“Yes!” came from three young throats. The children’s delighted and expectant expressions declared their full and comprehensive agreement.
Pru slumped back in her chair. She looked at Diana, then at the children, and lastly at Toby, and shook her head. “This is so like you. You wait to the very last, then you leap over all the hard steps and end with an instant family!”
For a moment, the others stared at her—at the mock-disgruntled expression that only a put-upon elder sibling could manage—then everyone dissolved into unrestrained laughter.
EPILOGUE
Toby and Diana were married on a pleasant day in late October. Despite the season, the sun chose to shine, and the breeze, although cool, was playful.
Their engagement ball had been held a bare week after they’d arrived in London and announced their intention to wed. More than five hundred guests had crowded into the massive ballroom of St. Ives House, the Grosvenor Square residence of the Duke of St. Ives, the head of the Cynster family.
The event had been such a glittering affair, so packed with the titled, the famous, and the powerful, that Diana had known a moment’s qualm. She was an untitled nobody from a family with little standing; would these people accept her as Toby’s wife?
The question had been overwhelmingly answered by the genuine warmth with which every last person, family or otherwise, had embraced her. She’d finally realized that Pru and Meg, Toby’s sisters, had told her nothing more than the bald truth, namely that the entire ton had been convinced that Toby would never marry. As Pru had put it, that he would never find the lady to whom he would give his heart.
That Diana was that lady was a point that Toby, by word and deed, had made abundantly clear, and consequently, she was accepted and welcomed to the family as akin to a savior and drawn into their circles with wide-open arms.
She’d found her feet in the whirling social throng, primarily through becoming firm friends with Pru, Meg, and Toby’s sister-in-law, Addie. Their support had bolstered her through the intervening weeks, and their children had readily accepted the Fellows three into their family group.
The wedding ceremony was attended by all who could find space in St. George’s Church on Hanover Square and was the culmination of weeks of frenetic yet pleasurable and heartening interactions and herculean efforts on many ladies’ parts. Diana had been touched when, as she had no near relatives on whom to call, Drake had offered to walk her down the aisle, pointing out that it was at his instigation that Toby had gone to Vienna and met her. She’d accepted with relief and gratitude and had laughed at Drake’s attempts to take credit for finding a match for Toby, the until-now-recalcitrant Cynster.
Naturally, the Fellows children had their places in the wedding party. Evelyn was a flower girl, along with Pru’s youngest daughter, Philomena, and Meg’s oldest daughter, May Augusta, with the three younger girls watched over by Nicholas and Addie’s oldest daughter, Julia Rose, while Roland and Bryce served as trainbearers.
Pru, Meg, and Addie were Diana’s matrons of honor, while their husbands made up the line of Toby’s groomsmen. The entire party was so striking and handsome, the onlookers literally sighed.
Yet when Diana and Toby met before the altar, she had eyes only for him, and he, too, seemed to see nothing beyond her face.
In that moment as their fingers twined, and together, they turned to face the altar, there was only them, with the rest of the congregation reduced to a softly murmuring background.
They exchanged their vows in clear, strong voices, the implication that they viewed this event as merely a necessary step in formalizing the life they both wanted and were determined to have—and largely, already shared—ringing out, crystal clear.
Finally, Toby got his wish and replaced the old ring Diana had worn throughout their charade with a finely wrought gold ring of his own. As he slipped the band onto her finger, their gazes locked, sharing that moment of triumphant achievement—of reaching their goal.
The first important goal in their new joint life.
The service, planned and orchestrated by their panel of lady supporters, continued without a hitch, much less any stumble, and then they were pronounced man and wife, and Toby drew her to him and kissed her.
Diana kissed him back with joy and delight and so much love filling her heart.
As they reluctantly ended the caress, she looked into his eyes and knew her own were glowing with emotion. “This,” she murmured, so quietly only he would hear, “was meant to be.”
His lips curved gently. “Fated. I was, thank God, fated to find you.”
For an instant, they shared a look filled with devotion and love, then the rest of the world returned, rejoicing, and with smiles wreathing their faces and joy in their eyes, they turned to accept the congratulations that rained upon them.
Despite the unquestionable power of the ladies organizing all, a full hour passed before they managed to leave the church and were once again walking into the St. Ives House ballroom, this time for their wedding breakfast.
All those assembled stood and applauded and cheered as, beaming widely, they walked down the length of the long room to the raised table at its end.
In all that followed—through the congratulations, the speeches, the shared food and wine, the dancing—the element of family in all its many guises and manifestations invested and imbued every moment, threading through each interaction like a ribbon linking the ages, anchoring and connecting and strengthening and supporting.
Perhaps because she’d never before in her life encountered anything like it, Diana saw it all, was conscious of each and every aspect and, perhaps more than anyone else there, recognized and appreciated its true value.
This is what I want our family to have.
To seize, to hold, to value and protect.
The Cynsters embodied that to their core. They didn’t consciously think of it; they simply lived it.
