Page 65 of The Marquis' Game of Seduction

“It’s not a sea, silly. It’s an ocean. And it’s called the Pacific,” Duncan returned.

Emily scowled. “Same difference.”

“It’s not!” Duncan said.

“Do you want to go play in my room after this?” Emily asked.

“Yes. Do you still have your horses?” Duncan demanded.

“It’s not like I would ever get rid of them,” Emily said.

Duncan’s eyes flashed, both with annoyance and pleasure. Rose rolled her eyes, and in the midst of their roll, she caught sight of Amelia performing a similar action.

Amelia smiled at her. “I missed him so much,” she said quietly. “When I was in the depths of the fever, all I could do was think of my baby. I think, in a way, I found a way to live because I wanted to fight my way back to him. Is that silly to say?”

“No. No, it’s not,” Rose affirmed. “I can imagine it, although I’ve never been a mother.”

“You’ll be a marvelous one,” Amelia said. “The way you are with Duncan and with Emily, it’s so clear.” Amelia paused for a moment, pressing her lips together. Her eyes turned toward Colin, noting that he was in the depth of conversation with Allan. “You know, I really do regret the advice I gave Colin all those years ago.”

Rose tilted her head. She hadn’t imagined Amelia to be so forthright, so eager to engage in honest conversation.

“I know he’s told you all about the dilemma with Emily. I was far and away, in the West Indies, and already a bit enraged about my father and my brother deciding that I’d done something somehow inappropriate in following the man I loved. You must understand, now, what it means to love. You do things blindly and sometimes without reason. But you don’t regret them. Because you can still feel how you felt at the time.”

“Of course,” Rose said. She placed her fork to the side of her plate, no longer hungry. She peered at her newfound sister-in-law, feeling a sudden camaraderie forming between them.

“I told him to take the baby to the orphanage. In my mind, it was the only way to go about things. The woman he loved had died, and it was necessary that he move forward without her and without any of the baggage she’d left behind. But goodness, I was wrong. Life is far more complicated than it seemed from the West Indies. I was far away, and thusly, I assumed that I could just… deduce the proper way to handle the situation, without seeing it.

“Colin never told me that he kept the baby. I suppose he’s also told you that we didn’t speak for many years. I didn’t regret it at the time. You can hear it from Laurence. I bemoaned my life in England. I said that we should never return. And then, when we did, I immediately grew so ill… I blamed England for that, too. Idiotic of me, certainly.

“But now, I see that I was incorrect. All children need in this world is someone to love them. And look at her. How could I ever take that creature—that beautiful, silly, alien creature—to the orphanage?”

Rose shook her head. “I would have never had the strength to do it.”

“Colin tells me that you grew up in an orphanage. This must all be much more pointed for you. And it must have made you love him all the more, knowing that he would change his life, if only to protect that girl,” Amelia said.

“Yes. Of course,” Rose whispered.

Amelia reached across the glowing table cloth to grip Rose’s hand. They shared a simple smile. Rose’s eyes traced across the table to find Anna’s, where she sat alongside her dear love, Ernest. The table brimmed with impossible amounts of love, the sort of love Rose hadn’t envisioned in her life before. She reminded herself just how grateful she needed to be, forevermore.

This was all she needed.

THE END