“I suppose this means you’re going home now?”
Sebastian nodded. “Napoleon hasn’t gained the support he needs to spread his wings across Europe again, so as you said, it won’t be long before he is defeated again with the armies that did so previously gathering.”
Montgomery glanced at Rickles, who was still guarding the door before asking Sebastian, “Are there more rebels outside?”
“Quite a few, but I’ve warned this one.” Sebastian thumbed the man who had surrendered. “They will never be forgiven; they will court death if they return home.”
“We deal more harshly with assassins here,” Montgomery said to Charles. “Is banishment enough punishment for you?”
“Sebastian knows my mind. For a Feldlander to lose his home is a grave punishment.”
“Well then! With my job apparently ended, I will say I’m glad your difficulties are over, but I won’t say it’s been a pleasure.”
Sebastian jabbed his ribs. “You know you will miss us.”
“Not a bit,” Montgomery denied.
“And we shall miss you, Monty. You should visit us in Feldland someday, and bring your delightful wife.”
“I don’t have a wife.”
“You will.”
Montgomery wished he were as confident about that. But he glanced at the servant-turned-monarch again, annoyed that he’d been so perfectly fooled. “At least Feldland doesn’t have a buffoon for a king.”
Sebastian snorted. “It was a role!”
“One you played too easily, boy. I need a drink.” And then his eyes widened. “Good God, you let your king drive a coach?! That’s taking disguises a little too far, don’t you think?”
Sebastian laughed. “He insisted. And we will return to Carlton House tomorrow to await passage home. I do owe Prince George an apology as well as an introduction to his actual ally. How do you think he will take the news that it wasn’t actually Feldland’s king who bedeviled him?”
“Depends on his mood, so I’ll go with you to make light of it. If you want to leave here with your current disguises intact, it will avoid a lengthy explanation to the Blackburns, but that’s up to you. In either case, I’ll explain to Vanessa after you’re gone.”
“You ought to do more than that.”
“Yes, I know. And matchmaking doesn’t become you. Stick to bodyguarding.”
Chapter Fifty-four
VANESSA WAS PLEASED WHEN she saw Monty at the bottom of the stairs. Waiting for her? She was smiling before she reached him.
“Thank you for getting me back to my room last night. I must have been very tired not to have woken up when you carried me there.”
“It was an eventful day, but no need for thanks. It was my pleasure. I happen to like holding you in my arms.”
She hoped that was why he was suddenly leading them toward the garden again. To continue where they’d left off yesterday, before her father had found them there?
“D’you know if my father has returned yet?”
“Hoping for another interruption?” he teased. “By the by, what did your mother want with you yesterday that was so pressing she sent your father to fetch you?”
She snorted delicately. “It wasn’t pressing a’tall, she just needed someone to complain to about my father.”
“She’s not pleased that he’s back?”
“Oh, she is, she just hoped for a different sort of reunion with him.”
“I see,” he said.
She smiled to herself. He didn’t nor would he unless she finally told him the whole of it, but that still wasn’t her secret to share.
And then he added with a sigh, “My guardianship has ended.”
Her brows furrowed. “Why does that sound like you’re leaving us?”
“Because my excuse to be here is leaving us.”
He briefly explained that their companions had told the truth about royal blood, but not about who had it.
“Arlo is a king? Really? But he looks so unassuming!”
“That was the point.”
“And you kept that secret all this time?”
“No, I bloody well didn’t know, either, until last night,” he grumbled.
She laughed. “It suddenly feels like we’ve been in a theater all this time. Charley—Sebastian is it?—even asked me for advice about how to act like a commoner! And he said it was to please you!”
“You know he was laughing at us all the while for falling for his performance.”
“I doubt that. If anything he was having fun being someone so different from who he really is. Don’t begrudge him. I find it highly amusing now. But you don’t need to leave when he does. Aren’t you still avoiding duels here in the city—and axes?”
“Sebastian was able to hide in plain sight here, but I wasn’t. However, I did straighten out that mess I had been avoiding, enough so that the respective husbands no longer think I’m quite the culprit and have backed off. So you see, my excuses really are gone to remain tucked away in your home. While I won’t miss Charley, I will miss you. I can’t imagine a better traveling companion on a lifelong journey.”
It was the look he gave her when he picked a flower and handed it to her that made her heart race. Hope was a tricky thing, but in this case, it was suddenly soaring.
Until he asked her, “So you’re going to finish off the Season and find another groom?”
There was hesitancy in that question. And she wasn’t letting go of her hope yet. She moved a little closer to him until their shoulders brushed as they walked.
“No, someone else has already proposed,” she said.
He stopped abruptly and demanded, “Who?”
“You did,” she replied nonchalantly, and then put it out there to win her dream or lose it. “So you’re going to marry me.”
“I am?” he said with a very big smile.
“Yes, you did actually ask, twice I believe, so don’t even think of wiggling out of it.”
“Don’t know how to wiggle. I suppose you could teach me, but I’d rather you didn’t.”
She shoved him back when he started to lean closer. “That wasn’t an answer.”
“Of course it was. I love you, sweetheart, so much that I nearly lost you. I accept your proposal.”
“But I didn’t propose, you did. I was the one accepting.”
“If you say so.”
She pulled him back to her, put her arms around him. “One of these days I might not think you’re teasing and then you’ll be in a pickle.”
“That will never happen, because you know me too well, as I do you, which is why I know you love me, too, Nessi. I don’t need to hear it.”
“But you want to, so I’m saying it, I do love you.”
“Thank God!” he exclaimed.
“You weren’t in doubt,” she reminded.
“No, I wasn’t. But it was still an excruciating wait at Carlton House yesterday for George to return when I’d wanted to go with him. It should have been my voice objecting to that wedding so you’d know bloody well that I did object to your marrying another man. But George insisted I not muck up the intervention with unnecessary complications, which a declaration of love certainly would have done. As for now, you’ll be pleased to know that I already have your father’s permission to court you.”
Her eyes widened. “How the deuce does he know before I do?”
“He mentioned it when I met him yesterday.”
“Just out of the blue?”
“I might have confessed to loving you.”
“Smart of you to get one parent on your side.”
“Do I need to worry about the other one?”
“My mother? Not in the least. But I think we’ve already done sufficient courting. You and I are going straight to the altar.”
“I couldn’t agree more. I’ll arrange for the first bann to be announced today, then we will only have to wait two weeks.”
“It’s only a couple days’ ride to Gretna Green, where we don’
t have to wait a’tall,” she pointed out.
“No, we’ll let your mother do her planning, and my mother will be ecstatic to help, and you’ll have time to order a new wedding dress of your own design, and then we’ll escape to the estate my parents are giving me as a wedding gift, for at least several years of seclusion with parents not invited.”
She laughed. “You’re marrying me just for property?!”
“No, bliss first, then property,” he teased back. “At least I’ll forgo a dowry!”
• • •
IT HAPPENED JUST AS they’d planned, they were married two weeks later directly after the third bann was announced at Sunday service. It had been an excruciating wait, especially because Monty had indeed returned to his parents’ town house. He still called daily, though her parents wouldn’t leave them alone together, one or the other always present, never both together. But whenever they were in the same room they treated each other like strangers, or got into whispered arguments, none of which they wanted to visit on the happy couple. At least at meals the twins kept them distracted from each other.
But the wedding must have softened their hearts, because when Vanessa and Montgomery turned to leave the church as man and wife, she saw her parents kissing, rather hotly, too, and on either side of them, the twins giggling about it.
Vanessa shook her head. After only two weeks her father had forgiven her? William must have realized he still loved her, after all. But she wasn’t annoyed about it. Hadn’t she hoped, deep down, that her parents would get back together?
But at the wedding party that afternoon, she pulled her father aside to ask, “Has Mother blackmailed you into her bed?”
He laughed. “You need to strike that word from your vocabulary, Daughter.”
“So you’re happy about it?”
“I believe I am.”
She humphed. “Then take Mother home to Cheshire and keep her out of London.”
He laughed. “Good advice.” But then seriously, “I don’t need to ask if you’re happy, when it’s so obvious. But don’t let him change you, Nessi. You are perfect as you are.”
“He happens to agree with you, Father, and wouldn’t have me any other way!”
And Emily teased her a while later, “You said he would never marry.”
“I didn’t think he would. I’m pleased to be wrong.”
“I can see that. I knew he wasn’t interested in me, so I’m glad you won him. Really, I’m happy for you.”
She hugged the twin who waxed hot and cold. “I know you are. And I’ll be happy for you when you make up your mind about a husband. You really don’t need to rush it, Em. Be sure first. It’s so much better when you’re sure.”
“Are we going to cry?” Layla asked as she hugged them both.
“We might,” Emily mumbled. “We only just got you back, Nessa, and now you’re leaving again.”
“But I’ve been told I’ll only be a day or two away.”
“Then we’ll both visit you.”
“Not until you’re invited,” Vanessa replied, but softened her words with a grin.
“Of course not, you’ll be on your honeymoon,” Layla agreed.
“Which could last a year or more.”
“Nonsense, we’ll see you soon.”
She was hoping that she and Monty could escape soon when she was besieged by his family, en masse. She’d already met the lot of them, even the nieces and nephews, when her family had been invited to dine at their town house.
Angela Townsend hugged her warmly today and whispered, “His father and I despaired that this day would ever come. It’s such a joy to welcome you to our family.”
And Weston said to Monty, “I suppose I’ll have to tolerate you now. You’re too bloody happy to get annoyed at my jibes anymore.”
It was a complaint and yet it wasn’t. Weston even smiled as he said it. But Andrew still poked him in the ribs, saying, “You still have me, Brother. I promise to take the bait when you feel inclined to boorishness—oh, wait, you always are!”
Weston snorted, but Monty’s eldest sister, Evelyn, put her arm through his and warned Andrew, “Leave him alone. Today is a day for cheer. Baby Boy has joined our ranks.”
“Let’s hope without our trials and tribulations,” Claire put in with a grumble.
Vanessa might have been confused if Monty hadn’t already told her that Evelyn wasn’t talking to her husband and Claire wanted a divorce from hers because she believed he’d cheated on her, even though her entire family had assured her it wasn’t so.
But then Evelyn said to Claire, “Speak for yourself, darling. I’m talking to my husband again.”
Vanessa whispered to Monty, who had just put his arm around her waist, “Did she really call you Baby Boy?”
“They all did for a while. It’s hell being the youngest.” But then before the tiff between his sisters escalated, he grinned at Evelyn. “I think I’m a little too old for that nickname, Evy.”
But Claire, still smarting over Evelyn’s remark, turned to her older sister. “At least he didn’t use his old nickname for you, Evil.”
At which point Brian Townsend said in a warning tone, “The lot of you will remember that this is a gloriously happy day for our family.”
“Of course!” more than one of them said in unison.
But then even he ribbed the groom a little. “The rake never did become you, Montgomery, but I always knew it would only take the right woman to help you to figure that out. Wasn’t so complicated after all, was it?”
Monty laughed. Vanessa guessed what his father was referring to, though she doubted Monty would tell his family it had required royal intervention to free her to marry him. She was so pleased that his parents appeared to like her so much, but now they wanted more grandchildren! When that subject was mentioned, Vanessa extricated herself without blushing.
• • •
“WE SHOULD ARRIVE BEFORE evening tomorrow. The property is near Harwich on the Essex coast. Your father mentioned that you like a view of the sea, so I’m quite pleased with the location. And Mother assured me the staff she hired has the manor cleaned and stocked.”
“Just hired?”
“The house has been empty for a good number of years. And you can pick your own staff if you’d prefer. She just wanted the place ready for us.”
“To be dealt with as needed. Just now, you’ve a wife to be dealt with.”
He rolled her over in the large bed. “Like this?”
He entered her for the second time that night. “Exactly like that,” she said before she gasped, and held on tight.
This was their wedding night, and a nice enough inn to be having it in. And she reminded herself that she could sleep in the coach tomorrow. . . .
“You . . . do that . . . splendidly.”
He threw back his head and laughed. “You spoil me.”
“You object?”
“God, no.”
She drew her nails up his back lightly, then down to grip his buttocks. He surprised her by climaxing with a loud groan, but it was a deep enough plunge that she joined him. She smiled in delight to have caused it.
He rolled to her side then pulled her close. “How did I get so lucky?”
“You got attacked by two Feldland rebels. That started it all.”
“Well, if we want to be precise, George started it all by offering his friendship, which led to this and that and then two Feldland rebels.”
“I’d rather not thank George.”
“I’d rather not thank the rebels.”
“Then you can thank my Snow for shaking me off his back just as you were passing by.”
“I have a feeling your Snow is going to be thanking me.”
She was too tired to ask what he meant, but when they reached his property the next day, he didn’t take her directly into the very large house. He took her straight to the stable, and it only took a moment for her to notice a large area filled with shire horses in assorted colors.
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“They’re all mares,” Monty told her. “My wedding gift to you.”
She turned around and hugged him tightly before she cried.
“So you’ll be happy here?”
“Did you really have any doubt?”
More from the Author
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Beautiful Tempest
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Wildfire In His Arms
Stormy Persuasion
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About the Author
Johanna Lindsey is world-renowned for her “mastery of historical romance” (Entertainment Weekly), with more than sixty million copies of her novels sold. She is the author of fifty-five previous national bestselling novels, many of which reached the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list. Lindsey lives in New Hampshire with her family.
FOR MORE ON THIS AUTHOR:
Authors.SimonandSchuster.com/Johanna-Lindsey
SimonandSchuster.com
Facebook.com/GalleryBooks
@GalleryBooks
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