Page 64 of Alone with a Scarred Earl
“I will say this much,” he said. “Mountwood has improved remarkably. The roads have been tended, the tenant disputes are fewer, and I daresay the sheep look more content.”
Gabriel gave his friend a modest bow.
“That is due to your tedious inspections,” he said, his tone light. “And Sophia’s persistence in making me read every tenant’s petition before I dismiss them out of hand.”
Sophia laughed loudly.
“You are not so easily persuaded,” she said, reaching for a cucumber sandwich. “But you do listen. That is all most people require. To be heard.”
Genevieve glanced across the table, her eyes lingering on Sophia’s serene expression. In the past months, their friendship had deepened into something vital and sustaining. Sophia’s quiet wisdom, her gentle humor, had proved invaluable through long days of recovery, social renewal, and estate management. What had begun as a tentative connection forged under dire circumstances had grown into sisterhood.
“I should like to commission a portrait,” Victoria said suddenly. “Of the five of us. Something dramatic. With wind.”
James coughed into his tea.
“The wind is non-negotiable, I suppose?” he asked.
Victoria nodded.
“Utterly essential,” she said. “Gabriel will look mysterious. James will appear heroic. Sophia can be bathed in artistic melancholy. Genevieve will be the calm in the storm.”
Gabriel chuckled softly, lifting Genevieve’s hand to his lips.
“She has always been the calm,” he said softly.
The moment settled around them with rare sweetness. For all the trials that had preceded this peace, they now sat among family, whole and alive.
Victoria, noticing the silence, lifted her cup in a mock toast.
“To clear skies, even if the wind insists on drama,” she said.
“To the wind,” Sophia said, lifting hers.
“To friendship,” said James, raising his as well.
Genevieve met Gabriel’s gaze across the rim of her cup.
“To beginnings,” she said softly.
And as they drank together, laughter resumed around the tea table, the sun dipped lower in the sky, and Mountwood stood as it should: not a place of haunting, but of hope, its rooms echoing not with secrets but with voices of love, loyalty, and life.
Gabriel leaned closer to her ear.
“The shadows are gone, darling,” he said.
She smiled and threaded her fingers through his.
“Yes,” she said. “And we are still here.”
The End
