Jeanette wiped away another tear. “You love me.”
“I absolutely do, and I should have told you that. I should have been honest about my sentiments and begged you to humor me enough that we could sort through Beardsley’s foolishness together. I am proud, though, and I worry too much, so instead I flung a proposal at you like I hurl my knives. Badly done of me, but here’s the thing: We will disappoint each other, Jeanette. We already have disappointed each other. Perhaps to love is to be disappointed. God knows I’ve disappointed my family, and they regularly vex me, but that’s not what matters.”
Jeanette took his hand, though both of them had dirt in the creases of their palms. “What matters, Sycamore?”
“To love anyway. I will get it wrong again, Jeanette. I will speak intemperately or say something ill-advised about your favorite bonnet. You will criticize a play I adore, and we will bicker and make up, and feud and stumble. But I know this about myself: I will love you madly through it all and count it my greatest blessing if you can love me too.”
Jeanette tried to think, to find logic in what Sycamore said, to make his words fit a new definition of herself—as a woman who was loved, flaws and all—but her mind was not up to the challenge.
“You want me to trust you, to trust us.”
“I am begging you for the chance to deserve your trust, and I am freely offering you mine.”
She cuddled close, and Sycamore looped an arm around her shoulders. “You unnerve me, Sycamore Dorning. You utterly unnerve me.”
He sighed and something soft brushed Jeanette’s temple. “Well, thank God for that. I wouldn’t want to be the only person in this foyer feeling witless and muddled.”
“You are witless and muddled, and perfect, Sycamore.”
He bent near. “Say that again.”
A deep, quiet joy came over Jeanette, a letting-go of old sorrows and a welcoming of new challenges. “I said I love you, Sycamore Dorning. I love you, I love you.”
He scooped her into his lap and gathered her close, and then nobody said anything—with words—for the next little while.
Epilogue
“I cannot understand her French,” Tavistock said, sounding slightly dazed, “but she is so earnest about it, I feel I must try.”
“Have another glass of champagne,” Sycamore said. “Tabitha is equally voluble in English, Latin, and German. We are hoping as my niece matures, her verbal engines acquire some lower gears.” Though not just yet.
Casriel had decreed there was to be a massing of his troops in London for Sycamore and Jeanette’s wedding, and thus Tabitha had been hailed from school, the infants rounded up, and the countess given field marshal responsibilities.
Valerian and Emily had arrived a week ago, claiming Valerian needed to meet with his publisher, and Emily needed to do some shopping. In that regard, she was abetted by Jacaranda and Della, while Margaret—wife to Hawthorne—was making an inspection tour of London’s apothecaries and herbals.
Penweather and Daisy had also come up to Town, in separate coaches from separate abodes, but they had already acquired the look of a settled couple, and Penweather certainly exhibited paternal patience with Daisy’s brood. Oak and Verity, Penweather’s neighbors in Hampshire, had journeyed with him to Town as well.
Even Willow and Susannah had torn themselves away from their rural pursuits, the requisite wedding mastiff trotting at Will’s heels. Susannah had disappeared with Della and Verity to make a circuit of their favorite bookshops, and they’d dragooned Jeanette into joining them.
The wedding, a quiet ceremony at the Dorning town house, had been attended by every Dorning to which Sycamore could claim a near relation. Tavistock and Goddard had stood up with the bride, and—in a gesture of goodwill Sycamore would not have thought to offer—Jeanette’s nieces and nephew had also been invited.
The wedding breakfast was held at the Coventry, which showed to good advantage when full of loud, happy Dornings. The staff looked happy too—extra wages were always cause for joy—and Sycamore had given orders that Goddard’s excellent champagne was to flow freely in the kitchen too.
“She’s quite lovely,” Casriel said, taking the place on Sycamore’s right. “Your marchioness, that is. Has an air of friendly dignity about her.”
“She has a head for numbers,” Ash added from the right. “Always a fine quality in a woman.”
Hawthorne, who had made the supreme sacrifice of pulling himself away from his acres in springtime, peered over Sycamore’s right shoulder.
“She’s good with children,” he rumbled. “Margaret noticed that right away.”
“Well-spoken,” Valerian added from Ash’s right. “Likes books and doesn’t babble. I could listen to her speak French all day.”
Willow, holding a flute of champagne, gazed over Sycamore’s left shoulder. “The pup likes her. No more need be said, though Susannah also claims Jeanette has excellent literary tastes.”
A double endorsement, coming from dear Willow.
“I will come back to Town to do your wedding portrait,” Oak offered, passing around a plate of sandwiches. “Or we might stay for a time. The children enjoy London, and they should get to know their cousins.”
“They should get to know Uncle Sycamore and Aunt Jeanette,” Sycamore countered. “We intend to bide in Town for much of the year, so you will all send us your offspring from time to time. Jeanette will insist upon it. She thinks having a huge family is wonderful.”
Casriel munched a sandwich and surveyed the chattering, laughing, happy throng who had long since abandoned mealtime decorum to move about, talk across the table, and otherwise turn a breakfast into a celebration.
“You don’t think a huge family is a blessing?” he asked.
Jeanette was across the room, one of Casriel’s infants perched on her hip. Daisy and the countess were in discussion with her, but as if she’d known her