“Then Veronica was right. She said I would suit you.” She slid her arms around his neck. “But she was wrong as well. She said you would never suit me.”
“I do love it when she’s wrong. I shall have to remind her of that.” He brushed his lips across hers. “And remind you as well how nicely we suit. Every day for the rest of your life I think. I intend to make you absurdly happy and completely content.”
“Don’t be silly. I shall never be merely content with you.” Her green eyes gazed into his and his breath caught and his heart leapt. “You, my love, for now and forever, are my adventure.”
The End
Three weeks later …
“Lovely ceremony, I thought. Quite touching really.”
At once Julia was wide awake and struggled to sit up. “Where have you been? And why are you here now? You do realize this is my wedding night?”
“Happy, darling?”
“Blissful but …” She glanced at Harrison sleeping beside her and lowered her voice. “Do be quiet. You’ll awaken him and I have no idea how to explain you.”
“I rather think he’s too exhausted to awaken.” Hermione flashed her a wicked grin. “Indeed, he’s sleeping like the dead.”
“That’s not the least bit amusing.”
“Really? I thought it was most amusing, given that I really am expired whereas he is simply”—she chuck-led—“expended.”
“Now is not the time.” Julia tried to pull her thoughts together. “There is something I must tell you and I’m not sure how to say it.”
“My, this doesn’t sound good.”
“It’s not.” She drew a deep breath. “Your memoirs seem to have disappeared. I can’t find them anywhere.”
“Imagine that.”
“Odder still, neither Benjamin nor Portia nor Harrison can find the selections they had.”
“That is odd.” She shrugged. “Well, I’m certain they will turn up eventually.”
Julia studied her. There was something decidedly different about Hermione tonight. “Will they?”
“I have no idea.” She nodded toward Harrison. “You do realize he will always be somewhat stuffy and proper?”
“I do.”
“And that proper English gentlemen and their wives usually have separate rooms?”
Julia grinned. “In that respect, I doubt he will ever be entirely proper. Nor do I intend to allow him to be.”
“Excellent.” Hermione paused. “Are you going to tell him about the circumstances of his birth?”
She shook her head. “No. It would serve no purpose save to take him down a peg. And I suspect I shall have other methods of doing that when necessary.”
“You love him and that’s how it should be. Julia …” Hermione hesitated.
“Hermione,” Julia said slowly. “What is it?”
“Oh dear, am I that transparent?” She glanced down. “No, delightfully solid I would say.”
“Why are you here?”
“I have something to tell you as well and now that the time has come I too have difficulties finding the right words.” She drew a deep breath. “As lovely as my afterlife has been, and I have had a grand time, I have learned, and learned really isn’t accurate.” She thought for a moment. “I’m not sure how to describe it. One minute I didn’t know and the next moment I did.”
“Know what?”
“Why I have lingered here and why my time is now at an end.”
“Of course, that’s it. That’s what’s different.” Julia stared. “You look ten years younger.”
“Fourteen actually. I was four and twenty when my husband died. I had thought I would join him when it was my turn but having fun with my old friends, meeting new ones, going to parties and routs and balls was apparently my penance.” She shook her head in amazement. “I find it hard to believe. I had everything here that I had enjoyed in life except the one thing I wanted most. But I couldn’t leave, you see, until I had fixed what was, however indirectly, my fault.”
At once Julia understood. “Grandmother and Lord Kingsbury?”
“That’s why I talked to her all these years.” She smiled an odd sort of half-hearted smile. “I tried to be a better mother in death than I was in life.”
Julia nodded.
“Then when you inherited the memoirs and you needed me, well, I had to be here. But my work is done and all at last ends well.” She rose to her feet. “Have a wonderful life, my dear child.”
“Aren’t you coming back?”
“You no longer need me. My daughter has been reunited with the love of her life and you have been joined with the love of yours.” She smiled. “And I have earned the right to be reunited with mine.” Hermione paused for a long moment. “I lived forty-three years after he died. I had a lovely life full of adventures and affection.” She sighed. “But I would have traded all of it for one more day with him.”
Julia swallowed hard. “I know.”
“Yes, darling, at last you do.” She cast a smile at her great-granddaughter’s new husband’s sleeping form. “You know exactly how I feel.”
“Will I ever see you again?”
“Certainly someday. But it will be a very long time from now. When your adventure”—she nodded at Harri-son—“and his is at an end.”
Julia swallowed hard. “I will miss you.”
“My dear child, I will always be with you in your heart, just as I will always be with my daughter.”
An ache burned the back of Julia’s throat. “Do you really have to go?”
“Darling, I want to go.” She fell silent for a moment. “Did you ever finish reading my book? Did you ever get to the end?”
She shook her head.
“Ah well,” she said in a lofty manner, “it was an excellent ending in which I imparted the lessons of a lifetime.”
Julia smiled. “Anything I should know?”
“My dear child.” Hermione faded from sight. “You already do.”
At the beginning of this volume I said I had no regrets and when I wrote those words I believed them to be true. Now, as I have set to paper the adventures of my life I find there are indeed regrets.
I regret I did not know in my youth what I know now. I regret that I made assumptions about the unrelenting nature of time. I regret that I was not as clever as I thought I was. And I wonder if these regrets are unique to me or if they are universal as they seem so very human.
Still, I have learned much. I know that the person in the midst of the crowd may be the most alone. I know that true love makes no sense and cannot be denied and lingers even after death. I know that it is indeed the adventure that makes life worth living. And I know the grandest adventures of life pale in comparison to the greater adventure of love.
That, Dear Reader, is the most important thing I have learned. And the true lesson of the life of a perfect mistress.
from The Perfect Mistress,
the Lost Memoirs of Lady Hermione Middlebury
The Perfect Mistress Page 33