Page 77 of Adored in Autumn
She glanced at him. “That Roger Beckford is to be transported tomorrow? Yes.”
“And how do you feel about that?” he asked, turning her toward him, searching her face for her pain, for her fear, for anything dark or dangerous that remained.
She smiled to reassure him. “I feel…peaceful. He cooperated with the authorities in the end. Transportation is just as final as hanging for what he did. And once he is gone from London, there is nothing that remains of the horrors he and Fitzgilbert and Barbridge and many others committed.”
He smiled at her calm and she rested her head on his shoulder as they looked at the scene before them once again.
“Do you know that just over a year ago, none of this seemed possible?” Felicity said.
Asher wrapped his arms around her. “How so?”
Felicity shook her head in wonder. “Well, just last November, Stenfax was still to marry Celia. Gray was completely cut off, certain he would never love. We didn’t even know John. And Elise was despised and alone in London.” She turned in his arms and looked up at him. “And you…youwere lost to me.”
“I was never lost to you,” he said, bending down to kiss her. “I was always yours in my heart.”
She smiled. “And now you are mine in every other way.”
He nodded. “Forever, Mrs. Seyton.”
She looked back at the others. “We are lucky. Everyone in this room got a second chance.”
“And none of us will squander it,” Asher said. “Now come, my love, show me the steps to this jig.”
She laughed as he drew her to where Rosalinde and Gray were dancing and swung her into the steps. Her family was complete. Her life was now whole. And she had more happiness than she thought could be possible.
