“You have it,” she whispered.
EPILOGUE
Six years later
KENDRA RAN DOWN Amberley’s marble front steps, then, waiting for Trick, paused and looked back at the house. She smiled at the incongruous stone lintel over the elegant double front doors—a long, decidedly inelegant rock with symbols chiseled into it: the letters KC and PC, a ship, a heart, and a date. 1668.
“What’s that?” she’d asked Trick the day she first came home from the orphanage to see it.
He’d blinked. “Do you not remember Falkland? And the marriage lintels?”
“Well, yes. But this isn’t a weaver’s cottage in Scotland—it’s a mansion in Sussex. And this house wasn’t built in 1668.”
“Maybe it wasn’t,” he’d told her, lacing his fingers with hers. “But that was the year it became a home.”
Remembering now, the same joy filled her heart that had filled it then. She touched the stones on her amber bracelet, knowing with a certainty that she’d never take it off again.
Trick finally sauntered out, displaying none of her own impatience.
“Hurry, Trick, or Cait’s babe will be born before we get there.”
“Slow down, or our babe will be born too early.” Walking her over to the caleche, he smiled and ran a possessive hand over the slight bulge of her middle. “Besides, we were there already. It was you who insisted we leave everyone and return home for the gift you forgot.”
“It was you who insisted on the hour we just spent in our chamber.” Grinning as he climbed up beside her, she leaned in for a quick kiss.
With a hand on the back of her neck, he held her close, his lips meeting hers in a much longer, warmer embrace, sending a swirl of excitement spiraling through her. The soft, paper-wrapped package in her hands slipped to the caleche’s boards.
He broke off and, with a chuckle, reached to collect it and set it back on her lap. “Do you want to go back upstairs, leannan?”
“Oh, yes,” she whispered on a sigh. “But no.”
“Women.” He shook his head, bright gold in the sun, and lifted the caleche’s reins.
“Drive fast,” she urged, and then, “Faster,” until they were racing toward Cainewood at an alarming speed, considering her delicate state. “I want to be there with Cait when the babe greets the world.”
But as she was hurrying up Cainewood’s carved stone staircase, the thready cry of a newborn split the air. She paused with her hand on the gray marble rail.
Trick squeezed her around the shoulders. “Sorry we’re late, lass, but do you not think our little interlude was worth it? We so rarely have time to ourselves these days.”
“I suppose.” She gave him a mock pout. “Let’s go meet the child.”
The door to Jason and Caithren’s chamber was wide open, the room crammed with cooing Chases. Cait reclined like a queen in the cobalt-curtained bed, a squalling infant in her arms.
“For me?” she asked with a smile, indicating the gift in Kendra’s hands. “Or the babe?”
“Both.” Kendra handed it to her. “Though really it’s from your cousin Cameron. I wrote asking him to send it. Then he wouldn’t accept my money.” Looking around the noisy chamber while Caithren opened the package, she spotted Jason and Colin, but not her twin. “Is Ford not here yet?”
Jason sat beside Cait. “He sent a message from Lakefield House that they’d be a bit late,” he said, helping his wife unfold a green and blue tartan blanket. “Seems to think he’s on the verge of some discovery.”
“Turning iron into gold? He always did want to be Midas.” Kendra laughed, moving closer as a grinning Cait wrapped her child in the Leslie plaid.
Like magic, the babe quieted.
Swathed in its maternal homeland’s colors, the baby looked so precious and content. Feeling her heart melt with tenderness, Kendra ran a fingertip along its downy cheek. “Everything went well?” she asked Cait while smiling down at the newborn. “You’re both healthy?”
“Aye. Everything went perfectly.”
The baby grasped her finger with tiny fingers of its own. Such a miracle. Beneath the new blanket, it was swaddled in plain white. Kendra looked up. “Well, what is it?”
Cait gave a happy sigh. “A lad.”
“Another boy?”
That made three. The Chase family had multiplied in the six years since Kendra and Trick were wed.
Cait’s two older sons were bouncing on the canopied bed. Thankfully the infant didn’t seem to mind the wild ride.
The rest of the chamber was no more calm. Amy and Colin’s two boys were racing around the room, chasing Kendra and Trick’s two giggling daughters and gleefully careening off the tapestried walls. The oldest of the cousins at seven, Jewel was a bit more sedate. Of course that was because she was busy at the moment, serenading the new arrival with a lullaby—at the top of her lungs.
One of Kendra’s young daughters rammed into her knees, the result of a hopeless attempt to escape her pursuing cousins. As she lifted the girl into her arms, Trick moved close. “Chaos, as always,” he whispered.
“Yes,” she said, turning to him. “But a happy chaos, don’t you think?”
He grinned and took her lips in a soft kiss, right there in front of her brothers and everyone, like their first kiss in Cainewood’s chapel so many years before.
And this kiss left her every bit as breathless.
A glorious thing, true love was, she thought as she pulled back with a smile, their daughter wriggling between them. Once, long ago, she’d promised Trick he’d find true love, and she’d followed through, hadn’t she?
A Chase promise was never given lightly.
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Next up is Ford’s story in The Viscount’s Wallflower Bride. Please read
