Dear Future Husband

Epilogue (Maximilian)

1 January 1896

Maximilian laughed at the expression on Lee's face when he saw him and Rosalie together. Her winter clothing was too thick for the balmy Hong Kong weather, so she'd donned one of the local styles, all billowing sleeves and flowing robes. Her golden hair was tied back in a braid that had been twisted into an updo and held in place with jewelled sticks.

"Your wife appears to have—what's the saying?—gone native," Lee said when he recovered from his shock. "It's good to see you again, old friend. It's been far too long."

Maximilian shook Lee's hand before making introductions. "My wife, Rosalie Wi-that is, Walker."

Rosalie raised an eyebrow at the introduction before offering her hand to Lee. He kissed it chastely.

They sat down at the dai pai dong, otherwise known as a street hawker, that sold bowls of noodles and dumplings. It wasn't too busy this afternoon, thankfully, as they would have preferred to avoid the gawking that came with being foreigners.

"What sort of news has you looking so... as the French say, with the angels?" Lee asked, adjusting his hat.

Maximilian smiled at his friend's cosmopolitan ways. "I have recently come into possession of a great fortune."

Though he shuddered to think of how the money had been made, surely he could now put it into good use.

"How wonderful! I can think of no other man so deserving." Lee clapped him on the back, "But the two of you must tell me everything first. How ever did you find your way back together? How did the two of you find each other again?"

In disjointed sentences, interruptions, and interjections, Rosalie and Maximilian told him everything. Lee listened raptly,

"A tale worthy of an opera," Lee said, nodding just as the dai pai dong's owner brought out three steaming bowls of noodles with wontons and soup. He plunked them down unceremoniously before returning to the kitchen.

Maximilian glanced down at the chopsticks, fairly certain he could use them with some degree of skill after having lived in Hong Kong for so long, even if it had been some years ago. Rosalie, being a good sport, did try her best to learn, but ended up eating with one stick in each hand, a painstakingly slow experience that made him and Lee laugh. He passed her the spoon and suggested that she try to eat with that before her food got cold or she was left eating one noodle at a time.

"So how are you Lee? What has happened since we've last seen each other?" Maximilian asked as he took a bite of noodles.

"Do you remember my sister-in-law, the one who ran off with the gwei lo?" Lee said.

"The one who ran off with the foreigner," he said, a faint stab of pain lancing through him at the memory of the betrayal. Though she'd been a veritable stranger to him, she'd given away his location to Edgar in exchange for a ticket to England to be with her lover.

"Yes, the two are now happily married," said Lee. "And living in Hong Kong, which her father approves of, They have a beautiful five-year-old son, as well."

"And your wife?" Maximilian said, nudging his friend with an elbow.

Lee had the temerity to blush–or perhaps the decency too. "What about yours?"

Rosalie, who had been drinking tea, looked as if she might spit it out or choke on it. She spluttered out,  "Excuse me."

"What? Surely the two of you will be having children?" said Maximilian, needling his friend a bit.

"A child on the way, actually," Lee said, lifting his cup in a toast. "Gon bui!"

He echoed the exclamation though in more butchered Chinese. "Are you hoping for a son?"

Maximilian knew the Chinese were more rigid about these things, always more demanding for a son. And then, if a man's first wife did not bear him a son, he could take another wife while keeping the first. He thought his friend might be a more modern man than that, being a Christian and all that, but how could he be sure?

He shrugged. "My wife is. I don't care much either way, as long as the child is healthy." He cast a knowing look between Maximilian and Rosalie, who had suddenly gone quiet, still coughing on her tea. "Are you hoping for a son?"

Rosalie took a long drink of tea as though avoiding giving an answer.

"I shall be happy with whatever–and whomever–God decides to bless me with, since He has already seen fit to grant me with such a wife."

Rosalie rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. "He flatters me too much."

"Yes, your husband is a real charmer. That's the only reason he is still alive. He charmed his way out of life or death situations," joked Lee.

Though, when he had worked for Lee's father, he'd been forced to use a certain amount of cajoling and flattery to convince people to purchase products from the Lees' shipping company.

Rosalie's expression changed at the mention of life or death situations. "So, what line of work are you in, Lee?"

As his old friend began regaling them with tales of irate customers, fighting pirates on the seven seas, and exotic goods being procured from far-off lands, Maximilian couldn't help but be suspicious of his wife's behaviour. He decided that later, he would ask her about it. When they were alone.

***

"Is there something you'd like to tell me, dear wife?" he said that night as they were preparing for bed.

"Hmm?" Rosalie smoothed out her muslin nightgown, sitting on the edge of a stool as she brushed through her hair. "Whatever could you be talking about, dear husband?"

"You seemed rather tense today doing our discussion about... children," he said slowly, unsure of how to phrase his question. "Do you not wish to have... them?"

She set the brush down on the vanity, and plaited her hair before tying off the strands with a blue ribbon. "No! Not at all, I assure you. I mean, it's not at all that I don't wish to have children..." She cleared her throat, rolling her shoulders back. "That is, I do wish to have children. Do you?"

"Of course," he said, feeling slightly affronted. "Why would you think that I do not?"

"It's only that... you've never mentioned it." Two spots of colour rose high on her cheeks. "And I thought that maybe..."

"That maybe?" he prompted.

"That perhaps, you didn't wish to have children, because you don't want to die and leave them an orphan... I know it's a silly thought, but I do worry about it... Women die in childbirth quite often." She twisted the ends of the ribbon around her hair, not meeting his gaze.

His mind flashed back to her face when Lee had said the words life or death. "Are you worried about dying, Rosalie?"

"Well... I suppose... Not particularly, but death in childbirth does seem like a possibility..." She rambled on, fiddling with the ties of her nightgown.

"A possibility?" he repeated. The realization hit him like a steam engine, crushing him against the tracks. "Rosalie, are you... with child?"

She looked up, her blue eyes meeting his at last. "I have good reason to believe that I am, yes."

He stood, frozen, by the bed for a moment, a lifetime, in which he saw his entire childhood pass before his eyes, his entire life leading up to this moment: their wedding, the months they'd spent together. Then he crossed the room in three strides and flung his arms around her. "You're sure?"

"I haven't had... well..." she mumbled into his shoulder. "I am quite sure. But I didn't wish to disappoint you, in case..."

Even the thought of loss was distant, he was jubilant at the news, too happy to think of anything remotely sorrowful. He pulled away slightly, pressing a gentle kiss to her forehead. "None of it matters. All that matters is... you are my wife, and we are having a child."

Rosalie's smile was enormous, gazing up at him wide-eyed as if awestruck. "I love you."

He held his wife in his arms and kissed her. There was nothing in his life that he could regret, nothing he would take away. Everything had been in God's hands, leading him directly to her, and to this moment.