Epilogue

 

Rachel lifted her hand and gazed down at the ring on her finger. The sapphire ring her father had left her now sat on her right hand now, and she cherished it still. However, the gem that sat in the ring on her left hand, a diamond, though larger and costlier than the blue, held more significance to her.

She was no longer Miss Rachel Cooper. Leah insisted on the pretense of referring to her as My Lady, and it had taken Rachel almost the entire year to acclimate herself to it. At times, it still felt strange to be named differently and yet feel the same. No, perhaps not the same, for Lady Rachel Linfield was in love with Lord Joseph Linfield, so it was only right. Joseph now used Rachel’s Christian name, and Rachel used Joseph’s, and even that needed time to become comfortable, but both had felt they were as close as any man and woman could be.

Rachel reached out and took his hand in hers. They were on their way to Scotland for their honeymoon and had already stopped off at her parents’ house along the way. Mildred had been nervous and jittery at having a lord and lady, even if she was her daughter, stay at their tiny cottage, but had also insisted. Joseph only worried about being an inconvenience, but Rachel’s mother had made it clear that there was no inconvenience, unless His Lord thought the cottage not to his standards. After that, Joseph readily agreed. Rachel, of course, had laughed. Leave it to her mother to convince a man of nobility to stay in a cottage and have nothing about which to complain.

“You know I love you, my handsome husband, do you not?” Rachel asked as the carriage trumbled down the well-used road.

“I do,” came Joseph’s reply. “And I love you.” The sparkle in his eyes was now a permanent part of him and only enhanced his dashing good looks.

They were two different people from whom they had been, their changes brought about by the death of one man. That man looked to repair a mistake from his past by creating a brighter future for two people he cared for.

As Rachel thought on her birth father, she smiled. Although she had not known him, in her heart she thanked him, for his wish that she and Joseph be happy was complete. And she could not imagine her life any other way.