by JayneFresina
"I don't need them. I only need Nonesuch. She was, of course, the first item on my list."
She looked down. "Yes. I noticed that."
He reached for her hand and closed his fingers around it. "I love you."
Her heart was dancing, but she felt very still and shockingly calm. "I—are you sure?" she said steadily.
"More sure than I have ever been about anything in my life."
In less than five minutes she had to be in the foyer of the hotel. There was no time. No time to make a sensible decision. Oh, now she felt panic. That sudden moment of calm must have been the eye of the storm.
"What happened...with Elizabeth and the...your child?"
"I will do anything I can for him, or her, but the Stanburys are determined to keep the child away from me. In the future I hope to change that, but," he sighed, "I can't plan for everything the way I once thought I could. I have to live the life that's in front of me now. With the woman who has my heart and had it from the first sight. If she cares to have me. However she cares to take me. Wherever she can fit me in."
He was giving over a great deal of control to her hands, she realized in amazement.
"I would...I would like to have you," she managed in a voice that sounded most unlike her. "Oh, you know what I mean." Composing herself as best she could, she added, "I'm sure I can find somewhere to put you."
Chuckling warmly, Damon leaned over and kissed her. "Where's Merrythought?"
She sighed, clasping his hand tighter. "I'm afraid she wanted to stay with the Mortmains at Darkest Fathoms. She became such an unbearable little wretch that I told her she'd better write to father herself. So she did. I think the Mortmains are happy to have her there. They seemed cheerful. For Mortmains."
Laughing, Damon reached with his spare hand into his coat and brought out the steamship tickets in their envelope. "Well, then, Pip," he said, "looks like you have a spare ticket."
Pip Piper could scarce believe her ears, and they were usually so dependable. At that moment they were shamefully damp. "As it happens, I do need someone to escort me home. It wouldn't be entirely proper for a young lady to travel alone."
He swung both arms around her now and tugged her into his lap. "How long do we have before we have to leave?" he demanded huskily, trying to untie the buttons at her throat.
"For pity's sake, Deverell, have some restraint! We have to go now. If you're serious about coming with me." She hesitated then, laying her hand over his. "Are you sure you can leave everything behind like that?"
He grinned slowly and his entire face looked suddenly boyish. Mischievous. "I'm not leaving anything behind. I'm taking everything I need with me." And he stood, carrying her in his arms.
"Are you sure you can do this? Can we do this?"
"I'm a Deverell, and you're a Piper. Together we can do anything."
Damon Deverell, so the rumors went, carried Miss Epiphany Piper all the way out of the Clarendon Hotel that day and into the hired carriage which was taking her to the train station and then to Southampton. And then he leapt up behind her, urging the driver to make haste, before he tugged the window blind down, shutting out the shocked eyes of witnesses in the street.
* * * *
"I can't believe you're doing this, Deverell," she whispered, snuggling against his lovely warm coat. "I never thought you'd ever do anything without carefully planning first."
"Oh, we'll have plenty of time to discuss our plans later. On the boat. In our berth."
Uh oh. She'd quite forgotten that she and her sister were meant to be sharing a berth. And a bed.
"Don't worry," he assured her with all solemnity, "I'll be on my best behavior. Entirely no frivolity. This is merely business."
"Hmm. Doing what you do best?"
He chuckled. "Yes. Every night."
She looked at him. "Not every night surely?"
"What else would you and I do together? I can think of nothing else."
"You really are the very limit, Damon."
"And that, Pip, is why you love me."
She put her hands on her face and held it still to kiss him as the carriage raced hectically along. "Yes," she said, "I do love you. Like you said, from the first moment I've loved you."
"When I found you under my feet?"
"I think, even before then. Is that possible? I've always felt as if I've known you forever."
Damon said nothing to that, but held her close and kissed her until there was nothing left in the world, but for the two of them.
Epilogue
New Orleans 1854
She stormed into the office, pulling something sticky out of her hair and subsequently pulling it all loose from the pins that scattered to the floor around her. "That's the last time I let that man spend an entire afternoon, unsupervised, with The Terrible Two. They create more havoc than a herd of buffalo."
"Hmm." Damon got up from his desk to give her a kiss. "I'm not sure which is worse than the other. Your father or our daughters. And I hope, for all our sakes," he placed a hand on her belly, "that the next one is a boy."
"Why? A third girl would be just as wonderful. With my brains and your looks."
He laughed. "Thank goodness you finally agreed to marry me and make our arrangement more permanent, since you insist on having all these children."
"What else could I do? I had to make an honest man of you, didn't I? Couldn't have folk looking at you as if you were a kept man. Now, get back to work." She smacked him smartly on the rump, and while he returned to his desk she went to her own, directly opposite his.
She turned on her gas lamp and looked over at her husband, who was already reading again, deeply absorbed in his work as he had been before she came in. A warm, blissful sense of pride and satisfaction swept through her from head to toe when she looked at that beautiful man and knew that he was hers.
Pip kept two framed daguerreotypes on her desk: one an informal picture of Serenity and Jonathan Lulworth with their twins; the other a more formal engagement portrait showing Merrythought with her fiancé Edwyn, Viscount Mortmain. How far away they were, and yet they were both still in her heart, so how much closer could they truly be? One day, she and Damon would take their family back for a visit, but for now they were busy managing Old Smokey Piper’s Bourbon since her father had "semi-retired" to play in the grass with his grandchildren. Of course, he was not really retired at all, far too restless to be leisurely all day, but he was learning to trust more and more duties to his daughter and her husband.
"A damn lawyer, Pip?" Prospero had exclaimed in outrage when she introduced him to the man who brought her home. "I always knew you'd be the one to put me in my grave. Now you bring to me this feller — of any you might have had—and tell me you want to marry him!"
"I'm afraid, pa, I'll have to marry him now and you'll have to let me. We don't want any more unsavory rumors now, do we? Besides, he's quite lovely—as the British say— once you get to know him."
It didn't happen right away, but slowly her father came to appreciate Damon's work ethic, his fearless honesty and his ability to get any job done without fuss.
"You know, Pip," he'd said to her recently, "that feller you married ain't so bad. We just have to loosen him up some. He takes life far too seriously. Him being a Deverell and all, I thought he might be wilder."
And she had laughed at that, because Damon was by no means tame. He just hid it better than other folk in his family, and she had discovered that for herself the moment he had her on the steamer ship from Southampton.
Sitting back in her chair, Pip stretched both arms over her head, swung her legs up and set her heels on her desk with a bang.
Damon looked up and smiled, shaking his head.
"Stop looking at my ankles."
"I wouldn't dream of it, my darling."
"They're puffy and swollen."
"They're as beautiful today as they were the first time I laid eyes upon them. More so, in fact. I have never beheld such shapely
ankles, troublesome for a man trying to concentrate."
Good answer, she mused. Her husband always knew the right thing to say. But of course he did, he was a lawyer. It was almost what he did best. Even when he said the wrong thing, she knew now, it was deliberate.
"In fact, I would say those ankles were my undoing, Mrs. Deverell. I was quite tightly knotted until you came along with your ankles and undid me."
Which is, of course, what she did best.
Also from Jayne Fresina and TEP:
Souls Dryft
The Taming of the Tudor Male Series
Seducing the Beast
Once A Rogue
The Savage and the Stiff Upper Lip
The Deverells
True Story
Storm
Chasing Raven
Ransom Redeemed
Damon Undone
Pumpymuckles – A Deverells Story
Ladies Most Unlikely
The Trouble with His Lordship’s Trousers
The Danger in Desperate Bonnets
A Private Collection
Last Rake Standing
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jayne Fresina sprouted up in England, the youngest in a family of four daughters. Entertained by her father's colorful tales of growing up in the countryside, and surrounded by opinionated sisters - all with far more exciting lives than hers - she's always had inspiration for her beleaguered heroes and unstoppable heroines.
Website at: jaynefresinaromanceauthor.blogspot.com
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