by Anne Gracie
* * *
* * *
Alice had told the servants not to wait up. They entered the sitting room, and James lit the fire, which had been laid. He rose, dusting off his hands, and Alice came straight to the point. “Why did you announce our betrothal tonight?”
“Because I was angry at all the whispers. Because I wanted to slay dragons for you, but the only dragons I could see were wearing ball gowns. So I made the announcement to change the focus of the evening, and it did. You didn’t mind, did you—my assumption of your assent?”
“I was just surprised, that’s all. I thought you’d changed your mind about wanting to marry me.”
“Changed my mind? Why ever would I do that?”
“Because, well, you hadn’t asked me again, and once I became your mistress . . .”
“You thought I wouldn’t want you?” He stared at her and rumpled his hair, perplexed. “I thought our time at the cottage would have convinced you how passionately I do want you. I must be losing my touch.”
“No, of course you haven’t. But mistresses don’t get proposals of marriage, do they? Not that I know what your touch was before—” She broke off, embarrassed.
A slow smile grew on his face. “Before we anticipated our wedding vows with a spot of ‘um’? Several spots, in fact. And now that I come to think of it, spot is not at all accurate. A lavishness of ‘um,’ a feast of ‘um,’ a—”
“I mean, even though I’d proved to you that I could enjoy the marriage bed—”
He held up a hand. “Hold it right there, my sweet. It wasn’t I who needed anything to be proved—I was already wholly and completely committed. You were the one with the doubts. Now, stop all this shilly-shallying. Will you marry me or not?”
Her heart filled and she threw herself into his arms. “Oh, James, of course I’ll marry you. You won’t regret it. I promise I’ll make you a good wife.”
She thought he’d kiss her then, but he held her back with a quizzical expression. “A good wife? Like you pick out a good apple at the market, or a good pair of shoes?”
“Of course I’ll do my best to be a good mother to your daughters as well,” she added hastily. “I know I could never compare with Selina, but—”
“But nothing.” He cut her off gently. “Selina was the love of my youth. Yes, I loved her, and I will always love her memory. But you, my dearest Alice, are the love of my maturity, my beloved companion in this life.”
He drew her toward him. His voice deepened. “My darling Alice, I didn’t ask you to marry me because I thought you’d make a good wife and be a good mother to my daughters—though it goes without saying that you will. I want to marry you for only one reason—I’m madly, deeply, irrevocably in love with you. More than I ever knew was possible.”
Her hand flew to her mouth and she took a shaky inward breath. “Truly, James?”
He cupped her face in his hand. “Truly, Alice. I want to live the rest of my life with you in my life, in my bed and in my heart.” Her eyes sheened with tears, and he added, “Is it so hard for you to believe?”
It was, a little. In thirty-eight years, no one had ever told Alice they loved her. And now, here was this big, beautiful man, the embodiment of all her dreams, telling her he loved her. And oh, how she’d ached to hear it.
“Oh, James, I love you, too, so very, very much.”
They kissed then, and for a while, time disappeared. A coal fell out of the fireplace, startling them, and they separated. James scooped it back into the fireplace, and set a screen across it. Then, to Alice’s surprise, he locked the door.
“James?” He surely didn’t mean to . . .
He winked. “We don’t want the servants coming to investigate any strange sounds, do we?”
Strange sounds? Oh my. “No. Or Lucy.”
“I have a feeling that nothing much will ever shock that young minx,” he said as he swept her into his arms, laid her on the settee and followed her down.
“Well, in that case . . .” Alice pulled James’s head down to hers and proceeded to show him how much she loved him.
* * *
* * *
The fire was burning low. James and Alice lay on the settee, twined together in the dreamy aftermath of making love. She stirred sleepily and woke. James smoothed the hair back from her face. Lord, she had the softest skin. He didn’t want to leave her, didn’t want to have to get dressed and go home.
She was a miracle. His very precious miracle.
He gazed into the glowing coals. “I came back to England in something of a gray fog. I thought that the special love a man has for a woman was all in my past. I felt lucky enough just to have my daughters to love and care for. I never expected anything more.
“And then I went to a party, and I was bored and about to leave when I saw this gorgeous woman arriving. You smiled—not even at me. In fact, you were quite cruelly cold toward me.” She started to explain, but he pressed his finger over her lips and went on, “But it was such a sweet smile, and my closed-off, battered heart opened up and whispered, This one.”
She sighed.
“And in the following days and weeks in which I came to know you, my heart kept insisting, This one.
“And all the wild, tumultuous feelings I thought were dead and in the past boiled up again, stronger than ever.” He stroked her cheek with the back of his hand, and she leaned into it. “It’s not the same as my first love, but it’s just as strong, and it’s only going to get stronger. So, my dearest love, you are already in my heart. I just need you in my life.” He leaned back so he could see her face properly. “Really, the only question left is, when are you going to make an honest man of me?”
Chapter Eighteen
Alice and James decided to marry at Towers, James’s house in Warwickshire. They traveled down in a cavalcade of carriages. The three little girls—and cat—theoretically traveled with Nanny McCubbin, but hopped from one carriage to another every time they stopped to change horses. Gerald and Lucy followed in a separate carriage—without a chaperone—and Mary and James’s valet and a pile of luggage traveled last.
Towers was delightful. Nestled in a green wooded valley, it was a sprawling, asymmetrical pile, begun in the fifteenth century and added to by various ancestors every few centuries.
“It’s a bit of a monstrosity,” James said diffidently when the carriage turned a corner and the house first came into sight. But he clearly loved it.
“It’s wonderful,” Alice said, and she meant it. The oldest part of the building was in the half-timbered black-and-white Tudor style, other parts were stone, and one wing was brick. And there were battlements and several towers, including one round brick turret with a pointy roof.
The girls, too, were enchanted. “It’s a fairy place,” Judy exclaimed. “Can we sleep in the turret, Papa, can we?”
The church on the estate was small and beautiful, built of bluestone with a steep slate roof and a slightly crooked spire. Arched stained glass windows glinted in the late afternoon sun. The moment Alice saw the little church, she knew that this was where she wanted to be married, rather than the impressive, much larger church in Kenilworth that they’d seen earlier.
* * *
* * *
James paced back and forth at the front of the altar. It was ridiculous to be so nervous, he knew. But waiting for his bride in a church was almost as nerve-racking as waiting to go into battle. He just wanted it over and done with, and to be left alone with his family.
“Don’t worry, she’ll be here,” Gerald said heartily.
James gave him a baleful look. “Wait ’til it’s your turn.” He knew she’d be here. He didn’t know why he was nervous; he just was.
The church smelled of beeswax and flowers—the village ladies had descended and given it a good scrub and polish. Guests had been arriving over the last few days. The pews were f
illing up, county gentlefolk and villagers. He’d been stunned by the welcome he’d received from the local people. Apparently they remembered him with fondness, and had warmly welcomed Alice and the three little girls.
There was no organ, but the vicar had brought in a small choir to sing the bride down the aisle. They started to hum, then broke into a soft hymn. James turned and a small figure dressed in blue began marching importantly down the aisle, a small figure wearing a very strange black-and-white fur collar.
The collar yowled, stretched and leapt to the floor. Luckily it wore a smart blue velvet harness, which restrained it. The congregation chuckled, and some of James’s tension dissolved.
Next came Lina, elfin and dainty, looking more like her mother every day. Then Judy, serious and responsible, his firstborn. After that came Lucy, part of his family now, and he wouldn’t have it any other way. And finally there she was, the love of his life, serene and lovely in shades of sea green and blue to match her glorious eyes, shining now as they met his. She was radiant, smiling; he had the biggest lump in his throat.
He held out his hand to her and she took it.
“Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today . . .”
Epilogue
The biggest, splashiest wedding of the season was over—and nobody had been strangled. The large and lavish wedding breakfast was coming to an end, and Lucy was upstairs with Alice and Mary, changing from her wedding dress into a traveling outfit. She and Gerald were going to Paris for their honeymoon.
“Are you sure you like the murals?” Lucy asked Alice, while Mary removed dozens of tiny pink rosebuds from her hair. “If you don’t like them, you can always paper over them.”
“Never!” Alice said, shocked. “The girls adore them. I don’t know how you came up with such charming designs, each one so different but so perfect for each child. Lina is in love with her fairy dell, Judy adores her horses, and Debo—well, we could hardly get Debo to leave her room once she saw it. She’s named every single cat—all thirty-five of them!”
Lucy laughed. “I’m so glad.”
The door opened, and Gerald poked his head around it. “Ready?”
Lucy looked a query at Mary. Mary stepped back, beaming. “All done, miss—I mean, Lady Thornton. You look beautiful.”
“Thank you, Mary.” Lucy wrinkled her nose. “So strange to be Lady Thornton. It doesn’t feel like me at all.”
“You’ll get used to it,” Alice assured her. Gerald entered, followed by James, who had been his best man. Alice had given away the bride, an action that raised more than a few eyebrows.
“The baggage is all packed,” Gerald said. “We’re driving to Dover and will spend the night there, then catch the packet to France in the morning.” He glanced at Lucy. “Or the next day.”
Alice looked at Lucy. Something in Gerald’s expression suggested that she and James hadn’t been the only ones who had anticipated their wedding vows. The house at Bellaire Gardens had been empty, after all . . .
But there was a faint crease between Lucy’s brow, and she was looking at Alice in a very particular way. At a very particular part of Alice’s anatomy. “Alice . . .” she began on a query and stopped.
Alice raised a brow at James, who nodded.
“Yes, Lucy, what you’re wondering about—it’s true,” Alice said softly.
“Really?” Lucy gasped. “Oh, Alice, that’s wonderful.” She embraced Alice.
Alice placed a hand on her swelling midriff and leaned back against James. “I know. It’s our little miracle. After all those years of being barren.”
“You must have been mistaken.”
Alice smiled mistily. “I don’t understand it. Thaddeus had a son, after all. But who cares about the whys or wherefores. All I know is that I’m expecting a child, and I’m over the moon.” She glanced up at James and said softly, “We’re over the moon.”
“Congratulations,” Gerald said. “But this son of Uncle Thaddeus’s—when was this?”
“He was born shortly after Thaddeus and I were married. His mistress, Mrs. Jennings, went to the country, where she gave birth to a son in secret. The baby was raised by one of his tenants in the country. Thaddeus made no secret of it to me—far from it, he was furious.”
Gerald frowned. “So this son would now be nineteen or twenty then?”
Alice nodded. “I suppose so. Thaddeus never let me forget it. If old Lord Charlton had allowed him to marry Mrs. Jennings instead of forcing him to marry me, that son would have been his legitimate heir.”
Gerald snorted. “I doubt it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve seen Mrs. Jennings’s son, and he is definitely not related to Uncle Thaddeus.”
“What are you saying? How could you have seen him?”
“It was when we were sorting out Uncle Thaddeus’s will.” He gave Alice an embarrassed look. “He’d made a number of bequests to her, you see. Papa got me to deal with it—dealing with a mistress being beneath his dignity. So I went to her home, and her butler answered the door. I also met a young man there, nineteen or twenty, who called her Mother.” He paused for dramatic effect. “That young man was the spitting image of her butler.”
There was a short, shocked silence.
“That would explain why she never brought the boy to the city,” Alice said after a moment. “Thaddeus claimed it was too painful to meet the son who should have been his heir.”
“I wonder if he knew,” Gerald mused.
Alice thought about it, then shook her head. “No, he would never forgive infidelity, let alone being cuckolded by a butler. And if he’d known, he would never have left Mrs. Jennings a penny in his will.”
She thought about all the years of guilt and shame she’d endured for her apparent failure as a wife. And then dismissed them forever. She was no longer that woman. James’s arm slipped around her waist, and she smiled and leaned into him.
She had a new life now—a husband who told her daily he adored her, and demonstrated it in the most blissful ways. Three little girls who filled her days with joy and laughter—and cats—and a goddaughter who’d begun as an unwelcome imposition and became a beloved daughter and a friend. And soon—Alice laid a hand on her burgeoning belly—a baby.
Life was wonderful.
“Well, are you ready to go now?” Gerald asked Lucy. “The carriage is waiting, and everyone’s gathered downstairs to see us off.”
Lucy glanced around the room, checking that she’d left nothing behind, then kissed Alice and James goodbye, as well as Mary the maid. Then she turned to her brand-new husband. “I’m ready.”
Gerald bowed and gestured gracefully toward the door. “After you, Lady Thornbottle.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Anne Gracie is the award-winning author of the Chance Sisters Romances, which include The Summer Bride, The Spring Bride, The Winter Bride and The Autumn Bride, and the Marriage of Convenience Romance series, including Marry in Scandal, Marry in Haste, Marry in Secret and Marry in Scarlet. She spent her childhood and youth on the move. The roving life taught her that humor and love are universal languages and that favorite books can take you home, wherever you are. Anne started her first novel while backpacking solo around the world, writing by hand in notebooks. Since then, her books have been translated into more than eighteen languages and include Japanese manga editions (which she thinks is very cool) and audio editions. In addition to writing, Anne promotes adult literacy, flings balls for her dog, enjoys her tangled garden and keeps bees. Visit her online at annegracie.com. You can also subscribe to her newsletter.
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Anne Gracie, The Scoundrel's Daughter