Epilogue

Boston

1822

They waited at the docks for the ship to anchor. A runner had reached the house just twenty minutes earlier, telling Merry Manning that the Monique had been sighted.

Gabriel would be aboard. So would Pamela, Pamela’s husband, Robert, and their two children.

It had been three months since she had seen her husband, nearly five years since she had seen her sister.

Only a pregnancy had kept Merry from this voyage. She had been on grand journeys to China and India. In the past three years, though, she had stayed home after the birth of David, now a toddler three years old. Another new child was due in two months. Even now she could feel her kicking.

She was quite sure that the child was a she, though a second boy would also please them both.

As she reached the waterfront, just minutes from their home, she saw the ship approach the wharf. Gabriel was on the deck, just as she had seen him years earlier. His hair was shorter and glinted like gold in the sun, and his posture radiated the confidence she had always loved.

Beside him was Pamela, waving madly. She held the hand of a girl that looked about David’s age, and Robert—a broad smile on his face—held a younger sibling.

She and Gabriel, Pamela and Robert had been married in the same ceremony in London before she and Gabriel had left for America. Monique had liked Robert immediately. He was a kind and compassionate man who obviously adored Pamela. He had not cared that she had lost most of the fortune accumulated by her father, and the estates as well.

Pamela had used what money she’d been able to save from her father’s estate to join Robert in Edinburgh while he finished his medical studies. He was now a physician in the same village where his family lived.

David yelled and waved as he saw his father, and Gabriel grinned back. In minutes Gabriel and her two friends departed the ship. David ran toward his father, who scooped him up and gave him a hug and introduced him to his cousins before setting him down. David shyly ogled his cousins.

Then Gabriel turned to her. The broad smile turned tender as his gaze went to her widening form, then to her face. He touched her cheek as he often did with fingers that adored. Then he kissed her in front of a goodly part of Boston until she thought she would melt into the earth.

His eyes promised heaven a few hours later.

She turned to Pamela, who was watching with amused affection. “I see nothing has changed between you two,” she said.

“Nor you,” Merry replied. Robert’s eyes regarded his family with unmistakable pride and love.

Pamela took Merry’s two hands and held them. “A long visit this time.”

“Perhaps we can convince you to come to Boston,” Merry said. “The city is in need of fine doctors.”

Something in Pamela’s eyes told her it was not an impossible dream. She knew Robert’s father had died, following his mother’s death by only a few months. Merry imagined that gossip had not made their life easy.

But that would come later.

Now it was time to return home. Tonight they would celebrate the reunion. Sydney and Dani, who lived several blocks away, were eager, as well, to see Pamela and Robert. Sydney was a foreman in the shipping company and was soon due for another promotion.

This would be Gabriel’s last voyage as a captain. Now that Samuel Barker was retiring, Gabriel would assume control of the shipping company. It would mean an end to captaining ships, but Gabriel had assured her he would be content.

“I was restless because I had no home, no anchor,” he had told her before this last trip. “You and David and the new one are my home and my life. I have reached my landfall.”

She knew they would journey together again. But it would be for pleasure and joy. Just as she had tinkered with a few plays until her son came. She did not miss it.

She’d discarded the name of Monique as well. Merry suited her much better these days.

All those thoughts warmed her as she stood in the loving circle of her growing family. She’d never thought to have such joy.

Gabriel reached down and slyly felt her stomach under her cloak. The baby kicked. “Ah, a little spitfire,” he said. “Takes after her mother.”

She smiled back. “Or his father.”

She offered one hand to him and the other to Pamela.

“Let’s go home.”