He settled his arms back around her. “Soon. Soon it’ll be only you and only me, for as long as we want.”
She gave him a wicked smile. “In the meantime, let’s practice.”
Epilogue
Ten Years Later
The spacious hallway of the Duke of Caversham’s London residence was lit by a single candle, burning low. Shadows stretched long and languid at each end of the room, waxing and waning as the candle flickered. A thick eiderdown of silence lay over the grand space, rendering it cosy and peaceful. An onlooker would never have guessed at the noise and bustle that filled the house by day.
The light of an approaching lamp began as a pinprick in the stained glass of the front door, growing larger and rounder and sprinkling multicoloured shards of light across the floor like scattered jewels. Faint laughter rang out, a daytime sound that the candle answered by strengthening its flame.
A liveried footman opened the door, and an oddly shaped silhouette blacked out the lamplight for a moment. It ducked, stumbled a little but regained its footing, and emerged into the candlelight as Malcolm Locke, Duke of Caversham, carrying his duchess in his arms.
Selina pounded Malcolm’s shoulder with a playful fist. “Put me down! I saw the way you and Louis were working through the claret at supper. You’ll drop me!”
Malcolm was not drunk, in fact. If his head was filled with a pleasant cotton-ball sensation, it was simply due to the lateness of the hour. A lifetime of trial and error had taught him not to compete with Louis when it came to drinking wine. But Selina knew that, of course.
He feigned a stagger and let her slender body slip through his arms a little. Selina let out a gasp of laughter, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Don’t! We’ll wake the children.”
Malcolm nodded towards the top of the stairs. “Too late, I’m afraid, on at least two counts.”
Selina glanced over her shoulder and gave a rueful smile as Malcolm set her gently on the ground.
Clinging to the bannister on the first landing was a little girl in a white nightdress, a tangle of dark curls forming a halo around her head. Sitting beside her with his feet on the next step down and his head leaning sleepily against his sister’s knee was the future tenth Duke of Caversham. He rubbed his eyes and yawned.
Selina glided up the stairs, a swan in her silver ballgown, and picked him up, though he was really getting too old for it. She settled his nodding head against her shoulder and gave her daughter a stern look. “This is no hour to be out of bed, Sophia.”
“You are out of bed, Mama,” she answered pertly, and put a finger still a little chubby with baby fat into her mouth.
“That is a very good point,” said Malcolm, reaching them moments behind Selina. He bent down and gently removed the finger. “Or it would be, if you were not nine years old, and we were not fully grown.”
“It was not Sophia who woke me, Mama,” said the sleepy heir, raising his head from his mother’s shoulder. “It was Percy.”
Sophia stepped aside, revealing the evidence for this assertion in the form of the slumbering dog, now a little grey around the muzzle.
Selina caught Malcolm’s eye. He was grinning, and not trying hard enough to hide it. She gave him a resigned shake of her head. “Then Percy is a very bad dog. But we will forgive him if you all go to back to bed now.”
“I’ll ring for Nurse Betty,” said Malcolm.
“No, don’t wake her.” Selina shifted her son’s weight to one arm and offered a hand to Sophia. “Come along, now. I’ll tuck you in.”
Sophia stopped to tickle Percy’s ears until he stirred again, yawned hugely, and pattered along to his customary place at Selina’s ankle. Only then did she accept her mother’s hand, turning her head aside in a futile attempt to hide her own yawn from her parents.
“Did you see Aunt Anthea?” she asked.
“Yes, we did.”
“And Uncle George? And Aunt Edith and Uncle Nat?”
“Yes, them too.” Selina glanced back at Malcolm. “Do ring for Brady, please. I should get ready for bed myself.”
Malcolm stuck his hands in his pockets and leaned against the bannister his daughter had just vacated, watching his family – the three of them who were awake, at any rate – make their slow way back towards the nursery. Sophia’s questions chirruped on, interrupted ever more by her yawns.
“And Uncle Alex and Aunt Daisy? And our friend Lord Louis? And Aunt Isobel and Uncle –”
“Yes, petal, they were all there too. Now we must be nice and quiet, or we’ll wake the others.”
They crossed the silver square of starlight flung from a window and rounded the corner out of sight. Malcolm heaved a sigh, something between contentment and wistfulness settling warm and heavy in his chest.
He trod carefully on his way to his own rooms, avoiding the odd floorboard that creaked, and wending his way in zigzag fashion between one wall and the next. Ah. Perhaps Selina was right about Louis and the claret.
She was right about most things, after all.
He pushed open the door to the private sitting room he shared with Selina. The inner door on the left led to the master bedroom, and the right hand one led to Selina’s, which after ten years of marriage still saw only occasional use. It might not be fashionable to share a bed, but it was certainly pleasant.
The coals were still smouldering hot in the fireplace. Malcolm sat down in his favourite armchair and pulled off his boots one by one, stretching his feet towards the heat.
There would soon be more light in the room than the orange glow of the fire. In the slice of window visible between the curtains,
