Page 143 of Lessons for Marquesses
A sob broke freely at the simple gold wedding band.
He slid his arm about the small of her back and clasped her head, his big hand drawing her against him. He murmured at her cheek, “Will you marry the Marquess of Eastwick? Will you pledge to thumb your nose at society, hate the title as much as I do, and wear your breeches while I forgo a razor?”
“Yes,” she replied breathlessly. “A hundred times. And I should like to see you in more skirts.”
“Agreed.” He laughed. “And I will not object to you wearing skirts either. A woman was never as beautiful as you at St. James.”
Tears rolled, one after another, down her cheek. “Nicholas, I did not give you enough credit when I first told you I loved you.”
He pressed his brow to hers. “You gave me too much credit.”
“No. I did not understand it fully. Likely I still do not. But you accepted me. You never said,‘By God, it’s a gel’. You called me George. You never questioned who I was, even when I did.”
With a grin, Nicholas brushed back her hair. “By God, I love this gel.”
She slid into his arms, claiming his lips and in her urgent, trembling kisses, she told him that she might sometimes put a face on it, but she would never let him go.
EPILOGUE
August 1765
Farendon Estate
“Uncle Nick!”
Georgiana covered her ears at the name shouted inches from her ear by Oliver’s second middle daughter—there were two middles out of the four—Mariah. An argument had swiftly commenced during a game of tag. Specifically, the first middle daughter, Cassandra, had refuted Mariah’s claim that touching a participant’s clothing counted as being caught.
“It does!” Mariah asserted.
“Does not!” Cassandra countered.
The two had bellowed at each other with these back-and-forths for five rounds, and then proceeded to wrestle on Farendon’s north lawn. When Georgiana had handed off her sixteen-month-old son, Stephen, to Oliver and run to join the fray in hopes of avoiding an all-out blood match, Mariah had hollered for Nicholas. Who wasn’t her uncle. But Nicholas had earned the honorific by virtue of his sex, his size, and his smashing ability to haul the girls upon his back two at a time.
Where was Nicholas anyway?
The St. Clairs had arrived at Farendon two days ago for Nicholas’s birthday celebration and the man who turned two and thirty this very day was hiding. With Mariah and Cassandra at it again, Edie, Oliver’s youngest at eight, crying over an unknown slight, Lady Acomb ineffectually calling for an end to the hostilities, and a pet terrier barking over all of it, Georgiana had no idea why.
Georgiana’s mother-in-law in her elegant, feline glory, made scandalous eyes at footman. Oliver was the only soul smiling, lounging on a wrought-iron bench with a brandy and Stephen on his lap.
Sophia, Oliver’s eldest, approached as Georgiana extricated herself from the quarreling siblings, and like all the St. Clair sisters, her eyes were brown. Currently, they were shining with anticipation.
“Georgie, may we ride horses before the party? We have three hours before we must rest and prepare.”
With owl-like hearing, Mariah, stout and ready for any argument, jumped from the lawn and dashed over. “I want to ride, too. I am far better in the saddle than all of my sisters and can prove it!”
Delicate, with auburn hair and freckles, Cassandra pushed her way to the front. “I am a better rider than any of you.”
“I want to powder my hair blue for the party,” Edie said, jabbing at her silver-blond hair. “It is Uncle Nick’s favorite color.”
“Silly,” Cassandra said. “You would look awful.”
“Would not!”
“Would too!”
Georgiana peered over the latest argument to Oliver who waved a handful of straw at her. He used them to settle his daughters’ arguments by drawing them.
“I suggest you have these handy throughout the house,” he had said within minutes of his arrival. By the afternoon, they were in every public room.
