She turned a wary gaze to the prince. “You don’t mean to punish him, do you?”
“For serving England?” the prince said dryly. “Routing Napoleon? Protecting his regent? The country would probably take up arms against me if I did, especially since all is now well.”
“Then why did you mention treachery?” Gavin snapped.
Her father was the one to answer Gavin. “When His Highness heard that you were married, he assumed you had somehow coerced my daughter into sharing the content of the letters with you. And that the two of you meant to tender your own demands in exchange for them. As soon as I landed at Dover two days ago, he had men waiting to bring me to London to witness this meeting, so that if anything went wrong, I could coerce her into doing the right thing.”
“I take it His Highness doesn’t know my wife very well,” Gavin said. “I haven’t met a man or woman alive who could ‘coerce’ Christabel into anything.”
Her father eyed Gavin consideringly. “Still, she does have a kind heart, and it sometimes leads her to trust the wrong sort of man.”
As Gavin bristled, she left her father’s side to go to his. “Not this time, Papa.” She slipped her hand in Gavin’s. “I know that you have good reason for your concern, and until you know him better, you won’t believe me. But Gavin is the finest man I’ve ever known.”
Gavin squeezed her hand. “I swear I would never let harm come to your daughter, sir,” he said in the most solemn tone she’d ever heard out of him, except for perhaps when he’d spoken his wedding vows. “And if you give me the chance, I’ll prove I can be a good husband to her.”
Papa looked at them together, his face wary but resigned. “We’ll see, Mr. Byrne. We’ll see.”
“The ceremony will begin in ten minutes,” the prince said. “Ladies are not allowed in the gallery, so you will have to wait here, Mrs. Byrne.”
“I’ll keep her company,” Papa said. “We have much to tell each other.”
“Yes,” she told her father, “but if you could give me a moment alone with my husband first before he goes in—”
“Of course.”
After he and the prince left, she turned toward Gavin, her heart swelling with pride. “So my wicked Prince of Sin is to be a baron, is he?” she whispered as she straightened his cravat and brushed a speck of lint off his fine black coat. “Your mother will be so happy.”
He gazed down at her tenderly. “As a wise woman once told me, my mother will be happy if I am happy.”
“And are you happy?” she whispered.
“I was. Until you told your father that I’m the finest man you ever knew. Are you certain I can live up to that, darling?”
“I’ll make sure that you do,” she said lightly.
“And how do you mean to do that? By shooting at me?” Though his dry tone held a hint of the old Byrne, the bitter cynicism was gone.
“By loving you.”
His eyes darkened, and he kissed her, long and slow and tender. “Now that, my sweet, is a prospect worth reforming for.”
Epilogue
London
July 19, 1821
Marriage changes a man, and not always for the worse.
—Anonymous, Memoirs of a Mistress
The cannons and gunfire and other celebratory explosions had gone on all afternoon, which was why Gavin didn’t hear his butler’s approach until the man spoke.
“The first of the guests has arrived, my lord.”
Gavin had been a baron for five years and still couldn’t get used to being called “my lord.” “Thank you.” He closed the account book for the Blue Swan and laid it aside on the desk in his study.
Gone were the days when he spent hours at the club poring over the books. It was just as easy to do it at home, especially now that he’d hired a manager. Just as easy…and far more pleasant.
His butler still stood nearby.
“Is there something else?” Gavin asked.
“Shall I inform her ladyship of the guests’ arrival?” the butler asked. “Or would you prefer to do it yourself?”
“She’s not down there already?”
“No, my lord. She was called to the nursery. Something about another Tweedledee emergency, I believe.” His butler was trying hard not to smile and failing miserably.
“I’ll fetch her,” Gavin said, chuckling. “You go explain to the guests about Tweedledee emergencies. If you can.”
The butler headed off downstairs, while Gavin went in the opposite direction. As he approached the nursery, he heard Christabel speaking in even tones. “I told you, your papa is too busy right now to decide who will be Tweedledum. He’ll do it later. And if you don’t behave, I’ll make you both Tweedledee.”
“Papa has to do it, or it doesn’t count,” answered a child’s voice.
Smothering a laugh, he paused in the doorway to watch. As always, at the center of the family contretemps was his black-haired, four-year-old daughter, Sarah, who’d inherited her father’s deviousness and her mother’s temper. Toddling after her was his two-year-old son, John, whose hair already held a hint of red and whose stubborn insistence upon doing whatever his sister dictated had landed him in trouble more than once.
Trying futilely to reason with them was his wife. His beautiful, adorable wife, whom he loved more every day. And to think he’d almost thrown her away for some vengeance that would have brought him naught but grief.
“If you won’t let me do it,” she said, “then you’ll have to be patient and mind Nurse until after dinner—”
“It’s all right,” Gavin said as he entered the room. “I’m here.”
“Papa!” his children cried as they raced over to throw their arms about each of his legs.
He swallowed the lump that stuck in his throat every time he looked down to see those faces light up with joy.
“Make me Tweedledum, Papa,” Sarah cried.
“No, me, Papa,” John said.
He ruffled their hair. “If I make you both Tweedledum, will you stop plaguing your mother?”
He must have been mad when he’d first read them the nursery rhyme and encouraged them to play the parts. But who would have thought they’d turn it into the competition of the century?
“We can’t both be Tweedledum,” Sarah complained. “John has to be Tweedledee. He was Tweedledum last time.”
His son’s lower lip began to tremble. “John Tweedledum. Not Sarah. John.”
“That’s not fair!” Sarah protested.
Gavin hid a smile. “I tell you what—you can be Tweedledum for the first hour, and John can be Tweedledum for the second. All right?”
Sarah nodded solemnly, which meant that John instantly followed suit.
“Jane?” he said.
Their nurse came forward, her face filled with exasperation. “I’m sorry the children disturbed you and my lady, but Miss Sarah ran downstairs to fetch her mother when my back was turned—”
“It’s all right. I know what a slyboots my daughter can be sometimes.”
“I wonder where she got that from,” Christabel muttered.
“Watch it, wife,” he teased, “or I’ll make you Tweedledee.”
“Mama can’t be Tweedledee,” Sarah said loftily. “She’s just Mama.”
When Christabel rolled her eyes, he stifled a chuckle. “Jane,” he said, “I hereby endow you with the authority to designate Tweedledums and Tweedledees. If either John or Sarah misbehaves while their mother and I are dining with our guests, you have my permission to turn them both into Tweedledees until they agree to behave themselves.”
“Very good, sir,” Jane retorted.
He cast his children a stern look. Or attempted to, anyway. “And if I hear one word about your giving Nurse any trouble, I’ll tell Grandmama Byrne and Grandpapa Lyon. They’ll be very disappointed to hear how their grandchildren are behaving.” He turned to offer Christabel his arm. “Shall we, my love?”
She took it, but as soon as they’d left the room,
she said in a low voice, “Tell Grandmama Byrne and Grandpapa Lyon, indeed. As if that would do anything—they spoil the children almost as much as you do.”
“Every child deserves some spoiling,” he said.
She glanced up at him with a soft smile as they headed down the stairs. “Yes, I suppose they do.”
“But I wish I knew why they consider Tweedledee to be ‘bad’ and Tweedledum ‘good.’ In the bloody nursery rhyme, the two are interchangeable.”
Christabel chuckled. “Ah, but they’re children, Gavin. Logic doesn’t enter into it. Sarah decided that Tweedledum sounds like drums, so she associates it with Grandpapa’s tales of battle. Whereas, according to her, Tweedledee is the sound a bird makes, and that’s just ‘silly.’”
“And if Sarah says it, John follows right behind.”
“That won’t last once he’s old enough to assert himself, I suspect.”
He laughed. “True, true.” They’d reached the next floor and were heading for the staircase that led down to the drawing room when he suddenly pulled her into an alcove and kissed her hard.
As he drew back, she was staring at him, bemused. “What was that for?”
“For marrying me. For giving me two beautiful children.” He settled his hands on her waist. “For believing in me when no one else in their right mind would have.”
It was her turn to kiss him, her mouth so warm and sweet that their kiss soon erupted into something hotter. This time when he drew back, her face was flushed, and her breath came in little staccato gasps that only enflamed him further.
“We don’t have to go downstairs right away,” he murmured. “We could keep them waiting a few minutes more.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she warned, pushing him out into the hall and tugging him toward the stairs. “You know what happened the last time we kept your brothers waiting. We never heard the end of their teasing. ‘So, Byrne, did you and Christabel get lost on the way down? Perhaps we should send you a floor plan for next time. The drawing room is the one that doesn’t have a bed.’”
He laughed at her fairly accurate imitation of Iversley. “Point taken. My brothers are idiots.”
She snorted. “You’re as bad as they are with your swaggering answers.”
“You do know we only say such things to make our wives blush.”
“Yes, I know very well the whole lot of you are wicked scoundrels.”
Yet despite her grumbling, she’d never wavered in her faith in his character. She’d never been the clinging, distrustful woman she’d threatened to be as his mistress. And oddly enough, her trust in him made him even more determined not to disappoint her.
He bent to press a kiss to her ear. “That’s why you never find us boring.”
She gazed up at him with an earnest expression. “Do you ever miss your old life, Gavin?”
“You mean my whining mistresses, long, lonely nights at the club with drunken cardplayers, parties at Stokely’s where I had to be on my guard against treachery every waking hour—”
“That’s a no, I take it,” she said with a small smile.
“A definite no.”
They’d reached the drawing room now, but he paused outside the doors to take her hands in his. “Never doubt for one minute that I love my life, I love my children, and I love you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she replied, her own love shining in her eyes. “But we’d better go in. I am not going to be fodder for their teasing again.”
“I’m not sure you can ever entirely avoid that. You’re married to me, after all, and it will be some years before my brothers stop making me eat crow for the many times I swore never to marry.”
How true it was. The minute they walked in, Draker hailed them with a smug smile. “You know, Byrne, once you marry, your appetite is supposed to decrease, not increase.”
“And how’s that working for you?” Gavin shot back, as one of his footmen offered him a glass of wine.
“Here we go again,” Christabel murmured under her breath.
But then a cannon shot from outside the window made them start.
“They’ve been at it all day,” Iversley said, gesturing to the window with his own glass of wine. “Prinny has been ruling for years already, yet you’d never know it to hear them.”
“Did you attend the coronation?” Gavin asked Draker.
“I did. The Queen turned it into a damned fiasco.”
“One thing you can say for Prinny.” Gavin remarked, “He’s never boring.”
“Rather like his sons,” Christabel said from beside him.
Gavin smiled. “Yes. Exactly.” He took a glass of wine from the footman and handed it to her, then lifted his own. “On this day, of all days, we need a toast, don’t you think, gentlemen?”
“Absolutely.” Iversley lifted his glass, and said, “To the Royal Brotherhood of By-blows.”
They echoed the toast as one, even the ladies.
As they drank, Gavin looked round at the men who’d truly become his brothers and at their wives, who would walk through fire for one of their own. Just like his mother.
Just like his own wife. He stared down at Christabel, who was beaming at him, her face brimming with love. He raised his glass again. “And to our royal sire. Long live the king.”
Author’s Note
Rumor has it that George IV and Maria Fitzherbert did indeed have a son, James Ord, who was given to a ship’s captain and his family to raise, first in Spain, where the captain was given a job as a dockyard inspector by George’s brother, then in America. Supposedly James Ord wrote Mrs. Fitzherbert once to ask if she was his mother. She never replied. And with good reason—since her “marriage” to the prince had always been disputed, if she’d admitted to having a child by him, it would have seriously damaged the prince’s chance to be king. England could not afford any more disputes over successions.
At the time of my story, Princess Charlotte had indeed broken her engagement with the Prince of Orange, but at this point was already considering Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom she married in 1816. So she definitely wouldn’t have liked being forced to marry Lord Stokely!
FINALLY
A WEBSITE
YOU CAN GET
PASSIONATE
ABOUT…
Visit
www.SimonSaysLove.com
for the latest information
about Romance from Pocket Books!
READING SUGGESTIONS
LATEST RELEASES
AUTHOR APPEARANCES
ONLINE CHATS WITH YOUR
FAVORITE WRITERS
SPECIAL OFFERS
AND MUCH, MUCH MORE!
One Night with a Prince Page 31