“Dorothea?” he asked like a ninny, his tongue suddenly knotted around his tonsils.
She looked up at him, her hands at her waist. “Will you marry me, Thomas Merritt? I have some lands, it seems, in Louisiana, and I will do my best to be a good wife—”
He set his finger against her lips and smiled at her. “I’m supposed to ask you, sweetheart.” He took a breath and dropped to one knee, taking her hand in his. “Julia Leighton, will you do me the honor of being my wife?”
It sounded right. No, it sounded perfect.
“Yes,” she sighed. “Oh, yes.”
“Am I interrupting?” Stephen Ives stood in the doorway. “I see you arrived after all, Merritt, just as Doe predicted. I had hoped you wouldn’t come. I would have proposed again, you see, and again, until Julia accepted me, but now . . .” He shrugged, remained in the shadows.
Julia crossed to him and kissed his cheek. “I wouldn’t have said yes. I wouldn’t make you happy.”
He gazed down at her. “No, I suppose not. I have never seen you as happy as you look right now. Still, forgive me for hoping.” He shook his head sadly. “First Doe, now you, Julia. Everyone is getting married, it seems. That’s why I came to find you. Will you help me raise a toast to Doe and Peter?”
“Of course,” Julia said, and Thomas took her hand. For a moment Stephen stared at the link between them, his lips pinched.
“What will you do now?” Julia asked Stephen, taking his arm as well.
“There’s still that posting in Spain. Or I could stay here, see if Wellington needs me when he arrives. I will leave, if you are staying in town.”
“We’re going to America,” Thomas said, liking the sound of that. It could be the ends of the earth, as long as he was with Julia.
Stephen glanced at him. “America? A new start in a new land. You’ll do well there, both of you.”
They reached the ballroom, and Stephen let her go and crossed to toast the bride and groom. “I wish you every happiness, and a lifetime of love and joy,” he said, raising his glass.
His words were for Dorothea and Peter, but his eyes were on Thomas and Julia.
“Do you think a lifetime will be long enough?” Thomas asked Julia. “We’re getting a late start.”
She smiled at him with so much love in her eyes his chest ached. To have a woman like Julia, a family—perhaps this was what honor felt like, and pride, and peace. “We shall have to make the most of it. Come and meet your son.”
She led him upstairs to the nursery and placed the child in his arms. The baby looked up at him with wide eyes—his eyes—and raised a chubby hand to touch his cheek. Julia put her arms around his waist and smiled at them both.
“Louisiana,” she sighed as the child cooed, caught hold of Thomas’s finger and squeezed. He drew a breath, felt something open inside him.
“We’ll build a home, give him brothers and sisters.”
Wherever they went, he would be home, as long as he had Julia. He was whole again in her eyes, his honor restored. “I love you,” he said to her, his voice choked with emotion, and she kissed him gently and laid her head on his shoulder.
Thomas Merritt, Julia Merritt, and Master James Merritt.
He liked it. It sounded perfect.
Epilogue
Waterloo, June 1815
Major Lord Stephen Ives tightened his hands on the reins. The stallion was nervous as the guns crackled and the cannon boomed. He was nervous himself, and he looked at the grim faces of the dragoons around him, all of them waiting for the order to charge across the plain to overrun the deadly French guns.
He thought of Julia, as he had every single day since she left Vienna with Thomas Merritt. She was probably in Louisiana by now. Was she happy? He could not wish her otherwise, though the familiar ache of loss filled him.
She and Thomas had stayed for Doe’s wedding, and she helped his sister pack for her journey to England. Peter had wanted their child to be born in Kent, at his family home, and Doe was eager to start her new life. He missed her company.
The peace conference had been a failure. It had ended when Napoleon fulfilled Talleyrand’s prediction and escaped from Elba. He’d marched on Paris, gathering an army, and declared himself Emperor once again. Wellington had no time for peace talks then.
And so they stood on yet another battlefield, this time in Belgium, churning up peaceful farmlands, leaving them red with blood once more.
Stephen stared ahead at the French bastion. The bugle would sound and they would charge. His feet twitched, eager to set his spurs to the stallion’s flanks, to get on with it, to stem the pain, to cover himself in glory before—if—he was fated to die today.
“A forlorn hope, if ever there was one,” the captain next to him muttered, his eyes on the muzzles of the French guns, belching fire and death across the very path they would ride.
Stephen heard the signal and drew his sword, raising it over his head. He opened his lungs to let out a battle cry as the stallion lunged forward, leaping into the fray, as eager as he was to see it done.
He felt the wind in his hair, smelled gunpowder and blood, felt the hot June sun on his skin. “Julia,” he whispered, and wondered if she’d hear.
About the Author
LECIA CORNWALL lives and writes in Calgary, Canada, in the beautiful foothills of the Canadian Rockies, with five cats, two teenagers, a crazy chocolate Lab, and one very patient husband. She’s hard at work on her next book.
www.leciacornwall.com
[email protected]
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Romances by Lecia Cornwall
THE SECRET LIFE OF LADY JULIA
HOW TO DECEIVE A DUKE
ALL THE PLEASURES OF THE SEASON: A NOVELLA
THE PRICE OF TEMPTATION
SECRETS OF A PROPER COUNTESS
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE SECRET LIFE OF LADY JULIA. Copyright © 2013 by Lecia Cotton Cornwall. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition JUNE 2013 ISBN: 9780062202468
Print Edition ISBN: 9780062202451
FIRST EDITION
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