The Viscount Debacle Extra Epilogue

 

1820, London

Simon got out of the carriage and wanted to kiss the door in front of him. He was finally home. He’d been gone for an entire month to visit his younger brother, Erwin, and the entire trip had been exhausting. 

For one, the lack of routine had kept Simon constantly on edge. Two, being away from his husband for so long was a trial at the best of times, and three, it had not been the best of times. 

Erwin, Simon reluctantly admitted to himself, was a bit of a bore. Erwin could be an amusing conversationalist on his own, but every time his wife, Madelyn, walked into the room, Erwin groaned dramatically.

“She’s always wanting something,” Erwin had complained. It seemed to Simon that all Madelyn wanted was to exist in her own home, but Erwin groused about her constantly. Then, worst of all, Erwin would end every conversation with, “You’ll understand when you’re married.”

Simon had smiled and pretended like he didn’t want to kick something. 

Simon opened the door and put on what felt like the first genuine smile in weeks. No servant greeted him at the door, but Simon hadn’t expected one to. 

Erwin’s house was run like clockwork. Simon’s was… not. 

He didn’t employ servants so much as take people in and get them back on their feet. Having a household full of other people who didn’t fit the rules of society meant Simon could relax at home without worry, but because of the varying hodgepodge of skills, the level of cleaning in the house was questionable. 

In the entryway alone, there was a ball of yarn, no doubt left by an industrious cat, an abandoned hat on the floor, and a toy duck. Still, Simon would rather eat burnt toast than spend a single day more under Erwin’s roof. 

Simon found Nash in the morning room. Nash was lying on the couch reading a book with a kitten asleep on his foot. An untidy stack of novels sat on the table beside him.

“Nash,” Simon said, the tension he’d been carrying for the entire trip draining away.

Nash looked up from his book and his face lit up. “Simon! I didn’t even hear your carriage. Oh, you should go to the kitchen, we made you lemon tarts.”

“In a bit.” Simon settled down on the couch beside his husband carefully so as not to disturb the kitten. Erwin was wrong about marriage. It wasn’t a prison or a mousetrap, it was kittens and lemon tarts.

“How was your trip?” Nash asked.

Simon wrapped an arm around his husband and wished, not for the first time, that Nash could have come with him. There would be no good explanation for bringing Nash along, though, so Simon settled for making trips to visit his parents and brother as rare as possible. “Awful. I missed you. How were things here?”

“Interesting.” Nash didn’t meet his eyes. “You sure you don’t want lemon tarts first?”

“Nash. What happened?” Interesting could mean anything from Jane burning down a room while trying to run an experiment again, to Nash donating all their silverware to radicals. Again.

“Remember when we talked about the kittens?” Nash asked.

Of course Simon remembered when they’d talked about the kittens. They’d had an awful row about it. Nash had noticed some sad looking kittens in an alleyway and started going on about how the best way to catch and save kittens was at night, and Simon had gotten worried that Nash intended on wandering down alleyways in the middle of the night. Simon had paid a worker to fetch the kittens instead, which had infuriated Nash to no end.

“If it isn’t safe, you shouldn’t pay anyone to do it!” Nash had argued. He’d gone off on a whole lecture about how his life wasn’t any more valuable than anyone else’s, and Simon had vehemently disagreed. He’d taken a vow to put Nash first above all others, hadn’t he? 

They’d come to a compromise when Simon had agreed that he wouldn’t pay anyone to do anything he wouldn’t do himself. It felt much more fair to Simon than trying to consider valuing Nash less.

“Did something happen to the kittens?” Simon asked.

“No, the kittens are healthy,” Nash said. The kitten on his foot purred as if agreeing. “It’s about how Porter got the kittens.”

“How’d he get the kittens?” Simon hadn’t asked before, and it occurred to him that he should have.

“He paid children to get them for him! They were sleeping in an alley!”

“The kittens?”

“No, the children. And it’s almost winter!”

Nash’s unwavering belief that the world really ought to be fair was one of the things Simon loved best about him, even if it meant that the silverware disappeared and Simon had to think through the moral implications of his decisions in a way that no one in the ton had ever required of him.

“You know you can’t save everyone,” Simon said. There were a lot of orphans in London. The poor laws did little to benefit them. Sometimes they ended up in the workhouses, which wasn’t much better than being on the streets. The laws needed to change, but there were already people who mumbled about Simon’s radical sympathies because he’d brought up welfare at a few too many dinner parties.

“Of course I can’t save everyone, but they were living in an alley without any parents, Simon. They didn’t even have any coats.”

The pieces clicked together in Simon’s head. “How many children, exactly, are in this house right now?”

Nash scratched the kitten’s chin. “One or two?”

“When it comes to human children, the exact number matters.”

“Three. We have that extra guest room we can turn into a nursery.”

“And you didn’t think you needed to talk to me about this first?” Simon asked.   

“I didn’t want to put it in a letter, and there wasn’t time to wait. It’s freezing outside. We can always sort it out in the spring,” Nash said hopefully. The kitten woke up with a meow and began attempting to climb the back of the couch.

“Ah, yes. Because come spring we’re going to throw out homeless orphan children after having spent the entire winter caring for them.”

“Well… no. I suppose not. It’ll be fine, Simon. How much damage can four children do?” 

Simon scrubbed a hand across his face. “All right. We’re going to take the lemon tarts up to the children so I can meet them, and then I’m going to take a very long nap. And if there’s more than four children, Nash, I swear…”

“There’s definitely only four,” Nash said adamantly.  

The kitten bolted off, hunting ghosts, no doubt. 

Simon sighed as he got up. Maybe marriage wasn’t entirely kittens and lemon tarts, but he still wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world.