EPILOGUE
That Ends Well
“These, indeed, gave her rights which she could not, and would not, yield . . .”
Bury, Charlotte, The Diary of a Lady-in-Waiting
The inquest in the matter of the death of Josiah Poole was held the next day at the Bow Street magistrate’s court. Sir David Royce presided over a jury of twelve men, who returned a unanimous verdict of murder with malice aforethought against William Fitzwallace Considen and recommended that he be bound over for trial.
The prisoner was held at the Brown Bear public house for exactly one night. When the sheriff arrived in the morning to take him to jail, it was to discover that he had breathed his last. Sir David declared that he had succumbed to his illness at some point in the early morning.
Melora Poole buried her brother beside their parents and retreated from the public eye.
Mrs. Fitzherbert did depart for the Continent but wrote to Rosalind that she planned to return in time for the upcoming season.
The trial of Queen Caroline dragged on for two more months, with all the public rumor, spectacle, and outcry as could be brought to bear upon it by all classes of society. In the end, the king failed in his quest, and the marriage was declared to be valid and legal.
The queen declared her intent to leave England once again and this time never return.
While the world was still waiting to see if that promise would be kept, Rosalind Thorne met Letitia Poole at Gunter’s Tea Shop. It was the autumn, and a gray rain drummed against the windows. Letitia had stayed three days with Rosalind during the crisis that enveloped her family but had returned to her stepmother’s house after Mr. Considen’s funeral.
“How have you been?” Rosalind asked her.
“I think I am becoming a ghost,” said Letitia with a small smile. She had fallen back into the studied disinterest that was the acceptable tone for a young woman in polite company. “My stepmother will not even speak to me. She has agreed that my engagement can be broken, so that is something, anyway.”
“I have a plan to put to you,” said Rosalind. “A possibility, rather.”
“Yes?”
“I have learned there is a school in Ottawa. It’s an academy for the daughters of English officers who are posted in the territory. There they are instructed in the polite accomplishments and proper English manners.”
Letitia frowned. “You think I should attend this school?”
“I think you should teach.”
Letitia’s polite mask slipped just a little, and she looked at Rosalind as if she had taken leave of her senses. “Who on earth would possibly hire me to teach?”
Rosalind laid a sealed letter down. “Your mother.”
* * *
Still later, Rosalind returned to her darkened parlor. It was quite late, and the staff had all departed, except for Laurel, who lived in. But Laurel was in her own bed upstairs. Alice and Amelia had gone to their flat, and Rosalind was alone. She sat on the window seat, with only one lamp burning low.
She had come home to the papers filled with the latest news of the quarrels of the king and the queen. Rosalind ignored them. She had the peaceful darkness and her own thoughts to keep her company.
At last, she saw a familiar silhouette coming up the street. She smiled softly.
Adam walked up the path and, using his key, opened her door.
He came into the room, laid his hat aside, and bent to kiss her.
“How did Miss Poole receive your suggestion?” he asked as he took a place beside her on the window seat. She laid her hand over his but found her eyes would not turn away from the stillness outside.
“Very well, I think.” She paused, and Adam, because it was his way, let her have her silence.
“Let us never be rich,” she said eventually.
“Very well,” agreed Adam.
“And power,” she said. “Let us abjure that, as well.”
Adam smiled. “I think I can safely promise you that.”
“Good. Neither state seems to be beneficial to human rationality.”
“As it happens, I agree.”
“I’m tired, Adam,” she said.
Adam reached out and turned her, just enough so that he could settle an arm around her shoulders. “So am I.”
“I find I am sickened of this business of money and bodies, and who owns whom and what rights that confers on them, and how children may be bartered to further some end of the parents’. It is unjust, and what feels worse is it is all a colossal waste of time and effort.” She frowned. “I’m babbling.”
“No.”
“I do love you.”
“And I love you.”
“I want to be with you.”
“And I with you.”
“I want it to be for us. Not for money, not for the sake of any children having a name. I do not want to be hidden, and I do not want you to be denied.” She paused again. “Now is not the time to be talking like this.”
“When is the time?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. I barely know what I’m saying. Seeing Letitia today, it brought all this summer back to me—the whole terrible business between the Pooles and the Fallers and the Fitzherberts . . .”
“It’s over now. You have done what you promised, and more.”
“But it will come again. It is at the heart of what I do.”
Adam was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Rosalind . . . I have, well, not a proposal. I have a possibility.”
She pushed herself away, just far enough so she could see his face fully.
Adam reached into his coat pocket and removed a folded paper. He placed it in her hands.
“What is this?” she asked.
“A marriage contract.”
Rosalind froze.
Adam stood and crossed the room, as if he could not speak while he was beside her. “It occurred to me a while ago that it might solve . . . or at least help, or, well, perhaps it might make clearer—” He stopped. “I visited a solicitor I know. It’s only a draft, and of course, you’d want to have your own man look it over, but I thought, perhaps—”
Rosalind could not stop staring at him. Her mouth opened, but no words came.
“What is it?” he asked, and for a moment, she saw fear in his wide blue eyes. “Is it too much? Are you . . . You’re not offended, Rosalind, because I promise you . . . ?”
Rosalind laid the paper down and held up both her hands, begging him to stop, to wait just a moment. She jumped up and dashed into her private parlor, opened her desk, and returned.
Now it was Rosalind who placed a paper in Adam’s hands.
He stared at it and then at her.
“No,” he said. “You didn’t.”
She nodded. “Almost a year ago now. I asked my man to draft it. I thought if I could at least delineate the legal questions, it would remove some of my fears. But I couldn’t bring myself to give it to you. I thought it might insult you, or that you would think I did not trust you sufficiently. I thought . . . I was afraid if love wasn’t enough that we might fall apart somehow.”
She gazed at him, pleading. He returned her gaze, wondering. They stayed like that for a long time, facing each other—wondering, bewildered, disbelieving.
Then believing.
Then amazed.
Adam smiled. Rosalind pressed her hand against her mouth.
In the next heartbeat, they were both laughing—a long, loud, and breathless affirmation of themselves; a wordless mutual understanding that it was not the papers and not the law that held them. It was their knowledge and need of each other, and their desire to bring this love into the everyday world. Not to try to be in some place apart—some daydream of another place and another time wreathed in a mist of “Oh, if only”—but in the world as it was.
Rosalind threw herself into Adam’s arms, and he grabbed her about the waist and whirled her around. And then they were kissing each other, passionately and frantically, as if each believed the other might melt away.
“Then this is yes?” she asked.
“Yes,” he answered. “And you?”
“Yes,” she said immediately and without hesitation. “Yes, now and always, Adam. Yes.”