Among The Roses

Epilogue

One year later.

"Chiara! Hurry the fuck up!"

"Coming, I'm coming!" Chiara came dashing out of the master bedroom at Langton, the room she'd shared with Drew for the past year, more or less. "My god, Mara, you are the bossiest pregnant lady I've ever known."

Ellie followed right behind her, carrying her bouquet for safekeeping.

"Yes, and you'd better get used to it," Mara retorted, "because I plan to be pregnant a lot of the time, and I'm now officially your best friend, the London Times says so."

An article about Chiara's wedding had appeared in the society pages of the Times the day before, and had mentioned Mara Davies, who was her Matron of Honor, as Chiara's "best friend and confidante, her closest ally and go-to for all matters relating to her upcoming wedding to Drew Pennington."

Today, the day of the actual wedding, Mara, seven months pregnant and huge already, stood at the bottom of the stairs, hand on her hip, waiting for Chiara to descend. "Please be careful, don't trip and tear the train," she scolded.

"I'm being careful, I'm being careful," Chiara assured her as she held up the front of the dress and picked her way carefully down the stairs. She turned around to make sure Ellie had the back of the dress.

"Don't worry, I've got it, love," Ellie assured her as she gathered the long train in her hands after she handed Chiara the bouquet. "You can go.

"Where's the baby?" Ellie asked Mara.

"Which one, Sienna or Albert?"

"Well, either, I suppose," Ellie asked.

"Sienna is with Gars, waiting to do her thing with the flower petals, and Bertie's with my mum," Mara answered. "You can take him as soon as you get out there."

Ellie nodded.

Albert Noah Pennington had been born on December 5th, a perfect baby boy with his father's dark hair and his mother's eyes.

"We ready?" Mara gave Chiara the once over, from her sheer veil to her off the shoulder lacy bodice to her bell-shaped dress.

"Yes," Chiara nodded, biting her lip.

"Stop that, you're eating your lipstick," Mara ordered.

"Okay, love, this is it," Ellie declared, leaning in to kiss her cheek. "You look lovely." And she was gone, out to collect her grandson from Mara's mother. Bertie was six months old, a chubby butterball of a baby with a deep dimple exactly where his mother had hers. He had two teeth coming in on the bottom and smiled readily for anyone, though his biggest smiles were reserved for his mother and father.

Mara opened the French doors and descended the steps to walk up the aisle behind Sienna, who was walking and distributing flower petals liberally as she went with her father Gary's help, wearing a pink A-line dress for the occasion, looking like a baby princess.

Once she was finished, she stepped to the side, holding Mara's hand, as Gary stepped to the groom's side to stand with Ned and Luke.

Noah, as the Best Man, stood next to Drew, who waited for Chiara in a beautiful suit with a royal blue cummerbund. Drew's vision blurred with tears as he saw her for the first time in her dress, walking slowly up the petal strewn aisle with the backdrop of the roses she'd tended for the better part of a year, just so they'd be ready for today.

Bertie saw his mother walk by and gurgled happily from Ellie's arms, waving pudgy hands as he grinned and kicked his feet. Chiara saw and heard and smiled, turning her head slightly so she could look at her son.

She and Drew couldn't have looked any happier as they gazed at their boy.

Chiara stopped next to Drew, and both stood under the trellis she'd erected the year before, the trellis that had the small, pink, Cecille Brunner roses blooming on it. The judge they'd hired to perform the ceremony began speaking the words they'd chosen for her framed perfectly under the living arbor.

"Do you, Andrew John, take Chiara Angela, to be your lawfully wedded wife?"

"I do." Drew smiled at Chiara.

"Do you, Chiara Angela, take Andrew John, to be your lawfully wedded husband?"

Chiara squeezed Drew's hand.

"I do, yes." She nodded.

They exchanged rings, and were pronounced husband and wife.

"You may now kiss each other!"

And as they kissed, Bertie chose that moment to let out an exuberant laugh, full of the unknowable joy of the very young. It made the entire crowd laugh and clap. This made Chiara and Drew laugh also, right in the middle of their most romantic and significant kiss.

"Wonderful, what an auspicious beginning," Chiara murmured into Drew's mouth.

They walked slowly up the aisle, hand in hand, followed by the wedding party. They stopped to wave to Bertie on the way, and he leaned eagerly toward his father, arms outstretched, so Drew took him from Ellie, and he walked the rest of the way with his parents, smiling at the crowd, who couldn't help but smile back at him as the gentle breeze ruffled his fine brown hair.

"I am the the happiest person in the whole of England," I think," Chiara told her husband as they posed for pictures in front of the roses, moving to where the photographer was posing them.

"Not possible, that would be me," Drew contradicted her, kissing the baby's fragrant head.

"Let's just call it a tie, shall we?"

"Okay, it's a tie."

And they kissed over their baby's head. Bertie looked up to see what they were doing, and the photographer got a perfect picture of this perfect moment of the beginning of their happy married life.