Total pages in book: 127
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 127368 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 637(@200wpm)___ 509(@250wpm)___ 425(@300wpm)
Shoowie.
I scribbled my own lines at the end of the last journal.
And there were a lot of them.
I couldn’t help it and didn’t try. I didn’t want future countesses to miss anything.
And I wanted our love story to be known.
So it would be.
Tour visitors, students, dogs and cats, kids, staff, and Daniel and Jenny and their brood, Lou and her man, Portia and hers, also their children, my mom, visits from friends and further family, brought the house back to life.
And there was no denying, the house loved it.
It was what it was built for, naturally.
Say what you will, but I believe the house spoke, at least to me, and I believe it took care of us all, and not just providing a roof over our heads.
Then again, that might just be fanciful.
But eventually, those sad days would come, and they did.
We lost Richard, then Lady Jane.
However, it wasn’t simply our mourning that made it so Ian and I didn’t move.
We never left the Hawthorn Suite.
Tradition be damned.
And last, on the second floor, in the gallery, a new portrait was hung.
Very tall and proudly large, it showed me seated, wearing an edgy red gown that Portia selected for me. Ian was standing next to me, wearing a handsome, perfectly-fitting charcoal suit.
The collar of his shirt was open.
I had a two-year-old Walt in my lap. Ian had our four-year-old Gus on his hip, seated at his side was a chocolate lab, and standing next to him with her hand on Charlie’s head, was Alice. Curled at my feet, was a ragdoll cat, at Ian’s, a Himalayan, and seated panting at one outer edge was our English bulldog (Walt’s) and lounging at the other one was Gus’s springer spaniel.
We were placed directly across from the portrait of Adelaide and Augustus.
The perfect spot.
Ian, Alice, Gus and I were smiling.
Walt was giggling.
It was painted in the Conservatory.
The End
PS:
Oh!
It’s important to note, I had my mind on other things, so I was in no state to check. But while her Grandpapa and Grandmama were in the city for one of their many visits (yes, it would take grandchildren to wrest Lady Jane from Duncroft, and they did, often), out and about entertaining baby Alice, her mummy and daddy were utilizing this much needed alone time in bed, making her brother.
And when that conception occurred, I couldn’t be certain, but I was pretty sure it was three oh three.
Walt, as Walt became wont to do, made his own times.
However, I knew, because they kept track of these things, that on a very early stormy morning just two days before her father’s birthday, after too damned much labor, Alice was born.
And I would never know what it meant, truly, but it gave credence to the legend.
Because that joyous event definitely occurred at three oh three.
The End