‘I’m not sure if I could survive a next time,’ Alistair said. Not that his wife had been anything but healthy throughout, but the anxiety, knowing his mother had died in childbirth, had been hell on him.
Luke wandered over, cake plate in hand, to gaze down at Olivia. Smiling, his brother stroked the baby’s petal-soft cheek. ‘You are going to have your hands full with this one when she starts noticing there are two genders.’
‘As you have your hands full now?’ Alistair glanced over at Jeffrey and Daniel scrapping over the last bit of shortbread.
‘Get your heir and a spare and we will all stop fretting.’
Alistair ignored the jibe. ‘We’ll take what we get.’
A baby set up a long drawn-out wail and Alistair barely managed not to cover his ears.
‘What plot are you two hatching?’ Beauworth asked, joining them. ‘It wouldn’t be a nice glass of brandy in the library, would it?’
Alistair glanced at Julia and she gave a small nod, interpreting his question with ease.
‘Men,’ Eleanor muttered. ‘Julia, let me get you some of that delicious cake.’
Having rescued Lewis, or rather the Marquess of Dart, the men retired to the library, where Alistair poured them all a drink. ‘To Isobel,’ Luke toasted.
They stared at each other in contemplative silence.
Luke shrugged. ‘If not for my mother, our family might never have been reunited.’ He looked at Alistair. ‘What? She loved me in her way. She was just a bit misguided. She would be thrilled to see you had a daughter.’
The other men chuckled and Alistair burst into laughter.
Families. Who needed ’em? He did. He had the most perfect family in the world and who was he to deny his brother his abiding love for his mother.
He raised his glass. ‘To Olivia. The latest addition to the Crawford family.’
The men drank to this toast with a will.
‘The new stables have turned out well,’ Dart said, looking out of the window.
‘It was a good thing all of your beasts were out to grass.’ Beauworth said. ‘I suppose you never did discover how she managed to set them on fire.’
‘Knocked over a lantern,’ Luke said.
‘Since most of the lads were at the tavern in Boxted,’ Alistair added, ‘there was no one around to help her saddle a horse, the one man on duty being up at the house for his dinner.’
Beauworth frowned. ‘Odd that she was there at all.’ The man loved a mystery. Beauworth took his duties as peer very seriously and events in his past made him keen on seeing justice done.
‘Let it lie, Beauworth,’ Luke said. ‘The family is satisfied it was an accident.’
‘As you say.’ Beauworth sipped at his drink and talk turned to other more important matters like crop yields and the best time for haying.
* * *
Later, when Julia and Alistair stood at the front door watching their guests depart, Olivia having been whisked off to the nursery by a doting Digger and an equally doting nanny some time before, Alistair could not resist a kiss on his wife’s cheek. ‘You need your rest.’
She smiled a naughty smile. ‘That is just an excuse and you know it.’
‘You know, it is a while since I have seen you wearing the Dunstan rubies.’ It was their own private code for the naughty things they did in their bed.
‘You are right. It has been too long,’ she said, her lovely eyes smiling up at him. ‘We have time with Olivia off having her nap.’
He put an arm around her waist and to the devil with the footman gazing at the ceiling and Grindle pretending to be invisible, he kissed her full on her delicious mouth.
Together they walked inside, there to beget the next Duke of Dunstan, who learned to love all of his myriad brothers and sisters very well indeed.
* * * * *
EXCLUSIVE EXTRACT
Prince Rafiq must save his desert kingdom’s pride in a prestigious horse race. But he’s shocked when his new equine expert is introduced…as Miss Stephanie Darvill!
Read on for a sneak preview of
THE HARLOT AND THE SHEIKH
by Marguerite Kaye
Prince Rafiq could be wearing tattered rags, and still she would have been in no doubt of his status. It was in his eyes. Not arrogance but a sense of assurance, of entitlement, a confidence that he was master of all he surveyed. And it was there in his stance too, in the set of his shoulders, the powerful lines of his physique. Belatedly garnering the power to move, Stephanie dropped into a deep curtsy.
‘Arise.’
She did as he asked, acutely conscious of her disheveled appearance, dusty clothes, and a face most likely liberally speckled with sand. Those hooded eyes traveled over her person, surveying her from head to foot with a dispassionate, inscrutable expression.
‘Who are you, and why are you here?’ Prince Rafiq asked, when the silence had begun to stretch her nerves to breaking point. He spoke in English, softly accented but perfectly pronounced.
Distracted by the unsettling effect he was having on her while at the same time acutely aware of the need to impress him, Stephanie clasped her hands behind her back and forced herself to meet his eyes, answering in his own language. ‘I am here at your invitation, Your Highness.’
‘I issued no invitation to you, madam.’
‘Perhaps this will help clarify matters,’ Stephanie said, handing him her papers.
The Prince glanced at the document briefly. ‘This is a royal warrant, issued by myself to Richard Darvill, the renowned Veterinary Surgeon attached to the Seventh Hussars. How do you come to have it in your possession?’
Stephanie knitted her fingers more tightly together, as if doing so would stop her legs from trembling. ‘I am Stephanie Darvill, his daughter and assistant. My father could not, in all conscience, abandon his regiment with Napoleon on the loose and our army expected to go into battle at any moment.’
‘And so he saw fit to send his daughter in his place?’
The Prince sounded almost as incredulous as she had been, when Papa suggested this as the perfect solution to her predicament. The enormity of the trust her father had placed in her struck her afresh. She would not let him down. Not again.
Don’t Miss
THE HARLOT AND THE SHEIKH
by Marguerite Kaye
Available February 2017
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Copyright © 2016 by Christine Merrill
ISBN: 978-1-474-05327-3
SECRETS OF THE MARRIAGE BED
© 2016 Ann Lethbridge
Published in Great Britain 2016
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
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Secrets of the Marriage Bed Page 24
