The Spinster's Secret (22 page)

Epilogue

Five Months Later

Edward glanced at his wife. She cantered alongside him, magnificent in a claret-red riding habit. He felt a fierce sense of possession.
She’s mine
. Mattie caught his glance and grinned, making the dimples spring to life in her cheeks.

They halted on the brow of the hill. Summer surrounded them, the scent of meadows and wildflowers, the hum of bees, birdsong. Edward looked across the pastures and hedgerows to the mouth of the Helford River and the glittering, restless sea beyond.

“I can never decide whether it’s more beautiful on a day like this,” Mattie said. “Or when it’s stormy.”

Behind her, Blythe Manor could be glimpsed: the mellow golden stone, the gables and the tall chimneys, the gardens and orchard.

“Both,” Edward said.

The sea breeze lifted a tendril of Mattie’s hair and blew it across her cheek. He reached out and brushed it carefully aside.

Mattie smiled at him. It wasn’t a mere movement of her lips, it was a smile with her eyes, with her heart. Her love for him shone as brightly, as warmly, as the sun itself. She leaned her cheek against his hand, a silent
I love you
.

The child nestling in her womb wasn’t visible yet. Only the two of them knew of its existence.

Edward inhaled, filling his lungs with the warm, fragrant summer air. Happiness hummed inside him. Not a shallow, fleeting happiness but a happiness so deep, so pure, that it sank into his bones.

“Shall we go down to the shore? And then home?”

Mattie captured his hand and pressed a light kiss to his scarred fingers. “And then home.”

Author Note

Several passages from
Sermons to Young Women
by James Fordyce are quoted in this novel, as are passages from the erotic novel
Fanny Hill: Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure
by John Cleland. Both
Fanny Hill
and
Sermons to Young Women
were first published in England in the 1700s.

The line of poetry quoted in Chapter One is from
Samela
, by Robert Green (1560?-1592).

Edward’s experiences at Waterloo are partly based on a letter by Private Thomas Hasker, 1
st
King’s Dragoon Guards, and, to a lesser extent, the journal of Sergeant Archibald Johnston, 2
nd
Regiment of Dragoons. Both men fought at Waterloo, and their writings are some of many letters and journal entries that form
The Waterloo Archive Volume I: British Sources
, edited by Gareth Glover (Frontline Books, 2010).