by Anna Bradley
“You’re warm. I’ve never known anyone warmer than you.” Emma gazed up at him, firelight flickering in her eyes. “Please, Samuel.”
Samuel’s hesitation melted away at that soft plea. He could refuse her nothing. So he shed his coat and boots and stretched out on the bed next to her. She snuggled close, and he opened his arms to her.
“There, that’s better.” Emma lay her head on his chest with a happy sigh.
They lay there together listening to the crackling of the fire, Samuel holding her as tightly as he dared, his heart thundering in his chest. Just when he thought she’d fallen asleep, Emma asked quietly, “Lord Dunn?”
“Locked in the icehouse. Lovell and Humphries have gone after the magistrate. They’ll see to it he’s dealt with.”
Samuel said no more, and Emma didn’t ask. Neither of them wanted to talk about Dunn. His neck was destined for a noose, just as Brixton had said. As far as Samuel was concerned, there was no reason to ever speak of Dunn again.
All he wanted to think about, all he cared about, was Emma.
Samuel stroked her hair. “You should sleep, love.”
“I will, but I need to say something to you first. When I was in the icehouse with Dunn, when he…he attacked me—”
“Emma, please—”
She clutched at his hand, her fingers trembling. “Shh. Let me speak now, Samuel, and we need never mention Lord Dunn again.”
Samuel couldn’t speak, but he held her as close as he could, so she knew he was there, and she was safe. That she would always be safe in his arms.
“Those moments in the icehouse were…I was frightened, Samuel, but all the terror I felt, all the rage at Lord Dunn for everything he’d done, was nothing at all to the regret I felt for not telling you how much I love you when I had the chance.” Emma turned his face down to hers with a hand on his cheek. “I never thought a man could come to mean so much to me, but you hold my whole heart in your hands. You’re everything to me. I love you, Samuel.”
“Emma, my love.” Samuel closed his eyes, buried his face in her hair and let her words sink into him, into the deepest corners of his heart.
They were quiet for a time, content to lie wrapped in each other’s arms, until Emma wriggled closer and rested her cheek against his chest. “Your heart is beating so quickly,” she murmured sleepily.
“Yes, I’m, ah…a little nervous.”
“Nervous? Why should you be nervous?”
Samuel smiled against her hair. “Because I know myself to be a presumptuous, demanding, arrogant marquess, but I’m hoping you’ll agree to marry me in spite of it, though I daresay you could find a more agreeable husband.”
Emma went so still, for one breathless moment Samuel thought she might refuse him, but then she rose onto her elbow, a smile tugging at her lips as she looked down at him. “I don’t want an agreeable husband, Lord Lymington. I want you.”
“Oh, you have me, Miss Downing. You’ve had me from the start.”
“And I know just what to do with you, my lord.” Emma dropped a playful kiss on the end of his nose.
Samuel chuckled as he eased her onto her back and pressed his lips to the tempting red ones he loved so well. “Do you, indeed? What’s that, then?”
Emma gazed up at him, her blue eyes shining. “Keep you forever, Lord Lymington. Keep you forever.”
Epilogue
No. 26 Maddox Street, London
December 1795
“I do believe I’ve overindulged in Mrs. Beeson’s biscuits.” Emma licked the corner of her lip where a smidgen of sweet quince preserves lingered, then dropped her hand to her belly.
“It’s the preserves that make us do it.” Georgiana pushed a crumb-filled plate away from her with a sigh. “We’re all helpless against the preserves. For pity’s sake, my stomach is nearly as swollen as Cecilia’s.”
Predictably, Cecilia’s cheeks turned as red as a peony. “I beg your pardon, Lady Haslemere, but that’s a shocking thing to say.”
“Really, Georgiana, you’re too ridiculous.” Sophia snatched up the tufted pillow on the settee beside her and stuffed it behind her shoulders. “It’s plain to see no one’s stomach is as swollen as Cecilia’s.”
Lord Darlington rose from the table in the corner where he was playing chess with Lord Haslemere, and went to his wife’s side. “You’ve never looked more beautiful,” he murmured, kissing her cheek.
“You’re leaving the game now, Darlington?” Lord Haslemere abandoned the chess board and squeezed onto the settee beside his wife. “I was one move away from beating you.”
“If I recall, Sophia, your own belly was swollen not so very long ago.” Emma shot Sophia a sly look. “And Georgiana’s will be too, before long.”
“My goodness, Emma, Lord Haslemere and I have only been wed for six months! It’s much too soon for children yet.” But a dreamy look came into Georgiana’s eyes, and she let out a yearning, very un-Georgiana-like sigh. “Though perhaps a little girl would be rather sweet. Lord Haslemere says he wants a half-dozen.”
Lord Haslemere chuckled. “At least half a dozen, and all of them girls.”
Sophia snorted. “Why, that’s a litter! Shame on you, Lord Haslemere. Your wife is a countess, not a hunting dog.”
“My wife can do anything she sets her mind to.” Lord Haslemere dropped a kiss on Georgiana’s forehead, making her flush up to the roots of her hair, and setting all the girls off into gales of laughter. Georgiana had never been one to blush, but her handsome husband’s teasing pinkened her cheeks every time.
“Still, I can’t help but agree with Lord Haslemere,” Sophia went on. “Little girls are sweet, especially little girls who have their father’s beautiful gray eyes.”
“And their mother’s beautiful face.” Lord Gray looked up from the bundle he held in his arms to give his wife a secret smile.
“Gray eyes are lovely. One might think they’d be cold, but they’re not.” Emma dropped her voice to a murmur as she turned to smile at Lord Lymington. “Not at all.”
Lord Lymington was reclining on a chair across from the settee, a glass of port in his hand and his lips quirked with amusement as he listened to them banter, but the gray eyes in question transformed to a soft silver at Emma’s words. “I prefer dark blue eyes, myself.”
The drawing room at the Clifford School wasn’t a large one, but it had never looked quite so small to Lady Amanda as it did now, with all four of her girls and their growing families crowded around the fire.
It was strange, how things seemed to go on very much as they’d always done, until all at once they didn’t, and everything changed, seemingly in the blink of an eye. With one unexpected event coming on the heels of the last as they’d done this year, was it any wonder Lady Amanda had started woolgathering?
Her four dearest girls, two of them now countesses, and the other two marchionesses, of all things. A smile twitched at the corner of Lady Amanda’s lips. One might have predicted Sophia would turn out to be a countess, if only through sheer force of will, but sweet, tenderhearted Cecilia, a marchioness? Lady Amanda hadn’t predicted that, nor had she imagined her practical Georgiana would find love with the Earl of Haslemere, London’s most notorious rake.
Or he had been a rake, before he’d found Georgiana.
Such was the transformative power of love.
Then there was Emma. Of all her girls, Lady Amanda had feared Emma’s ghosts would haunt her forever, but Emma had found her own love in a man who knew her worth, and treasured her heart.
“How does Helena do, Emma?” Lady Amanda asked, rousing herself from her musings. She’d had a notion she might take Helena in at the Clifford School, but Lady Lymington, of all people, had taken a liking to the girl, and invited her to come live at Lymington House.
Emma smiled. “Very well, indeed. Lady Lymington and Lady Flora—t
hat is, she’s Lady Lovell, now—both dote on her. Helena gets on so wonderfully in Kent, I begin to think they’ll never part with her. Will it trouble you if she doesn’t return to London, my lady?”
“Not at all, dearest. I quite like the idea of Helena tucked up quietly in the country rather than in London. It’ll do her good, to have some peace.”
A companionable silence fell, then Cecilia asked, “Shall we read another chapter of Mrs. Parsons? When we left it, the Countess of Wolfenbach’s lady’s maid had been murdered, her desecrated corpse left upon the bed.”
“Who leaves a corpse on a bed?” Georgiana licked a dollop of the preserves off the end of a spoon. “It hardly seems the proper place for such a messy thing.”
“The countess was fleeing her wicked husband, and had no choice but to leave the poor thing where she’d fallen.” Cecilia skimmed to the bottom of the page. “Oh, dear. It’s lucky she fled, because the castle is about to burn to the ground.”
Sophia frowned. “Why don’t I recall the lady’s maid?”
“You were asleep on Lord Gray’s shoulder during that bit, dearest.” Emma patted Sophia’s hand, grinning.
“Why, how absurd you are, Emma. I never fell asleep!”
Cecilia hid a smile. “Never mind. Let’s have another chapter, shall we?”
“By all means, let’s have another chapter.” Lady Amanda let her eyes drift closed as Cecilia opened the book and began to read, letting the smooth, soft voice lull her into another reverie. She’d never been one for daydreaming, but she’d found herself falling into reveries these past months as her world had changed.
“Then I am an outcast, a forsaken orphan, without friends or protectors!” Cecilia cried, pouring out the heroine’s despair before lowering her voice to Mr. Weimar’s villainous growl. “Take comfort, my dearest Matilda, permit me to offer you my hand, my heart, and I will be your protector through life.”
“Her protector, indeed,” Georgiana scoffed. “How can Mathilda be so foolish as to imagine Mr. Weimar is a hero? Why, any lady with any sense can tell he’s an utter villain.”
“Well, he certainly has a villainous voice!” Emma replied with a laugh. “Really, Cecilia, in another life you might have gone on the stage.”
Sophia let out a pensive sigh. “It’s a pity there should always be so many villains hanging about, isn’t it?”
“There are a great many villains, I’m afraid, but there are heroes, too.” Emma reached for Lord Lymington, and clasped his big hand between both of hers.
Lady Amanda took in the four masculine faces arrayed around the drawing room, then her gaze wandered to the door, where Daniel stood half hidden in the shadows, listening to Cecilia read, and watching, always watching the four girls he’d guarded since they were in pinafores. For all that he was a hard man, a menacing man, Daniel’s heart had been open to his girls from the first.
Cecilia finished the chapter, and a companionable silence fell over the room as dusk approached, tinting the shadows on the other side of the window from a pale gray to a darker violet. It was growing late, but there was no place Lady Amanda would rather be than here, tucked into an overstuffed chair, a roaring fire at her feet, with all of her girls surrounding her.
All her girls, but one.
Teresa Anne, Lady Amanda’s only child, the daughter she’d cherished, and been unable to save. Teresa had once been a bright, smiling young lady just like the four gathered around the fire tonight, her deep blue eyes so very much like Emma’s.
Teresa should be here now, her husband at her side, her belly swollen with a child, but she’d long since succumbed to her fate, the victim of an unscrupulous seducer and a cold, unforgiving father.
Lady Amanda had searched London for her. For years, she’d wandered through every filthy street and down every dark alley, Daniel by her side, praying a fair-haired, blue-eyed girl would appear before her like a phoenix from the ashes, a precious flicker of hope in an ocean of filth.
She’d never found her. In the end, Teresa had gone the way of so many young girls just like her, lost to mothers who’d cherished them, but couldn’t save them.
But others had been found, in their places. Others, like Sophia, Cecilia, Georgiana, and Emma who’d been rescued from their sad fates. In their turn they would save others, and so it would go, until there were more girls saved than lost.
And so, one way or another, the phoenix did rise slowly from the ashes.
Cecilia let out a soft laugh, rousing Lady Amanda from her reverie. “Baby Amanda’s fallen asleep again. Such a dear, drowsy little thing.”
Sophia turned a fond eye on her infant daughter, still held in her father’s arms. “She looks so harmless when she’s asleep, doesn’t she? No one would ever guess how fierce she is, to look at her now.”
“I daresay her namesake would,” Emma said softly.
All four of them turned to Lady Amanda, who lingered on each rosy face before she held out her arms for the child. “I’ll rock her for a while, shall I?”
“Of course.” Lord Gray rose, and settled the sleeping child in Lady Amanda’s arms. She cooed at the baby girl as she ran a hand over the downy head, cradling the warm body in her arms.
Outside, the shadows had melted into purple, and from purple to a deep black, black enough to hide whatever wicked deeds London’s sinners chose to commit tonight.
Where there was darkness, there would always be sinners, but there was no darkness that didn’t give way to light. For every villain, there was a hero, and for every broken promise, another one was kept.
For every lost girl, another was found and saved.
The baby girl in Lady Amanda’s arms stirred, the tiny, pink rosebud of her lips opened, and a squawk of pure, infantile fury emerged.
“That’s it, little one,” she whispered into the child’s ear. “Make your voice heard, and someday, you and your sisters will change the world.”
Author’s Notes
Burns, Robert (1786). “Poems, chiefly in the Scottish dialect.” Kilmarnock: John Wilson. p. 138. Retrieved 13 February 2014.
Chaucer, Geoffrey. Troilus and Criseyde. 1609. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/257/257-h/257-h.htm
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Ford, David Nash. Royal Berkshire History. 2004. The footrace between the Earl of Barrymore that Lord Lovell describes to Lady Flora in Chapter Seven in which Lord Barrymore lost a wager to Mr. Bullock truly happened, though it took place in 1790, not 1795. http://www.berkshirehistory.com/bios/rbarry_eofb.html
Knowles, Rachel. “Finding Your Way Around Vauxhall Gardens in Regency London.” March 2019. https://www.regencyhistory.net/2019/03/vauxhall-gardens-finding-your-way-around.html
Murden, Sarah. “William Leftwich and the Ice Well.” January 2019. The Guardian Online. https://georgianera.wordpress.com/2019/01/17/william-leftwich-and-the-ice-well/
Parsons, Eliza. The Castle of Wolfenbach. London: printed for William Lane, at the Minerva Press, and sold by E. Harlow, 1793. https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/parsons/castle/castle.html
Pope, Sir Alexander. “An Essay on Criticism.” 1711. Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/files/7409/7409-h/7409-h.htm
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
Reynolds, Sir Joshua. Sir Banestre Tarleton. 1782. https://ageofrevolution.org/200-object/joshua-reynolds-portrait-sir-banestre-tarleton/
Reynolds, Sir Joshua. The Ladies Waldergrave. 1780. Scottish National Gallery. https://www.na
tionalgalleries.org/art-and-artists/5360/ladies-waldegrave
Romney, George. Emma Hamilton as a Bacchante. 1792. https://www.npg.org.uk/whatson/exhibitions/2002/george-romney/emma-hamilton
Stewart, Doug. “To Be…Or Not: The Greatest Shakespeare Forgery.” Vortigern and Rowena. https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/to-beor-not-the-greatest-shakespeare-forgery-136201/
