Page 107 of How To Compromise A Duke

He sealed the letter and set it on the salver for the morning post.

The reply came inside the week. Edmund’s hand was rounder than his own, the letters generous and slightly unsteady, and the paper smelled faintly of hay and horse, which told Henry about his cousin’s new life.

Henry,

I am glad. I am so glad I could weep, and I have, and the boy looked at me as though I had gone soft in the head. He is not wrong. Young Edmund does not like porridge, he does not like being told what to do, and he does not like strangers, which I gather he has inherited from you.

We will come at Michaelmas. He is afraid of horses, which presents difficulties on a farm, but we are working on it.

Your cousin, Edmund

P.S. Thank Kit Harris on my behalf for not breaking my jaw.

Henry read the letter twice and put it in the drawer beside the stick of sealing wax. He sat for a while, watching Violet in the garden with her sisters around her, all of them bent over the vegetable beds. His own child would grow up among them. The boy or girl, he had not yet permitted himself to imagine either, would not know what it was to be alone in a house. He had not known either, since the morning Violet refused to succumb to the Alliance’s pressure. He got to his feet and went out to join them.

The Hampstead Botanical Circle convened at Iredell House on a Thursday in July, which Mrs Bickle declared the greatest triumph of her natural life, surpassing even the time she had correctly identified a New Zealand fern at the Horticultural Society and silenced a botanist from Cambridge.

They arrived in the ducal carriage, all five of them, because Violet had insisted and because Mrs Bickle’s bonnet alone required the legroom. Mrs Acklam brought a jar of salve for Henry’s hands, which she said would take the roughness out of his palms if he was going to continue gardening like a common labourer. Mrs Colston brought a cutting of white deadnettle from the hospital garden, wrapped in damp muslin. Mrs Finney brought gossip. Mrs Brindle brought nothing and said nothing, which Henry was familiar with.

He received them in the garden because Violet had told him to and because he had learned that his wife’s instructions generallyled to outcomes he could not have arrived at on his own. He thanked whatever fortune had compelled Violet to demand his name.

Mrs Bickle took his hand in both of hers and pumped it. “Your Grace. You are looking very well indeed for a man who was nearly murdered.”

“Thank you, Mrs Bickle.”

“Not as green as last time, is he?” She turned to the others. “The last time I saw him he was the colour of old lettuce. Now look at him. There is colour.”

He let them pass and stood in the garden while the voices moved through the kitchen passages and down. Mrs Bickle’s commentary carried through stone. He heard Violet’s laugh and was overwhelmed with gratitude.

Later, following the Circle’s heartfelt goodbyes and many hugs, they embarked the Iredell carriage. Henry hugged his wife’s shoulder and watched it move off out of the gate. They waved until the trees took them and the sound faded.

He turned her gently and drew her against him. She pressed her face into his chest and stayed there while the sun went down gold over the rooftops and the garden quieted around them.