Falling for her Sister’s Intended – Extended Epilogue

One Year Later

Victoria stepped aside and watched two nurses pass with a ledger and a basket of folded linens. The sun settled on the window glass, then slid over the sign erected cleanly into the arch outside the giant building.

Ravenswood College of Medicine.

She paused beneath the stone and let herself look. The courtyards, the rows of herbs set in tidy beds, the modest infirmary with its wide windows for air and light, all of it breathed the one thing Edmund had always given others and only lately allowed himself.

Stability.

She drew a quiet breath, and the scent of rosemary and chalk settled her. Edmund came down the steps from a lecture room, his black coat dusted pale and a strand of hair across his brow. He brushed at the chalk with a slight hand and smiled.

“You came to fetch me?”

“I came to admire you,” she replied, without teasing.

A wave of color touched his cheek. “Then I must send you to a different building. I hear the anatomy theater is far more impressive.”

“Doctor!” she said, laughing. “I mean this.”

He shook his head and took her hand. They walked the length of the herb beds where labels, neat and plain, were plastered on each remedy. He greeted a boy who hovered at the edge of a doorway, then paused by another doorway, his eyes settling on a woman who stood beside the wooden surface.

“Have the splints arrived yet?”

“Yes, Doctor, they have. Dr. Hale wanted us to examine a new case with them.”

“Good, I cannot wait to see what you learn,” he responded. 

The young woman nodded, a smile on her face as Edmund and Victoria went their way, their fingers still entangled.

“You have made a city out of kindness,” she said, low so that only he might hear.

“I have only arranged rooms,” he replied. “Kindness, my dear, is the work that fills them.”

They crossed the court to a wing still under construction and smiled as a mason lifted his cap. In the window above, a patient stood with a shawl over her shoulders and watched the light. Victoria lifted her hand in a small salute. The woman smiled and dipped her head.

“Shall I steal you now,” Victoria asked, “or must I wait on the bell?”

“I am afraid I have patients waiting in my study. But when we are done here, I am all yours,” Edmund said, soft as a secret.

“Come back to me before supper,” she said.

“I will,” he promised, and he leaned in again and kissed her, his promise more certain than anything. 

Later that afternoon, back at the house, Georgiana arrived in a flurry of long dresses and bouncing curls.  She kissed Victoria, then began to talk before the greeting had cooled.

“You cannot imagine the chaos of planning Thomas’s lecture series.”

“Can I not?” Victoria asked, a cherry smile on her face.

Georgiana rolled her eyes, the complaint leaving her tongue with the ease of a feather. “He insists the title must be plain and useful, and I insist it must not put the audience to sleep. Imagine it, an evening with the scholar Doctor Ravenswood, and the words ‘plain notes on circulation’ on the handbill. I shall perish.”

“You will not,” Victoria said, taking her arm. “You will change those words and let him think it was his idea.”

Georgiana laughed and allowed herself to be led toward the little garden behind the college. They walked slowly, their dresses skimming the path, laughter rising and falling as distant memories visited and retreated again. Suddenly, the misheard conversation felt rather like a hilarious moment than a sad one.

“To think I ran with a basket of roses as if chased by wolves,” Georgiana said, half appalled and half amused.

They laughed until the ache behind the laughter softened and a group of students passed, tipping their caps. Georgiana watched them with bright interest.

“To think we once thought our small quarrels were the whole world.”

“I mean, they did feel like the whole world,” Victoria answered.

“How did we ever survive ourselves?”

“With difficulty,” Victoria said, “and with the right gentlemen.”

They stopped beneath the ash and Georgiana took both of Victoria’s hands and looked at her for the simple pleasure of looking.

“You are well,” she declared. “I wanted to see it with my own eyes before I told Thomas that all is properly arranged for his talk. He means to demonstrate something with a piece of wood, and I have told him that he must not bring the log.”

“Thank heaven,” Victoria said. “He can be that direct as well.”

They laughed and walked again, pausing where the sun warmed the stones. When at last Thomas’s familiar stride appeared at the far end of the path, Georgiana’s face lit with a feeling that needed no words. She squeezed Victoria’s fingers, then went to meet him. 

Before they reached each other, both were already smiling. Victoria watched them for a moment, her own smile easy.

Later that evening as a mild breeze moved through the ash leaves and turned the last light to silver, Edmund sat beside Victoria on the stone bench, his hand warm over hers.

“There is something I must tell you,” she said.

He turned at once. His eyes were steady, the day’s labor gentled out of his face. “You are with child.”

She blinked, then laughed. “You already knew?”

“I had seen the signs and hoped that was the case,” he said, and he kissed her hand with a reverence that made her throat catch. “You have been falling asleep in the afternoons recently.”

Victoria blushed, her face heating with each second. “Is it so obvious?”

“Only to me,” he murmured. “I am going to become a father.”

Silence settled around them without weight and she settled snugly beside him.

For the rest of the night, they remained that way, basking in the bliss of their newfound joy.

THE END