Love, At Last
The travel from climax arena to vow venue consumed the next hour. Headlights cut cold through the gathering dusk.
The aide withdrew, and the words settled over the room like a stone dropped into still water. Sebastian watched the man hurry down the corridor, the message already forming in his mind: the chapel would be opened, the Archbishop notified, the world made ready for a truth that had waited seven years to be spoken aloud.
The Prince Regent lifted his glass, the candlelight catching the gold of his rings. “A month, then. You will forgive me, Davenport, but I had begun to think you incapable of sensible haste.”
“I have been incapable of many things,” Sebastian said. “Haste, it seems, was not among them.”
The month passed as months do when they are chased by anticipation. It passed in the turning of pages in ledgers, in the fitting of a navy velvet jacket for a small boy who could not stand still long enough for the tailor’s chalk, in the arrival of crates of white roses from the hothouses and the quiet hum of the household as it prepared Ashworth House for something it had never seen: a wedding.
The morning of the ceremony arrived cold and clear. Frost painted the windows of the chapel in ferns of silver, and the light that fell through them was pale and thin, but the candles made up for it. A hundred flames, maybe more, tipped and bowed like attendants as Sebastian stood before the altar and watched the doors.
He counted the candles along the left wall. Seven, eight, nine. He counted them again, because the first count had been a lie, a distraction. His gaze kept returning to the heavy oak doors at the end of the aisle.
Behind him, the chapel had filled with the sound of held breath. The household staff stood in their Sunday best, pressed against the walls in rows of wool and silk, their faces turned toward the doors with a hunger that Sebastian recognized. They had watched him walk these corridors for years, a man who owned everything and held nothing. They had seen the change in him, the slow thaw, and now they had come to witness the spring.
Silas stood by the vestry door, his posture easy, his eyes moving constantly. Isadora sat in the front pew, her gown the color of ripe plums, a lace handkerchief already crushed in her gloved fist. And at the entrance to the chapel, positioned with the gravity of a soldier, stood Toby.
He wore the navy velvet jacket, the collar stiff, his hair combed into a submission that would not last the hour. In his hands, he held a small cushion of white silk, and on the cushion rested two rings, tied together with a ribbon the color of winter sky. He had been instructed to walk slowly. He had been instructed to look ahead. He had been instructed, by Isadora, not to wave at the servants.
Sebastian watched his son stand there, seven years old and solemn as a judge, and felt something crack open in his chest, clean and painful and good.
The organ breathed.
The doors opened.
Nova stood in the threshold, and the winter light caught her and made her a creature of silver and glass. Her gown was the color of moonlight on snow, a pale silk that fell in long, clean lines and gathered at her waist with a sash of the same blue as the ribbon on the rings. No veil. Her hair was pinned low, with a thread of pearls woven through it, and her face—her face was turned toward him with an expression that Sebastian had never seen on any woman, in any ballroom, in any moment of his life.
She was glad.
He had been loved before, or he had thought so. He had been admired, and flattered, and pursued. But no woman had ever looked at him across the length of a candlelit aisle as if his existence were a gift she had been waiting to unwrap.
Toby turned. He held out his free hand to Nova, and she took it, and together they began the walk toward him.
Sebastian did not hear the organ. He did not hear the rustle of the congregation rising to its feet, or the soft, swallowed sob from somewhere among the staff. He heard only the whisper of her gown against the stone, and the steady click of her slippers, and the small, certain footsteps of his son.
They reached him. Toby stepped back, standing straight, presenting the cushion with the ceremony of a herald. Nova’s hand, warm despite the cold of the chapel, found Sebastian’s.
“Your hands are freezing,” she murmured.
“I have been waiting in this chapel for an hour.”
“You could have waited in the house.”
“I did not trust the house to hold me.”
The Bishop, a gentle man with a tremor in his hands and a voice like warm milk, stepped forward. The congregation settled. The candles flickered.
“Dearly beloved,” the Bishop began, and the words were as old as the hills, as worn as the stone beneath their feet. But Sebastian heard them as if they were new. As if they had been written for this exact moment, for this exact woman, for the son standing at his side.
The vows came.
Sebastian spoke first, and he spoke slowly. He had practiced these words in the dark, alone in his study, with the fire burning low and the weight of his past pressing against his shoulders. He had said them to the empty room until they no longer felt like borrowed language, until they had become his own.
“I, Sebastian Alexander Davenport, take thee, Nova Lennox, to be my wedded wife.”
He paused. The pause was deliberate. It was a room full of witnesses, and there, between his phrases, he was paying for the years he had wasted.
“To have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
He said it without a tremor. He said it as a man who had learned the cost of silence and had chosen, at last, to speak.
Nova’s eyes held his. She did not look at the Bishop or at the congregation. She looked only at him, and her voice when she spoke was steady, carrying the same weight as his own.
“I, Nova Lennox, take thee, Sebastian Davenport, to be my wedded husband, to have and to hold from this day forward, for better, for worse, for richer, for poorer, in sickness and in health, to love and to cherish, till death us do part.”
Each word was a thread, and she was weaving them into something that would hold. Seven years of silence, answered by seven sentences. It was not enough. It would never be enough. But it was a beginning.
“The rings,” the Bishop said.
Toby stepped forward. His face was grave, his small body held with a dignity that did not suit his age but fitted the occasion. He extended the cushion.
“Father,” he said. “Mother.”
Nova’s chin trembled. Sebastian heard it, that single word from his son’s mouth, and felt the heat rise behind his eyes.
He took the rings. He slid the silver one onto Nova’s finger, and it fit as if it had been waiting for her. Then he slid the gold one onto his own hand.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” he said.
“With this ring, I thee wed,” she echoed.
The Bishop smiled, a wide, unguarded smile that creased his weathered face. “By the power vested in me by the Church of England and His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, I now pronounce you husband and wife.”
Sebastian leaned forward, his forehead touching Nova’s. Her breath, warm, brushed his lips.
“We did it,” she whispered.
“We have,” he said. “I am sorry it took me so long.”
The Prince Regent rose. He had been seated at the front of the chapel, a study in royal blue and silver braid, and his face wore an expression that was not often seen on it in public: actual pleasure.
“You will kiss her, Davenport,” George said. “It is customary. I will not have my morning wasted.”
The congregation laughed. The sound was warm and rolling, and Sebastian turned to Nova, cupped her face in his hands, and kissed her. It was not a chaste kiss, not a performance for the crowd. It was the kiss of a man who had waited seven years to claim what had always been his, and the applause that echoed through the chapel was deafening.
Isadora was openly weeping, her handkerchief soaked, her other hand pressed to her chest. Silas wore the expression of a man who had been shot at and was quietly grateful that the shooting had ended. The household staff had abandoned all pretense of restraint; the housekeeper sobbed into her apron, and the footmen cheered.
But Sebastian had not finished.
He turned to Toby. The boy stood where he had been left, the velvet cushion now empty, his eyes wide and bright.
“Toby,” Sebastian said.
And then, before the eyes of the Prince Regent, before the Bishop, before the household that had served him for years, Sebastian Davenport knelt.
He knelt on the cold stone floor of the chapel, in his wedding clothes, before his son. He brought himself down to the boy’s level, and he placed his hands on Toby’s shoulders.
“I made a vow to your mother today,” he said, and his voice was low, for the two of them alone. “Now I want to make a vow to you.”
Toby’s lip wobbled. “You don’t have to.”
“No,” Sebastian agreed. “I don’t have to. That is what makes it a promise.”
The chapel had gone silent. Even the candles seemed to hold their breath.
“I will never hide you again,” Sebastian said. “Do you hear me? You are Tobias Davenport, my son, my heir. You will be known to every soul in England. I am done with shadows. I am done—” his voice caught, and he let it catch, let the boy see the truth of it, “—I am done being the man who kept you a secret.”
Toby stared at him. Then, with a sound that was half sob and half laugh, he threw himself forward, wrapping his arms around Sebastian’s neck.
“You’re a very good atoner,” Toby said into his collar.
Sebastian held him, his son’s small body pressed against his heart, his ring warm on his finger, the candles burning all around them.
“Thank you,” he said. “I have had excellent teachers.”
Nova knelt beside them, her silk gown spreading across the stone, and wrapped her arms around them both. The three of them formed a small, improbable structure in the center of the chapel, and the Prince Regent, who had seen more battles than most men and more politics than any, felt his throat tighten.
He cleared it.
“Page,” he said. “Toby. Come here.”
Toby pulled back, his eyes red, and looked up at the Prince Regent. George held out his hand.
“You have done your duty well,” the Prince said. “I have attended many weddings. I have never seen a page boy so brave.”
Toby puffed his chest out. “I was not afraid.”
“Liar,” Isadora whispered, and hid a smile.
The Prince laughed, a genuine laugh, and ruffled Toby’s hair. “There is a word for that, young man. It is called bearing. You shall grow into it.”
“I grew into it today,” Toby said.
“Indeed you did.”
The register was signed in the vestry, the fire crackling in the small hearth. Sebastian signed his name first—Sebastian Alexander Davenport—and the ink shone dark against the page. Nova signed beside him, her script neat and swift.
Toby, to the great amusement of the room, was given the pen.
“I am signing,” he announced, and he produced a slow, careful scrawl that read Toby Davenport with a flourish of ink at the end.
“There,” he said. “Now it’s legal.”
“It was legal before,” Nova said, laughing softly.
“But now I’m on the paper,” Toby said. “That’s better.”
The Prince Regent signed as a witness, and Isadora and Silas signed as well. The pages turned, and the ceremony was complete, and the cold air of the winter evening rushed in as the chapel doors were thrown open.
The snow had begun.
It fell soft and slow, large flakes drifting down through the pale blue twilight, settling on the gravel of the drive, on the iron railings, on the bare branches of the elms. It landed in the hair of the guests as they filed out, their breath rising in clouds, their laughter ringing across the courtyard.
Sebastian stepped out last.
He stood in the doorway of the chapel, the warmth at his back, the cold before him. Nova came to his side, and Toby slipped between them, taking his mother’s hand and his father’s hand in his own small ones.
“Look,” Toby said, tilting his face up to the sky. “Snow.”
Nova looked at Sebastian over the top of their son’s head, her eyes dark and warm, the snowflakes settling on her lashes.
“Come,” she said. “We have a home to go to.”
Sebastian looked at her, then at the boy between them, then at the falling snow, and for the first time in his life, he did not need to count the exits or check the shadows. There was nothing left to hide.
After seven years of separation, the Duke and his Duchess walked into the falling snow with their son between them—and at last, they were a family.