The Cerulean Swan reopened under new owners after the trial of Richard Carlisle. Mr. Carson and Mrs. Hughes had enough of the infamy the case and the resulting trial brought so they sold the restaurant to Ms. Baxter and Mr. Moseley to retire to Scotland. Ms. Baxter and Mr. Moseley, his recent retirement from the morgue allowing him a sizeable pension to use for refurbishments, rebuilt the Cerulean Swan to its former glory while also doubling down on the infamy of the location to gain most of their most loyal customers for the next few years. When they trickled away they slowly changed their advertising to bring back a broader crowd until they too retired.
Mr. Mason safely delivered Ms. Braithwaite, Mr. Bricker, and Ms. Flintshire to trial as they provided a sizable portion of the prosecution against Mr. Carlisle. His defense sought to tear each of their testimonies to tatters but the weight of the evidence and the pile of mounted bodies proved too much. Richard Carlisle, on the counts of murder of no less than six people spent the rest of his life in a maximum security prison.
Following the trial, Ms. Braithwaite served six months, on account of her assistance to the case, and returned to work at the Cerulean under the watchful eye of Ms. Baxter before she moved North to seek other ventures. Ms. Flintshire served probation and moved to India, never fully reconciling with either her husband or her daughter before she left the country for the last time. Mr. Bricker served probation and paid heavy fines before vanishing. When his body was found later, the translation of the Hebrew printed on the sign hung around his neck read 'traitor and murderer'. The perpetrators were never found.
Superintendent Crawley retired from the force after twenty more years of service and left London for the North with his wife. The rest of his family spread to the winds to seek their fortunes and move on with their lives outside the scandal that brought them together during that cold, rainy night. None of them suffered any long-term repercussions for their presence.
Ross, Atticus, and Talbot continued in their work, with infrequent reunions between the three of them and Anna as time and tide permitted. When they did meet it was at the same pub but different tables. They ordered drinks for one another, passed them around the room, and nodded from a distance between they departed through different exits. Soon there was only three of them as Ross returned to America. Then two when Atticus and Rose moved to America as well. And, finally, only Anna as she shared a final drink with John for company at the news of Talbot's disappearance.
It was, at that moment, they decided to name their first son Henry, if they ever had one.
The subject of children, while exceedingly desirable to both of them, that troubled them greatly. Their wedding, a small affair attended by their friends and family, set the stage for them to start their life together. And when they both changed their shifts to the daylight hours, moved to a quieter part of town, and slowly fell into a pattern, they hoped to begin the next step.
But the next step was long in coming.
So long it worried Anna. She fretted herself sick about it multiple times. So sick that she feared a series of miscarriages were due to those fears and John spent nights holding her as she sobbed about her inability to bear children. Even his suggestion of adoption only brought more pain as Anna claimed she failed John. Failed him so badly she feared he might leave her.
"It's all you've wanted and I'm just not able." She cried one night but John held her all the tighter, his own tears soaking spots in her hair.
"No. We're not able." He moved them so they could face one another. "You're my wife and what you suffer, I do too. And if we can't have children then… Then we'll just be us two."
"But you wouldn't be happy if-"
"I'm happy wherever you are." John held her hands so their rings clinked against one another. "I married you because I love you. Whatever else happens, then it's just more happiness than I could've imagined."
"Truly?"
"Truly." John brushed some hair from Anna's face, wiping at a tear. "We're in this together, Anna, through thick and thin."
"Thin and thinner, more like."
John smiled and Anna managed one through her tears. "Then we'll get thin together. For better or worse, remember? That was the promise. And I intend to keep that promise until death do us part."
And he did. Through the next few months as they settled into their life as two. A life that turned for the potentially happier when Anna visited a doctor on the recommendation of Mary Crawley. A doctor who performed a simple operation, and another one when they feared the worst, but left them both crooning at the swell of Anna's abdomen as their child grew between them.
A child that gave them all the joy in the world when Anna delivered it at their little home. A child John held in his arms and cried over until Anna shushed them both to hold them close to her. A child they christened Henry in the same church where John received his christening.
A child they thought would be their only one.
Until, one night, Anna surprised John. Seduced him, more like. Anna denied it later but John always insisted he was helpless when she entered their room in just a dressing gown and shed it to leave her naked as she mounted him. Any arguments she covered and drown with kisses before turning her back on John when she straddled him.
It was all John could do to hold to Anna as she moved over him. And at first she was satisfied running his hands over her back or holding to her hips when she rocked against him to change the angle of his arousal inside her. But eventually John rose behind her, turning them to put his feet on the floor and hold Anna tightly to him to grind into her as his hands covered her breasts and he littered her neck with kisses in time to the moans she made as she took her pleasure from him.
"What is it Anna?" John's other hand moved between them, following the path of his eyes as he watched her rise and fall on him, leaving the shine of herself on him between the teasing ticks of his fingers against her nerves there.
"What's what?" She tried to deflect but her fingers dragged at the skin of his neck as John thrust against her at the same time his fingers pinched her nerves.
"What's brought this on?"
Anna did not answer. Instead she took his hand from her breast and rested it against her abdomen. That was all the answer John needed to lead them both to their climaxes. It took them time to untangle and clean themselves enough so that a cry from their child in the next room would not have them rushing about in their skivvies. But John kept lifting Anna's nightshirt to kiss at her abdomen.
"How'd we get so lucky?"
"Says the man who just let me have my way with him?" Anna did not open her eyes, smiling satisfactorily as they cuddled closer.
"I meant about all of it." Anna worked her eyes open to stare at John. "Meeting you. Having Henry. Having…"
"Well, there's a cell in a maximum-security prison where a man named Richard Carlisle lives now and a restaurant on the other side of town called the Cerulean Swan." Anna kissed John. "I'm pretty sure the story for it all starts there."