“Leave England. Return to America. I will pay for your passage. I will even provide enough funds for you to support yourself comfortably until you can find suitable employment there,” Aurora offered. “You will take nothing else from Gavin. You will never contact him again. You will never attempt to use your sham marriage to control or extort him again, and you will never, ever go near my son again!”
“I’ll leave here with nothing!” Meredith protested.
“As that is how you came here, it should not be a problem,” Aurora stated. “You are not his wife. You were never his wife. There is nothing he has to which you are truly entitled.”
“Look, madame, if I don’t stop the bleeding soon, it’ll be a moot point about her going anywhere,” the doctor said.
“I do not have an issue with that,” Aurora snapped. “And as I am paying your fee, you will adhere to my orders.”
“Fine!” Meredith shrieked. “Fine. I’ll go. You have my word!”
“I’ll have more than your word. You’ll be signing a contract to that effect before you ever step foot on a ship,” Aurora said. But she stepped back and allowed the physician access to his patient.
It was only then, when she stepped back and pivoted away from the assembled tableau, that she saw him. Gavin stood on the edge of the dueling field. He was mud splattered and dirty, his horse lathered with sweat.
“I could throttle you,” he said.
Aurora shrugged. “It was a matter of honor.”
“My honor!” he shouted.
“And mine!” she shouted. “Or do you think women do not grasp the concept of honor? Are we not allowed to be offended? Are we not permitted to defend ourselves even against other women? You would have paid her. Then you would have paid her again and again. She will go away this time, and she will do so because she knows that if she does not, I will see her dead and in hell. An ugliness that you, sir, shied away from!”
“What was I to do? See her murdered in cold blood?” Gavin demanded.
“No, you were not! Can you not see that having a challenge between two who are evenly matched was the only way to resolve this?” Aurora demanded.
“What I see is that you put your life at risk and I will not—I cannot—have that!”
“Why not?” Aurora demanded. “It is my life, after all!”
“Because I love you, you little fool!” he shouted back at her.
Behind them, the scene on the field grew quiet. Even Meredith ceased her caterwauling. Percy and Olivia were looking on with expectant expressions and the physician looked as if he’d lucked into the best seat in the house to a prime Drury Lane drama.
“What did you say?” Aurora demanded.
“I called you a fool,” Gavin stated, his tone sharp and perhaps a bit embarrassed.
“You said something else,” Aurora reminded him. “Just before that. What was it?”
He sighed. “I told you that I loved you. As if it matters at all!”
“It does,” she said. “It matters a great deal, in fact, because I love you too.”
Gavin stared at her. He thought perhaps she hadn’t said it. That it had only been wishful thinking on his part. Or some sort of hysterical hallucination brought on by fear from thinking her dead only moments earlier.
Stepping closer to her and lowering his voice as if the others present hadn’t already heard everything, he asked, “You love me?”
“Yes. I love you. You infuriate me. You excite me. You make my blood sing and my heart pound, and I can’t even begin to picture my life without you as a part of it.”
“I’m still not free,” he said. “Not really.”
She smiled. “I’m content enough to be your lover and to be your love. I do not need to be your wife.”
But he wanted her to be. He wanted it with a desperation he couldn’t even begin to describe. But first, he’d need to be certain such an arrangement would never bring scandal to her name. Though, given the fact that she was dueling on the Heath, at dawn, perhaps he should have been more wary of the scandals she courted on her own.
“You two,” he said, looking up at Lady Holland and the newly minted Mrs. Algernon Dunne, “get in the carriage and get home to your husbands before I’m facing the both of them on this field!”
The two women and the doctor picked up Meredith and helped her to the waiting coach. A dark stain had spread over the shoulder of her green dress. He shook his head. “You’re very lucky you did not kill her,” he stated. “It’s hard to conduct a love affair when one of the participants is locked up in the gaol.”
Aurora’s lips curved in a satisfied smirk. “Luck had nothing to do with it. I knew precisely where I was aiming. I’m a very good shot, Your Grace.”
“Bragging?” he asked.
“Issuing a warning,” she said. “Don’t ever make me challenge you.”
Gavin chuckled. “Didn’t you say when we met that you didn’t do things impetuously?”
“I changed my mind. There are things in this world far more important than preserving one’s reputation,” she stated.
“And what is that?”
“Preserving one’s family. And you, whatever may come, will be part of mine, legally or otherwise.”
“Let’s get you home before Lady Deerfield spies you sneaking in covered in mud and blackpowder.”
Epilogue
October 1819
“This would be a lovely color on you.” Aurora held up a lovely bottle-green silk next to Percy. The color did amazing things for her complexion.
Percy eyed the fabric greedily but shook her head. “It is a lovely color, but we aren’t here to shop for me. We’re here to purchase a gift for Olivia.”
Aurora put the silk down. “Yes, but that doesn’t mean we only have to buy a gift for Olivia. You can purchase other things, as well.”
Percy laughed, “To what end? In two months, I’ll look like a fattened calf going to market no matter what I have on.”
Aurora smiled at her. She remembered feeling that way. There was a pang of envy there as well. She so wanted to feel that way again. But she and Gavin were taking every possible precaution to avoid conception. Under the circumstances, they really had no other option. “Yes, but you won’t care. Because by then, you’ll be able to feel your baby moving. It’s miraculous.”
Percy’s eyes widened with glee at that thought. “If anyone had ever told me we’d be friends, I would have laughed until I made myself ill with it. And yet here we are, and I couldn’t be gladder of it, because I can ask you all the things I need to know about carrying a child.”
That statement was followed by a flash of pain in the younger woman’s eyes. Aurora recognized it only too well. Her brother had disowned her entirely for aiding Helen with her elopement. He’d disowned Helen too, but Gavin had provided generously for them. The St. Jameses were residing in a cottage on his estate, with Stephan apprenticing to be a steward. They were blissfully happy, as all newlyweds should be.
“Your sister chose her path,” Aurora reminded her gently. “You cannot change what she is, and she has no wish to do so. Your only option is to keep your distance and live happily with your husband who adores you.”
“And you?” Percy demanded. “When are you going to finally marry Westerhaven? I rather like the idea of having a best friend who is a duchess.”
Aurora shrugged. “I’m not certain we will marry.” It had been five months since the duel. Five months since their mutual confession of love. Five months since Meredith Brandon had returned to America after singing a sworn affidavit vowing to never return or contact any of them again and also swearing that their marriage had never been legal as she’d been wed previously to two different men who were both still counted amongst the living.
Percy paused in sorting through a bin of ribbons. “What do you mean that you aren’t certain you’ll marry? You love him. I know you do. I can see it in the way you look at him.”
Aurora’s expression hardened. It was he
r own fault. She’d sworn for so long that marriage wasn’t important to her that he’d come to believe it. Hoisted on her own petard, so to speak. She couldn’t help but feel a bit of bitterness at his easy acceptance of her declaration, though. “I do love him but he does not love me. Or he doesn’t love me enough to want me for his wife, because he’s never asked me to marry him. Not even after all this time.”
Percy’s gaze was filled with sympathy. “He does love you. I know he does. There must be a reason.”
“Whatever it is, he hasn’t chosen to share it with me, and my pride will not allow me to ask,” Aurora said. “But I don’t wish to discuss it further. I did tell Algernon that I would have you home precisely at two o’clock, because he doesn’t want you to be overly tired.”
Percy reached back into the bin and pulled out a length of blue ribbon embroidered with gold stars. “He acts as though I am the only woman in all of England to have ever carried a child.”
“Oh no. He acts as if you are the only woman in all of England who has ever carried his child. And that makes it substantially worse!” Aurora teased. “How does it feel to be loved and cherished above all things?”
A smile played about Percy’s lips. “It’s very wonderful. And I’m eternally grateful that you turned down his proposal.”
“That was not a proposal. It was a half-cocked notion that was quickly dispelled,” Aurora answered smartly. Just recalling that horridly awkward moment was enough to make her shudder. “You, my dear friend, were his first proposal. His only proposal.”
“As he was mine. I think I’m done with shopping. I can’t find a single thing for Olivia. What do you get for a woman who has everything?” Percy asked.
“You’ll find something,” Aurora said.
Percy paid for her few items and they left the small shop. They walked toward her home on Park Lane where she and Algernon stayed while in town, still next door to Percy’s sister which could only be awkward. Aurora’s carriage awaited her there. And as they made their way down that idyllic street, they both became aware of a commotion ahead. A glance revealed that it was at the entrance to the Fennelworth residence. Several large men were carting things out of the household while Daphne Fennelworth wailed in the foyer.
“Oh dear,” Aurora whispered.
“Bailiffs,” Percy surmised. “They’ve lost everything.”
“Not everything,” Aurora quipped. She wasn’t without sympathy for the woman to some degree, but she also knew that Daphne had courted her own ruin by continuing to spend lavishly on herself even when her husband had warned her not to. “She has her children, after all. Perhaps if she can stop obsessing about what is fashionable and focus on her family, she will be happier for it.”
“I don’t believe Daphne is capable of happiness,” Percy observed. “But I want to be wrong. It’s a shame. And the children, horrid though they may be, are not really at fault. They simply mimic what they see from her.”
What a grim thought that was, Aurora realized. All six of that woman’s children let loose upon the world to act just as she had. “Then, heaven help us all.”
Seeing Percy to the door, they said their goodbyes, and then Aurora moved toward her coach. As she neared it, she glanced up the street to where the duke resided. “Take the carriage home. I will be along later in a hired conveyance,” she told her driver. “I want to walk.”
The man said nothing. He didn’t even smirk. Instead, he simply nodded and then climbed onto the box and eased the carriage into traffic.
Aurora walked slowly as she considered her next move. Why did she have to wait for him to propose? She’d shown that she was clearly not above flouting conventions. She had fought a duel for him, after all.
Reaching his elegant townhouse, she climbed the steps and raised the knocker. The butler who opened the door was still superior, still disapproving, and still unwilling to hide either. But she’d long since grown used to him and his supercilious ways. “Is he in his study?”
“Yes, Lady Sheffield.”
“I know the way,” she said and breezed past him.
Gavin stared at the documents before him and felt a mixture of impossible triumph and incredible fear. He’d been working tirelessly within the House of Lords with a special committee to obtain one thing and one thing only: a doctrine of nullity. And he had it in hand. He’d obtained documents from the American courts to show that his marriage to Meredith had never been legal. In turn, he’d presented those documents to the special committee in the House of Lords and had now been granted freedom from that mistake in not one country but two.
The door opened, and Aurora breezed inside. She looked lovelier than ever in a day dress of printed cotton with a paisley shawl draped over her arms. “I wasn’t expecting you until tonight,” he said. They had stopped trying to be discreet about their affair. It was well known and well remarked upon ,and very few people actually cared. It was the one benefit to her widowhood.
“I’ve been thinking,” she said.
“Oh, about what?” he asked, getting up from his chair and closing the distance between them so that he could claim her lips for a brief kiss.
“I think you should marry me,” she said.
His heart stuttered a bit, but even then Gavin felt a grin tugging at his lips. Still, he battled it back. If he was to be the blushing bridegroom, as it were, he’d need to not appear overly eager. “I thought you were perfectly content in your widowhood and all the freedom it afforded you.”
“Well, I am,” she said. “Or I was. But then you came along, and frankly, things are quite different now. Will is growing up, and Percy is having a baby, and Olivia is having a baby and here I am…”
“Are you— Aurora?” He couldn’t even ask the question. The thought of it was so beyond thrilling to him that it nearly robbed him of speech.
“No. Not yet. We’ve been rather careful and rather creative in finding ways to avoid that… But I don’t want to avoid it anymore,” she said, stamping her foot a little. “I want to have baby. I want to have a baby. Your baby! If I can, that is. And even I will flout convention only so much! I refuse to have a child out of wedlock.”
He breathed out a sigh. It wasn’t relief. It wasn’t disappointment. It was just that ir had been a very big what-if he’d been contemplating for a moment. “I understand.”
“You understand?” she asked, her expression falling. “What does that even mean? You understand? I rather require a yes or a no from you, Gavin!”
“Well, you didn’t exactly propose. You simply made a statement. A proposal generally occurs in the form of a question.” As he’d made that distinction, he’d risen from his desk and carried the sheaf of documents with him. “But before you ask, and before I answer, I think you need to look at this.”
She accepted the documents and began to scan them. As she did so her expression changed, turning into one of awe. “What is all this?”
“Well, I very much want to marry you, Aurora. But there was this pesky problem I had of that other wife who may or may not forget what a good shot you are and show up here to make trouble again. Before I could ever ask you, I had to be certain that I had everything worked out to keep Meredith out of our lives for good.”
Aurora nodded, though she appeared to be in shock. “And that’s what this is?”
“Yes. Delivered just this morning. My marriage to her has now been recognized as nullified in two countries. And, now, I am free to give you this.” From his pocket, Gavin produced a simple leather box, which he held out in front of her.
With shaking fingers, Aurora plucked the box from his palm and opened it. Inside was a delicately carved band of gold set with pearls and diamonds. It looked very much like that delicate necklace he’d given her, but far weightier and much more substantial. She looked up at him, “I asked first. I’m taking this ring as your form of yes.”
“You never asked.”
“I don’t care,” she said, placing the box back in his hand. “Put
that ring on my finger, Gavin, and consider yourself spoken for.”
He slipped the band from the box and settled it over her finger, sliding it gently into place. “I was spoken for from the moment we met.”
“I do love you,” she said.
“And I do love you. But no more dueling. Ever. All right?”
She shrugged. “If someone besmirches my husband’s honor, I cannot guarantee that I will not feel called upon to do what is necessary.”
“Minx,” he said, grabbing her about the waist and hauling her close.
“Your minx,” she said. “Forever.”
If you enjoyed THE OTHER WIFE be sure to see where it all began in THE LAST OFFER. And look for PERCY’s story in THE FIRST PROPOSAL. And coming this summer, Madame de Roussard will have her very own tale in THE LATE HUSBAND releasing June 13th, 2021.
About the Author
Chasity Bowlin is a USA Today Best Selling Author who lives in central Kentucky with her husband and their menagerie of animals. She loves writing, loves traveling and enjoys incorporating tidbits of her actual vacations into her books. She is an avid Anglophile, loving all things British, but specifically all things Regency.
Growing up in Tennessee, spending as much time as possible with her doting grandparents, soap operas were a part of her daily existence, followed by back to back episodes of Scooby-Doo. Her path to becoming a romance novelist was set when, rather than simply have her Barbie dolls cruise around in a pink convertible, they time traveled, hosted lavish dinner parties and one even had an evil twin locked in the attic.
Also by Chasity Bowlin
THE DUNNE FAMILY SERIES
The Last Offer
The First Proposal
The Other Wife
The Late Husband
SHIFTER ROMANCE
Purrfect Santa (A Howl’s Romance) co-written with Jessie Lane
The Other Wife (The Dunne Family Series Book 3) Page 10
