Cordelia looked around in disbelief, her hands still gripping onto Jacques.
"Please excuse my ignorance, but why are there four children in the Cottingham's parlour, and why are they all wearing paper hats, like yours?"
"Because we're pirates!" shouted Claude, growling to emphasise his point, "And Jacques is our king!"
"Mademoiselle Cordelia, may I make you known to my four youngest siblings? Come here, children, and remember your manners."
"Are you going to marry my brother, then?" asked Rosalie as soon as she completed her curtsey,
Cordelia, instead of going red with embarassment, executed a perfect curtsy of her own. "If he will have me, although I think it will depend on whether you would like me as a sister, for he holds your opion very highly, you know."
Rosalie looked over at her siblings. Some kind of silent debate went on between them, and then Pierre stepped forward, holding out a hand towards Cordelia.
"So long as you promise not to be as bad as the sisters I've already got, I suppose you can," he said with a shrug. Jacques bit his lip hard as Cordelia gave the little boy's had a solemn shake, and was then forced to repeat the motion with the other three.
"Are you any good at pirates?" asked Claude.
"I'm afraid you'll have to teach me that game," Cordelia confessed, but quickly recovered in the eyes of the children by adding, "but I'm very good at painting, you know, and I once painted a Pirate King for a book by my cousin. She's a very talented writer, you know, and knows lots of things about pirates."
"Is that the drawing in your package?" squealed Geneviève with excitement, and Jacques was intrigued by the flood of colour that filled her cheeks.
"No, but it's a gift for your brother, if you think he would like it."
"Open it, Jacques, please!" begged Geneviève , dragging her brother over to the table.
He looked at Cordelia, his eyebrow raised in question.
"Do you wish me to open it, ma cherie?"
She nodded, and he got the feeling that she had lost the ability to speak.
His little siblings helped him to pull the mounted painting free from the brown paper, and silence fell as he stared at the face of a man he knew, but had never before truly seen.
"Why did she paint Jacques in a wig and frilly collar?" whispered Claude loudly, breaking the tension enough that both Cordelia and Jacques let out soft chuckles.
"It's my father, John Cartwright," he told his young brother. "Mademoiselle Cordelia has a special talent for art, and she used it for my benefit. I do not know if I can ever thank her for such a gift."
"Yes you can," replied Pierre with a lazy shrug. "You can give her a title as well when you get yours from Grand-pere Shropshire, and that's as good of a gift as a painting."
Jacques winced as Cordelia turned a puzzled gaze his way.
"I don't understand."
Pierre laughed. "You don't know each other well if you are getting married, do you? Jacques is going to be the new Marquis, and we're all going to live with him!"
"You do want us to all live with you, don't you?" asked Rosalie, looking anxious. "I want you to teach me how to paint like that."
"Of course I will teach you to paint, my dear, I just..." said Cordelia, trailing off to look back up at Jacques. "Is it true?"
He nodded.
"And you did not tell me?"
"Le Marquis wished to be sure that I would be recognised as his legitimate heir before it was announced."
"But all this time... all this time I thought you were going to leave," she said, her brow creased up in quite the prettiest frown he had ever laid eyes upon.
He pulled her tight into his arms and rested his forehead against hers.
"And you loved me anyway," he murmured. "We loved each other before I knew that my family would be here with me, and before you knew that I would never take you away from yours. Marry me, Cordelia. Marry me, and I promise you a noisy, boisterous, opinionated and troublesome family spanning three generations to call your own, and eventually, hopefully a long way away, I will make you a Marchioness as well."
He saw her eyes fill with tears before she choked out the only word he wanted to her.
"Yes."
There was a cough of disgust from the sofa. "Eugh, I think he's going to kiss her."
"He can't kiss her, they're not married!"
"You're allowed to kiss if you're not married, you know, so long as you've promised to."
Cordelia giggled, but Jacques would not allow her to pull away, even when the sound of more voices began to float up from the hallway below.
"Pierre, Claude, I have a job for you both. Carry down that painting, and the moment our parents return home, show it to them. Geneviève, Rosalie, I need you both to talk as much as you have ever talked in your life, and keep our siblings away from this room as long as possible."
"Why?" asked Geneviève.
"What's in it for us?" demanded Claude.
"Ice creams at Gunters, and as many river pebbles for your slingshots as I can collect," he promised. "As for why, well, because I intend to kiss my fiancée, and I would prefer not to have an audience while doing so."
"You heard him!" shouted Pierre, and the four children, accompanied by the portrait of Jacques' father, raced from the room with the quiet grace of twelve elephants.
"Do you think it was wise to promise them ammunition for their slings?" asked Cordelia.
He put a finger beneath her chin, light guiding her face towards his.
"Probably not wise, ma cherie, but if it means I can finally kiss you, then it was a good decision nonetheless."
Cordelia, finding there was no arguing with such logic, slipped her arms around the back of his neck, and allowed her foreign nobody to thoroughly kiss her.
It seemed that both of them had been correct, for it all really did work out fine in the end.
Author Notes
Hello! Thank you so much for once again reading one of my books, and I hope you now how much it means to me that you spend your time and money with my characters. I can’t believe this is the ninth book in the series, and that there is only one more until the Romps are officially complete!
Fear not, those of you with favourite characters yet to find their One True Love, for just like the Putney Brothers, there will be a few more series in the coming months and years featuring several members of the Ton that you have already met, and hopefully love already.
Back to this book! Well I suppose I made it obvious at the end of the Devilish Duke that Jacques would be the hero of the next novel, for it was always going to take a man a little out of the common way to attract a fire cracker like Cordelia! As I’ve mentioned before, I’m an immigrant to Canada and I very much love my adopted homeland, so I’d been itching to include some of research into the Romps books.
Let’s just say making Jacques French Canadian was not my best decision, and was the main cause of the delay with this book, thanks to some minor controversies. I beg for a little understanding as I try to explain!
Firstly, French Canadian and French are not the same language, and there are some words and phrases that mean completely different things. While my French-Canadian friends helped me with some terminology, we very quickly found ourselves getting bogged down in minor details of language, for it isn’t always clear when the popularity of specific terms came into fashion.
Secondly, while I had already established that Henri was Metis, I was not originally planning to include Mémère in the story, even in the small role that she has. While her appearance is based on a contemporary drawing of a First Nations family, I want to stress that it is not my place to tell the story of the First Nations, Metis or French-Metis communities, and urge any readers interested in learning more to study this period as part of the Truth and Reconciliation healing process, for without the indigenous populations Canada as we know it would not have come into existence.
Thirdly, as I’ve mentioned before, I tend to think of th
e timeline of the Romps books as Regency Light, and have more than once had characters or events occur in a book that, in truth, were over a decade apart. This is the first time, however, that I’ve handled the history of two different countries with such casual disregard for an accurate timeline, and can only reassure you that it give me many a sleepless night trying to fit the pieces together. For all scholars of Canadian history scoffing at my casual disregard for the timelines of the Hudson’s Bay and North West merger, please accept my apologies, and my hope that mention of such things as the Red River Colony, Pemmican, Sir John Coape Sherbrooke and the Voyageurs will encourage more people to learn about this truly fascinating period.
I promise most faithfully that all new series not connected to the Romps will have nice, solid timelines tying them firmly into the past. It’s easier for me to keep track of all the interesting historical events that way, but it’s also easier for people to send me corrections!
As always, I appreciate it very much when I receive emails from fellow history nerds correcting me on my history (and, let’s face it, my typos when I upload the uncorrected manuscript by mistake – Reader-in-Chief has still not forgiven me for that one). It’s always interesting to me to discover how many assumptions about Regency life have become accepted as historical fact, and nothing makes me happier than being directed to a new book or website to help me with my research! Tech Monkey made the mistake of taking me to a second hand bookstore near my hometown just after Christmas, not realizing that it was stuffed to the seams with hard-to-acquire non fiction on basically every aspect of history that fascinates me.
I’m just saying, if the next book I release is set against the backdrop of a Mayan sacrifice at Tikal and features a ball player called Red Rooster, you can blame Tech Monkey. In the meantime, I always welcome hearing from readers at [email protected] for any reason at all, because although these books are and always will be written for Reader-In-Chief, I always feel honoured to know that other people enjoy them as much as she does, too.
Beth xxxxx
PS – I was going to sigh off here, but just before I hit “upload” on this manuscript, I feel like I have to acknowledge the world right now, and the stress so many of us are under. While I can’t do anything to alleviate the immediate strain you and your loved ones are battling against, I can provide free audiobooks on Audible of the first five Romps books to anyone who feels that listening to the remarkable Julia Eve narrate my stories will help them relax, even for a little while. Just email me and they are yours.
PPS – Take care of each other xxxxxx
The Unknown Heir: Book Nine in the Regency Romps Series Page 21