by Lenora Bell
The foreman reluctantly handed over the socket and Edgar sprinted back to help Grafton connect to the main, set up the hoses, and quickly raise steam pressure.
When everything was ready, Edgar handed the gunmetal nozzle to Grafton. “You direct the stream. I’m going to find the children and make sure they’re safe.”
Grafton nodded. “Good luck.”
Suddenly, Mari appeared from behind them, dressed improbably in the coachman’s greatcoat, which hung down past her ankles and scraped on the ground.
Edgar caught her by the shoulders. “Mari, I told you to stay in the carriage.”
“As if I would stay in a carriage when the twins were in danger.”
“Have you seen them? Are they safe?”
“Quite safe.” Mari gestured over her shoulder, and he saw Lumley and the children watching them.
He ran to them. Gathering the children into his arms, he kissed their cheeks.
“Father,” Adele cried, clinging to him.
Michel shuffled his feet manfully.
“I was so worried about you,” said Edgar. “I love you both so much. Never, ever run away again. Promise me.”
“We promise,” said Michel.
“They came to me,” said Lumley, coughing slightly. “To tell me that they needed my Mari.” He smiled at Mari. “I told them we could share her.”
“Is that your engine?” asked Michel, pointing at Grafton where he was wrestling with the copper branch pipe.
“Yes, it is.” Edgar rose. He caught Mari’s eye, trying to communicate everything he hadn’t had the chance to say yet.
That he loved her, as well. And he hoped she loved him.
“I’ll be back soon,” he said. “I’ve got a fire to fight.”
He left the children with Mari and Lumley and ran back to Grafton. “Here,” he shouted over the noise of falling debris and shouting men. “I’ll man the boiler, you take the hose.”
The flames were climbing higher now.
There was still time to save Lumley’s shop but they must hurry.
“What’s happening?” asked Mari’s father, his face turned toward the blaze that was still smoldering, but greatly reduced now.
“Father is shoveling coal into the boiler,” said Michel.
“And Mr. Grafton has hold of a copper hose nozzle and the water is shooting so high in the air,” said Mari. “You wouldn’t believe it.”
The two men and their new kind of fire engine were the subject of much intense curiosity. Some in the crowd cheered them on, while others stood on the sidelines, arms crossed and faces grim.
Edgar worked tirelessly, sweat pouring from his brow. His shirt clung to his chest, displaying powerful muscles, as Grafton aimed the heavy stream of water at the still-smoldering bookshop.
“The fire’s contained now,” she told her father. “It won’t spread to your shop.”
His shoulders sagged. “That’s very good news. Though I do feel sorry for poor Brookfield. I’ll have to help him build his book collection again. Such rare volumes he had. What a tragedy.”
“It could have been so much worse. I’m so glad you and the children are unharmed. You’ll have to come home with us tonight to the duke’s house in Grosvenor Square.”
“Do come back with us, Mr. Lumley,” said Adele. “We can read you some of our stories about P.L. Rabbit.”
“Does she have many adventures?” he asked.
“Does she!” Adele glanced at Michel and the two of them grinned. “She’s a pirate rabbit.”
“She’s an Arctic explorer,” said Michel. “She speaks ten languages.”
“And she and Sir Peter Teazle won the Derby,” explained Adele. “We write new adventures for P.L. every day in our journals.”
“Did you now?” Her father laughed. “That’s not a bad idea, you know.”
“What’s that?” Mari asked.
“A series of stories about my wooden rabbit. We already have books that come with little toys, like tops and jacks, but we don’t have a little book that comes with a big toy.”
“It’s brilliant,” pronounced Mari.
“We’ll write the stories,” said Adele.
Grafton finally threw down the hose and Edgar joined him beside the engine. Mari could see them talking with the fire brigade foreman. The flames were almost completely doused.
The bucket line began again, to subdue the last of the fire.
Grafton dismantled the hoses while Edgar walked back to them.
“You did it, Father,” said Michel, running to meet him.
The two of them walked back together.
“There’s going to be quite a fight over our illegal use of a fire engine with no insurance company to back it. Luckily, I’m a duke,” said Edgar. “And also, luckily, the engine works. And it beats the devil out of buckets.”
“Your fire engines will save so many buildings, and so many lives. I’m so proud of you,” said Mari, her heart swelling with joy. Now he just had to build that railway.
“Are you?” he asked, his eyes soft in the near darkness.
Soot was streaked across the strong lines of his face, and his hair fell into his eyes. He brushed it back with his hand.
A look of panic crossed his face. “Do I still have it?” He felt about his waistcoat. “Don’t tell me I’ve lost it.”
“What are you talking about?” Mari asked.
He drew something out of his pocket. “This.”
He dropped to his knees in the streaming water and soot, holding something out toward her.
Something that glinted with gold and glowed like fire.
“I’m an obstinate fool who can’t see past his own nose,” he said. “But I know one thing.”
“Edgar, your poor knees. Get up off the paving stones.”
Mari’s heart thudded and her vision narrowed. Not too narrow, because it had to be wide enough for Edgar’s broad, broad shoulders.
“Mari-rhymes-with-starry, you walked through my door and you broke all of my rules. You put me in my place. And then you made me love you. Wait.” He closed his eyes for a moment. “This is coming out all wrong.”
“Edgar . . .” Tears filled in her eyes.
“I love you, Mari. You give me hope. Hope that my life has meaning. That I’m not only living in opposition to some painful memory. You hang the stars in my sky. Without you, I won’t be able to see my way in the dark.”
“Ew,” said Michel. “Romance.”
“Hush,” Adele told him. “Can’t you see he’s trying to ask her something?”
“You’d better ask her what you’re going to ask her, Your Grace,” called her father. “Because I’d like a nice hot glass of whiskey and honey.”
“I’m trying to,” said Edgar. “Now then, where was I?”
She wanted to hear him say the words again. “You were saying that you loved me,” she prompted.
“You toppled my wrought iron walls like so much crumbling plaster. Thirty years from now, I’ll feel the exact same way. I love you. Plain and simple. But can you love me?”
Mari smiled. “Edgar,” she said, and she wondered at how steady her voice remained. “I’m a thoroughly practical person and I told myself I would never allow sentiment to muddle my thinking. But I’m thoroughly, impractically, impossibly in love with you. Now do please get up.”
“Then you’ll have me?” His eyes sparked with pleasure. “You’ll have me, Mari?”
“Oh for Heaven’s sake,” she replied. “Of course I will.”
“Hoorah!” cheered the children.
Edgar leapt to his feet and gathered Mari into his arms, sweeping her into a long, blissful kiss.
When he slipped the ring on her finger she saw that it was a ruby in a simple gold setting.
“My mother’s ring,” he whispered in her ear. “She wanted you to have it.”
“You visited her?”
“Yes, and she told me not to come back until there was a wedding to plan.”
“What’s going on here?” asked Mr. Grafton, joining them and wiping grime and ashes from his face with a handkerchief.
“She’ll have me,” Edgar said, wonderingly.
Mr. Grafton chuckled. He clapped Edgar on the back. “Ambrose, it is, then.”
Whatever that meant. Mari would have to ask him later.
“I’ll finish with the engine,” Mr. Grafton said. “You go home.”
They all walked back together to the waiting carriage. Mari holding the twins’ hands, and Edgar helping her father find his way in the dark.
This was her family.
Five lost souls who had found each other at last.
It was all she’d ever wanted.
Epilogue
Two months later
The bells of St. Mary-le-Bow rang out lustily on the wedding day of the Duke of Banksford and Miss Mari Lumley.
When the happy couple descended the stairs, the gathered crowd was treated to the sight of a duke who was everything a duke should be, but rarely ever was.
Tall, handsome, and utterly besotted with his new bride.
The way he gazed at her made the assembled ladies sigh with envy, and hope for a groom who might gaze at them like that one day.
The bride had unfashionable freckles and fiery auburn hair, but she was radiant in a gown from Madame Clotilde’s of palest cerulean silk dotted with tiny pearls like stars strewn across a night sky. She had a very unconventional wedding bouquet, however.
It appeared to be some sort of tattered old wooden figurine of a . . . rabbit? At least it had very rabbitlike ears.
Some whispered that she was the duke’s former governess. Others whispered that she had been born out of a long-buried scandal.
The bride and groom paid no attention to any of it, laughing and chatting with their families, the duke’s two illegitimate children weaving joyfully in and out of the assemblage as everyone made their way to the waiting carriages.
“Let’s go home, Mari,” Edgar said, holding out his hand.
She placed her hand in his. “Yes, let’s go home.”
Mari’s heart was so light and buoyant that the only thing tethering her to the earth was Edgar’s hand on her knee, hidden by the tablecloth.
Their gathered friends and family were eating wedding cake, and arguing loudly about who had played the greatest role in bringing the two of them together.
“You owe me one hundred pounds,” India said to Edgar. She held out her palm. “Pay up.”
“What does she mean?” Mari asked Edgar.
“I placed a wager that he would be the first to marry,” said India. “And when he would have thrown you out on your ear, I told him you were precisely what this household required.”
“And then you brought me a lovely new wardrobe,” said Mari. “Very clever.”
“She did?” asked Edgar.
“It was all part of my grand plan,” said India, smugly. “I knew that dusty old black gown had to go.”
“On the contrary, it was my plan,” said Mrs. Fairfield. She smiled at Mari. “I knew the moment I laid eyes on your rosy cheeks and bright smile that you would be the perfect mother for the children.”
“You can’t claim credit, either one of you,” said the dowager sternly. “When Edgar came to visit me, I told him he was a fool, gave him my ring, and made him promise not to return until I had a wedding to plan.”
“She did tell me I was a fool,” said Edgar. He squeezed Mari’s knee. “And I was. A big, stubborn fool.”
She kissed his cheek. “You’re my big, stubborn fool.”
“Ew,” said Michel.
“You’ll have to get used to it, Michel, my boy,” said Edgar. “Your mother and I will be kissing quite frequently.”
True. They only stopped kissing to eat and sleep. Oh, and to be wedded, but that had included quite a long and thrilling kiss at the end.
“The kissing is all your fault,” Adele told her brother. “Remember when I wrote their names together in the sand? You’re the one who drew a heart around it.”
Michel looked embarrassed. “I might have done.”
“A secret romantic,” teased Mari’s father. “But it wasn’t because of any heart drawn in the sand. I’m the one who orchestrated this union. I sent the lawyer searching for Mari and gave her a reason to come to London, setting the whole thing in motion.”
“That you did,” said Edgar. “And I thank you heartily.”
“But I should still receive my one hundred pounds,” insisted India, jokingly.
“Piffle,” said the dowager. “Mr. Lumley and I should split the prize. Everything traces back to us, wouldn’t you say so, Mr. Lumley?”
Mari’s father turned his face toward the dowager. “Well said, Your Grace. You know, I remember meeting you many years ago, before my eyesight faded. I still remember the unusual amethyst of your eyes.”
The hint of a smile crossed the dowager’s face. “I remember meeting you, Mr. Lumley. I believe my son wished you were his father instead of . . .” Her voice trailed into silence.
“And now I have you for a father-in-law, Lumley,” Edgar said. “I couldn’t be happier.”
Mr. Grafton stopped eating cake for a moment and lifted his fork in Edgar’s direction. “I predicted you’d marry her, didn’t I? You’ll have to name your firstborn Ambrose after me.”
“Pardon?” Mari asked. “Ambrose?”
“Ambrose Percival,” said Mr. Grafton.
“Edgar,” remonstrated Mari.
Her husband looked sheepish. “Between India’s extortion and your ridiculous name, Grafton, I’ll be lucky to escape this meal with the shirt on my back.”
Mari silently agreed. She’d been dying to rip off his shirt all day.
“Aren’t you going to claim credit, Ravenwood?” asked India, glaring at the darkly handsome duke, whom Edgar had invited over his sister’s strident protests. “I’ve never known you to miss a chance to soak up all of the attention in a room.”
“For shame, Lady India,” said Ravenwood. “You know this day belongs to your brother and his beautiful bride.” He lifted his glass and drank a toast, giving Mari a rakish wink.
“I must admit, we did have something to do with it,” Mari laughed.
Edgar’s hand inched higher on her thigh. “Oh,” she squeaked. “Ah . . . have you tried the grapes, Your Grace?” She thrust a platter of grapes at Ravenwood.
The conversation resumed around them, rising like a wave, swept along by playfulness and love.
“Do you think all families argue so vociferously?” Edgar whispered in her ear.
“I’m not sure. This is the only family I’ve ever known,” she whispered back.
And it was the best family in the whole world.
“I have something to show you, my love.” His wicked fingers traced a circle along her inner thigh. He tilted his head toward the door.
“Edgar,” she whispered. “Stop that. We can’t leave our own wedding breakfast.”
“They won’t even notice. Come.”
Sure enough, everyone was too busy arguing and laughing to notice when Mari and Edgar slipped away. Or, if they did notice, they pretended not to.
“Where are you taking me?” asked Mari as Edgar led her away. “To your bed?”
“Impudent minx. Not my bed.”
“Oh.” Unexpected. “Oh. I understand. Not your bed. Perhaps . . . the library carpet? But we don’t want to scandalize any footmen.”
“Mari,” said Edgar sternly. “Please take your mind out of the gutter for one moment.”
Where were they going?
Through the entrance hall, down the gleaming marble stairs and out the front gate.
The street was peaceful. Delicate blossoms drifted down from the trees. A breeze ruffled the hem of her skirts.
Something had begun today. Their brave new life together.
Edgar made a spinning motion with his finger. He wanted her to . . . turn around?
“Real
ly, Edgar? The front gate. With our entire family inside eating wedding cake. Wouldn’t that be, well, illegal? There might be constables about, you know.”
He rolled his eyes. Then he cupped her chin with his hand and lifted her head toward his gate.
“Oh,” she exclaimed. “You changed the motto. Amor Vincit Omnia.”
“Love conquers all.” Edgar kissed her cheek. “It conquered me and I was a heavily armed fortress.”
“I saw the cracks in your armor immediately.”
“And you administered the tongue-lashing I deserved. Speaking of which, I think I might deserve another. I’m having very bad thoughts about a certain redheaded governess.”
She stood on her tiptoes and placed her palm over his heart. “And I’m having very bad thoughts about a certain devilish duke. Very bad, indeed.”
He kissed her then. Really kissed her. Until she was flushed and breathless with longing.
She loved him with all of her heart.
A love designed by trust, forged by desire, and tempered with respect.
A love built to last forever.
Acknowledgments
Writing romance novels is a privilege and a pleasure, and I’m blessed to have so many people in my life to guide me on this grand adventure. Many thanks to my witty and wise agent, Alexandra Machinist, and my wonderful editor, Carrie Feron. I’m indebted to Carolyn Coons and everyone else on the fabulous team at Avon Books. Everlasting gratitude to Neile and Rachel for their careful reads of the manuscript. My family gave me support and love every day. My brilliant brother, Carl, assisted with historical research. Mr. Bell . . . you make me believe in happily-ever-afters. Finally, to all the amazing readers, bloggers, librarians, and booksellers . . . thank you so much for loving and championing romance!
An Excerpt from For the Duke’s Eyes Only
Continue reading for a sneak peek
at the next book in Lenora Bell’s
School for Dukes series