“It sounds exactly right.”
She kissed him again—and then again—and the quiet certainty between them gave way, once more, to something warmer, brighter, alive with promise.
And Lorraine Weston—soon to be Lorraine Vane—let herself feel it fully.
Not as something borrowed.
Not as something fleeting.
But as something that was, at last, hers to keep.
Epilogue
One Year Later, Spring
The garden was absurd.
Lorraine stood on the terrace in the April sunshine and surveyed the devastation with the expression of a woman who had requested a modest herb garden and received, instead, something resembling Versailles after a cheerful explosion.
Roses—climbing, rambling, sprawling—engulfed the south wall in a profusion of pink and cream and deep, theatrical crimson. Lavender bordered the gravel paths in extravagant purple drifts. The kitchen garden had quadrupled in size, producing—according to Mrs Potter, who had developed proprietary feelings about every vegetable on the estate—enough basil to supply the whole of Yorkshire. And in the centre of it all, installed three weeks ago by a team of men from York who had sweated, cursed, and charged an eye-watering sum, stood a stone birdbath of such monumental proportions that even the kestrels circling the folly regarded it with visible suspicion.
“Your husband,” said Margaret Harding, settling into the garden chair beside her with a cup of tea and the satisfied expression of a grandmother who had been proven spectacularly right about everything, “has no concept of restraint.”
“My husband,” Lorraine replied, one hand resting on the considerable swell of her belly, “was told that I wanted somewhere pleasant to sit in the afternoons. He interpreted this as an invitation to redesign the entire eastern grounds.”
“James was the same. I once asked for a window box in Calcutta and received a conservatory.” Margaret sipped her tea.
From the lower garden came the sound of laughter—Thomas’s, high and bright, followed by a deeper sound that still, after a year, made Lorraine’s chest expand. Dominic laughing. The full, unguarded laugh of a man who had spent four years forgetting how and was now, with the enthusiastic assistance of an eight-year-old accomplice, making up for lost time.
She could not see them from here—they were somewhere beyond the hedge, engaged in an activity that Thomas had described at breakfast as “an expedition of critical scientific importance,” and that Dominic had declined toelaborate upon with an expression of conspiratorial innocence that fooled no one, least of all his wife.
His wife.A year, and the word still caught her off guard. Not because it felt wrong—it had never, for a single moment, felt wrong—but because it felt so thoroughly, mundanely, magnificently right that she sometimes forgot it had ever been otherwise.
They had married in March of the previous year, six weeks after the proposal, in the small stone chapel at the edge of the Rovewood estate. Lorraine had worn cream silk—a gift from Margaret, who had taken one look at Lorraine’s plan to wear her best grey dress and responded with the quiet, implacable authority of a woman who had negotiated with Indian princes. Thomas had carried the rings on a velvet cushion and had only dropped them once. Julian Pierce, Earl of Westbrook, had served as best man and had wept more copiously than anyone present, a fact he denied with increasing indignation whenever it was mentioned.
Graves had, witnesses attested, smiled.
Thetonhad been, as expected, appalled. A duke marrying his governess—a governess with a scandal—was precisely the sort of thing that supplied drawing rooms with conversation for an entire season. Lorraine had received three letters of congratulations from former employers, seventeen of horrified reproof from people she had never met, and one from Lydia that beganDear Sister, I hope you will understand why Arthur and I cannot publicly acknowledge—and which Lorraine had used to light the fire.
She had returned Lydia’s conscience money the following day. There was even less reason to keep it now. She was the Duchess of Ravenswood, and the Duchess of Ravenswood did not require ten pounds from a sister who could not bring herself to write the wordcongratulations.
“He’s getting tall,” Margaret said, shading her eyes as Thomas emerged from behind the hedge, grass-stained and grinning, his solemn face transformed into something radiant. “Every time I visit, he’s grown another inch. James says he’ll be as tall as his father.”
“Dominic says he has William’s build.” Lorraine watched as Dominic appeared behind Thomas, carrying what appeared to be a wooden frame—a structure, perhaps, or—
“Is that a nesting box?” Margaret asked.
“Ah.” Lorraine’s mouth twitched. “The expedition of critical scientific importance.”
“For the kestrels!” Thomas called, spotting them and breaking into a run. He arrived breathless, flushed, incandescent with the particular joy of a child who had spent the morning building something with his father. “We made it together. It’s for the eastern ridge, near the folly. We measured the entrance hole precisely—thirty-two millimetres, because that’s the optimal diameter forFalco homunculus.” He paused. “Father helped with the sawing.”
Father.
The word had arrived quietly, without ceremony, on a Tuesday afternoon in October. Thomas had been painting at the nursery table, Dominic reading beside him—a habit that had begun as occasional and become, by unspoken agreement, immovable. Thomas had needed a jar rinsed and had said, without looking up, “Father, could you fill this, please?” Dominic had risen, filled it, and sat back down. Neither had acknowledged it. Lorraine had stood in the doorway with her hand pressed to her mouth, tears streaming down her face, and known that some moments were too large for words, and too perfect for ceremony.
The adoption had been formalised in June. Thomas Harding was now Thomas Harding Vane—legally, permanently, irrevocably the son of Dominic Vane, Duke of Ravenswood. James Harding had handled the legalities with the calm efficiency of a retired diplomat and the barely concealed emotion of a grandfather. The documents were signed in the study, beneath the kestrel painting—the first one, garish and crooked,For His Gracelettered carefully across the bottom—that still hung on the wall and, Dominic had informed the household, would remain there until the house itself fell down.
“It’s a fine nesting box,” Margaret told Thomas, examining it with grave attention. “Will you show your grandfather when he arrives? He’ll want the full specifications.”
