The marriage of Cecily Dancer, née Anderson-Reese, and D’Arcy Dancer, just like their two weddings, was the model held up by nearly everyone in good society in all their years in London. They raised a family of four attractive and brilliant children, mostly in London, and sometimes in Ireland, although they never returned to Lincolnshire. The Dowager of Yarmouth, although she had chambers in Lincolnshire, chose instead to reside with the Dancer family, and even devoted much of her time to the children who were some of the brightest and best-behaved children anyone in London had ever seen.

Their four children were Andrew, the eldest and smartest of the children, followed by Patrick, the second, a most empathetic and kindly young man who was two years younger, and then two daughters, Fiona and Diana, who were fraternal twins, and who were three years younger than Patrick. They were both kind and caring and sweet and all four of them grew into excellent examples of British society.

Andrew went to Oxford and entered the House of Lords as a young man, while Patrick went back to Ireland to help with the relief efforts, and finally settled down as a priest with the Church of England. Fiona and Diana both married well and were productive members of society.

Of course, the family returned to Ireland several times a year, where Fintan O’Malley had undertaken a program of land improvement in Kilkenny, which spared many of the peasants in the land of Callan from the potato famine that ravaged much of Ireland only a few years later, and for many years to come. During much of this time, D’Arcy and Cecily were to be found in London, where D’Arcy formed a relief fund for the destitute Irish emigrants, helping them to get to the New World.

“My darling,” said Cecily to D’Arcy one afternoon in the later stages of their life. “I think it would be a lovely thing to take a picnic, now that our children are away.”

“But darling, all of them are descending upon us this evening. Surely you remember that our annual family reunion is tomorrow.”

Cecily laughed, holding her back to prevent the ache that had been bothering her since she turned sixty. “Of course I remember. That is precisely why I want you to myself this afternoon, far from the prying eyes of Fintan and Finnegan.”

“You want a picnic then?” said D’Arcy, smiling, smoothing back his long grey locks. Whenever he made that motion, Cecily fell in love with him again, as if it were for the first time. The years had marked his face with the crags and crannies of age. He was nearly seventy, but still as handsome to her as the day she first saw him at the ball all those years ago.

“I want nothing better,” she said, and moved to him. He kissed her passionately. She, too, bore the ravages of age, but to D’Arcy, who had loved her deeply and passionately for nearly forty years, she was the most beautiful woman who had ever been tossed out of Eden. His kiss was met with her lips, curled as they were in a smile.

“Then I shall have the cook prepare us something sumptuous,” he said.

An hour later, the two of them set out in their little carriage. D’Arcy took the reins and steered them to a little bower he had made thirty years ago for just such an occasion. Cecily, who never knew about this place, sat beside him, breathing in the warm spring air of her beloved Kilkenny. “My love, I do not think it possible to be happier than I am at this minute.”

“I am willing to bet you can,” he said cryptically. Cecily smiled at the eternal creativity of her husband. What had she done, she asked herself, to deserve someone who thought so often and so deeply about her happiness.

“You are a fox, you are, my grey-beard goon,” she laughed.

They rounded the bend in the road, and D’Arcy pointed out a narrow opening in the roadside copse of trees. “We shall go this way,” he declared.

“I have used this road as inspiration for so many of my novels,” she said pensively.

“I know you have,” he said. “I have read every word you have published, and that is no mean feat. This road featured prominently in The Tenant of Mersey Hall, if memory serves.”

“Yes, and in The Highwayman’s Lover, too,” she said, laughing, recalling her early years as a writer. There were times when she could hardly keep up with the demand from her publisher, Mr Thackeray, publisher of The Constitution, the literary journal that she had helped keep afloat for several years before publishing her work in book form. Sometimes, she confessed to herself—but to no one else—she wrote things she would have rather kept to herself. But the readers were voracious in those days, demanding stories of increasing passion and action.

“I daresay, The Highwayman’s Lover was a wonderful book,” said D’Arcy, recalling the passionate scenes by moonlight on a road just like this one.

“Those were heady days,” she recalled, turning to D’Arcy and forgetting the road. “You know that every hero I ever wrote was you, do you not?”

“My darling, that could hardly be true, for they were always so handsome.”

“Just as you are to me, my love,” she said, cuddling into his still-strong arms.

D’Arcy pulled the carriage to halt. “Well,” he said. “What do you think?”

Cecily looked up and saw spread before her like a painting the most beautiful bower she could ever imagine. Lush with the spring greenery of Ireland, it was a beautiful room cut into a copse of trees, with a little brook babbling through the center of it. There was a rough-hewn table and several very comfortable chairs, as well as a swing hanging from one of the overhanging branches.

“My God, D’Arcy, it is divine,” she said.

“Do you know who designed it?”

“Was it not you?” she said in astonishment.

He shook his head.

“You mean, you simply found this?”

“Nay. I did not.”

“Then who did?” she asked, getting confused.

“My darling, this is the very bower you created for the trysts between the highwayman and Bess, his lover. Do you not remember?”

And as she recalled her writing from thirty years back she realized that, not only had D’Arcy read her work, he had created art of his own modeled on the work of her imagination.

She was beside herself. Tears began to pour from her eyes. She was unable to control the love she felt for this man who had so much ingenuity, so much love for her, that he could recreate something she had invented in her mind and save it for thirty years to surprise her in her dotage. He took her in his arms and kissed her. Together they fell to the soft grass and clutched one another as if they were children discovering their passion for the first time.

“I have never loved you more than I do at this moment,” she said, her tears pouring liberally on to D’Arcy’s face.

He wiped them with great joy and clutched her all the tighter. “I have never been happier,” he said, taking his handkerchief and drying her tears.

“Tomorrow, my love, I have another announcement,” he said.

“Are you planning on telling me or will you cause my heart to explode again? It may cost me my life if you do, you know. For I am no longer a young woman.”

“I shall tell you,” he said. “But I want to tell the whole family, for this will affect them as well.”

“What is it? You silly goose,” she said as she kissed his wet face.

“Do you remember all those books you wrote about the young woman taking the Grand Tour? Discovering the great artworks of Renaissance Italy?” he said.

“Well, of course,” she said.

“And do you realize that, in all our time together, we never traveled past France?”

“Well, that is because Jonathan and Garance have that lovely chateau in Provence,” said Cecily.

“It is divine,” he said. “But I have arranged for passage on a lovely new schooner to take us to Florence.”

“Oh, D’Arcy. That is wonderful. When?”

“We leave in two weeks’ time,” he said. “No time like the present.”

Once again, Cecily was struck dumb. “I am so glad that you remembered. I have always wanted to go to Florence,” she said.

“Ah, but not only Florence. We shall go to Venice and Genoa and Rome and Naples. And then we shall go to Greece. We will see everything. I want you to be like Alexander, to weep because you have no more lands to conquer.”

“Then I shall accept your offer, you mad Irishman,” she said, leaping on to his aging form as though she were a wildcat upon a deer.

D’Arcy fell backwards and kissed her deeply.

“Mother,” said Patrick as he sat down to dinner the next day. “I must say I was scandalized last month. You see, I had never read your work before and thought it high time I remedied that situation.”

“I see,” said Cecily, smiling benignly at her son. “What is it that scandalized you?”

“Well, I picked up a copy of your book, The Pyrate.”

“Oh my,” said Cecily, blushing. “You picked up my most scandalous novel. I daresay it is not appropriate for a priest to be reading that sort of thing.”

Diana and Fiona, who knew about this, both laughed heartily. “I suppose you know,” said Fiona, who was the more wicked of the Dancer girls, “that book is based on Father’s experience with a real pirate, Miss Ann O’Mally. Is that not true, Father?”

It was D’Arcy’s turn to blush this time. “Well, of course, I did meet the pirate in question, but I was certainly never seduced by her. Your mother has a fanciful imagination, you know. These things always seem to grow into epic poems in your mother’s imagination.”

“I certainly relished reading that one. In fact, I read it to Dennis, and it made him fall madly in love with me. We have that book to thank for our first child, I daresay.”

Dennis, who was a pudgy bookish fellow, more comfortable with a ledger than with a woman, was aghast at Fiona’s fiery and lascivious nature, and sat with his mouth open, his fork in mid-air. He was trying to speak but found himself without words. Lavinia, their thirteen-year-old daughter, who was the spitting image of Cecily as a girl, laughed so hard a piece of chicken shot across the table and hit D’Arcy Junior, Diana’s youngest child, in the eye.

“Oy. Careful with your missiles,” he said.

Shortly, the table descended into good natured madness for several minutes, until D’Arcy, realizing that the brood of high-tempered, madcap children would never settle down unless he interceded, stood up and raised his glass. In their family, when a glass is raised, silence descends.

Within a few seconds, the table was restive and quiet. “I have an announcement to make,” said D’Arcy, looking grave. “Your mother and I have decided that, at long last, we shall go and see the wonders of the old world. For all the joy we have had together, neither of us has ever been to Italy or Greece, and I have remedied that situation. In a fortnight, we shall depart from Dublin bound for Florence. From thence, we shall travel the length and breadth of Italy and then board ship from Naples, bound for Greece. This journey shall take us several months, and we shall be returning for Christmas.”

There was silence in the room. Nobody knew if it was good news or bad news because of the peculiar way D’Arcy had introduced it.

“They say that Rome is the city of echoes, the city of illusions, and the city of yearning,” said Cecily. “And I can’t wait to explore it.”

“We are certainly happy for you,” Diana said. “By Christmas we shall then hear of your great voyage when we gather together once more.”

“But you all must promise to behave while we’re gone,” Cecily said as D’Arcy placed his arm around her.

“Of course,” Fiona said with a smile, causing them all to chuckle.

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