The Duke and I

  “And your mouth.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  “And your—oh, my, I think he has your nose as well.”

  “I’m told,” Michael said in an amused voice, “that I was involved in his creation, too, but I have yet to see any evidence.”

  Francesca looked at him with so much love that it nearly took Violet’s breath away. “He has your charm,” she said.

  Violet laughed, and then she laughed again. There was too much happiness inside of her—she couldn’t possibly hold it in. “I think it’s time we introduced this little fellow to his family,” she said. “Don’t you?”

  Francesca held out her arms to take the baby, but Violet turned away. “Not just yet,” she said. She wanted to hold him a while longer. Maybe until Tuesday.

  “Mother, I think he might be hungry.”

  Violet assumed an arch expression. “He’ll let us know.”

  “But—”

  “I know a thing or two about babies, Francesca Bridgerton Stirling.” Violet grinned down at John. “They adore their grandmamas, for example.”

  He gurgled and cooed, and then—she was positive—he smiled.

  “Come with me, little one,” she whispered, “I have so much to tell you.”

  And behind her, Francesca turned to Michael and said, “Do you think we’ll get him back for the duration of the visit?”

  He shook his head, then added, “It’ll give us more time to see about getting the little fellow a sister.”

  “Michael!”

  “Listen to the man,” Violet called, not bothering to turn around.

  “Good heavens,” Francesca muttered.

  But she did listen.

  And she did enjoy.

  And nine months later, she said good morning to Janet Helen Stirling.

  Who looked exactly like her father.

  It’s In His Kiss

  If ever there was an ending in one of my books that readers howled about, it was the one in It’s In His Kiss, when Hyacinth’s daughter finds the diamonds for which Hyacinth has been searching for more than a decade . . . and then puts them back. I thought this was exactly what a daughter of Hyacinth and Gareth would do, and really, wasn’t it poetic justice that Hyacinth (a character whom I can only call “a piece of work”) should have a daughter who is just like her?

  But in the end, I agreed with readers: Hyacinth deserved to find those diamonds . . . eventually.

  It’s In His Kiss:

  The 2nd Epilogue

  1847, and all has come full circle. Truly.

  Hmmph.

  It was official, then.

  She had become her mother.

  Hyacinth St. Clair fought the urge to bury her face in her hands as she sat on the cushioned bench at Mme. Langlois, Dressmaker, by far the most fashionable modiste in all London.

  She counted to ten, in three languages, and then, just for good measure, swallowed and let out an exhale. Because, really, it would not do to lose her temper in such a public setting.

  No matter how desperately she wanted to throttle her daughter.

  “Mummy.” Isabella poked her head out from behind the curtain. Hyacinth noted that the word had been a statement, not a question.

  “Yes?” she returned, affixing onto her face an expression of such placid serenity she might have qualified for one of those pietà paintings they had seen when last they’d traveled to Rome.

  “Not the pink.”

  Hyacinth waved a hand. Anything to refrain from speaking.

  “Not the purple, either.”

  “I don’t believe I suggested purple,” Hyacinth murmured.

  “The blue’s not right, and nor is the red, and frankly, I just don’t understand this insistence society seems to have upon white, and well, if I might express my opinion—”

  Hyacinth felt herself slump. Who knew motherhood could be so tiring? And really, shouldn’t she be used to this by now?

  “—a girl really ought to wear the color that most complements her complexion, and not what some overimportant ninny at Almack’s deems fashionable.”

  “I agree wholeheartedly,” Hyacinth said.

  “You do?” Isabella’s face lit up, and Hyacinth’s breath positively caught, because she looked so like her own mother in that moment it was almost eerie.

  “Yes,” Hyacinth said, “but you’re still getting at least one in white.”

  “But—”

  “No buts!”

  “But—”

  “Isabella.”

  Isabella muttered something in Italian.

  “I heard that,” Hyacinth said sharply.

  Isabella smiled, a curve of lips so sweet that only her own mother (certainly not her father, who freely admitted himself wound around her finger) would recognize the deviousness underneath. “But did you understand it?” she asked, blinking three times in rapid succession.

  And because Hyacinth knew that she would be trapped by her lie, she gritted her teeth and told the truth. “No.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Isabella said. “But if you’re interested, what I said was—”

  “Not—” Hyacinth stopped, forcing her voice to a lower volume; panic at what Isabella might say had caused her outburst to come out overly loud. She cleared her throat. “Not now. Not here,” she added meaningfully. Good heavens, her daughter had no sense of propriety. She had such opinions, and while Hyacinth was always in favor of a female with opinions, she was even more in favor of a female who knew when to share such opinions.

  Isabella stepped out of her dressing room, clad in a lovely gown of white with sage green trimming that Hyacinth knew she’d turn her nose up at, and sat beside her on the bench. “What are you whispering about?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t whispering,” Hyacinth said.

  “Your lips were moving.”

  “Were they?”

  “They were,” Isabella confirmed.

  “If you must know, I was sending off an apology to your grandmother.”

  “Grandmama Violet?” Isabella asked, looking around. “Is she here?”

  “No, but I thought she was deserving of my remorse, nonetheless.”

  Isabella blinked and cocked her head to the side in question. “Why?”

  “All those times,” Hyacinth said, hating how tired her voice sounded. “All those times she said to me, ‘I hope you have a child just like you . . .’ ”

  “And you do,” Isabella said, surprising her with a light kiss to the cheek. “Isn’t it just delightful?”

  Hyacinth looked at her daughter. Isabella was nineteen. She’d made her debut the year before, to grand success. She was, Hyacinth thought rather objectively, far prettier than she herself had ever been. Her hair was a breathtaking strawberry blond, a throwback to some long-forgotten ancestor on heaven knew which side of the family. And the curls—oh, my, they were the bane of Isabella’s existence, but Hyacinth adored them. When Isabella had been a toddler, they’d bounced in perfect little ringlets, completely untamable and always delightful.

  And now . . . Sometimes Hyacinth looked at her and saw the woman she’d become, and she couldn’t even breathe, so powerful was the emotion squeezing across her chest. It was a love she couldn’t have imagined, so fierce and so tender, and yet at the same time the girl drove her positively batty.

  Right now, for example.

  Isabella was smiling innocently at her. Too innocently, truth be told, and then she looked down at the slightly poufy skirt on the dress Hyacinth loved (and Isabella would hate) and picked absently at the green ribbon trimmings.

  “Mummy?” she said.

  It was a question this time, not a statement, which meant that Isabella wanted something, and (for a change) wasn’t quite certain how to go about getting it.

  “Do you think this year—”

  “No,” Hyacinth said. And this time she really did send up a silent apology to her mother. Good heavens, was this what Violet had gone through? Eight times?

&
nbsp; “You don’t even know what I was going to ask.”

  “Of course I know what you were going to ask. When will you learn that I always know?”

  “Now that is not true.”

  “It’s more true than it is untrue.”

  “You can be quite supercilious, did you know that?”

  Hyacinth shrugged. “I’m your mother.”

  Isabella’s lips clamped into a line, and Hyacinth enjoyed a full four seconds of peace before she asked, “But this year, do you think we can—”

  “We are not traveling.”

  Isabella’s lips parted with surprise. Hyacinth fought the urge to let out a triumphal shout.

  “How did you kn—”

  Hyacinth patted her daughter’s hand. “I told you, I always know. And much as I’m sure we would all enjoy a bit of travel, we will remain in London for the season, and you, my girl, will smile and dance and look for a husband.”

  Cue the bit about becoming her mother.

  Hyacinth sighed. Violet Bridgerton was probably laughing about this, this very minute. In fact, she’d been laughing about it for nineteen years. “Just like you,” Violet liked to say, grinning at Hyacinth as she tousled Isabella’s curls. “Just like you.”

  “Just like you, Mother,” Hyacinth murmured with a smile, picturing Violet’s face in her mind. “And now I’m just like you.”

  An hour or so later. Gareth, too, has grown and changed, although, we soon shall see, not in any of the ways that matter . . .

  Gareth St. Clair leaned back in his chair, pausing to savor his brandy as he glanced around his office. There really was a remarkable sense of satisfaction in a job well-done and completed on time. It wasn’t a sensation he’d been used to in his youth, but it was something he’d come to enjoy on a near daily basis now.

  It had taken several years to restore the St. Clair fortunes to a respectable level. His father—he’d never quite got ’round to calling him anything else—had stopped his systematic plundering and eased into a vague sort of neglect once he learned the truth about Gareth’s birth. So Gareth supposed it could have been a great deal worse.

  But when Gareth had assumed the title, he discovered that he’d inherited debts, mortgages, and houses that had been emptied of almost all valuables. Hyacinth’s dowry, which had increased with prudent investments upon their marriage, went a long way toward fixing the situation, but still, Gareth had had to work harder and with more diligence than he’d ever dreamed possible to wrench his family out of debt.

  The funny thing was, he’d enjoyed it.

  Who would have thought that he, of all people, would find such satisfaction in hard work? His desk was spotless, his ledgers neat and tidy, and he could put his fingers on any important document in under a minute. His accounts always summed properly, his properties were thriving, and his tenants were healthy and prosperous.

  He took another sip of his drink, letting the mellow fire roll down his throat. Heaven.

  Life was perfect. Truly. Perfect.

  George was finishing up at Cambridge, Isabella would surely choose a husband this year, and Hyacinth . . .

  He chuckled. Hyacinth was still Hyacinth. She’d become a bit more sedate with age, or maybe it was just that motherhood had smoothed off her rough edges, but she was still the same outspoken, delightful, perfectly wonderful Hyacinth.

  She drove him crazy half the time, but it was a nice sort of crazy, and even though he sometimes sighed to his friends and nodded tiredly when they all complained about their wives, secretly he knew he was the luckiest man in London. Hell, England even. The world.

  He set his drink down, then tapped his fingers against the elegantly wrapped box sitting on the corner of his desk. He’d purchased it that morning at Mme. LaFleur, the dress shop he knew Hyacinth did not frequent, in order to spare her the embarrassment of having to deal with salespeople who knew every piece of lingerie in her wardrobe.

  French silk, Belgian lace.

  He smiled. Just a little bit of French silk, trimmed with a minuscule amount of Belgian lace.

  It would look heavenly on her.

  What there was of it.

  He sat back in his chair, savoring the daydream. It was going to be a long, lovely night. Maybe even . . .

  His eyebrows rose as he tried to remember his wife’s schedule for the day. Maybe even a long, lovely afternoon. When was she due home? And would she have either of the children with her?

  He closed his eyes, picturing her in various states of undress, followed by various interesting poses, followed by various fascinating activities.

  He groaned. She was going to have to return home very soon, because his imagination was far too active not to be satisfied, and—

  “Gareth!”

  Not the most mellifluous of tones. The lovely erotic haze floating about his head disappeared entirely. Well, almost entirely. Hyacinth might not have looked the least bit inclined for a bit of afternoon sport as she stood in the doorway, her eyes narrowed and jaw clenched, but she was there, and that was half the battle.

  “Shut the door,” he murmured, rising to his feet.

  “Do you know what your daughter did?”

  “Your daughter, you mean?”

  “Our daughter,” she ground out. But she shut the door.

  “Do I want to know?”

  “Gareth!”

  “Very well,” he sighed, followed by a dutiful “What did she do?”

  He’d had this conversation before, of course. Countless times. The answer usually had something to do with something involving marriage and Isabella’s somewhat unconventional views on the subject. And of course, Hyacinth’s frustration with the whole situation.

  It rarely varied.

  “Well, it wasn’t so much what she did,” Hyacinth said.

  He hid his smile. This was also not unexpected.

  “It’s more what she won’t do.”

  “Jump to your bidding?”

  “Gareth.”

  He halved the distance between them. “Aren’t I enough?”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He reached out, tugged at her hand, pulled her gently against him. “I always jump to your bidding,” he murmured.

  She recognized the look in his eye. “Now?” She twisted around until she could see the closed door. “Isabella is upstairs.”

  “She won’t hear.”

  “But she could—”

  His lips found her neck. “There’s a lock on the door.”

  “But she’ll know—”

  He started working on the buttons on her frock. He was very good at buttons. “She’s a smart girl,” he said, stepping back to enjoy his handiwork as the fabric fell away. He loved when his wife didn’t wear a chemise.

  “Gareth!”

  He leaned down and took one rosy-tipped breast into his mouth before she could object.

  “Oh, Gareth!” And her knees went weak. Just enough for him to scoop her up and take her to the sofa. The one with the extra-deep cushions.

  “More?”

  “God, yes,” she groaned.

  He slid his hand under her skirt until he could tickle her senseless. “Such token resistance,” he murmured. “Admit it. You always want me.”

  “Twenty years of marriage isn’t admission enough?”

  “Twenty-two years, and I want to hear it from your lips.”

  She moaned when he slipped a finger inside of her. “Almost always,” she conceded. “I almost always want you.”

  He sighed for dramatic effect, even as he smiled into her neck. “I shall have to work harder, then.”

  He looked up at her. She was gazing down at him with an arch expression, clearly over her fleeting attempt at uprightness and respectability.

  “Much harder,” she agreed. “And a bit faster, too, while you’re at it.”

  He laughed out loud at that.

  “Gareth!” Hyacinth might be a wanton in private, but she was always aware of the servants.

&
nbsp; “Don’t worry,” he said with a smile. “I’ll be quiet. I’ll be very, very quiet.” With one easy movement, he bunched her skirts well above her waist and slid down until his head was between her legs. “It’s you, my darling, who will have to control your volume.”

  “Oh. Oh. Oh . . .”

  “More?”

  “Definitely more.”

  He licked her then. She tasted like heaven. And when she squirmed, it was always a treat.

  “Oh my heavens. Oh my . . . Oh my . . .”

  He smiled against her, then swirled a circle on her until she let out a quiet little shriek. He loved doing this to her, loved bringing her, his capable and articulate wife, to senseless abandon.

  Twenty-two years. Who would have thought that after twenty-two years he’d still want this one woman, this one woman only, and this one woman so intensely?

  “Oh, Gareth,” she was panting. “Oh, Gareth . . . More, Gareth . . .”

  He redoubled his efforts. She was close. He knew her so well, knew the curve and shape of her body, the way she moved when she was aroused, the way she breathed when she wanted him. She was close.

  And then she was gone, arching and gasping until her body went limp.

  He chuckled to himself as she batted him away. She always did that when she was done, saying she couldn’t bear one more touch, that she’d surely die if she wasn’t given the chance to float down to normalcy.

  He moved, curling against her body until he could see her face. “That was nice,” she said.

  He lifted a brow. “Nice?”

  “Very nice.”

  “Nice enough to reciprocate?”

  Her lips curved. “Oh, I don’t know if it was that nice.”

  His hand went to his trousers. “I shall have to offer a repeat engagement, then.”

  Her lips parted in surprise.

  “A variation on a theme, if you will.”

  She twisted her neck to look down. “What are you doing?”

  He grinned lasciviously. “Enjoying the fruits of my labors.” And then she gasped as he slid inside of her, and he gasped from the sheer pleasure of it all, and then he thought how very much he loved her.

  And then he thought nothing much at all.