Interesting. “And how did he take the matter?”
She gave a little laugh. “He hugged me. In all the years I’ve known him, he’s never done that. He hugged me and said he’d see it done, and if I ever wanted to come back, he’d find a place for me.”
“And how did you take the matter?”
“Very well, as you might expect. Could anyone mind hearing that? He listened to me. He implied he’d miss my work. It is . . .” As she considered, a smile lit her face. “It is beautiful to hear.”
“What you said about me was beautiful to hear, too. It wasn’t necessary for you to say it.”
“I did make a spectacle of myself, didn’t I? But you made a great deal of difference. I hope you realize it.”
“Yes, I do. It’s odd. But I rather do.” He smiled. “Now. Because of you. Thank you.”
She shook off his thanks. “You’ve done it yourself, you know. And I’m not only talking about this plan to save your father. You invested in the restaurant; you bought supplies for photographia.”
“Helio-ichnographia,” he corrected.
“Whatever you want to call it. George, you’re your own man. You’re not like your father. You spend your money on helping other people get ahead, and on learning.”
Surely there could be no more beautiful sound than Cass Benton, professing her faith in him in that wonderful voice of hers. “You make me sound marvelous.”
She went pink. He loved it when she went pink. “That’s because you are.”
“Such faith in me?”
“Yes,” she said. “I have it. And now you do too, don’t you?”
“I do, though it took me a bit of time. I had to sort out who I was apart from my title and my father’s son.”
“You are so many things.” She smiled, but the expression fell at once. “And I am no longer a Bow Street Runner, nor am I Mrs. Benedetti.”
George tried to hold out his right hand to her, remembering the sling only too late. He settled for the left, taking her fingertips in his. “Who you are is enough for me, which means it ought to be enough for anyone.”
She rolled her eyes. “So much confidence! If only one could bottle it.”
“I don’t mean that my opinion is more worthwhile than anyone else’s—though I shouldn’t care to disagree if you said so.” He grinned. “I only mean this: who should care more about the woman I love than I do?”
She gaped. “I thought you weren’t going to pursue me.”
“I’m not. I’m standing right here with you. Side by side. Will you allow it?”
“Yes. Oh, yes.” Her eyes were wide and starry.
A weight lifted from his heart; a sweet fullness settled within it instead. It felt like certainty. Like home. “I wonder if you might like to be Lady Northbrook? I’ve already given you a ring, you know.”
She tilted her head, all impishness. “That was a fake proposal for a fake person.”
“Not altogether. I could never have slipped it on your finger in that way if a piece of me hadn’t already belonged to you.”
“Ah. Patterns.” Cass tapped her temple. “You just said you loved me. But really, you’ve been besotted with me ever since you first called me plain, haven’t you?”
“Fascinated, yes. Intrigued by, undoubtedly. Besotted is such a watery sort of word. It sounds as though all the feeling is on my side, like I’m soaked in it. When really, it all comes from you. Wonderful you.”
“You really do love me,” Cass said. “That’s quite wonderful.”
“Couldn’t you tell that from the pattern of my words? I dropped enough clues.”
“Oh, yes. But sometimes one craves a confession, even if the solution is perfectly obvious.”
“All right, we’ll do it properly.” Holding her hand for balance, he sank with some difficulty—a man wasn’t used to having his arm pinioned like this—to one knee. “I love you, you brilliant woman. If you’ll have me, I’ll love you my whole life long. And I’ll try to keep up with your determined mind and I will sometimes be serious.”
She beamed at him, heedless of the attention they were gathering. “Will you undo my buttons?”
“Now? Gladly.”
She laughed, pulling him to his feet. “I love you, too. And I’ll have you, and happily.”
George put two fingers to his mouth and let out a piercing whistle. “Attention, please, everyone! I am about to kiss Miss Benton, as she has just agreed to be my wife.”
“The scandal sheets will be full tomorrow,” commented Isabel.
“I know it,” said George. “Everyone will be shocked that the Duke of Ardmore is selling some of his paintings.” And then he lowered his head to Cass’s and found her lips, and neither of them cared about anything else.
Epilogue
One Year Later
“Three more applications today, my lady.” The maid dipped her head, handing over the papers.
Cass thanked her, settling the applications atop the desk in her study and shuffling through them quickly. This one wanted a bit of capital to open a dress shop in a village on the outskirts of London; that one wanted help paying off a surgeon’s bills. The third asked for references to teach French to a nobleman’s children. The rest of the application was in French; Cass laughed and set it aside to show to George later.
The one with the dress shop, she’d look into herself. Perhaps Janey would like to research the application about the surgeon’s bill; she scribbled a note to remind her to ask her sister-in-law when Janey and Charles came to dine the next day.
Over the years, Cass had seen that simply giving money to Charles never did him a bit of good. He had no use in mind for it, and so it dribbled away. But to give money to someone with a need, or a talent? What a difference that made to someone like George’s friend, Antoine Fournier. Or to Janey, who with a sliver of a Bow Street salary had now hired three other women to sell clothing for her.
With her pin money, then—which seemed a ridiculously generous amount—Cass gave out small loans and donations. Women had simply to apply to the marchioness, and someone researched the merit of each application. Janey helped with some; so did her friend Mags. So too did Lady Isabel Jenks, when her attention could be pulled from her baby daughter. Each woman had a particular set of skills.
And each was paid, always. Even Lady Isabel, wealthier by far than Cass and George, who took the money with a bemused smile and probably popped it right into the poor-box at church.
Other applications, Cass researched herself, her Bow Street knowledge drawing her into parts of London that the ordinary marchioness would never penetrate.
But Cass was no ordinary marchioness.
The sort of marchioness she was—one with a courtesy title, as George had once explained—did not have much with which to occupy herself unless she so chose.
And she did.
The fallout from the revelation of Cass’s true identity ought to have been dire. Had she merely tricked people, it surely would have been. But knowing she was part of a case, one that struck to the heart of the ton and saved lives and involved Angelus and adultery and murder and a fortune? She was more notorious than ever, and this time for her own sake.
It was rather like the tonnishness that had cloaked Callum Jenks in respectability when he saved Lord Wexley—and oh yes, now people recalled that Miss Benton had been part of that rescue as well. And she was the great-granddaughter of a gentleman, wasn’t she? So her blood had a tinge of blue.
Besides this, she hosted the most wonderful teas at a restaurant called Antony’s—the same place, in fact, where she and her marquess had held their wedding breakfast. The power of a perfectly made quiche or hand-pie was strong; the enticement of perfectly brewed teas and little sugary cakes was irresistible.
“You shall be a marvelous society hostess,” said George after the first, not-entirely-not-awkward of these gatherings. “You are so wonderfully yourself, and people will love you for it.”
“You confuse me wit
h yourself. People love you.”
“Yes, well, that’s only because I’m a little of everything. Enough to make people feel comfortable but not inferior.”
Cass had laughed. “Nonsense. People love you because you are delightful to be around. You have a happy heart.”
“I do when I’m around you.”
“Silver tongue,” she teased. “Well, I can play the part of a marchioness.”
“No part. Just you.” He kissed her hand. “You will make the title yours, and not the other way around.”
For himself, Lord Northbrook was hardly as tonnish as he’d used to be. Though he’d never been much fun at the gambling tables, he’d at least been out in company at all hours, dressed in the latest and best. He’d dropped out of the pinkest company the year before, with the proper excuse of his mother’s health. But now he was as likely to be found at Antony’s as he was at Ardmore House—perhaps no wonder, as he’d moved to his own house as soon as the tontine was dissolved. Unnecessary, since there was ever so much more space in Ardmore House now that the duke had sold all his oil paintings . . . though rumor had it he was already collecting more.
Cass set aside the three new applications. From the corner of her desk, Grandmama smiled at her.
This had been Cass’s wedding gift from Charles, who explained, “I didn’t spend all your money. I had a copy made of Grandmama’s painting. This is the original.”
“So you used my own money to buy me a gift.”
“I used your gift to me to get a gift for you,” Charles corrected.
“So glib,” Cass said, shaking her head. “Thank you. I wouldn’t have taken the miniature from you.”
“I know. And I wouldn’t have asked you to go without it. She loved you that much, Cassie.” He turned very red. “I love you too, you know.”
“I know that, you oaf. And I love you, too.”
Yes, she and Charles got along quite well now that neither of them relied upon the other. At least once a week, he and Janey came to dine at the small house Cass and George rented in Piccadilly. They kept Cass informed of all the most interesting cases going at Bow Street, and sometimes she offered ideas. They’d become interested in George’s experiment room too, so he always showed him his latest assays in helio . . . whatever it was. The process had a different name every week.
Pushing back her chair, she decided to check on the fate of George’s latest experiment. His room was next to her own study, on the second floor of their little house, so she had only to slip from behind her desk and rap at the door.
“One moment,” came the reply. “Let me put away my plate before you open the door.”
Ah. He was working in the dim amber light, then. When he bade her enter, she drank in the sight of him. She loved him at work like this, all preoccupied and rumpled. “What plate were you working with? One of glass?”
He turned to face her, smiling. He had a smudge of bitumen on one cheek. “Yes, and I think I’ve got the image to hold. It’s not at all clear, but if I let it sit in the camera longer, perhaps it’ll become so.”
“And we’ll be able to see . . . ?”
He laughed. “Nothing very exciting. The line of the roof visible through this window.”
“An image from life,” Cass marveled. “That would be very exciting indeed.”
“If it works,” George cautioned. “I might be imagining it. It’s very faint yet; it might only be the way I’ve spread the bitumen.”
“Even so. It’s wonderful. You’ll hit upon the answer someday.”
George nodded. “Even if it never comes to anything, I enjoy the process of trying.”
“That’s what life is.” She smiled. “A process of trying.”
“Getting philosophical with me?” Her handsome husband looked wolfishly at her. “You know how that excites me, darling Cass. Close the door, will you?”
And Lord Northbrook carried out the process of bringing his lady to pleasure an unprecedented number of times in one afternoon. The experiment was enjoyable for both.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Theresa Romain is the bestselling author of historical romances, including the Matchmaker trilogy, the Holiday Pleasures series, the Royal Rewards series, and the Romance of the Turf trilogy. Praised as “one of the rising stars of Regency historical romance” (Booklist), she has received starred reviews from Booklist and was a 2016 RITA® finalist. A member of Romance Writers of America® and its Regency specialty chapter The Beau Monde, Theresa is hard at work on her next novel from her home in the Midwest. To keep up with all her book-release news, please visit her online at theresaromain.com, where you can sign up for her newsletter.
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