EPILOGUE
heavens—hearth—home
- Sixteen Months Later -
A wuthering breeze swept through the dreaming midsummer’s night, but not even its chill offered persuasion enough to send the three women down from the roof. They sat in a row along the ridgepole: the pirate, the witch, and the spy. And staring out at the limitless horizon, they sighed.
“Forever is so beautiful,” Alice said.
“Yes,” Cecilia and Charlotte agreed in unison.
A star to the north was flinging off shoots of light as if it could not contain itself. Alice wanted to reach out, pretend to touch it, but decided that doing so would be too strange while in company. She tapped her fingers discreetly on the roof instead. Her roof, with its brown tiles sloping above white walls and linen-curtained windows. Her house. She patted it with a fondness that was secretly an adoring, almost obsessive love she never admitted to anyone, not even Daniel—although of course he would know, just by looking at her.
This little bungalow had taken them all over the British Isles in the past year and a half since they left A.U.N.T. Evading the agency’s lawyers and assassins, teaching countesses how to fight off jewel thieves, selling bank managers security against the threat of pirates (and then going to dinner with those same pirates, because it was, after all, just business). Trying again and again to find peace.
They even had employees. Agent Mia Thalassi defected to them in exchange for a fast cottage and the secret of Daniel’s special choke hold, and two of Frederick Bassingthwaite’s chambermaids were on the payroll as inside informants, feeding them secrets from both the piratic society and A.U.N.T. (and doing their laundry every Monday).
They had ghosts too: the children they once were, still haunting them faintly in the background of their selves. Sad-eyed little Alice, held together by alphabets and poetry fragments. And young Daniel, who had learned so thoroughly not to flinch that, even now, he never noticed when he accidentally burned a finger, and was confused when Alice cared about it. But she did care, and he knew the right poems to whisper when she needed them, and every day the ghosts grew a little fainter.
Alice still had not learned how to fly the house. She swore that the magic persisted in overwhelming her—but really, secretly, she just liked to watch Daniel at the wheel. He was so masterful, more than once she’d made him land the building so he could express that mastery in a more horizontal fashion than flying generally allowed.
(Although there had been that one time, half a mile above the Shetland Islands, when she’d stood leaning forward against the open flight window, the wind caressing her face, and Daniel had . . .)
“Ahem,” she said, shifting uncomfortably on the roof. Cecilia and Charlotte glanced at her, but luckily the darkness hid her blush.
That particular day had been, according to Alice’s calculations, when William was conceived. Or perhaps that evening. Or later that night. After discovering her pregnancy, they’d given up any lingering notion of peace. They lived now with their hearts forever exposed in the shape of a small, squirmy, brown-haired baby with eyes like tarnished silver and a seemingly endless capacity for emotions. They lived frightened—enchanted—in love.
But oh, how they lived.
“It scares me sometimes,” she said, gazing out at the darkness, “when I think how long I spent alone, trapped in a life other people made for me to suit themselves. The fear I might go back there still grips me every now and again, you know?”
“I know.” Charlotte tucked her knees up closer against her heart. “Me too.”
“I took all the clocks out of my house when I first married,” Cecilia said. “I couldn’t bear the tick, reminding me of the long, peaceful afternoons and quiet nights in my aunt’s house. But Ned was always running late for burglaries, and then I needed to keep track of Evangeline’s routine, and there’s the fact our housemaid, who took over when Pleasance got her own battlehouse, suffers from recurrent bouts of amnesia (we suspect she’s a lost princess, although she does make an excellent lamb stew). So I brought the clocks back again. Besides, quite frankly, I could do with a peaceful afternoon every once in a while.”
Charlotte chuckled. “Yesterday Alex took the twins to visit with my mother so I could have time to do some reading. I just sat and stared into the middle distance and luxuriated.”
Cecilia smiled sympathetically, but Alice had to look away, hiding the sudden pallor of her face.
“What is it?” Charlotte asked, nudging her with a shoulder. Alice laughed silently, because of course the witch had noticed. She rather thought she could lock herself at the back of a closet, covered entirely by a blanket, and whisper that she had a headache—and within the hour Charlotte would arrive at her doorstep with a willowbark remedy.
“I’m sorry, I’m an anxious fool,” she said. “Even the thought of Daniel taking William anywhere without me makes my heart shake.”
“Are you still getting menacing visits from your A.U.N.T.?” Cecilia asked.
“No. After Daniel taught the last person who tried to assassinate him how to do a carotid restraint properly, Mrs. Kew acquiesced and signed the consultancy contract. The invitation to William’s christening probably helped too.”
“I get nervous when I leave Alex alone with the children,” Charlotte confessed. “I’m sure one of these days he’ll decide letting them play with his sword is a grand idea. The only reason I was able to luxuriate while they were visiting with my mother was because I had the house parked across the road and a telescope aimed at Mama’s sitting room. So you’re not an anxious fool, Lissy. Or, if you are, I am too.”
“What do you think they’re doing right now?” Cecilia asked, stretching her legs out over the tiles. Moonlight flowed into the white muslin billows of her dress, illuminating her like a love interest in a romantic poem.
“I dread to think,” Charlotte muttered.
“I can’t hear any crying,” Alice said, tilting her head toward the roof hatch. “Should we go down and check on them?” Her heart yearned as always for her boys—but then again, the stars were so lovely, and, as a bonus, no one was clutching at her bosom. So long as she knew they were safe nearby, she was quite content to remain up here a while longer with her friends.
Her friends. Fiddlesticks. Even after more than a year, she still got tingles when she thought of it. In fact, they were more than friends, these women, their husbands—they were an extended chosen family, at least according to Ned, who alone of the group was not afraid to say it. They were honorary aunties and uncles to each other’s children.
Alice wished she could reach back to little Alice, hunched alone and hurting on a dormitory bed in the Academy, and assure the girl that time would see her happy and loved just the way she was.
And that the Academy tutors would wake some thirteen years later to find all their birch switches burning atop a pile of their shredded training manuals. Alice smiled. That had been a fun night.
Crash!
The women flinched at the sudden loud sound from downstairs.
“Everything’s fine!” Ned called out.
Cecilia glanced wryly at the other two. “I apologize, Lissy. Almost certainly, something is not fine.”
Alice grinned at her. “Don’t worry. I don’t mind a little mess.”
“Hm,” Charlotte said with a disapproval that sounded almost as stern as Daniel’s. She pushed herself to her feet, managing easily in her trousers. “I had better go and check.”
“I’ll come too,” Alice said, standing. On Charlotte’s other side, Cecilia also rose, brushing wrinkles from her skirts. The three began to step sidelong toward the trapdoor.
“This reminds me of the time Alex and I danced in Clacton-on-Sea,” Charlotte said, swaying a little to keep her balance on the ridgepole. She happened to catch Alice’s glance, and a glimmer of humor passed between them.
“What is it?” Cecilia asked. “You’ve stopped. Is something the matter?”
“I was just thinking,” Charlotte said, the humor tugging now at her mouth, drawing it into a crooked, piratic smile. “Perhaps we need not go down just yet.”
“Oh?” Cecilia inquired.
“Perhaps we might go up instead.”
She held out her hand to Alice, who took it without hesitation. Her other, she presented to Cecilia.
“Lottie Pettifer,” Cecilia chided. “Are you suggesting witchcraft?”
Charlotte shrugged and nodded. “Yes.”
“Excellent.” Cecilia took her hand.
And as Charlotte whispered the magic word, they rose from the roof. Three wicked women who had run away from who they were supposed to be and found themselves, found each other; three wild women holding hands, sharing laughter, as they danced together in the midnight sky, beneath a yellow moon.
The men stood looking at the broken vase. Alex and Ned, holding their swords down, grimaced guiltily. Daniel just smiled and rocked the baby in his arms.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “I hated that vase and am glad to be rid of it, but never could tell Alice. Mrs. Rotunder gave it to her.”
“I clean up!” Evangeline called out happily, running to kneel down in front of the broken pieces. Ned quickly crouched beside her, taking her little hand before she could touch anything sharp. He passed her the bottom half of the vase, which now looked more like a bowl.
“You hold this,” he said, “and I’ll put the pieces inside it for you.”
“Yes!” she authorized, nodding briskly, making her golden curls bounce. Ned lifted a sour look to the other two men.
“So exactly who corrupted my child to this degree? It’s bad enough that Aunt Darlington has her testing everyone’s temperature, but this new mania for tidying is simply not at all appropriate for a pirate.”
“Don’t blame me,” Alex said, raising his hands palm out. “I might have taught her how to use a screwdriver to jimmy open a cake tin—”
“What?!” Ned said.
“—but I still don’t know where our housemaid keeps the carpet sweeper, let alone how to use it.”
Daniel huffed a laugh. In his arms, William huffed too, mimicking him in a way that reached up, took his heart, and squeezed with a pain he’d come to love, perhaps even hunger for. He smiled gently at his son, entranced by the perfect measurements of his tiny face and the uncanny depths of his eyes, which defied any scientific explanation. Damn, he thought. Don’t cry.
Looking up resolutely, he found Alex grinning at him. Embarrassed, he clenched his jaw but got only sympathy in return, the pirate’s dark blue eyes filling with a sentiment that drew him away from the other men suddenly and across the room to gloat over the baby girls cuddled together in a fleece-lined basket near the hearth.
“Would you ever have guessed he’d become so soppy?” Ned whispered.
“When has he ever not been soppy?” Daniel answered, and Ned choked on a laugh.
They hastily settled their expressions as Alex returned. “Thank bloody God,” he said, dragging a hand through his dark hair. “Still asleep.”
“Pirate children learn to sleep through just about anything,” Ned said, then fell into discussing vase pieces with his daughter, whose suggestions as to their potential criminal purposes made him smile proudly—and grimace a little with trepidation at the same time.
“What did you break?” came a dry voice, and they looked up to see Charlotte enter the sitting room. With her high, spiky boots and Alex’s voluminous, long black coat, she looked more piratic than all of them put together. Hands on her hips, she directed the question to Alex like a knife to his throat.
“Excuse me,” he said, affronted. “Why do you think I broke something? It could have been anyone.”
Charlotte huffed a laugh. “Because I just know you’ve been showing Ned that clever new move of yours that yesterday broke the crystal swan we acquired from Lady Espiner.”
She and Alex began to quarrel contentedly. Daniel did not listen, his attention caught by Alice walking into the room. She’s here, his heart sang, hugging itself.
She lives here, replied his brain with exasperation for such mawkishness—then sent a smile out along every nerve.
“This is in disarray again,” Daniel said to her quietly, touching her unraveling coiffure as she came up beside him.
“We have been dancing,” she said.
He leaned closer. “That explains why you look like starlight and dark horizons.”
“All tidy!” Evangeline announced, toddling over to Alice with the remnants. Alice smiled, bending down to take them from her.
“Sorry,” Alex said. “My fault. I’ll get you a new one.”
“Thank you, Evangeline,” Alice said. “And please don’t worry, Alex. I confess I hated that vase, but I know Daniel liked it. Mrs. Rotunder gave it to him.”
“Charlotte and I can take you shopping for a new one,” Cecilia suggested, and behind her back Ned rolled his eyes.
“You mean stealing,” Alice said disapprovingly.
Cecilia waved this interpretation away. “Not at all. We’ll sneak into Starkthorn Castle and select one of their vases. It’s not stealing when it’s family. Thursday, perhaps? We’ll take Evangeline along for the fun.”
“Fun!” Evangeline sang out, and pointed two fingers like a gun. “Bang! Bang!” Her parents smiled at her dotingly.
“Thursday,” Charlotte agreed. “And now, time to go home.” She wrapped her arms around herself, and Daniel recognized that her senses had abruptly reached the end of their endurance for the evening. “Alex, will you bring Elizabeth and Anne?”
“Sure,” he agreed, touching her shoulder gently as he crossed again to the basket.
“We must be on our way too,” Cecilia said. “Ned, remember we have that burglary at Twinkers’ jewelry store tomorrow morning.”
“Good luck with that,” Daniel told her. “We helped them install several new security measures only last week.”
“Excellent,” Ned said, lifting Evangeline onto his hip and bouncing her a little, sharing a grin with her as she giggled. “I love a challenge, don’t I, Evie Angel?”
“You love Evie,” she answered, patting his face, and Daniel tried not to smirk at the sight of the pirate’s smile melting as his daughter outcharmed him.
Everyone departed, and Alice slipped away to prepare for bed. Daniel stood by the sitting room window for a long, quiet while, rocking William to sleep and watching first Alex’s old Irish cottage and then Puck House lift into the sky and fly off. The sky settled, full of stories made of stars. The world softened around him. Finally, Alice reappeared, all clean and fresh in a nightgown, smelling like roses from St. Therese. She put her arm around him, resting her head against his shoulder as she smiled down at their child.
“All right?” she asked.
“Perfect,” he said, looking at their reflection in the dark window, falling in love with the whole of them. And then falling in love again. And again. Counting his breath now not by numbers but by each beautiful moment he got to exist with his family. “Do you have any plans for tomorrow?” he asked, just for something to say.
“None,” she said. “You?”
“None. What shall we do?”
She smiled, setting her hand to his heart.
“Anything we want.”