Extended Epilogue
Five years later
Although the Season had just begun, the streets were already busy, and the invitations piled on the mantelpiece. Sebastian had leafed through them, merely out of curiosity, but he was content to let Aurelia decide which they should attend and which they should spurn—either out of a desire to shun the hosts or because they were too busy.
With two children at home, Aurelia did find herself getting tired on occasion. Sebastian thought that was understandable, and he secretly hoped that it meant she was pregnant with their third.
He had been joking about ten. Mostly.
On this bright March morning, the sun shone lustrously on their heads, and Aurelia marched importantly ahead of him to Hatchards. One of her favorite things to do in London now was to visit the bookshop. In part because she loved to read, and she especially loved that he could buy her whichever books she fancied.
Most grand ladies spent their pin money on clothes and hats and shoes and outrageous items of fashion. His Aurelia did too, on occasion, but she spent the bulk of her money and time on books. Beautiful, leather-bound, gold-engraved tomes that were as much works of art as works of literature.
He hurried to catch up with her. “What’s the urgency?”
“Lady Rothbury asked me to meet her at Hatchards at eleven, and it’s near that time now. We ought to have taken the carriage.” Her skirts snapped around her legs as she walked. “But I thought, as it was such a nice day, we could walk.”
He caught up with her and slipped his hand through her elbow. Lady Rothbury was Lady Mary Ann Rothbury, and the two ladies had maintained a close friendship even after Mary Ann married a prominent northern gentleman, the Viscount of Rothbury. They were only ever in London during the Season, and recently, due to the birth of her first child, she had failed to make even that.
“I think she has some news for me.” Aurelia’s steps lengthened, and he had to stride to keep up with her. “And, of course, I intend to buy some books while we are there.”
“Of course,” he said dryly. “You may keep pretending you are visiting only for the purpose of social meetings, and I will keep pretending it’s the truth.”
“Psh. Knowledge is a precious thing,” Aurelia shrugged, looping her arm around his.
“As is fiction,” he pointed out. “You, my shepherdess, partake in both.”
“That’s no bad thing!”
“Heavens, did I suggest otherwise?” He laughed at her scowl. “I find it charming that you have filled our library with new purchases and the latest literary ventures.”
“Good,” she muttered. “Because I am your wife and you are obligated to find me charming. Ah, here we are.” She paused outside the building for a moment, gazing through the windows at the latest assembled books. Before marrying Aurelia, Sebastian had never been acquainted with the establishment, but marriage changed a man.
He could have visited any number of gentlemen’s clubs, but he had chosen instead to accompany his wife. Later, no doubt, he would put in an appearance. It had taken years for the rumors to fully die, but now people no longer looked at him and thought that he might have a terrible past.
Now, they looked at him and saw a mere duke. Secretive, even a little aloof at times.
He didn’t mind.
Aurelia turned and pecked him on the cheek. “I really think I should go in alone, sweetheart.”
He blinked at her, momentarily confused. “Alone?”
“Yes. To see Lady Rothbury.”
“But—”
“She has something to tell me she might not wish to tell you.” Aurelia patted his head, as if he were some pitiful lost puppy. He may as well have been at her words. “But there are fireworks at Vauxhall tonight, so we shall see each other again in a few hours for that if nothing else.”
“That is one of the events you selected for us to attend?”
“Of course!” Aurelia beamed at him, and he couldn’t bring himself to do anything but smile helplessly back. This was what he, cold duke with a terrible reputation, had become—and he didn’t mind in the slightest. “Go to one of those awful smoky places you call a club and make its patrons quake in fear.”
“I am not so intimidating,” he protested, but she merely fluttered a gloved hand at him as she pushed open the door and, with the tinkle of a bell, disappeared.
Grumbling, Sebastian set off down the street. He might as well go to White’s, which was no doubt Aurelia’s plan. Although they were firmly cemented in London Society now, with no one disparaging Aurelia for her birth or him for his past, she never failed to keep making sure that continued. Not once did she let her guard down.
Sebastian understood the sentiment. They had both fought too hard for their little family’s position to let it slip through their fingers so simply now.
White’s it was.
He entered past the doorman, who bowed at him as he strode inside. When he was younger, Sebastian liked to make an entrance. Now, in his mid-thirties, he enjoyed the sensation equally as much. There was something about the sudden obsequiousness in everyone’s actions once they realized he was a duke that he found especially entertaining.
After some deliberation, he chose a table that Lord Redwood was sitting at. Since Sebastian’s return to the ton, Redwood had lost a lot of his bluster. And, to Sebastian’s knowledge, was no longer groping servants in the hopes that they might be forced to lie with him.
There was little Sebastian despised more in a man.
“Redwood!” he chimed dryly, seating himself in the armchair to the man’s right and accepting a brandy that the manservant handed him. The air was thick with cigar smoke, and Redwood nearly choked on his. His face turned red.
“Ravenhall,” he said curtly.
“I confess, I am delighted to find you here,” Sebastian said with a sly grin. “I hear you are to be married.”
With effort, Redwood appeared to control himself. “So I am.”
“My condolences to the bride.” Sebastian sipped his drink, thinking about the times Redwood had attempted to harm Aurelia in any way—in every way—and knowing that no punishment he offered here, no social condemnation, would ever be enough.
Redwood rose abruptly. “I forgot I had an appointment. Forgive me.”
The man had scarcely risen before Sebastian caught his shoulder and slammed him back into his chair. “Why the hurry?”
***
After returning from her Hatchards rendezvous, Aurelia barely had time to change before they had to leave for dinner at Vauxhall Gardens, where Sebastian had procured them a box. Liliana and Emmeline, their two daughters—they were still waiting for their younger brother Charles—had bounced on the carriage seats the entire way, their excited chatter filling any and all silent air that existed in Aurelia and Sebastian’s lives.
Liliana, their first, who was five now, had inherited her father’s dark features and her mother’s stubborn streak—a dangerous combination to be sure. Emmeline, on the other hand, possessed her grandmother’s fair curls and an alarming talent for getting precisely what she wanted through sheer charm alone.
Between the two of them, their parents never stood a chance.
To Aurelia’s surprise, Sebastian waited until they were all situated within the box, dinner being served, and all manner of people walking outside for their entertainment, before asking, “What did Lady Rothbury want?”
Aurelia thought back to the bookshop, with the warm scent of leather and paper and ink, and the way her friend had gathered her to a corner of said bookshop and spoken with her at length about her intentions for her future.
“She wishes to enter the world of politics,” Aurelia said, smiling a little at the thought. “Do you not agree that women should have the vote?”
Sebastian looked at her gravely, and she fought the urge to giggle. “If you did, sweetheart, you would vote us all out.”
“And replace you with women? Perhaps. Does that not indicate that you are doing a poor job?”
“It suggests that you have a vendetta,” he pointed with his cup of lemonade, before pouring it into Emmeline’s empty one.
“After years of being belittled and persecuted, I can understand it if we do. But that is not the purpose of equality, dearest. Its purpose is that we are both equal.”
He made an unimpressed sound. “Is that what it is?”
“Yes! I fully support the endeavor.”
“A man cannot vote without property,” he noted. “Are you suggesting we change that, too?”
“Papa, what’s voting?” Liliana chimed up from her now-empty dish, sticky-faced and curious.
“It is how we choose who runs the country, darling,” Sebastian pinched her nose.
“Can I vote?”
“Not yet.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re five, for one.”
“That’s not fair! I’d vote for Mama.”
Aurelia bit back a laugh. “See? Already more sensible than most of Parliament.” She propped her chin on her hands as she gazed at him. “Is that so terrible a thought, though?”
He appeared to consider it for a moment. That was something else she loved about him: the way he always looked at things from all angles before coming to a conclusion about them. “I suppose it depends on their level of education and comprehension. A man working the fields will not have the same priorities as a man who owns those fields.”
“And a woman will have different priorities again. We ought not all be spoken for and condemned by the men in our lives. And we must all live in this country, Sebastian.” She reached across to squeeze his hand. “Would you object if I were to join her attempts?”
He arched a brow. “And how do you suppose to do that?”
She shrugged. “Canvass people, perhaps make a pamphlet. With you and our children, I expect I will not have the time to do anything but be a patron.” Although that made difference enough. Money, as she knew well from her time before being a duchess, was what made the world go round.
“You may do as you choose,” he chuckled lowly, taking her hand and bringing it to his lips. “So long as you don’t vote me out when you charm me and take all my power.”
“Now, that would be impossible.”
“Mama! Papa! Look!” Emmeline grabbed Aurelia’s sleeve, pointing at the acrobats performing on the far side of the Gardens. “They’re flying!”
“Not flying, silly Emmy,” Liliana corrected, hopping down from her seat to take a closer look. “They’re on ropes, see?”
“I want to fly on ropes!”
“Absolutely not,” Sebastian and Aurelia said in unison.
There was a bang to their left. Both girls shrieked. Lights skittered across the sky. An almost unanimous ooh rose from the crowd around them. Liliana scrambled to the edge of their box, Emmeline right behind her. Sebastian pulled Aurelia into his lap, and they both sat together, looking at the sky as their world erupted with light.
Her body felt strange in a way she had experienced twice before, and when they returned home, she would tell him about their third child. Perhaps the son they’d once expected. Perhaps another daughter to complete their chaotic brood.
But for now, she let herself live in the moment, her head against his shoulder and his arms around her waist, and their two children gasping at every new burst of light.
And she could not have been happier.