Royally Ever After

He turned to her.

She stood watching him. Her expression had grown serious, and he couldn’t read it.

He grew anxious. If he muddled this part, he was finished.

“I realize I made a very bad first impression,” he said. “But I can’t apologize. If I hadn’t behaved ill, you wouldn’t have behaved ill, and then where should we be?”

“Not in Battersea Fields, certainly,” she said. “This . . . it . . .” Her lower lip trembled. Her eyes filled.

She covered her face and wept then, great, racking sobs, as uninhibited as her laughter.

Heart pounding, he closed the distance between them and wrapped his arms about her and held her.

The storm abated as suddenly as it had begun. After a moment, she tried to draw away. He didn’t let go. “I only want to know I’m forgiven,” he said.

“I forgive you,” she said. “That was not what I . . .” She paused and swallowed. “My sister was going away, and I was so sure I couldn’t be happy again, for a very long time.”

“And now?”

She didn’t answer, but she pushed, harder this time, and reluctantly he released her. She’d felt right in his arms. She’d felt right, he realized, from the moment she’d slapped him with her glove.

She started to turn away.

“You did the right thing,” he said, “calling me to account.”

She waved this away. “I was pot-valiant.”

“You’d have done it even if you’d been fully sober,” he said. “You might have done it differently, but you would have acted—out of love and loyalty and . . . all the right things.”

She turned back to him, surprised.

“I want to make reparations,” he said.

“You’ve done that,” she said. Her expression grew wry. “What a horrid waking up I had today.”

“I’ve had my share of those,” he said.

“You said you’d seen drunken friends home before,” she said. “I’ve never done anything like that before in my life.”

“Perhaps I bring out something special in you,” he said.

“I was mortified,” she said. “I was positive it would be years before I could look myself in the eye, let alone you.” She looked up. “I begin to understand why men do it. A duel clears the air and settles everything.”

“And one can be friends again,” he said.

“We can’t be friends again,” she said. “We weren’t friends before. Our worlds would never have overlapped if not for Althea’s marrying Prince Louis.”

“The world changes on that if,” he said. “We met, we had words, we had a duel. And now that we’ve cleared the air, I should like to start over.”

The color rising in her face told him she was beginning to understand what he was about.

“I beg that you won’t judge me by my actions yesterday,” he said.

She stared down at the toes of her purple boots. “They were not, all things considered, consistently bad actions,” she said.

“I improve on acquaintance, people say,” he said. “Well, Bates wouldn’t say it, but one must bear in mind that he’s lately had a severe disappointment in love, which makes him bitter and quarrelsome. However, Miss Renfrew seems well able to hold her own with him, and really, I don’t care much about them. I only care whether you will do me the honor of allowing me to take you for a drive in Hyde Park tomorrow afternoon.”

She stared at her boots for quite a long time. She bit her lip.

He waited, calm on the outside, while his heart attempted to break all previous speed records.

Finally she looked up. “Are you quite sure?” she said.

Speeches wanted to tumble out of him, wild declarations. But that was mad. They’d met only yesterday. He would take this one step at a time, if it killed him.

“Quite,” he said.

Castle de Grey, four weeks later

Lovedon drew Chloe into the passage between the drawing room and the picture gallery.

“It was here, wasn’t it?” Lovedon said. “This was where you heard me talking rot about Prince Louis and your sister.”

“Yes,” she said. “But this isn’t an immense royal wedding, only a dinner party, and we’ll be missed.”

“Let them miss us,” he said.

He’d arranged the dinner party with his cousin the Duchess of Marchmont. She would have a very good idea why Lovedon had slipped out of the drawing room with Miss Sharp. Being far from conventional, Her Grace would cover up for them.

He wrapped his arms about Chloe and kissed her, firmly, so that there would be no question about it, and lingeringly, so that she wouldn’t forget it in a hurry. And yes, certainly, he did it because he needed to and had needed to for what felt like eternity.

“There,” he said, when he was sure he’d done the job properly. She started to pull away, but she stumbled, and he caught her about the waist. Her perfect waist, that went with the rest of her perfect body.

“I am not drunk,” she said.

“I know that,” he said. “I shouldn’t have sneaked you in here if you were. You need to be completely in your senses.”

“That’s impossible, after what you just did,” she said.

Her voice was a little husky, and even in the passage’s dim light, he saw the soft glow in her eyes.

“Somewhat in your senses will be sufficient,” he said. “But not dead drunk. That wouldn’t be fair. And I need you to answer more or less rationally.” He went on in a rush, “I meant to take this in slow stages, but I’m so stupidly in love with you that slow and steady is only going to drive me mad.”

“In love,” she said softly.

“Yes, of course. How could I not be? I meant to be romantic, but this was the best I could do on short notice. That is, I didn’t mean it to be short notice. I meant to wait until at least Tuesday next, but preferably until September. But there you were, sitting across the dinner table, and I was thinking how agreeable it would be if we could go upstairs to the same bedroom, instead of separate houses, and you could sit in my lap instead of all the way across the table on a chair. And then . . .” He trailed off because his brain was conjuring images that activated his breeding organs while deadening his powers of speech and clear thinking.

He sounded, in short, like a complete nitwit.

“I’m trying to decide,” she said, “whether this is meant to be an offer of carte blanche or a proposal of marriage.”

“I adore you,” he said.

“That declaration could take things either way,” she said.

“My dear Chloe, if you don’t marry me, I’ll do something rash.”

“By which you mean, I presume, hitting yourself in the head repeatedly with the singing bird pistols until you lose consciousness and I take pity on you and say yes.”

“I will certainly do that if necessary.”

“Oh, you’re the most ridiculous man. Of course I’ll say yes. I was saying yes, very likely, at the same moment I threw champagne in your face. And I think it’s the most romantic thing in the world, your proposing in this passage, instead of properly, on your knees in, say, our drawing room.”

“I hoped you’d think that.”

“You knew I’d think that,” she said. “It’s a tragic thing, but our minds are strangely alike.”

“Yes, but I love you anyway,” he said. He pulled her close again. “And I challenge you to put up with me until death us do part.”

She reached up and caught him about the n

eck. “My lord,” she said, “the satisfaction which your lordship has demanded, it is of course impossible for me to decline.”

Despite Lord Lovedon’s impatience, the marriage had to wait for the bride’s dress and the bridesmaids’ dresses, and these things take time if they’re to be done properly. Since every item issuing from Maison Noirot was always done properly, it was nearly September before Chloe Sharp became Lady Lovedon.

They were married, naturally, in the Gold Drawing Room of Castle de Grey, and the laughing way they looked at each other at the end—so obviously sharing a private joke—told all the world that yes, undoubtedly, they’d married for love.

Author’s Note

Not only are the singing bird pistols based on historical fact, but they still exist. To watch these wondrous mechanical devices in action, please go to:

http://www.christies.com/singing-bird-pistols-en-1422-3.aspx

The Jilting of Lord Rothwick

8 February 1840

Two o’clock in the afternoon

The rain, two degrees from sleet, beat down with unrelenting fury. It reduced the rolling landscape to a grey blur, and turned the graveled driveway into a river.

Hugh Fitzwalter, the third Marquess of Rothwick, slammed the door knocker again. Findley’s staff had picked a fine time to go deaf.

After a fifty-mile ride from London, the frigid wet had penetrated his lordship’s overcoat and was working its way through the coat underneath. It seeped into his boots and dripped icily from his hat, down his neck, and into his neckcloth.

The door opened at last, and the wind and rain rushed in, spraying the butler, Freets. In a better frame of mind, Rothwick would have found the man’s expression comical. His lordship was not in a better frame of mind.

After one wild look at the broad-shouldered figure on the doorstep, Freets collected his wits and backed out of the way. “I do beg your pardon, my lord,” he said. “I’ll have someone see to your lordship’s horse. I hope your lordship has not waited long.”

“No more than a quarter hour,” Rothwick growled.

The butler’s face went white then red, and his eyes widened in terror.