Page 115 of Ne'er Duke Well
Then Freddie slid out of the saddle and took Lu’s hand in his. Then they were moving toward him, stumbling, almost running. And then Peter was hugging them, holding them all. Selina’s hair tickled his nose; Lu’s rapier thumped the back of his leg. Freddie’s chest hitched as he cried.
Good God, Peter thought. And then:God. Ours. Now and forevermore.
Epilogue
Six months later
Selina let her pelisse fall from her shoulders and puddle on the floor. She spared one single thought for the way it would wrinkle, decided she did not care, and collapsed into the bed at the center of the room.
She flung her arm over her face and groaned.
“Have they killed you?” inquired Peter mildly.
“Yes.” She felt the mattress shift as Peter settled himself beside her, his warmth seeping into her body in contrast to the modest bedchamber’s December chill.
“Well, at least your death will get this inn into the papers. They’ll probably erect a plaque in your honor. The Dancing Dog: The Final Resting Place of the Ninth Duchess of Stanhope.”
“She died as she lived,” Selina offered from beneath her arm.
“Trying to keep Kent family members from hurling themselves into chaos?”
She laughed despite herself and relocated her arm, tipping her face toward Peter’s. “A hairbreadth from catastrophe and loving every minute of it.”
They had sent Freddie to Eton that fall. He had been determined to go, his face set and his chin stubbornly lifted, though his trepidation was apparent.
That had lasted all of three months before Lu had dressed in breeches and jacket and taken herself off to Eton after him. She’d bluffed and bullied her way from the headmaster’s office into a Latin tutorial before they’d managed to track her down.
“I left you a note,” Lu had protested when they’d hauled both children into Freddie’s neatly appointed room. “I told you I was perfectly safe.”
“Your note,” Peter said precisely, “informed us that you had taken a boat to Antigua.”
Lu stared at him. “Well, obviously. If I told you the truth, you would’ve known exactly how to find me.”
Several hours later, they had given serious consideration to Lu’s arguments for why she should be allowed to stay at Eton, listened to Freddie’s pink-cheeked rebuttal as to why Lu shouldnot, and removed everyone to an inn with the discussion tabled for after Christmas.
“Do you know,” Selina told Peter now, turning on her side to look more fully at him, “I haven’t the faintest idea what to do in this situation.”
“Mm.” He tangled his fingers into her hair. “Neither do I.”
“Do you suppose that’s just… how things will be from now on? Utter pandemonium the majority of the time?”
“Very possibly.”
He muffled her laugh with his mouth, and she felt herself relax for the first time since they’d realized Lu was gone. She sank into his kiss, and his fingers tightened in her hair.
After a long, long moment, he pulled back. “I’m so damned glad you’re here.”
She luxuriated in the warmth of his arm around her, in the curve of his mouth. “There’s nowhere else I would rather be.”
“You could be tucked into your office at Belvoir’s, reading dirty books as we speak.”
She shrugged. “Don’t think I haven’t brought samples in my portmanteau.”
His eyebrows climbed. “Have you now, wife?”
She squirmed away and made an abortive dive for her travel bag beside the bed, but Peter was quicker. He swooped upon her and snatched the bag from her grasp, rifling through the stack of uncut pages while she shrieked and laughed beneath him.
She did not know what Laventille had sent her this time, and Peter’s staggered face had her mightily curious.
