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“Your affairs?” Ellie nearly lost her line of thought as Samuel gently touched her shoulder, but annoyance carried her through. “This is my affair. It has nothing to do with you, Your Grace. I love Samuel, I knew he was innocent, and I found a way to prove it. You stormed about being irritable because of some, admittedly terrible, rumours, worried about your reputation, while the man I love was about to hang. Did you really expect me to do nothing? Would Lizzy May do nothing, if you were about to hang?”
His Grace was finally looking at Ellie now, his expression a touch stunned.
“Lizzy May would certainly do something if I were about to hang,” he admitted in a bemused tone. “But she would never dress me down like that.”
“Make her as angry as I am right now and she would.” With that, Ellie whirled away from the Duke and marched up to the desk. “And you, Your Honour, you know no one set out to commit treason. Not Richard Carmichael. Not Yvette. Certainly not Samuel. This entire trial is ridiculous.”
The judge stared at her, face purple.
“And another—”
A hand settled on her shoulder.
Ellie spun back around to find Samuel, mouth twitching as if he might smile, his eyes alight.
“Miss Ellsworth?”
Her gaze locked with Samuel’s, Ellie’s thoughts scattered, taking her anger with them.
“Yes?”
“Would you do me the honour of becoming my wife?”
Ellie nodded. “I would.”
Samuel grinned.
“Thank you,” he said, and pulled her into his arms.
As his mouth lowered to meet hers, Ellie heard gasps, and the distinctly happy sound of someone clapping, beyond the Duke where Mrs. Carmichael stood, but those sounds were gone in a moment. As soon as Samuel’s lips touched hers, Ellie forgot the room, the people, the trial. Everything faded away except for the joy of being in Samuel’s arms.
Epilogue
Ellie sat on the thick picnic blanket beside Samuel, the slope of the hill giving them a fine view of the meadow below. Summer wildflowers in every shade speckled the landscape. Butterflies flittered among them, their spiralling paths somehow joyous.
Ellie dropped her gaze from the scene before her to the notes dotting the score she’d drawn into her journal. Ellie’s work. The reason they were out in the meadow. She required quiet to work out the composition.
Her pencil poised above the page. Butterflies, such as the orange, blue and yellow ones fluttering about the valley, required a smattering of quick, sharp notes. She pencilled them in.
Perhaps hearing the scraping of graphite on paper, Samuel looked up from his book. He pushed his glasses up on his nose.
“How goes the composition, Love?”
“Somewhat easier than the first.” Ellie chewed on the end of her pencil.
Samuel marked his place and closed the book, turning more fully to her. “Yet you seem discontent.”
Ellie smiled slightly. Her husband knew her too well.
“It seems too much easier. My first composition took so long. I struggled. I wrote and rewrote. Sometimes I became so frustrated, I cried. Why should this composition prove so much easier?”
She stuck the end of the pencil back between her teeth.
“Because you have experience writing music now? You’ve practiced, and improved?”
Ellie pulled free the pencil to say, “Or is it because this composition is terrible?” Shouldn’t true art be a struggle? “I nearly wish the first piece wasn’t so well received. I have to do at least as well with this one, if not better.” Ellie shook her head. “What if I can’t do better?”
She nibbled on the pencil, staring out at the butterflies.
