The Duke and His Duchess

Epilogue




The door to Esther’s bedroom cracked open as the baby stirred in her arms.

“Quiet now, you lot,” came a whispered admonition. “If the baby’s sleeping, we mustn’t disturb her, or your mama will be wroth with us.”

Percival Windham, His Grace the Duke of Moreland, had rounded up his lieutenants to make a raid on Esther’s peace.

“Mama’s always wroth with us,” Gayle observed.

“She’s not wroth with me,” Bart countered.

Percival pushed the door open another few inches and peeked around it. “Hush. The next man who speaks will be court-martialed for conduct unbecoming.”

“No pudding,” little Victor piped. “No pudding.”

Victor was very particular about his pudding, much like his father and his late grandfather.

“Come in,” Esther said, pushing up against her pillows and cuddling her newest daughter close. “I’ve been telling Louisa to expect some callers.”

Percival held Louisa’s older sister Sophie in his arms, and Devlin walked at his side, while Bart charged ahead, Victor clutched a fold of his father’s coat, and Gayle kept Valentine by the hand. Maggie, as always, hung back, though she was smiling, as was her father.

Another healthy girl child safely delivered was an excellent reason to smile.

“Can I see the baby?” Victor asked.

As small as he was, he could not see his mother in her great bed, much less the new baby. Percival tucked Sophie in against Esther’s side and hoisted the children onto the bed one by one. They arranged themselves across the foot of the bed, never quite holding still, but demonstrating as much decorum as they were capable of.

“There, you shall all have a look,” Percival said when he’d positioned his troops. “But no shouting or bouncing around lest you rouse your baby sister Louisa.”

“She’ll mess her nappies,” Gayle observed. “You named her for Uncle Peter, because his real name was Peter Louis Hannibal Windham.”

“We did,” Esther said, though she shared a smile with Percival over the scatological preoccupations of the young male mind.

Not to be outdone, Bart gave his next-youngest brother a push. “You named Sophie for Grandpapa, and that’s why she’s Sophie George Windham.”

“Sophie Georgina,” Gayle said, shoving back.

Percival scooped up wee Sophie and settled with her, his back to the bedpost. “The next fellow who shoves, pushes, or interrupts his brother will be sent back to the nursery.”

“No pudding,” Victor said again, grinning at his older brothers.

Percival tousled Victor’s dark hair. “Heed the young philosopher, boys, and follow Maggie’s example of juvenile dignity.” He winked at Maggie, which always made the girl turn up bashful. “Esther, how do you fare?”

This had become a family ritual, this bringing the older siblings to see the new arrival, and what a darling new arrival she was. Louisa had Victor’s swooping brows, which on a newborn made for a startlingly dramatic little countenance.

“I am well, Percival. Childbearing is not easy, but it does improve with practice. Would you like to hold your daughter?”

They exchanged babies with the ease and precision of a parental drill team, and Esther beheld the Duke of Moreland give his heart, yet again, to a lady too small to understand the magnitude of such a gift.

Gayle also watched his father gently cradle the newborn in his arms. “If you have another baby, Mama, will you name her Cyclops?”

“Cyclops is stupid name,” Bart started in. Percival silenced his firstborn son and heir—Bart was arguably Pembroke now, though no parent in their right mind would tell the boy such a thing yet—with a glower, while Esther waited for Victor to pronounce sentence on the pudding again.

“Cyclops is not a stupid name,” Gayle replied with the gravity peculiar to him. “Sophie was named for Grandpa, and he died. Louisa is named for Uncle Peter, and he died right after Grandpa. Nobody has seen Cyclops for days, so she must be dead too, and that means we can name a baby after her.”

Percival left off nuzzling the baby long enough to smile at Gayle’s reasoning. “I think if you climbed up to the straw mow on a sunny morning and were quiet and still long enough, you’d find that Cyclops has finished her own lying-in and has better things to do than let little boys chase after her and threaten to take her prisoner.”

“Girls don’t like to be taken prisoner,” Maggie said. “May I hold the baby?”

The idea made Esther nervous, though Maggie would never intentionally harm her siblings.

“Come here,” Percival said, patting the bed. Maggie crawled across the mattress to sit beside her father. He placed the baby in Maggie’s lap and kept an arm around his oldest daughter. “I think she looks a little like you, Maggie, around the mouth. She’s very pretty.”

Characteristically, Maggie blushed but did not acknowledge the compliment. “Sophie was bald. Louisa has hair.”

Little Valentine squirmed closer and traced small fingers over the baby’s cheek. “She’s soft.”

“She’ll mess her nappies,” Gayle warned.

Bart apparently knew not to argue with that eternal verity. “Can we go now?” He looked conflicted, as if he might want to hold his baby sister and didn’t know how to ask without losing face before his brothers.

In Esther’s arms, little Sophie squirmed but did not make a sound. “Take Thomas with you if you’re going to the mews, and mind you big boys look after Victor.”

Four boys who’d needed help to get up onto the bed went sliding off it, thundering toward the door, while Valentine remained fascinated with the infant.

He stroked his sister’s dark mop of hair. “Soft baby.”

“She is soft,” Percival said. “And you, my lad, are smarter than your brothers for choosing the company of the genteel ladies over some nasty, old, shiftless cat.”

“She’s heavy,” Maggie said, passing the baby back to Percival. “I’m going to watch the boys.”

“Take Valentine.” Percival used one hand to balance the baby and the other to help Maggie and Valentine off the bed. “He’ll make enough noise that Madam Cyclops will be able to hide before her peace is utterly destroyed.”

“Come along, Valentine. We’ve a kitty to rescue.” Maggie left at a pace that accommodated Valentine churning along beside her, leaving Esther with her husband and her two baby daughters.

***

Percival shifted to recline against the pillows with his wife, one arm around Esther and Sophie, the other around Louisa. He leaned near enough to catch a whiff of roses, and to whisper, “Do you hear that, Your Grace?”

“I hear silence, Your Grace.”

They addressed each other by their titles as a sort of marital joke, one that helped take the newness and loss off a station they’d gained only months before.

“That is the sound of children growing up enough to leave us in privacy from time to time. Good thing we’ve more babies to fill our nursery.”

He kissed Esther’s temple, and Sophie sighed mightily, as if her father’s proximity addressed all that might ail her—would that it might always be so.

“I wish Peter and His Grace had lived to see this baby, Percival. They doted so on Sophie.”

Percival went quiet for a moment, mesmerized by the sight of yet another healthy, beautiful child to bless their marriage. A man might love his wife to distraction—and Percival did—but love was too paltry a word for what he felt for the mother of his children.

“In some ways, their last year was their best, Esther. That tincture gave Peter quite a reprieve, and His Grace perked up considerably when you presented him with a granddaughter.”

His nursemaid had perked him up, though the young lady had been Esther’s companion in the late duke’s mind, and nobody had disabused him of this idea.

“Percival, it’s Thursday.”

“It’s Louisa Windham’s birthday,” he replied, kissing Esther’s cheek. “Two months from now, if I’m a good boy, I may have some pudding.”

Esther turned to kiss his cheek. She was wearing one of his dressing gowns—the daft woman claimed the scent of him comforted her through her travail, and because she came through each lying-in with fine style, Percival didn’t argue with her wisdom.

“Today is Thursday, Percival, and your committees meet on Thursday. You never miss those meetings. The government will fall if you neglect your politics. George himself has said nobody else has your talent for brokering compromises.”

That the king admired such talent mattered little compared to Esther’s regard for it. Percival traded babies with his wife, then gently rubbed noses with Sophie, which made the infant giggle. “Am I or am not the Duke of Moreland, madam?”

Esther loved it when he used those imperious tones on her, and he loved it equally when she turned up duchess on him.

“You are Moreland, and it shall ever be my privilege to be your duchess.” His duchess had labored from two hours past midnight until dawn, and could not hide the yawn that stole up on her. Even a duchess was entitled to yawn occasionally.

“And my blessing to call you so. But, Esther, as that fellow standing approximately sixty-seventh in line for the throne, I’d like somebody to explain to me why it is, when all I need are three more votes to carry the bill on children in the foundries, I am incapable of seeing such a thing done.”

He should not be bringing his frustrations up to her now, but in the past few years, Esther had become his greatest confidante, and for the first time in months, he did not want to attend his meetings.

“When do you expect the vote to come up?”

Right to the heart of the matter, that was his duchess. “Too soon. I’m sure if I could turn Anselm to my way of thinking, then Dodd would come along, and then several others would see the light, but they won’t break ranks.”

Esther stroked her fingers over Louisa’s dark mop of hair. “Lady Dodd was recently delivered of a son.”

Percival had learned by now that Esther did not speak in non sequiturs, not even when tired. She was the soul of logic; it remained only for Percival to divine her reasoning.

“I know. Dodd was drunk for most of a week, boasting of having secured the succession within a year of marriage. The man hasn’t a spare, outside of a third cousin, and he thinks his succession ensured.”

Children died in foundries, died and were burned horribly. How could Dodd not know his own offspring were just as fragile?

“How old is Anselm’s heir?” Esther asked.

Percival raised and lowered his tiny daughter and cradled her against his chest, because Esther’s question was pertinent. He wasn’t sure how, but it was very pertinent.

“He has a daughter, and a boy in leading strings. His lady believes in spacing her confinements, which imposition he reports to all and sundry before his third bottle of a night.”

“Not every couple is as blessed as we are, Your Grace. Who else would you consider to be susceptible to a change in vote?”

The Duke of Moreland left off flirting with his infant daughter and offered his duchess a slow, wicked smile. “My love, you are scheming. I adore it when you scheme.”

He suspected Esther rather enjoyed it too, though she no doubt fretted that somewhere there was a silly rule about duchesses eschewing scheming. What duchess could fail to aid her duke, though, when it made him so happy to have her assistance—and was such fun?

“A lying-in party, I think,” Esther said, smoothing a hand over Louisa’s hair. “I will have their ladies to tea, ask after the children, and mention your little bill.”

“You won’t mention it. You’ll gently bludgeon them with it. They’ll leave here weeping into their handkerchiefs.” And God help their husbands when the ladies arrived home.

“We’ll follow up with dinner,” Esther said, her tone suggesting she was already at work on the seating arrangements. “We’ll invite Anselm one night, and Dodd the next, and you can drag them up to the nursery to admire the children before we sit down.”

“We have very handsome children.” Percival ran a finger down Louisa’s tiny nose. “And I have a brilliant wife. It could work, Esther.”

“Divide and conquer. Pull Dodd aside one night, tell him your wife is haranguing you about this bill, and she’s recently delivered of another child. He’ll sympathize with you as a husband and papa like he’d never bow down to you as a duke.”

When a man should not be capable of holding any more happiness, Percival felt yet another increment of delight in his duchess. “Because Dodd’s naught but a viscount, and they are a troublesome lot. I’ll do the same thing with Anselm the next night and imply Dodd would capitulate, except he feared losing face with his fellows. My love, you are a marvel.” He turned to kiss her then drew back. “A tired marvel. I see a flaw in your plan, though.”

She cradled his cheek against her palm, looking tired—also pleased with her husband. “One anticipates most plans will benefit from your thoughts, Your Grace.”

He kissed her—a businesslike kiss that nonetheless nurtured his soul. “You will be lying-in. No political dinners for you for at least a month.”

She’d eschewed the old tradition of a forty-day lying-in several babies ago. Inactivity was not in the Duchess of Moreland’s nature.

“Two weeks ought to be sufficient, Percival. This was not a difficult birthing, and as that lady married to the fellow approximately sixty-seventh in line for the throne, I’ve decided I need practice making royal decrees.”

What she needed was a nap. Percival didn’t dare suggest that.

“Planning is one of your strengths, Esther. Though I do worry about your health. With each child, the worry does not abate, it grows worse. What proclamation are you contemplating?”

She kissed his wrist. “You need not fret, Husband. Every duchess has a carnivorous streak if she knows what’s good for her. I’ll soon be on the mend, or you’ll be slaying hapless bovines to make it so. Now attend me.”

“I am helpless to do otherwise, as well you should know.”

“The government will topple without you, I know that, your king knows it, and I suspect all of Parliament—when sober—understands your value, but I saw you first.”

She was tired, she was pleased with the night’s work—very pleased, and well she should be—but Percival also saw that his wife was working up to something, something important to her that must therefore also be important to him, even on Thursdays.

“Esther, I love you, and I will always love you. You need not issue a proclamation. You need only ask.”

“Then I am asking for my Thursdays back.”

“I wasn’t aware Thursdays had been taken from you, Your Grace.” And yet they had—they’d been taken from him, too, and given to the ungrateful wretches in the Lords.

“Percival, I recall that trip we took up to Town only a few years ago, when Devlin and Maggie came to join our household. I was so worried then, for us and for our children, and one of the ways I knew my worry was not silly was that you’d forgotten our Thursdays. I’m not worried now, but I think we need our Thursdays back.”

Something warm turned over in Percival’s heart. He loved his wife, but it was wonderful to know he was still in love with her too—more than ever.

“Parliament can go hang,” Percival said, stroking a hand over his duchess’s golden hair. “We shall have our Thursdays back, and no one and nothing shall take them from us, or from our children.”

The duchess’s proclamation stood throughout shifts in government, the arrival of more babies, the maturation of those babies into ladies and gentlemen, and even through the arrival of grandbabies and great-grandbabies—though given the nature of large, busy, families, Thursday occasionally fell on Tuesday or sometimes came twice a week.

Whether Thursday fell on some other day or in its traditional position, Esther knew she would always have her husband’s Thursdays, and his heart—and he would forever have hers.