by Julia Kelly
“Andrew—” she said at the same time he said, “When you—”
He smiled. “You first.”
She drew in a deep breath and nodded. “When we argued in the carriage, I meant all the things I said. I was furious with you. I’d never hoped for a second chance, because I didn’t think one would ever manifest, but then you walked into my shop and I realized it might happen. But then you made it clear there was no room in your life for me, and that I was a detriment rather than an asset to your operation. I lashed out and said things I wouldn’t have said under other circumstances, but I need you to understand that I meant them.”
He toed a clod of dirt in front of them, his expression unreadable.
“It would’ve been too hard to watch you turn from me if you knew the truth, but I want you to know,” she continued. “I love you. I’ve loved you since we were children and too young to understand what love was. I loved you when you asked me to marry you and when you sailed away. I loved you when I thought you’d died, and on my wedding day, and that terrible day when you came back. Every day my love has been a fundamental truth, even when I didn’t understand that it was still vital and real. I didn’t want you to leave without knowing that. It felt too important.”
She watched him scrub a hand over his chin, narrowly missing a cut on his jaw.
“You make this sound like you’re expecting this to be good-bye,” he said.
Her head snapped up, and she found him looking at her, his blue eyes soft.
“I won’t lie and tell you that this has been straightforward for me,” he said. “I spent years convincing myself that I hated you. It was easier than pining after a woman who had gone to another man—willingly, I’d thought. But I never could hate you, Lavinia. Not the true heart of me.
“All my life has been about trying to prove that I’m good enough to have the privilege of loving you. Even the last twelve years when I thought I’d never see you again, I tried to show that I could be the man I set out to be. But I never reconciled myself to how deep my distrust for you ran. A distrust you proved to me was wrong over and over again, long before you staged my rescue tonight.
“I’ve been wrong about so many things in my life, but my biggest regret is not having asked or understood what it was that you wanted. I’m ashamed that I wasted so much time I could’ve spent with the best woman I know.”
The dimming hope she’d been nurturing began to glow a little bit brighter.
“I’m going to have to go to London for a debriefing at Home, but then I intend to come right back to Edinburgh, because you’re where I want to be,” he said. “The place I live matters to me far less than whether I’m with you. If you’ll take me.”
“What are you saying?” she asked around the rising emotion thickening her throat.
When she twisted in his arms, he pulled her onto his lap and rested his head in the crook of her neck. Carefully, he placed a kiss on the delicate skin, making her shiver.
“I’m saying that I’m done with living this life without you. I love you. I want to be your husband, if you’ll have me, and if you won’t—if I’ve misjudged this entirely—I won’t be far, because I’ll be waiting, hoping you’ll change your mind.”
Her hands slipped up to his shoulders, and she gazed into his tired, contented eyes. “Can you say that again?”
“Which part?”
“The part about loving me? I’m not sure I’ll believe it otherwise.”
He chuckled. “I’ll shout it from the roof of this blasted warehouse if you’d like me to.”
“Right here is just fine,” she said.
“I love you.” He lowered his head and feathered her lips with his. “I loved you then.” Another kiss. “I love you now.” A third. “I’ll love you always.”
His hands framed her face as he angled their lips to deepen the kiss. His tongue swiped hers, cool and sweet. It was familiar and thrilling and everything she needed.
She pulled back a little. “I want you to be my husband,” she whispered against his lips. “I want us to be together. I don’t want to waste any more time either.”
He grinned and stroked a hand down her back. “Come to London with me. If you can spare time away from your shop.”
She nodded. “I can leave Siobhan in charge for a few days. But what will we do when we return?”
“Other than find the first minister who will marry us?” he asked, kissing the right corner of her mouth.
“Where will we live?”
He paused and drew back, searching her face. “I’ve seen a very charming set of rooms above Edinburgh’s finest dressmaker’s shop. It’s called Mrs. Parkem’s. You might have heard of it.”
“But what of your retirement? You want to be on the coast. You told me.”
“I find I’m growing rather fond of Edinburgh. It’s the place I fell in love with you all over again. Now, come on,” he said, depositing her on her feet as he stood. “I want a hot bath, several yards of bandages, and fourteen hours of uninterrupted sleep next to you.”
“And after that?” she asked.
His arched brow told her exactly what would happen after that.
She relaxed into his warmth as he tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. She was exhausted, shaken, and possibly delirious with a month’s cumulative lack of sleep, but she had never been happier. His life and his heart were open to her once again, and this time there would be no long separations with him at sea and her at home worrying. They were starting over. A second beginning.
“Just think,” she said as they slowly walked away from the warehouse, “if I stay in Edinburgh we could become friends with Gillie.”
“The woman is a menace.”
“In the best way.”
“Obviously.” He pulled her in closer and brushed a kiss to her temple. “Perhaps we should introduce her to your brother.”
Lavinia snorted a laugh. “She’d shoot him within a week, and she’s a remarkably good shot.”
“Thank God for that.”
Epilogue
THE WIND CAUGHT Lavinia’s hat, and she clamped a hand down on it while picking up her vermilion skirts with the other.
This was all the fault of her husband, whom she loved dearly. She and Andrew had decided, for their first wedding anniversary, to travel back to Eyemouth. Their hometown might not have the romance of some locales, but it was the place where everything had started. It also had the advantage of being near Edinburgh, meaning she didn’t have to leave the shop in Siobhan’s admittedly very capable hands for too long.
That morning, when the first rays of sun had broken through the shutters of their room at the inn, Lavinia had woken up to find Andrew’s side of the bed empty. In his place lay an envelope on the pillow.
She’d opened up the note and smiled. There was only one line: Meet me where we used to go.
She’d planned to keep him in bed with her that morning, winding her legs around his waist and enjoying the pleasure of waking up together slowly, sensuously. And then, after they’d satiated their desire for a little while, she’d planned to tell him her news.
It seemed that would have to wait a little while.
Tall grasses rustled as she rounded the bend in the road that led to the old merchant’s house where they’d spent nearly every night after Andrew had proposed the first time, when they were just sixteen. The old house rose up above her, perched on the hill that looked out over Killiedraught Bay with what had once been its sweeping gardens rushing down to meet the cliffside. Despite the years that had passed, however, the house seemed to have changed little. There was still paint peeling from the two columns framing the front door and the windows needed cleaning, but the salt air seemed to have somehow preserved it.
Lavinia reached the black iron front gate and paused. The padlock was gone. Despite the amusement it would give her to try to see if the hole in the hedge they used to creep through was still there, she pushed the gate open. She frowned when it hardly protest
ed. She bent down and squinted at the hinges. Had they recently been oiled?
“Over here!” Andrew’s shout carried to her on the wind.
She straightened and smiled. His hair had grown out darker in the year he’d spent back on land, hardly a surprise now that he spent more time helping her keep the appointment book and doing the business’s accounts than sailing. Andrew had proven to have a good head for the dressmaking business, and, while he didn’t have the fine sewing skills that Siobhan and the rest of the seamstresses did, he had a natural knack for keeping the shop’s sewing machines running. He was also the best bobbin winder in Mrs. Parkem’s.
“Where are you?” she called out, peering around an overgrown sweetbriar shrub.
“Look up!”
She cast her gaze up and started when she saw Andrew hanging out of one of the house’s upstairs windows. “Are you sure that’s entirely safe?”
They hadn’t ventured upstairs much when they were younger because a few of the stairs had rotted through. Now, more than a decade on, she couldn’t imagine the condition of the upper floorboards.
“Come in,” he called down before disappearing through the window.
Lavinia wove her way through the garden, pulling her cotton skirts free from thorns and brambles as she went. When she reached the front door, she found that it was open.
Inside, the entryway was dark, with a pair of drapes drawn over the two tall windows that framed the door, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.
“You found my note, I see,” said Andrew, coming down the stairs.
“You’re being very mysterious.”
He caught up her hand in his and kissed it. “I thought you’d like to see the old place since we’re back. Do you remember our nights here?”
“Every one of them,” she said, standing on her tiptoes to brush her lips against his.
“Do you remember how I told you once that I’d buy this house for you?”
She laughed. “Such bold words from such a young man. I don’t even know how you would go about purchasing it. No one seems to know who owns it.”
He stepped back. “Me.”
Her eyes widened. “You? You own this house?”
He nodded.
“But when . . . ?”
“Years ago. Most of the sailors I knew drank or gambled away their money, but I sent every cent I could spare back to Scotland. I arranged for a banker and a solicitor to take care of my interests. When my success as a first mate and then as a captain grew, I had my solicitor track down the negligent owners and purchase this house quietly. It was my intention to retire here. I’ve been slowly making improvements over the years.”
“I had no idea,” she said, turning slowly around and taking it all in. Now that her eyes had adjusted, she could see that the house—despite lacking furniture and rugs—wasn’t derelict. Far from it. Smooth boards made up the floors that no longer had holes rotted through them. A brass chandelier hung from the entryway ceiling, and all the plasterwork looked fresh. She could even detect the faint scent of fresh paint now.
“You were going to live here all by yourself?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I didn’t know what I would do with it. I just wanted it. Perhaps I knew that one day I would make my way back to you. Do you want to see the rest of it?”
She nodded and let him take her by the hand.
They went room by room, opening up heavy drapes as they went. Lavinia marveled at the space, so familiar and yet so new at the same time.
“Andrew.” She stopped as they were about to mount the stairs. “Why are you showing me this house now?”
He reached out and cupped her cheek, his thumb stroking along her jawline. “I’ve wanted to tell you about it for months, but I didn’t want you to think I want you to leave Edinburgh or Mrs. Parkem’s. We can rent it out instead of living here. We can stay here during the summers when the business is less busy. Just know that the house is here if and when we want it.”
She closed her eyes and leaned into his touch. “This is the house you asked me to marry you in—”
“The first time,” he said with a laugh.
“The first time. I couldn’t leave it.” She smiled. “Nor could I imagine a better place to raise our child. We’ll need quite a bit more space than we have above the shop.”
Andrew blinked and she watched as shock, confusion, and happiness broke over his face in quick succession. “Our child?”
She lifted his hand and rested it on her still-flat stomach. “It’s early, but yes.”
“You’re sure?”
“Andrew, of course I’m sure.” She laughed.
He swept her up in his arms, twirling her around so that her feet didn’t touch the ground. Then he lifted her higher and kissed her soundly.
“I love you,” he said.
“I should hope so, because I plan to be an absolute bear throughout my entire confinement. You’ll have to wait on me hand and foot. I won’t lift a finger.”
He grinned. “You’ll be designing and sewing up to the moment you go into labor,” he said.
She tilted her head, acknowledging that he was probably right.
“I couldn’t be happier, Lavinia,” he said, brushing back one of her curls that had escaped her pins when he’d spun her.
She sighed contentedly, melting into the warm comfort of his arms. “Neither could I. To think we almost missed out on this.”
“But we made our way back to each other. Do you know why?” When she shook her head, he smiled. “It was inevitable.”
Acknowledgments
EVERY BOOK DESERVES a great team behind it, and I couldn’t be more thankful for the wonderful one I’ve acquired over the years. As always, thank you to the HBICs—Laura von Holt, Alexandra Haughton, Mary Chris Escobar, Lindsay Emory, and Alexis Anne—and Tamsen Parker, my Tuesday accountability email buddy. Thank you to my agent, Emily Sylvan Kim, who is there for every brainstorm, pitch, worry, and celebration. Marla Daniels, you are truly a great editor. Thank you for never losing sight of this book over the crazy last six months we’ve had. I am always grateful to the incredible team at Pocket Star, including Lauren McKenna, Jean Anne Rose, Polly Watson, Bill Drennan, and Kathleen Rizzo. Sonia, I know I promised you an Anika a long time ago, and I hope you see yourself in her loyalty and sense of fun. This book is also for Jax, Ben, Mila, Sloane, Kather, and Christy. And finally, as always, my family, who keeps me in cups of tea and listens to me spin these crazy stories all day long. I love you all.
Want even more sizzling historical romance? Don’t miss the rest of the Matchmaker of Edinburgh series!
Discover the first installment in the delightfully charming Scottish romance series where the matchmaker of Edinburgh uses her uncanny abilities to create the perfect matches—even if the couples are doubtful they’ll ever find love.
The Look of Love
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When Moira introduces Jonathan and Caroline at a salon, he can’t help but be intrigued by the swirl of rumor that surrounds the fallen woman. Caroline knows the newspaperman is exactly the sort of person she shouldn’t associate with if she wants to restore her reputation and find a husband, but even as another, more suitable man begins to court her she can’t deny the power of her attraction to Jonathan. . . .
The Taste of Temptation
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And don’t miss the Governess series from Julia Kelly, on sale now! Governess Elizabeth Porter tends to two sweet girls who have a penchant for falling ill and needing the doctor. As the girls’ ruses increase and the doctor’s visits become more frequent, Elizabeth can’t help but notice Dr. Fellows’s bewitching bedside manner. . . .
The Governess Was Wicked
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About the Author
JULIA KELLY is the award-winning author of sexy historical romances about smart women and the men who love them. She picked up her first romance novel and the bad habit of reading well past
her bedtime when she was thirteen. Years later, she decided to try writing books of her own and never looked back. Julia also writes contemporary romances under the name Julia Blake. An Emmy-nominated TV producer and recovering journalist, Julia has called Los Angeles, Iowa, New York, and England home. She never met a pair of stilettos she didn’t love and still stays up too late reading. Readers can visit JuliaKellyWrites.com to learn more about Julia and her books and sign up for her newsletter so they never miss a new release!
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Also available from Julia Kelly and Pocket Star
The Governess Series
The Governess Was Wicked
The Governess Was Wanton
The Governess Was Wild
The Matchmaker of Edinburgh Series
The Look of Love
The Taste of Temptation
And don’t miss Julia Kelly’s contemporary romance, written under Julia Blake, from Pocket Star
Changing the Play
on sale now!
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