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Standard disclaimer.
Last chapter before the epilogue.
Arthur watched his mother closely, as she turned in place, taking in the walls painted with incongruous rainbows and frolicking Arabian colts.
"I wanted to tell you," he started and took a seat on a wooden stool, draped with a Holland cloth. "I just didn't know how. She was gone so quickly, and then, afterwards..."
His voice trailed off, and the duchess raised a hand, in a firm, silent gesture, letting him know, further words were unnecessary.
She was no stranger to quiet suffering, holding her aristocratic grace through all manner of trials.
He knew this news would hurt her deeply...it was why he hadn't told her.
But she was the duchess. If he knew his mother, she would cling to her composure...bear up under the weight and never crack.
Then, why hadn't he trust her strength and resolve?
Perhaps, he didn't know his mother at all.
She turned to him with tears in her eyes.
"Oh, Arthur...I've been so worried for you. I knew you were hurting, and I knew the cause must be something horrible. You've looked horrible."
Arthur rubbed his face with both hands.
"No, I mean it," she went on. "Just perfectly wretched."
He made a gesture of helplessness.
"My apologies."
She sighed.
"I was so hoping it wouldn't come to this. Stay right there."
She left a confused Arthur and returned within a minute, approaching him, where he sat in the center of the room.
From beneath her arm, the duchess unfurled the ugliest, most malformed knitted muffler, Arthur had ever seen.
She wrapped it once, twice, thrice about his neck. And it was the tightest, warmest hug he'd ever received.
He stared up at her, bewildered.
"Where did this come from?"
"The knitting? Or the affection it represents? I'd rather not talk about the knitting. As for the love...it's always been here. Even when we haven't discussed it."
He rose to his feet and kissed her on the cheek.
"I know."
For so many years now, they'd been all the family each other had.
He suspected, they'd avoided admitting how much they meant to each other, for the simple fear, of acknowledging how close they were, to being alone.
She touched one of her cool, papery hands to his face.
"My darling boy. I'm so sorry."
"How did you bear it?" he asked. "How did you bear this three times...the pain...the hurt...the helplessness?"
"Not as bravely as you have. And never alone." She looked around at the painted walls. "The loss was keen. In my heart, I have a room something like this, for each of them. But even in the darkest hours, your father and I took comfort in each other. And in you."
"In me? God...I never felt good enough to be one son. Let alone take the place of four."
"I hate that you felt that way. Looking back, we should have been more nurturing. But we were so afraid of coddling you, when we knew the strong man you'd need to become. Left to my own devices, I could have hugged you to my bosom and held you there, until your sixteenth birthday."
"Well." Arthur started, his mouth pulled to the side. "I suppose I'm glad you resisted that urge."
She patted his cheek.
"Arthur, I've always looked at you and seen a generous, good-hearted man. I've merely grown impatient, waiting for you to see the same."
"I wanted to be better for her." He lifted his eyes to the ceiling. "I didn't hide all this, because, I was ashamed of her. I was only ashamed of myself, my dissolute life. I'd resolved to make myself a better man. I didn't want anyone to look at my daughter and see her as one of my mistakes."
Mistakes he kept right on making, it seemed.
"She was right," he said. "Guinevere was right about our chances, but she had the blame laid wrong. If society won't accept her, it's not her fault. It's mine. A stodgy, boring sort of nobleman, might fall in love with a commoner, and society would give her the benefit of the doubt...an even chance to prove herself, at least. But with my sordid history, people will always assume, she's just a debauched duke's latest, greatest scandal. She deserves better than that. I want better for her."
"It's not too late," his mother said. "Let her come here. Not just for a week, but months. You can take your place in Lords, and we'll introduce her to society slowly, next year. You'll see, people will eventually..."
"No. No, that's just it. She doesn't want this life, and I don't blame her. I don't even want it, but I know it's my duty now." He sighed. "There may never be a ninth Duke of Bradford, but I want the eighth to be remembered well. For my daughter's sake."
"And what about Gwen?"
Guinevere, Guinevere, Guinevere. She'd been gone from his life, just a matter of hours, and he already missed her so intensely. He would spend his life digging out from under this landslide of a heartbreak.
"I just want all her dreams to come true," he finished.
Had the cottage always been this small?
Gwen stood in the lane, just staring, uncertain how to approach her own home.
Major the guard goose, came honking toward her, alerting those within the house.
"Gwen?" Her mother's face appeared in the window. "Gwen, is that you?"
She dashed a tear from her eye.
"Yes, Mum. It's me. I'm home."
Later, up in the sleeping loft, Gwen and Danielle hugged and cried.
Then, they brushed and plaited one another's hair and laid out their Sunday dresses, for the next morning.
Arthur's gold sovereign, went straight in the collection box.
And during the church service, Gwen could feel all the curiosity of Spinster Cove, focused on her.
She knew she'd have to answer a great many questions, but she just wasn't ready yet.
And even though, she'd managed to delay her first trip, to the All Things shop, for another several days, she still wasn't prepared to answer them.
Suzy Bright pounced on her the moment she walked through the door.
Aside from being her oldest and dearest friend, Suzy was the most inquisitive, gossipy person in Spinster Cove.
Gwen knew the curiosity must be gnawing at her friend, with a hundred teeth.
"You..." She lifted and waved a stack of newspapers. "...have so much explaining to do! Did you really attend a ball? Make a duke fall madly in love with you?"
"Suzy, I don't wish to speak of it yet. I just can't. It's all too..." Her voice broke.
Suzy didn't press for more. She hurried out from behind the counter and wrapped Gwen in a tight hug.
"There there. We'll have years to talk it over, won't we?"
Gwen nodded.
"Sadly, I think we will."
She'd been harboring the absurd hope, that Arthur would come chasing after her, perhaps, show up at the farm cottage some morning, unshaven and smelling of cologne.
But as the days passed, her hope seemed more and more, like a fanciful dream.
That wasn't the fairy tale he'd promised her.
"I have some news that will cheer you," Suzy said.
"Oh? What's that?"
"It's nasty old Mrs. Whittle. She's moved to Dorset, to live with her nephew."
"Truly? That is good news, I suppose. For everyone but the nephew. I thought she'd never leave that tumbledown old place."
Suzy shrugged.
"Well, she did. And cleared out of the neighborhood quickly, too. Now, I'm stuck with a half-dozen bottles of her noxious 'health tonic.' I don't suppose anyone else is going to want it."
Her eyebrows lifted.
"And there's something else. Something for you."
"What's that?"
"Come see."
Suzy pulled her over to the storeroom and on the floor in the center, sat an immense wooden crate, labeled with Gwen's name.
"A man delivered it special yesterday," she said. "It didn't come through the regular post. But he told me, it wasn't to go to your cottage, ever. I must wait until you come to the shop, and I couldn't speak a word of it to anyone. It was all just painfully mysterious."
She gave Gwen's arm an impatient shake.
"Can't we open it now? It's heavy as anything and I'm dying to know what's inside. Dying."
Gwen nodded.
"Of course."
Suzy gave a little cheer of excitement.
With the help of a slender crowbar, she pried the top from the crate and sifted through a top layer of straw.
"Oh," she said flatly. "Well, that's disappointing. I hope you didn't have your hopes too high. It's only books."
She lifted a red-bound volume off the top and peered into the crate.
"Yes. Books, all the way down."
"Let me see," Gwen said, snatching the book from Suzy's hand.
She ran a palm over the fresh red Morocco binding, brushing aside a blade of straw, so she could read the cover...Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure...The Life and Adventures of Fanny Hill.
"Who's this Mrs. Scott person?" Suzy lifted a handful of books from the crate. "She wrote a great many books."
"Be careful with them, please," Gwen said.
She went to her side and began to sort through the volumes. Scott, Johnson, Wollstonecraft, Fielding, Defoe. All the books on the list, Arthur had dictated that day, in Shilling bookshop.
He'd remembered.
He'd known not to send them to her home, for fear her father would pitch them all into the fire.
She lifted the book to her nose and inhaled that aroma deeply...her second favorite smell...before setting it aside to look at the rest.
Halfway through the crate, Gwen found a small volume, not bound in red Morocco, but instead covered in the softest, most impractical fawn-hued leather.
It was the collected poems of William Blake.
Tears welled in her eyes, as she opened the cover.
Inside, right on the exquisite marble end-paper, there was affixed a bookplate with a stamp. FROM THE LIBRARY OF MISS GUINEVERE CAMPBELL
"Oh, Arthur."
This crate wasn't merely stuffed with books. It was full of meaning. Messages too complicated to explain and too risky to send in a letter.
He knew her.
This crate of books said, he knew her to the deepest, most hidden places of her soul.
It said, he respected her as a person, with thoughts and dreams and desires.
He loved her. He truly did.
But most poignant of all, this crate of books held one clear, undeniable message...goodbye.
Stay safe!