An Unpublished Epilogue

They approached Acton Park on a brilliantly sunny, warm day in early summer. They sat in the carriage hand in hand, a companionable silence having fallen between them. Jocelyn imagined approaching the house along the straight, formal poplar drive, imagined taking Jane into the great hall, where the servants would doubtless be drawn up in formal lines for their inspection, imagined being swallowed up by all the necessary pomp of their homecoming.

It was something he did not shy away from. He was glad to be coming home at long last, glad that he had finally admitted to himself that it was home, that a part of himself was missing as long as he stayed away. And he longed to see Jane as mistress of it all.

But a part of him yearned to recapture the old boyhood feelings before he entered the house. The park, the trees, the hills...

He squeezed Jane's hand and looked down into her face. She smiled back at him in the new soft, tender way, which he suspected had something to do with impending motherhood.

"Are you up to a longish walk?" he asked.

She laughed. "Did I grow up in the country?" she asked. "Did I have a father who believed it was too much bother to call out the carriage for any distance less than ten miles?"

He leaned forward and rapped on the front panel. This was just the right place.

Two minutes later he and Jane, still hand in hand, watched the carriage with its ducal crest and its liveried footmen and outriders disappear along the road in the direction of the village and the driveway and the house.

Jocelyn laughed. "It will be bowed through the village and will cause palpitations as it comes into sight from the house," he said. "Meanwhile, Jane..."

He struck off the road onto a narrow lane, which skirted the wall of the park on their left, until they came to the stile he remembered. He helped Jane over it. Yes, the path was still here, though it looked as if it were not much used these days. It would take them up over the wooded hills and down again to meet the lower corner of the great lawn in front of the house if they did not turn off it.

"How beautiful!" she said after they had walked for a few minutes, surrounded by ancient trees and the coolness of their shade, by rustling leaves and birdsong and the faint sound of rushing water. The river was still invisible, but it would come into sight soon. "Is this where you learned there is too much soul in nature to be captured with a brush, Jocelyn?"

He could smell earth and leaves--the good country smells he had forgotten.

"Yes," he said, "though I did try words. Poetry. Atrocious stuff, which I destroyed when I left home. I dabbled in poetry. Can you imagine?"

"Yes," she said softly. "I know perfectly well what you mean when you speak of dabbling. I will have to persuade you to dabble again."

"Ah," he said, and stopped suddenly, gripping her hand more tightly.

The wooded path bent to the right and the trees thinned out on the downward slope ahead. The river had come into sight below. And the pool at the foot of a short waterfall. And not far from it, the thatched cottage, which was still standing, though the thatch looked faded.

Jane touched her free hand to his sleeve though she did not say anything. She did not need to. He knew she recognized these places from his account of them.

He did not realize he had been holding his breath until he released it quite audibly. "Strange," he said quietly, speaking to himself but to her too, since she was a part of himself. "It is merely a pool. And merely a cottage. And still picturesque."

"Yes," she agreed. "There are no demons as far as I can see."

"It would seem a pity to let it fall into ruins," he said, narrowing his eyes on the cottage. "It would make a good home for a gamekeeper or a gardener, would it not?"

"Yes," she agreed. "One with a family. It is idyllic. You must give orders to have repairs made, Jocelyn."

He tucked her hand beneath his arm. "It is perhaps a mile to the house straight on," he said. "Longer if we make a detour."

She looked at him with inquiring, laughing eyes.

"To the top of this hill." He pointed to their right. "There is a glorious view from the top. Ferdinand and Angeline and I held it against armies and pirates and cutthroat highwaymen all through our childhood. And I sat there in awed silence many times during my later boyhood."

"To the top of the hill, then," she said.

They were both breathless when they reached the top, having scrambled up a steep slope, dodging tree trunks and massive roots as they went. But a breeze they had not felt lower down fanned their cheeks as they gazed downward at the distant house and cultivated park before it and kitchen gardens behind.

Jocelyn felt something clutch at his heart. Nostalgia? Pride? Love? Hope? Perhaps there was a little of all those feelings.

"Ah, Jocelyn," she said. "I am so glad I am seeing it for the first time from up here. It looks... How can I explain it? It sounds foolish when I am seeing it for the first time, but it looks like home."

"This is home," he told her, turning her against him and framing her face with his hands. "This is home, Jane, you and I together. But here is where we will make our nest and set up our nursery and live and love together. Here. At Acton. We are on Acton land now." He smiled wickedly.

She glanced at the grass and the wildflowers beneath their feet and smiled dazzlingly back at him. "I chose green for our first bedchamber," she said. "How could I object to this? And to beauty and sunshine and warmth? Make love to me."

There could be humor and tenderness and passion all combined in lovemaking. It was one of the fascinating discoveries he had made with Jane.

"How my staff will be scandalized," he said as he pulled loose the ribbons of her straw bonnet and dropped it to the grass, "when their new duchess arrives looking disheveled and with grass all down her back."

"And when their duke appears with wildflowers decorating the brim of his hat," she said, taking it from his head, tossing it carelessly down the slope, and running her fingers through his hair.

"They will merely remind themselves," he said, unbuttoning the front of her carriage dress and folding back the edges to reveal her white chemise and the creamy flesh of her throat and the upper swell of her breasts, "that the Dudley men never were respectable. Ah, my love, I am feeling far from respectable at this particular moment." He hooked her chemise below her breasts and rolled her hardened nipples between his thumbs and forefingers.

She breathed in slowly and audibly, and for a moment her hands stilled on the buttons of his waistcoat. "If they are calculating the time it will take us to walk home from the point where the coachman let us off," she said, resuming her task and pulling his shirt free of the waistband of his pantaloons in order to run her hands up the bare flesh of his chest, "they will soon be sending out a search party."

He chuckled. "Fortunately," he told her, "I have servants who are far too well trained to attempt any such thing." He lowered his head and suckled her.

"Jocelyn." Her fingers were twined in his hair again, her body arched in to him. "Jocelyn, make love to me."

"It is what I am doing." He looked into her face and grinned at her. "Did you not recognize the signs? Has marriage destroyed all my famed skills?"

But her eyes were heavy with passion, and she was clearly no longer in the mood to banter with him. "How I love you," she told him. "Jocelyn, how I love you."

He bent down and picked her up, one arm beneath her knees. He set her down on the ground and lay beside her. They were in a bed of soft, fragrant grass and flowers, the sky a deep-blue canopy over their heads. Somewhere close by a bird was singing its heart out. Myriad invisible insects chirped and droned.

It was a precious moment of homecoming. And happiness. And passion. He turned to her, unbuttoning himself as he did so and then raising her skirts to her waist and removing her undergarments.

"Our first marriage bed at Acton," he said, lifting himself over her and lowering himself onto her and between her thighs as she twined her legs about his.

"I am glad it is here," she said. "Oh, I am glad. Jocelyn!"

He pressed deep inside her moist, welcoming depths and held still there, reveling in every facet of the moment, as he knew she was doing. He lifted his head, framed her face with both hands, and smiled at her.

"My love," he whispered.

"Yes." She smiled back at him.

"This is how I love you, Jane," he told her. "With a love that existed before either of us was born and that will exist long after we are both gone."

Her smile was dreamy. "Show me."

He lowered his face to the grass beside her head and showed her. As she showed him. It was a loving that was fiercely physical and vibrantly emotional at the same time. A loving that brought them after a few minutes to a shared and shattering completion. And to the peace of unity.

He disengaged from her when it was finished but did not lift himself off her. He moved down until he could rest his head on her bosom. Her fingers played softly with his hair while he relaxed and sighed with contentment. He could feel the cool breeze on his face and smell all the mingled fragrances of nature.

"Jane," he said after a while, "do you realize the odds there were against our meeting?"

"Yes," she said. "If I had not cried out when I did, Lord Oliver would doubtless have put his bullet through your heart and there would have been no point in my going closer to scold you."

"Not a chance," he said. "I had my evil eye fixed on him, Jane. His pistol hand was shaking like a leaf in a hurricane."

"Well, then," she said, "perhaps he would have shot me through the heart and it would have been pointless for you to crook your finger at me in that imperious way of yours just as if you were lord of the universe."

He lifted his head and grinned down at her. "Do I feel a quarrel coming on, my love?" he asked her. "I confess I do not feel up to doing it justice. I have just used up a ton of energy and we have a walk of at least a mile ahead of us."

"You are backing off because you know you can never win an argument with me," she said.

"Poppycock!" He rubbed his nose across hers before rolling away to sit beside her and set his clothing to rights. "As it will be my pleasure to prove to you during what remains of my lifetime."

"I tremble with foreboding," she said, buttoning her dress before tying the ribbons of her bonnet beneath her chin.

He laughed as he went in pursuit of his hat, and then reached down a hand to help her to her feet. She looked flushed and beautiful seated in the long grass, amid the colorful wildflowers.

"Come, Jane," he said. "Come, my love."

She smiled radiantly as she set her hand in his. "Take me home, Jocelyn."

They half ran down the upper slope in the direction of the house. Toward a future that would surely hold its share of troubles and heartache, as all futures must. But one that would also hold friendship and laughter and love and joy.

And moments like the present one of total happiness. Brief, ephemeral moments, but ones that would illumine the whole of their lives like a beacon if they were only open to recognizing them and seizing them and living them to the fullest.

Jane shrieked and then laughed helplessly as they ran faster and faster down the lower half of the slope. And as he caught her at the bottom and swung her around in a complete circle before setting her feet back on the ground, Jocelyn laughed with her.

© Mary Balogh