Page 255 of The Enslaved Duet

“Thank you for giving me a gift I never thought to ask for,” he said quietly, his tone so genuine it made my heart ache. “I promise to prove myself worthy of it, of you and our child, every single bloody day for the rest of our lives.”

“I know,” I said before I sealed his promise with a kiss. “You are the best man I know, and I’ll spend the rest of my life proving to you that I already know just how worthy you are.”

Four years later.

Alexander

Pearl Hall echoed like church bells in an ancient tower with the peeling, silver laughter of many children dancing, playing, and racing through its halls. Theodore and Genevieve Sinclair took turns sliding down the great, curving bannister of the staircase in the Great Hall as Riddick looked on as a stern supervisor, only cracking a smile when Genny demanded he stand at the bottom and high five her on her way down.

Two of the Davenport triplets giggled ceaselessly as their aunt Elena and uncle Dante blew kisses into their sweet baby rolls of fat and tickled the swell of their little bellies from where they lay inside their playpen set up in the informal living room. The adults argued good naturedly over which of the brothers was cuter, Edward or Dorian, and both babies screamed in delight as if adding their own opinions to the debate.

Mama held the only Davenport girl, the last triplet born, a small thing made of golden skin and curling ink-stained hair with eyes already turned a brightly polished silver. She cooed to little Poppy in a serious tone, imparting wisdom in dialect Italian the eleven-month-old girl couldn’t yet understand. Still, Poppy pressed her little fist to Mama’s softly creased cheek as if she comprehended each word.

Giselle sat on the loveseat before the fire curled up beside her husband, who read from’Twas the Night Before Christmasaloud for the benefit of the preteen girl lying belly down on the Persian carpet with her chocolate-stained face cupped in her hands as she listened. When she interrupted the story to protest, Elena shot her daughter a long, lingering look that spoke volumes and shut down the girl with a grumbled apology as she settled back in to listen.

I stood in the doorway between the Great Hall and the living room with my shoulder against the jamb, and my arms crossed as I took in the happy family tableau occupying my ancestral home.

It was our first Christmas as a family in years, and my wife had somehow convinced her clan to travel across the pond and spend it here at Pearl Hall. Every year previously, we had flown to the States for the occasion, but Cosima was tired—three newborns would test a literal saint—and she wanted her family in her home to celebrate.

I hadn’t properly understood her inclination until the current moment, watching my in-law’s children scurry around the imposing estate as if it was a playground, seeing my wife share the love of our home with her sisters and brother, and woo their partners with our history and amenities.

Pearl Hall had felt like a true home the moment I’d reinstalled Cosima at my side as its mistress, and it felt like a palace once more the moment we’d brought Aidon home from the hospital, but this was the first time I understood that together, my wife and I were creating a new legacy for the place.

It would never again be a cage for slaves or a prison for its heirs. Our children would grow up knowing it as a home as much as any other, a place of love and warmth with a new history built on loyalty and emotional generosity. They would impart this adage on to their children and from them their own, on and on until the legacy that had ended with Noel would be long forgotten and washed from the walls and grounds of Pearl Hall by many, many years ofmyfamily’s laughter.

The scent of crushed autumn leaves and warm spice heralded her arrival before slender arms wrapped themselves around my middle, and Cosima pressed herself to my back.

“Hullo, husband,” she said in a jaunty British accent.

Her voice would never forget those last traces of her homeland, but more and more over the years, she had adapted to my British-isms and manner of speaking. I enjoyed the traces of my country in her speech. It was yet another reminder of all the ways I’d made her intractably mine.

“Hullo, wife,” I replied, tugging her around to my front so I could take her face in my hands and look into her beloved golden eyes.

In the first years of our reunion, I’d harboured a secret, horrifying belief that our love was too good to be true. That any minute, she would recognize the mistake she had made in choosing me and get the hell out of my life.

But that moment never came.

Instead, every day that I woke up beside her, it was to a particular look in her eye I’d come to understand was crafted only for me. It was a look that turned her eyes from solid gold to warm, honeyed butter, soft and pliable with love and submission for me.

That expression was echoed in her money eyes then as I looked down into them, and I felt the mirror of that feeling take up inside my chest.

“How did I get to be such a lucky bastard?” I asked her before taking her lips in a firm, punishing kiss.

When I finally had my fill—for the moment— I pulled back and watched with wholly male satisfaction as she blinked dazedly a few times before recovering. She reached up to wrap her fingers around my wrists as they still held her face, and she smiled her million-dollar smile.

“You know perfectly well how you managed it, Xan. You paid the price for me.”

“Cheeky,” I scolded with a click of my tongue before I sobered and bent my knees slightly so that I was eye-level with her. “I paid the price not in wealth, but in sacrifice. Nearly four years without you was worse than any punishment had by Sisyphus or Tantalus.”

“Agreed,” Cosima said with a firm nod before collapsing once more in a beatific grin. “Are you happy now, husband?”

I looked over her head into the living room again as Cage Tracey began to play the piano, and Sebastian stood up to invite his mother to dance with him. Dante and Elena bickered over the game of chess they had started in the same spot Cosi had once played Noel before the fireplace while Aidon and Giselle carefully painted the trainset the former had received as an early Christmas present.

It was so perfect as to be nauseating for a man who had not believed in love for the better part of his life.

I told my wife that.

She tipped her head back and laughed her raucous, genuine laughter. I let it wash over me as I held her in my arms, and when she righted herself, I gave in to the impulse to kiss her once more.