She ignored him. “You have our blessing, Lord...or your grace.”
Mr. Woodchurch did not contradict her, but he glared at Mateo.
Lady Raney began to sob. “How is this happening? It will never work! No one will ever believe I allowed my daughter to marry into this family!”
“Mama,” Flora said and tried to smile. “IloveDaniel!”
“You do?” the younger Mr. Woodchurch asked skeptically.
Miss Raney looked stunned by his doubt. “Of course I do. Don’t you love me?”
“I mean...” Hattie’s brother rubbed his nape. “I don’t know if I’d say—”
“He loves you,” Beck said, and clamped a hand down on the young man’s shoulder. “He loves you, or he drags his family’s name into ruin, and then there will be nothing left for him, so I think he will see that he loves youvery much.”
Miss Raney gaped at her love. Mr. Woodchurch looked nervously around the room. The two boys were laughing. “Shut up,” he said to them. “Fine. Flora, I love you. I want to marry you.” He turned woodenly to Lord Raney. “My lord, may I have Flora’s hand,” he said without enthusiasm.
“Yes,” Lord Raney replied, and Lady Raney and Miss Raney began to cry in unison. “But don’t expect a large dowry. You dragged us into this fiasco.”
“How much?” the senior Mr. Woodchurch asked and seemed, incredibly, truly curious.
Just then, the grandfather clocks began to chime the eleventh hour, the sound of it as deafening as the people in the room who were wailing.
Mateo looked at Hattie. She looked at him. Her eyes were shining with love, with relief, with all the things he felt inside him. She began to laugh. Mateo did, too. He nudged two cats out of the way and embraced her. “I’m going to marry you,” he said. “I’m going to take you to Santiava and away from this.”
“Oh, Teo... When can we go?” She laughed again.
LILAWASSPENT. She looked around that room, amazed that she was able to pull this off. Well—she and Beck and Donovan. There was still the problem of Elizabeth, who would wail just as loudly as Lady Raney. But Lila was pleased. She couldn’t wait to tell this very strange story to Valentin.
She was the first to leave the Woodchurch house. She returned to Emma Clark’s party to say good-night to her. She was such a lively woman. She couldn’t imagine why Emma’s husband had left her for years to wander around Africa and the Sahara. She was the sort of woman who would be perfect for Lila’s nephew. It was a pity she was married.
Ah well. So many people. So many love stories. She was eager to go to the next one.
EPILOGUE
Santiava, 1871
THEYWEREATCastillo Estrella, on the roof. There was a blanket spread beneath them, as well as a stack of pillows and a selection of pastries. Next to Hattie was a bassinet. Their newborn, Luisa, was sleeping under the stars.
Luisa’s parents had just made love and were happily stargazing. Teo complained they would be caught, bare as the day they were born, but Hattie laughed as she crawled on top of him. “Who in their right mind would come up on the roof to see what we are doing?”
“Rosa,” he said. “She thinks Luisa is hers.”
“She wouldn’t dare climb all those stairs,” Hattie said, and had unbuttoned his shirt.
It had gone from there, Hattie crying out so loudly that Mateo warned her she’d bring the household to the roof.
As they lay together under that warm summer night sky, Mateo began to tell her about the time he’d gone fox hunting with his brother. It was a long, detailed recounting. The duke talked. And he talked. And he talked. He did not leave out a single detail—even the color of the leaves was something he wanted to share.
Hattie had never believed she could be so happy. She didn’t know this sort of happiness even existed. But she was, indelibly, indestructibly happy every single day.
She wrote her mother from time to time, but mostly, she heard about her family through Flora, who was not her friend, but was her sister-in-law, and wrote often to complain about her husband’s bad habits. If Flora had asked her that spring the Santiavan duke had come to London, Hattie would have told her what no one else would: that Daniel would make a terrible husband.
The twins had been sent to boarding school—apparently, they’d become too obnoxious for even a mother to love. Speaking of her parents, they had been invited to a party or two, and always left early to get home to the cats. Queenie, Flora said, had latched on to Miss Porter and was hoping to marry her brother, who was just as handsome as Christiana was beautiful.
Mrs. O’Malley had been terribly sorry to see her go, but she’d had her wish before Hattie departed London—she’d met the baking viscount. And Teo and Rosa were still trying to perfect the sponge cake.
Mateo’s mother hadn’t quite accepted the fact that her son had married a nobody. But she’d been a little more forgiving once Luisa came into this world. So was the parliamentary council of advisors. When Mateo and Hattie had first come to Santiava—married, as they had thought they ought to straightaway, given the events in London—there had been some rumblings from those sympathetic to Spain. What better time than now, they asked, to unite with Spain? Look how the duke conducted himself. Look who he’d married! She was no one!
