Page 62 of Lady Beast's Bridegroom
Arial guessed what Pauline was trying to say. “Edwards is her father?”
Pauline nodded. “I thought you knew, Peter. Your father did. He figured it out when she was born too early to be his.”
Peter shook his head. “I did not know until you told me yesterday. Was it only yesterday? Father would never criticizehis countess to me. Instead, he drank himself into a stupor and ruined the estate because he’d made a mistake he couldn’t fix.”
“It doesn’t matter,” Arial pointed out. “You are putting the estate back on its feet again, and Vivienne is our sister in all the ways that matter.”
He put his arm around her and kissed her forehead. “Wise wife. I have loved Vivienne since she was a baby, and the fact I didn’t like her mother never made any difference to that love. So, the identity of the man who bred her is of no importance. My father gave her his name and his heart. And so do I.”
Pauline was blinking hard. Arial held out her hand to her former enemy. “You, too, Pauline. You have a home with us for as long as you need one.”
Peter kissed Arial’s forehead again as Pauline lost her battle and burst into tears and hurried away with a handkerchief pressed to her face.
Arial let her go, though she would follow in a minute. She had cried alone too many times not to offer comfort if she could. First, though she wanted to embrace the greatest of her many blessings.
“I love you,” she told him, as he hugged her back and returned the words.
If someone had told the Arial of just six months ago that the year would bring her a husband who loved her, sisters, and a place in Society, she would have thought them as crazy as Josiah called her.
Peter had seen the truth from the start. He had not agreed that her outward appearance defined who she was as a person. He had seen past it to the beauty within. He had given her the confidence to be herself, dropping the mask of reserve and caution that hid her far more than the physical mask she wore.
She was no longer Lady Beast, the daughter of an earl who hid her ugliness from the world. She was Lady Ransome, wife,lover, viscountess, sister, soon to be mother… With her beloved at her side, she hid from no one.
Epilogue
Bledisloe House, London, March 1818
“Are you sureyou are not tired,” Pauline asked Arial. “It was a long trip yesterday.” She moved the parasol above Arial’s head a fraction to the right, so that she remained in shadow as the sun shifted.
“I am enjoying sitting here on the terrace,” Arial answered, “reading a book that Regina Paddimore recommended to me. Take a seat, Pauline, and have a cup of tea with me while we have a few moments of peace. John Henry will be awake at any minute, and then I shall need to go inside to feed him.”
Pauline settled in the next chair, the mention of Arial’s baby bringing on the besotted smile she’d worn in his presence since the day he was born.
“You have done wonders with the house,” Arial told her. “You have a real gift.”
Pauline, out from under the influence of her mother and sister, had proved to have impeccable taste, not just in fashion but in home décor. She had helped Arial to redecorate Three Oaks and had come on ahead to London when Peter and Arial’s search for a townhouse had come to an unexpected conclusion.
The search for a Stancroft heir had been unsuccessful, and the earldom had been about to revert to the crown when someone—Arial suspected a certain marquess—suggested to thePrince Regent that he might win some public approbation by becoming part of the story of Lady Beast and her bridegroom.
Peter’s rescue of his wife from the wicked machinations of his stepmother and her cousin had caught the popular imagination. Deerhaven, if it were he, engaged the ready sympathy of the prince for a lady in dire distress, and also pointed out that the estate was impoverished and would take more to put into a saleable condition than it was worth.
The upshot was that Peter was the new Earl of Stancroft, ostensibly as a reward for his services during the war, and the titular owner of the entailed property included Bledisloe House—rambling, run down, and in much need of refurbishment and redecoration.
Pauline beamed. “I’m glad you are pleased.”
They were interrupted by a troop of schoolgirls, walking up through the garden under the supervision of Miss Pettigrew.
When Marjorie heard that Peter and Arial were now Lord and Lady Stancroft, she had taken to her bed, turned her face to the wall, and refused to have anything more to do with her daughters, who had betrayed her by being born girls.
She had been installed at Greenmount under the care of Mrs. Parker, and her three timid little girls had been added to Peter and Arial’s growing family. With Viv as their leader and Rose to love them, they were coming out of their shells nicely.
And Miss Pettigrew now had a maid and an under governess to help her with her flock of charges.
The party stopped by the tea-sipping ladies, and Anne, the youngest of the Bledisloe sisters, climbed up onto Pauline’s lap, while Viv and Rose leaned one each side of Arial’s chair.
“We have been learning about garden creatures,” Viv informed Arial.
“Did you know,” Anne asked Pauline, “that one must be very gentle with a worm, because a squeeze might hurt him. One must put him down and let him burrow back into the ground.”
