A/N: Now we really are at the end. And, like someone else in the story, I might just be dabbing my eyes at the corners. Thank you to each and every one of you who has read, whether you've never commented or have reviewed every chapter, and especially to my darling ju-dou.

Epilogue: A Girl in White

August, 1913

"You look terrible," Mary says when the spare room door of their London home opens with a rattle of the knob and Richard staggers through it.

This remark seems to come unexpectedly to him, and he stops short in the doorway, blinking at her in the bed, before he finally raises his hands to smooth his mussed hair and tighten the knot of his necktie, which hangs loose his unbuttoned collar. Even across the room in the dim light of the bedside lamps she can make out the shadow of a day's growth over his chin as he scuffs his hand over it. The waft of stale smoke accompanies him further into the room, hanging thick when he pushes the door closed.

"You look wonderful," he says, his voice even deeper than usual, more hoarse-as it becomes when he's had rather too much to drink. He blinks again, then rubs his eyes, struggling to focus on her though she reclines motionless, propped up on pillows.

"You say it as if I don't always."

"Don't be silly. Only I thought…after giving birth…"

"I might look a little more dishevelled?" she prompts. "Like you? Was the waiting so horrid, then?"

"Interminable." Richard leans back against the door, ruffling the hair he just tidied by raking his hand through it, pinching the ends between his fingers and tugging.

His worry is a touching although, admittedly, Mary's emotions are at the moment a little wrought. "But surely Dr Travers and the nurse kept you abreast of the situation, and you knew there was no reason to worry?"

"I've never been shut up with your father for so long. It was like after-dinner port that went on for seventeen hours."

"I'm sorry giving birth was such a trial for you. If only Mama had been free to squeeze your hand and offer you soppy smiles."

"Sybil fulfilled that function admirably," Richard says, oblivious to Mary's wry tone. But she must smile at the image of her sweet little sister encouraging a chain-smoking expectant father. "Though I think she was frustrated not to be in the delivery room. It seems she's received quite the detailed education on childbirth from Mrs Crawley."

"I'll bet Papa is thrilled about what that will do for her prospects when she comes out next year."

"Almost his words exactly." As Richard's chuckle fades, so seems the mental fog that's shrouded him since he came in. "Listen to me, going on about mytrials when you're the one who just had a baby." His brows and the corners of his eyes tug downward in concern. "Was it very bad?"

"Not nearly as bad as I imagined it might be. Which was exactly what I hoped when I set such impossibly low expectations for the experience."

An approach with which Richard vehemently disagreed. "If I had an attitude like that, I'd still be standing on the corner in Morningside peddling newspapers instead of presiding over a publishing empire."

To which she replied, "When you take it upon yourself to bear your own children, you can do so with your that mindset. Until then, I'll think about it my way." Which was to imagine the worst, screaming and blinding pain, perhaps falling into a swoon for good measure.

"I'm a little tired," she goes on, noting his deepening frown, "more than a little sore…"

An attempt to push herself a little more upright on her pillows ends in a grimace which brings Richard at once to her side to clutch her hand. And very untidy, she thinks but does say, self-conscious of the state of things beneath the pristine fresh starched sheets draped over her lower body.

"But Dr Travers gave me something jolly for the pain, and I feel reasonably like myself, all things considered. Despite your mother's dire predictions with regard to the narrowness of my hips."

Richard snorts. "When I phoned to let them know you were in labour she said she'd pray for a tiny baby or miraculous expansion."

"Did you phone again to let her know my hips were a marvel?"

"That's not the sort of thing one talks of to one's mother." A sheepish grin tilts his mouth. "I forgot to call them, actually."

Mary shrugs. "Doubtless Jean would have scolded you for phoning at two in the morning for any reason other than my demise."

"Bugger..." He passes his free hand over his eyes, thumb and forefinger massaging the temple. "I even didn't think of the time when I rang Miss Fields."

"I daresay a pay rise will make up for it."

"I daresay," he agrees without irony, and Mary laughs-until her abdominal muscles seize in pain.

"I thought Travers gave you something," Richard says roughly, sobered by concern.

Mary notices her white-knuckled grip on his hand and the half-moons carved by her nails in his skin, and relaxes it. Poor Mama's hand must be black and blue. "Just don't make me laugh again. It's out of character anyway."

He lifts her hand to his lips and kisses the back, then each knuckle in turn. "I'm afraid I might do something even more unlike myself and cry when I see the baby."

He glances about the room, denuded of anything that might have been in the way or ruined during the delivery, as if realizing for the first time the most important part of the scene is missing.

"Where is the baby?"

"Taking the utmost care with her toilet before meeting her Papa, of course."

Richard's mouth gapes for what feels like a full minute before he manages to croak, "Her?"

Mary holds her breath as she nods; for all his bold proclamations of a modern value of the feminine sex, now that a daughter exists as more than as a hypothetical, she can't help but fear she will see a flicker of disappointment across his sculpted features, especially now that his inhibitions ate lowered by lord only knows how much drink.

She doesn't see anything on his face, however. At that moment both their heads turn at Mama's entrance, beatific as she carries the white bundle.

"Well it's about time," Richard says, his long strides carrying him quickly across the room. "Taking after her Mama already, I see, primping and making fashionably late entrances to every occasion?"

"She really is like Mary. She was such a pretty baby," Mama effuses as Richard takes the baby from her without hesitation, accustomed to holding his brother's children. "Though this one's done what I never thought possible, and is even more beautiful."

"I always say second editions aren't worth doing if they don't improve upon the first." Richard pulls aside the fold of the lace-edged blanket to peer down at the little face cradled in the crook of his arm.

"A year ago I'd scarcely met you," says Mary, "and already there's a new lady in your life. Exactly as I feared it would be, should it be a girl."

"My darling," Mama croons, but scarcely spares a glance before for Mary returning her attention to her new granddaughter. She sighs as Richard holds up the baby's fist curled around his pinky finger, grinning inanely.

"Oh, I just can't bear to take my eyes off her, but I'll give you three a moment alone." She starts to go, but pauses to give Richard's arm a squeeze and whisper, "Thank you."

When the door clicks quietly shut, Mary starts to remark on her mother's apparent amnesia with regard to the timing of the baby's conception, but at the last moment decides against it. Sarcasm requires too much effort, and Richard likely wouldn't hear her, anyway, so mesmerised is he by his daughter. Their daughter.

It's so strange to think of herself as a mother, even though the nurse put the baby on Mary's chest immediately after she drew her first breath and let out her first discontent cry. (There will be no saving that nightgown.) Mary shed a few tears, too-of relief and frayed nerves and most of all awe that a newborn knew instinctively where to root to find her mother's breast.

Richard, on the other hand, seems to come by fatherhood much more naturally. He carries the baby back to the bedside, never taking his eyes off her as he lowers himself into the chair. She seemed so small as Mary held her, but now looks even daintier stretched along Richard's forearm, her head of downy black fuzz resting in his big palm while the other hand pulls back the blanket so he can get a better look at her.

"She's so tiny," he says, softly.

"Not quite six pounds, and nineteen inches long."

"And perfect."

Nodding, Mary leans over as far as she comfortably can to see the clean newborn skin, warm and pink from her first bath, unclothed except for the napkin pinned around her. She watches Richard count the fingers and toes, trace the furry curves of her ears and shoulders-exactly as she did, when her daughter was placed in her arms and she found that instinct overcame the fear that she would have no idea what to do with an infant.

"She's like a little rosebud," he murmurs.

Mary quite agrees, but Richard is being saccharine enough for the both of them, so she says, "A briar rose, considering how prickly her parents are. We're not calling her Rose," she adds, hastily, as the thought occurs.

"Certainly not." This more characteristic statement is undermined by what follows, accompanied by a dazed grin. "That's far too ordinary a name for our little princess."

"Says a man called Richard to his wife Mary."

He looks up, thoughtful. "Although that does give me an idea."

September, 1913

Six weeks later, Richard carries the baby through the French doors of the drawing room, where Mary's family assemble before commencing to church for the Christening.

"Here's our little princess," he says, shifting her in his arms so they can admire her in her trailing confection of silk and lace, plump cheeks drooping in sleep above the bow of her bonnet, short puffed sleeves revealing dimpled elbows and wrists. "All dressed up with somewhere very important to go."

Predictably, Mama and Sybil leap up from their seats in a duet of coos and clucksand, on Mama's part, the most appalling stream of baby-babble which sets Mary's teeth on edge as she enters behind Richard. But it also makes her grateful that at as mushy as her husband is over his baby, the phrase pwetty pwetty widdle pwincess has neverfallen from his lips.

Though she's tempted not to give him any credit at all for that as he fails to look the least bit disapproving when Mama takes her granddaughter form him and says, "Widdle pwincess, indeed, oh, yes you are. My wuvwy wuvwy Sweeping Beauty."

"Careful, Cora," Aunt Rosamund says, cringing, "if you keep talking to her like that she's liable to think she's a housemaid."

"Is that really such a step down from princess of a tabloid empire?" Edith says.

"How beastly!" cries Sybil. "Couldn't you have stayed in America?"

"I wanted to, but for some reason everyone insisted I be here for family unity. As if we've ever had that."

"You're just jealous no one asked you to be godmother."

"Girls," Mama half-heartedly rebukes, and Papa is no better-though his annoyance as he clears his throat and lays aside the morning Telegram is not directed at his younger two daughters.

"Far be it from me to interfere with another man's decisions with regard to his children," he says, approaching Richard, "but I simply must ask-do you really intend to go through with this?"

"Robert!" The baby's brown eyes pop wide open, startled by Mama's sudden harshness, though Mary is just relieved she didn't say Wobert. The gooey adoration melts from her eyes as they leave her granddaughter to narrow on her husband. "You promised you wouldn't say a word."

Richard meets Papa's glower with a bland smile. "I can only presume you refer to my lack of religious belief, and the apparent hypocrisy of-"

"Oh no, Richard," Granny says from her chair, "we'd all far rather you were a hypocrite than a complete heathen."

"Indeed," says Papa. "No, I refer to-"

"Our choice of godparents?" Richard again interrupts. He holds out his palms in a placating gesture. "I know Frida Uhl seems an unconventional choice, but as a father of three daughters, surely you can appreciate the value of a madwoman with a pistol when the inevitable unwanted suitors come to call."

"If only we'd known Mrs Uhl when we chose Mary's godmother," Granny mutters, and Rosamund and Edith snigger.

"It was Frida or Diana Manners," Mary says.

"I'm not talking about the godparents," Papa says through tight lips. "I do not approve of this Uhl woman, but as you've asked Sybil and Evelyn Napier, I'm not awfully concerned about the likelihood of granddaughter being raised in a nightclub should anything unfortunate befall you and Mary."

"How can you say anything so dreadful, on today of all days?" Mama asks; whether she the refers to the nightclub or an unfortunate event, Mary cannot say.

"My quibble is with the child's name," Papa blurts out, having lost all patience. "Do you truly intend to call her Aurora?"

"What's the matter with Aurora?" Sybil asks. "I think it's a simply lovely name, and suits our little princess perfectly."

She gives Richard an approving nod, then resumes her admiration of the baby, a bracelet of silver beads gleaming as she flails a chubby fist.

"There's nothing the matter with the name itself," Papa says, "it's the fact that it's an obvious dig at me."

"It could be a complete coincidence," Mama says. "Everything isn't always about you, Robert."

"At least we know Mary comes by it honestly," comes Edith's unhelpful contribution to the discussion.

"A coincidence that he overheard me remark that Mary had more suitors than the Princess Aurora?" Papa retorts.

"When was this?" Granny asks.

"Last October," Mary answers. "When Evelyn and the Turkish gentleman came to hunt."

"Oh, that ghastly weekend!" Mama says with a shudder.

"Indeed," Papa agrees, though his steady gaze on Richard indicates he is of the opinion that the truly ghastly part was not that a guest had died at his home, but that a new life had been illicitly made there.

Richard smirks-guilty as charged-and Papa's face reddens so that Mary's heart lodges in her throat. What if the score was not fully settled on New Year's Eve? Will Richard provide fuel tomorrow's gossip pages by attending his daughter's Christening with a bloodied lip or blackened eye?

"Ah yes," he says in a voice as smooth as silk. "I suppose we have our answer to which suitor Mary accepted."

"Yes!" Mama interjects as Papa splutters and blusters, stepping between the two men, brandishing the baby almost as a shield. "Yes, we do, right here in this beautiful heirloom christening gown. It doesn't matter how or when she came into her lives. Only that she did. This is her day."

"Quite," Sybil says, chin lifted. "And it shouldn't be spoilt by the fragile male ego." She looks from Papa to Richard, adding, "Either one."

Richard's features fold into a rare look of annoyance at the sister-in-law who can ordinarily do no wrong in his eyes. Granny chuckles smugly to herself and remarks that she supposes he'll think again about his suffragist publications which Sybil reads when she stays with them in town.

Rolling her eyes, Mary says, "Mama and Sybil are right. It's Aurora's day, and it certainly won't do to make her late for her own Christening."

The men don their hats in the front hall, where Nanny awaits with the pram for the brief walk through Cadogan Square to church. Richard takes charge of pushing it, of course, an the proud and doting new father the neighbours have got used to seeing in recent weeks. They pass a few along the way who nod their approval or pause to admire the baby-and Mary's outfit, to her great pleasure: a jaunty yellow hat with a sweeping blue plume and, over a white dress that tapers to her ankles, a blousy fawn-coloured jacket with a printed collar in jewelled tones she bought in Paris, which is both the height of fashion and a disguise for the lingering baby weight.

The attention to herself and her daughter makes her take her husband's arm and look up at him, admiring the yellow carnation in his buttonhole which complements her ensemble, and the way the shade cast by the brim of his top hat sets off his strong features. She gives the crook of his elbow a little squeeze, and he looks down at her, eyes crinkling at the corners with his smile. Dimples and charm, she thinks, and she glances back over her shoulder at Papa.

"You're not alone in your disapproval of the baby's name, you know," she says. "Richard's mother doesn't like it, either."

This is not strictly true. Over the phone she spluttered over Aurora Antonia, neither of which appeared in the Bible or on any Carlisle or Crawley family tree, but George told Richard that she was fairly giddy as she everyone in the neighbourhood and in his store and in the family's church about the newest Carlisle,

Aurora Antonia Jean. "It's as if she's forgotten she already has a granddaughter called Jeannie," George said.

"Does Richard's mother like anything?" Granny mutters from further back.

Giggling, Sybil scurries up to Mary and whispers, "Pot, meet kettle?"

"Quite," Mary says, but no more; difficult as her mother-in-law is, Mary wishes Richard were able to share this day with his family. George can't afford to leave the store after the time away for the wedding, and Jean's been ill for most of the summer and Mark, understandably, doesn't want to leave her.

When she speaks again, it is to tease Papa. "Would you feel a little better if she were Aurora Roberta Jean instead?"

"For heaven's sake, my ego isn't that fragile."

Afterward, when the baby irrevocably bears the name Aurora Antonia Jean Carlisle, at least until the day she marries-which Richard, not entirely joking, swears will never come, as no man could deserve her, and what could the heiress of a newspaper empire need a husband for anyway?-Mary watches as photographer instructs Mama and Papa how to pose for a portrait with their first grandchild.

Granny sidles up beside her. "This takes me back to your Christening, Mary dear."

The normally crackling blue eyes gentle for once, she regards her own son as though she really has been transported twenty-two years back in time. As Mama adjusts Aurora's bonnet so that some of the black curls show beneath the lacy edge and checks that the voluminous train of the gown drapes smoothly over his sleeve, Papa's eyes are all for the baby herself.

"I distinctly remember him calling you his little Snow White."

At the photographer's beckoning, Granny moves off, and Richard takes her place at Mary's side. She doesn't realise she is crying until he takes his handkerchief from his jacket pocket and presses it into her hand.

Dabbing the corners of her eyes, she leans into his embrace and murmurs, "Only because I'm happier than I ever knew I could be."

~The End~