“Father.” Winnifred set her hands on her hips, her stubborn glower matching his own.
“Then again,” he added on a resigned exhale, “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to give him another chance.”
“If you’ll recall, Julian,” Mother said, slipping her arm beneath his, “my father wasn’t terribly pleased with you either. He thought you were too full of yourself.”
Father gazed down at her with a reminiscent grin. “I had you on my arm, Genie. How could I help but be a little full of myself?”
Again, Winnifred gaped at her parents. She had no idea what had transpired between them for such an alteration, but she wasn’t about to question something that filled her with hope.
“I’ll just leave the two of you alone then . . .” she said, backing out of the room. “I’m going to check with the kitchen about the tea I’m serving when Jane and Ellie arrive.”
“Oh, that reminds me,” Mother interjected, following her into the corridor. “The first few of your altered dresses arrived a moment ago. They will be simply lovely on you, I’m certain.” She pursed her lips as she slid a glance to her daughter. “Don’t give me that look of disbelief, and stop waiting for me to add something critical. I took your words to heart, my dear. And I am trying to make up for the years I’ve wasted every opportunity to fawn on you.”
Winnifred rolled her eyes. “I hardly need fawning.”
“Then at least, tell me you are eager to try on each dress, complete with hat and gloves.”
“Must I be eager or simply willing?” she asked with a wry lift of her brows. What had she gotten herself into?
* * *
A short while later, Asher stepped out of the Hollanders’ townhouse, ready to embark on his first order of business.
“Holt,” Devine called from behind him, donning his hat as he left the townhouse as well. “I know you have plans to scour London for a prospect, but I wonder if I might talk to you for a moment. Would you share my carriage, by chance?”
“I’d be honored,” Asher said, climbing inside the sleek lacquered chaise. He gave the direction of his solicitor’s office in Cheapside.
He’d formulated a plan of action to extricate himself from his father’s grip. He knew there was little he could do about his father borrowing money against his name. There would always be disreputable moneylenders who chose to ignore proper procedures. But he could draft letters, stating that he refused to be held responsible for monies lent to anyone who falsely used his identity. This might be the only thing to help him in court over the years to come and keep him out of Fleet.
When they were on their way, Devine didn’t waste any time. “I wanted to return this knife,” he said, placing it on the table between them. “It wouldn’t be right for me to keep it. After all, it’s part of your inheritance.”
Asher looked down at it with fondness. “It is all I had left of my mother’s, but I cannot accept it. Our trade was a binding agreement. You helped me out of a tight spot and this is the very least I can do to repay you.”
Besides, he’d been clinging to places and objects that inspired her memory long enough. His mother would always be with him, no matter if he had the knife or visited her grave at Ashbrook Cottage.
Devine stared at him quizzically. Then gradually, one side of his mustachios twitched in a grin. “You’re not at all like your father. It was always Liliandra’s wish that you would favor your mother’s temperament.”
“Liliandra?” Asher startled, sitting forward. “Do you mean my Great-Aunt Lolly?”
Devine chuckled. “As I said, this knife is part of your inheritance. Didn’t your mother ever tell you about her aunt stealing away on a ship?”
“And just how would you know anything about that?”
“As the perished privateer that I am, my name is Sir Roderick Devine. Yet for years on the open seas, I was an infamous pirate known as the Mad Macaw. And I offered the treasure that goes along with that knife to Liliandra when I proposed. Bold as brass, she’d said she would only marry me if she could give the entire ship and the treasure in its hold to your mother. She even made me sign a contract and put the whole of it in safekeeping.”
Stunned in speechless disbelief, Asher couldn’t form a reply.
“Liliandra read your mother’s letters to me,” Devine continued. “That is how I became acquainted with your father. And she’d always wanted your mother to be able to escape.”
Someday, Asher . . . Someday, the two of us are going to sail away on a treasure ship and start a whole new life, full of adventure.
“So the stories were true?”
“Knowing Liliandra and her inclination to protect your mother, she likely didn’t tell the whole story.”
Asher blinked. “And to think, my mother had a treasure all that time. Did she know?”
“Aye, but she wrote to Liliandra and asked that it be kept from you for a time.”
“She was afraid that I would turn out like my father,” Asher surmised. And thinking of Shettlemane, he felt a shiver course through him. “Once he realizes that there isn’t any treasure from the map he stole—and after an entire voyage of imagining how he’d spend it—he’ll be even more of a ruthless gambler than before. No. It is still best in safekeeping. Perhaps I’ll leave it for my own children one day.”
“I’m afraid that won’t be possible,” Devine said gravely. “You see, there’s much more to tell you about Liliandra.”
Chapter 33
Winnifred waited all morning and the early part of the afternoon for Asher to make an appearance, but he never came. Though he had sent a puzzling parcel earlier of a half-dozen black cravats and a note that read,
Eager for a fresh start. Do with these what you will.
Yours irrevocably,
Holt
Thankfully, both Jane and Ellie had arrived a short time ago, to distract her.
She’d sent them the news of her broken betrothal to Mr. Woodbine and her reconciliation with Asher. Over tea, she’d given them all the thrilling details—well, nearly all—about how she intended to marry Asher. If he should ever arrive on her doorstep.
“I’m glad it’s all settled between you,” Jane said, fishing through her enormous paisley reticule. “Because Lord Holt did, indeed, stop by my parents’ house and try to persuade me to give you some letters he’d written. Though, regrettably, I’d set my brothers on the attack before I’d bothered to look at them. Ah, here it is.” She lifted a fat, wrinkly scroll tied with a red ribbon and waved it like a baton, then placed it within Winnifred’s grasp across the low oval table. “But take care with how you unroll it. I didn’t have all the pieces and there are some parts missing altogether—I believe my brothers ate them—but you’ll soon see that they aren’t letters at all. They’re chapters.”
Winnifred stared at her in puzzlement.
“For our primer,” Jane added with a little nudge. “Go on, take a look and see for yourself.”
Strangely, her hands were shaking when she untied the ribbon. Asher had written chapters for the primer?
The instant she read the scrawled words “When a Scoundrel Meets His Match: And Why Drinking an Entire Pint of Rum Isn’t Always a Terrible Thing,” she smiled. And scanning farther down, her eyes misted over when she saw “How to Tempt a Scoundrel: And Twelve Reasons a Debutante Should Never Hide Her Freckles.”
Perhaps she was starting not to mind her freckles after all.
“You’re blushing,” Ellie said with a cheeky grin. “If you’re going to read the whole of it now, please do so aloud. Though you may whisper the more salacious parts, if you like. Just not too quietly.”
Winnifred didn’t have the chance to respond. In that same moment, the butler appeared at her side, presenting her with a letter on a salver. She set the scroll aside with tender care and inspected the letter.
“It’s from Prue,” she said, eagerly unfolding the single page to the crisp handwriting. They hadn’t heard from her for a fortnight. “‘De
arest Winnie, Lord F— has found me.’”
“Dear heavens!” Ellie exclaimed. “What an ominous beginning.”
“I shudder to think what will come next.”
Winnifred eyed her friends over the edge of the paper. “You would surely discover the answer sooner if I may continue.”
“No one is preventing you,” Jane said with an impatient swirl of her hand in the air.
“‘Lord F— has found me,’” she repeated for effect. “‘We met by chance at an assembly and he asked me to dance. I could barely speak, let alone refuse him. And before he handed me back to my aunt, he whispered that he would pay a call on the morrow. I was nothing but nerves and jitters all day. However, instead of a call, I received a missive through my maid, explaining that my aunt and uncle barred him from entering their house, and I nearly breathed a sigh of relief. Until I read what came next. If you can believe it, he asked me to steal away at midnight so that he might speak with me. I am in such a dither that I hardly know what to do. I should not slip out of my window in the middle of the night to see him. And yet . . . how can I not? I shall write again on the morrow with more news. Your muddleheaded friend, Prudence Thorogood.’”
“Lord F— is most definitely a scoundrel. There’s no question,” Ellie said.
Jane nodded, her lips pursed in contemplation. “We should expand our research. Not only should we scrutinize the methods of the marriage-minded gentleman, but we should learn absolutely everything there is to know about scoundrels. I’m certain it will be of use.”
Her friends nodded in commiseration, then looked to Winnifred.
She swallowed. “All I can say is that they are quite persuasive and far too easy to fall in love with.”
“What’s this?” a low, familiar drawl said from the doorway, causing tingles to race over her skin. “Surely you haven’t fallen in love with anyone else since we last saw each other, Winn.”
She grinned without turning to face Asher. “I suppose that depends on what you have to say to me.”
Her friends gawked at her.
Ellie said, “But you’ve gone to the window a thousand times— Ouch!”
She stopped when Jane pinched her and held a finger to her lips.
“I have a question for you, Miss Winnifred Humphries,” Asher said, sending her heart skittering beneath her breast.
Unable to bear their separation a moment longer, she stood and found herself gathered in his arms as he swung her around in a circle. She smiled, her greedy gaze roving over his dark features as if it had been years instead of hours since she’d seen him. And he looked quite splendid in a fresh white cravat.
“Are your trunks packed?”
She set her hands on his shoulders and her slippers on the ground. “That isn’t the right question.”
“Very well, then,” he said with a rakish grin. “How would you like to set sail by week’s end and visit my Great-Aunt Lolly in the south of France?”
She gasped. “Truly?”
He nodded.
But then she shook her head. “I want to say yes, but that is still not the right question.” After all, she recalled how willing he was to take her on a ship without marrying her first.
“Would you like to travel till your heart’s content, then live in Ashbrook Cottage—with me, of course—for the rest of your life?”
“Ashbrook Cottage? But I thought your father . . .”
He shrugged smugly. “I hold the deed now. Not only that, but a friend of mine and I took care of matters with Lord Seabrooke and his henchmen as well.”
“That’s rather mysterious.”
“Would you have me any other way?”
She arched a brow and stepped apart from him. “I’m not certain I’ll have you at all.”
“Stubborn,” he said and leaned in to steal a kiss. Then he knelt down.
Ellie gasped. Jane issued a huff of impatience. Her father cleared his throat at the door, and her mother said, “Hush,” and swatted Father’s arm.
“I have your father’s consent, and a special license,” he said softly. Then he tsked her and stood again, removing a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’ll never get through this if you cry, because then I’ll have to kiss you.”
Her father cleared his throat again.
She blinked rapidly as if that would dry up the flood gathering along the lower rims of her lashes. “It’s just that everyone I care most about in the whole world is here in this room and I’m so happy.”
He dabbed away the tears that dropped as he whispered, “I fell in love with you when we were standing at the crossroads. It started to rain and it just washed over me—the feeling that my life would be empty without you by my side. Marry me, Winn? Be with me for every adventure, and for every quiet moment, and for everything in between?”
Blubbering in earnest now, she nodded. “Of course I will. Just . . . not quite yet.”
Her scoundrel was leaning in to kiss her again when he stopped and blinked in confusion. Then Asher, her friends and her parents all exclaimed a simultaneous “Whot?”
Winnifred sniffed, taking hold of the handkerchief in his lax fingertips. “As you know, Jane, Ellie and I are writing a book. I cannot possibly abandon them. They are my dearest friends and—”
He silenced her with a gentle fingertip to her lips. “I know how important this is to you, and it is your loyalty to your friends that makes me love you all the more.”
“Oh, Winnie, for heaven’s sakes!” Jane declared, rising to her feet. “If you don’t marry this man—”
“This instant,” Ellie chimed in with watery-eyed vehemence.
“—then we’ll never forgive you.”
“But what about our book?”
Asher took her hand in his. “You could always write your chapters in letters to them.”
“Brilliant notion, Lord Holt,” Jane offered. Then, looking a bit chagrined, she shrugged. “And I apologize for threatening to poison you with a vinaigrette and for sending the horde after you.”
“Perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.” He inclined his head. Then he turned back to Winnifred, expectation in his gaze.
She didn’t leave him wondering. “Yes! I’ll marry you without delay.”
Since it was official, she expected him to kiss her. Instead, he kneeled down again.
“There’s one more thing you should know,” he said, unsheathing his pearl-handled knife from his boot.
She gasped, eyes wide. “But how did you get it back?”
“Winn,” he said with a grin and a lift of his dark brows, “have I got a story to tell you.”
Epilogue
South of France
October
Winnifred found Asher in the garden on the bluff where they often stood together, gazing out beyond the limestone balustrade toward the vast blue of the cape. The afternoon sun was low enough in the sky to gild the breaking waves and the tops of palm tree fronds rustling in the Mediterranean breeze.
They’d been living in this paradisiacal white stone chateau as guests of Sir Roderick and Liliandra since they’d arrived in April.
Months ago, after learning the news that Sir Roderick’s hunting lodge had been sold, Aunt Lolly and Sir Roderick had set sail for England from their island home. The sale had meant that the treasonous privateer, Sir Roderick Devine, had been declared dead, and it was now safe for him to return.
Yet once they reached the coast of France, Lolly had been in the grip of a malaria fever. But she was determined to meet her great-nephew at last, so Sir Roderick vowed to bring him to her.
Winnifred recalled the instant she’d first met Lolly. She couldn’t believe that the slender, spirited woman with the dark eyes and shoulder-length hair the color of moonlight had ever been sick. Lolly was more full of life than anyone she’d ever met.
With a hearty embrace, she’d welcomed Asher as if he were her own son, then welcomed Winnifred with the same motherly affection. Well, if Mother had been a pirate.
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Smiling at the thought, Winnifred grazed her fingertips over the smooth trunks of the skinned palm trees along the familiar stone path and made her way to Asher.
With his head bent and hands clasped behind his back, his attention seemed to be on the brightly colored fish in the fountain pool. As she drew closer, however, she noted the pensive furrows on his brow and wondered what was weighing on his mind.
Yet the instant he turned to see her approach, his contemplative frown disappeared into an easy grin. He held out his hand to her. “Have you finished your chapters, at last?”
“As you will note by the dreadful black stains on my fingers,” she said, offering them for inspection. He took hold of her hands and tugged her into his arms, drawing in a deep breath as she melted lovingly against him. “I fear it will take days before the ink will wash away.”
“All the better for me, because it appears you’ve given yourself a dark freckle here on your chin as well.”
She grinned when he kissed her there. “That must have been when I was thinking of how to answer some of Jane’s questions. She requires more information to understand just how and when I realized that you were a gentleman with honorable intent instead of a scoundrel bent on seduction. Though I suspect she has a personal reason for wanting to know. She mentioned a certain man in her letter.”
“Did you give her an answer, then?”
“I didn’t. I’m afraid my mind started to wander to . . . this morning.”
A wicked gleam lit his gaze. “Before our sea bath or after?”
“During,” she said on a low sigh as his lips grazed her earlobe and he began to nibble her neck. “You proved that the water wasn’t too cold, after all.”
“You kept me quite warm and snug.” He went back to the mark on her chin. “This gives me ideas of how I could put freckles all over your body and pay homage to them.”
“I will not have spots of ink all over my body. What will my maid think?”
“Likely that you’ve been frolicking in the buff with your husband in the broad light of day.” He waggled his brows with meaning and she blushed, thinking of after sea bathing. She’d had sand in more places than she ever thought existed on herself.
Lord Holt Takes a Bride Page 28
