Accidentally Married to an Icy Duke – Extended Epilogue

Alexander stepped out into the warm sunlight. He breathed in the fresh summer air, with the smell of roses and lilacs filling his senses, and the laughter of children filling his ears. Down on the lawn, William was running around, letting his twin sisters, Anne and Mary, toddle after him. When Mary faltered, the five-year-old stopped and watched for a moment.

“Mary, are you alright?” William called out.

“I-I am alright!” the three-year-old replied. Alexander watched William’s face soften in relief before he realized Anne had caught up with him.

“Aha!” Anne squealed as she wrapped her arms around William’s leg, giggling. William wobbled and laughed.

“You caught me!” he said, giggling.

“I did! I did!” She laughed as he lifted her into his arms and spun her around.

“I want cuddles …” Mary protested as she wobbled over. William stopped, scooped Mary into his arms, and sat down on the grass. Mary giggled and clung to him, nuzzling into his shoulder.

“William, William,” Anne said, tugging on his sleeve. “What bug is that?” she asked, pointing up. William and Alexander both looked up to where the little girl was pointing.

“I believe that is a peacock butterfly,” William said, smiling. “Am I right, Uncle Daniel?”

Standing under a nearby tree for shade was Daniel, having just returned from university recently.

“That it is,” he said. “You have a good eye for natural philosophy, William.”

“Really?” the young boy asked.

“Of course,” Daniel said, walking out to sit with them all. “And I must say, I believe you could be a gentleman scholar if you keep your inquisitive mind and you follow your imagination. With your natural curiosity about God’s creatures, you may end up discovering many wonderful things.”

William nodded eagerly, his little eyes shining with wonder and excitement.

“Is that what Uncle Elijah is studying?” Mary asked, going to put her thumb in her mouth before Daniel gently took her hand into his own.

“No, Elijah has gone on to study theology. I have had many a letter from him about the new things he has learned from his tutors; I dare say it will be nothing short of a miracle if he does not either enter the clergy or become an academic himself.” Daniel laughed softly.

“Elijah has always had a mind for the more academic side of his faith,” Amelia said, walking next to Alexander and speaking to the group.

“Mama! Papa!” William called out as he raced across the lawn, his sisters still in his arms. Amelia smiled as she watched, a hand on her belly that was once again rounding. Alexander knelt to wrap his arms around his children.

“I do hope you have all been behaving for Daniel?” Alexander asked teasingly.

“Yes, Papa!” his children cried out in unison, a tangle of arms wrapping around him to hug him tightly.

“They have been nothing but perfectly behaved,” Daniel insisted as he stood up.

“That is wonderful to hear.” Amelia smiled.

“Have you just been to see the dowager?” Daniel asked.

“Yes, she is doing well,” Amelia said, smiling.

“I should expect nothing else with Emma looking after her,” Daniel remarked. “How have her charities been performing?”

“Better than any of us could have expected,” Alexander commented. His heart warmed as he thought of his mother, whom he had once locked away, now laughing with her old friends and raising money for causes that meant the most to her.

“Yes,” Amelia nodded. “And she is so looking forward to Peggy’s debut.”

“I am sure most of high society is after some recent gossip,” Daniel said, clearly holding back a smirk. Alexander rolled his eyes.

“You know we have little interest in such things,” he said.

“No, I understand,” Daniel said. “But with some of the letters I have received from friends, I do believe they could be more than rumors.”

“Oh, really?” Amelia asked.

“Yes.” Daniel nodded. “I had a letter from one dear friend, the son of Duke Chanton, that his younger brother, who is but a year older than Peggy, is deeply interested in her. However, he may have some competition from Viscount Ireson and Lord Shaftsbury.”

“Well, I do say.” Amelia laughed. “It seems Peggy has some excellent prospects.”

“That she does.” Alexander agreed. “Should we have ever thought any differently?”

“I suppose not,” Amelia answered.

“How does your mother feel about her last daughter debuting?” Alexander asked.

“From her letters, she sounds as proud as a peacock,” Daniel reflected. “I dare say she will be visiting when the time comes.”

“Has she been enjoying the cottage?” Amelia asked.

“She has.” Daniel nodded. “Elijah visited her and says she’s settled in well.”

“Excellent,” Amelia cried.

“We shall need to visit her to make sure there’s nothing else she needs,” Alexander said warmly, to which Amelia agreed.

Movement caught Alexander’s eye. Mary had toddled out of his arms, possibly bored with the grown-ups talking, and had something in her hands.

“Mary?” Alexander asked in his stern “papa” voice that he had perfected around his children. Mary froze, and all eyes turned to her. She looked between her parents, then at her uncle … Then her eyes landed on her siblings. The thing in her hands squirmed.

“Mary, don’t–”

Too late.

The toddler threw the frog at her twin, who squealed and ran away. William ran, but not after his sister, after the frog. Daniel now suddenly had his attention split between the three children. He spun on the spot before racing after Anne.

“Anne! Come back!” he called after his niece. Mary laughed and was now sprinting toward the rose bushes.

“I caught the frog!” William shouted, now running after Mary.

Alexander burst out laughing, wrapping a hand around his stomach. Amelia laughed, a hand resting on her rounded belly.

“Only our children could be so well behaved for one moment, and then become complete chaos,” she said, shaking her head.

“No,” Alexander said, still catching his breath from laughing. “I dare say this is how many young families begin.”

“We can only hope we can teach them how to be proper members of society before they bring frogs and other wildlife to balls.” Amelia sighed. Alexander smiled and held her close.

“Their antics are exhausting you,” he said softly, kissing her temple.

“I do not wish to dampen their spirits,” Amelia admitted. “But running around after three children is not what one would call relaxing in their final weeks of this condition.”

“I know,” he said softly. “But I am sure that Daniel can continue his duties as their uncle while we take a moment for ourselves?”

“Are you sure?” Amelia asked.

Alexander glanced over at Daniel, who was now chasing Mary around the tree that Anne and William had settled under.

“Certain.”

Alexander quietly led Amelia away, toward Catherine’s garden. The plants were in full bloom, and the air was perfumed by the smell of roses and lilacs. He helped Amelia sit down on a bench, and she let out a soft groan as she sat.

“Ah … You could not possibly imagine the aches that my condition causes,” she said, grimacing.

“I have no firsthand experience,” he said sympathetically. “But I am not surprised when you are doing so much to help our family grow.”

He knelt in front of her, one hand resting gently on her knee, and pressed a kiss to the swell of her stomach. He stayed there for a moment, his forehead bowed, listening to nothing in particular. Just the garden. Just the warmth of the sun on the back of his neck and the faint, distant sound of his children being absolute terrors somewhere beyond the hedge.

“I cannot wait to meet our little one,” he murmured.

“Or little ones,” Amelia said, and he looked up to find her watching him with that particular expression, soft and amused and entirely his. “Mary and Anne have proven we are quite capable of producing twins.”

“Heaven help us,” he said, and meant it, and didn’t mean it at all. 

He looked up at her. The afternoon light was falling across the garden in long, golden lines, catching the silver that had begun to thread through her hair, and he thought, not for the first time, that she was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. Not in the way she had been beautiful when he had first met her, though she had been that, too, in a way he had been far too proud to acknowledge, but in the way of someone whose face had become the face you knew better than your own. The face you looked for in a crowded room without deciding to do so.

“I am the luckiest man alive,” he said quietly. “I have a family that, although it was born of scandal and a forced marriage, has become something I did not know how to want. Something I am not sure I deserved.”

“Alexander–”

“I will never be able to thank you enough,” he said. “For staying. For forgiving me. For being stubborn enough to love me when I was doing everything in my power to make it difficult.”

“You were not always difficult,” she said, her voice catching slightly.

“I was frequently difficult.”

“You were frightened,” she said. “There is a difference. And you stayed, too, even when you were afraid. You showed me how to hold your nerve when everything is collapsing. How to make amends even when the damage feels irreparable.” She tilted her head, studying him with those eyes that had always seen too much. “I should be thanking you for choosing to love me every day.”

He held her gaze for a long moment. There were no adequate words for what he felt, which had once been a source of great frustration to him and now felt almost beside the point. Some things did not need to be said. Some things simply needed to be sat inside, quietly, the way you sat inside a warm room after a long time spent in the cold.

“And I will continue to choose you,” he said, finally. “Every time. Whatever comes.”

She smiled, that small, private smile that was not for anyone else, that had never been for anyone else. He stood and pressed a kiss to her forehead and let himself stay there a moment longer than was strictly necessary.

“Lord Ravenscroft!” The children’s voices rose suddenly from somewhere beyond the garden wall, a chorus of delighted chaos. They both laughed.

“In a moment,” Alexander said, before Amelia could suggest they return. He sat down beside her and drew her gently against him, her warmth settling into his side the way it always did, easy and certain. She rested her head against his shoulder.

He looked out over Catherine’s garden, the roses in full bloom, the lavender and lilacs humming with bees, the light moving slowly across the grass, the way it did on long summer afternoons that you only recognized as perfect once they were already ending. He thought of everything this garden had once represented to him. Grief, and guilt, and the particular loneliness of a man who had convinced himself he preferred it. He thought of William solemnly identifying butterflies. Of Anne’s shriek of triumph wrapping around his leg. Of Mary, entirely unrepentant, hurling a frog into the general chaos of her family and laughing.

He thought of Amelia, writing him a letter she had not believed he would come after.

He pressed his lips to her hair and closed his eyes.

He had not deserved any of it. He was not sure that it had ever mattered less.

THE END