Epilogue

EPILOGUE

ONE YEAR LATER

“ G ently, Pandy girl,” Lottie said as she placed the swaddled baby in a seated Pandy’s waiting arms. “You must support his head and take care not to move, or you will disturb him.”

“Oh, Mama,” Pandy said, her voice hushed. “Albert’s hands is so small.”

“His hands are small,” Lottie corrected, smiling down at the two children who, though they had not been born of her womb, were hers.

It had taken time to earn that place in Pandy’s eyes and in her heart, but slowly, surely, they had bonded. And when one day, Pandy had burst into tears over a skinned knee after she’d been skipping on the garden’s gravel path and had rushed to Lottie for comfort, calling her Mama for the first time, Lottie herself had been moved to tears.

“Are small,” Pandy repeated, gazing in wonder at her new brother. “He’s sleeping.”

A recent arrival at the orphanage, Albert had been left by a young mother who was already overburdened with too many mouths to feed. Lottie had been taking tea with the orphanage director, Mr. Slatkin, when the baby had arrived. And something within her had simply known that she was meant to be his mother.

“Babies sleep a great deal when they are small,” Lottie told Pandy. “They need their strength to grow big.”

“Big like me,” Pandy said, puffing up her shoulders importantly.

“Big like you,” Lottie agreed, smiling as she straightened at last, aware she had been hovering over little Albert.

The way Pandy was positioned on the settee, a pillow at her side, meant that the baby was in no danger of sliding from his sister’s lap. As Lottie watched the two of them together, she had to blink furiously to clear away the prickle of tears.

“I’m biggerer ’n Jane,” Pandy declared.

“You ain’t,” declared her five-year-old sister as she dashed into the room, Cat trailing happily at her heels.

Behind her came Brandon, grinning at the antics of their other daughter, whom they had also brought home from the orphanage. She and Pandy had made fast friends, and they shared a true sisterly bond that extended to rivalries, arguing, and the occasional bit of naughty antics, from pepper on each other’s pillows to tying together the laces of each other’s boots.

“I’m older’n you,” Pandy pointed out quietly, displaying a remarkable restraint Lottie hadn’t been certain the spirited child possessed. “That means I’m biggerer.”

Jane harrumphed—likely the result of spending too much time with Brandon’s grandmother—and flounced onto the settee at Pandy’s side. “I’m tallerer.”

“I’m the tallerest,” Pandy countered.

Albert shifted, beginning to make sounds of protest.

“Hush, you two,” Brandon cautioned tenderly. “You’re disturbing your brother. You can argue over which of you is tallest later.”

Cat settled on the carpet at the foot of the settee, curling up with a contented sigh. With two girls to play chase-chase with her, Cat now no longer had quite the surfeit of enthusiasm she had a year ago. Lottie bent and gave the spaniel’s silken head a fond scratch as Brandon reached her, placing an arm around her waist and pulling her into his side.

“I’ve missed you,” he murmured, pressing a chaste kiss to her cheek for the benefit of the children.

“You were only gone in the gardens with Jane and Cat for one quarter hour,” she said, grinning at her handsome husband, love for him beating strong and firm in her heart.

“It felt like an eternity without you.” He winked.

“What’s a turnity?” Jane asked.

“It’s a pudding, silly,” Pandy answered before either Lottie or Brandon could. “And not a very good one, neither.”

They shared an amused glance.

“Eternity is something without end,” Brandon said then, holding her gaze. “Like the love I have for your mama and for all of you, my family.”

And her heart, already bursting with an abundance of love, filled just a bit more.

One year later

Something miraculous had happened.

Lottie didn’t know quite how to tell Brandon. Their family had grown and blossomed over the two years of their marriage. Pandy, Jane, Albert, Cat, and a new furred addition as well—ironically, a gray-and-white cat who had aptly been named Dog by Jane. Lottie had reveled in being a mother, in embracing that part of herself that she had thought she would never know.

Each day was one of new challenges and triumphs, of love and laughter and fur and barking and meowing and the occasional game of chase-chase and tears and sniffles and tricks and games of hide-and-go-seek. It was crumbs and spills, mayhem and peace, all wrapped in family and home.

Lottie had the happiness, the family, and the husband she had once only dreamt of having. And now, their family was going to grow just a bit more.

When she had first begun feeling dizzied in the morning and then sick to her stomach, she had thought she had contracted some manner of illness. But then she had spoken with her friends Hyacinth and Rosamund, who had realized what was amiss when she had nearly swooned during tea.

Lottie was with child.

Yet again, something she had never thought possible for her. Two years had passed without Lottie becoming enceinte , and her old suspicions had proven true. She was barren.

But she had been wrong.

This morning, the doctor had confirmed her suspicions.

It was time to tell her husband.

Lottie stopped at his study door and knocked. He spent mornings tending to business affairs in the sanctity of his study and shared the afternoons and evenings with her and the children. Her news could not wait until afternoon, however.

“Enter,” he called.

And with a deep breath, she did, reminded of that day over two years before when she had crossed this same threshold, coming to him to ask him to marry her. He had told her every day since, in word and deed, what her previous husband had not—that she, Lottie, was enough, that she was worthy. That he appreciated her and loved her, and that there was no other woman in the world whom he would rather have at his side, as his wife.

Brandon looked up from the correspondence he had been poring over when his magnificent wife swept into the room. He stood, half ready to carry her to his chamber and make love to her for the rest of the morning. She was wearing his favorite shade of blue, the one that matched her eyes.

“Did you miss me?” he teased, for they had only breakfasted some three hours before.

“Every moment I’m not with you,” she said with a small, tender smile.

There was something different about her this morning, something that had been absent at breakfast, he thought. A seriousness.

“Is something amiss, Lottie?” He rounded his desk and went to her, admiring the way the sunlight shone in the window and caught in her cinnamon curls.

“Nothing is wrong,” she said, “but perhaps we ought to sit down.”

He didn’t think he liked the sound of that. “The last time you wanted me to sit down, it was to tell me that Pandy had thrown a pig trotter through the library window.”

Lottie winced. “That was because I feared you would be cross with her, and it truly was an accident.”

Pandy had been playing a game of fetch-and-carry with Cat, and she had tossed the pig trotter in question with just a trifle too much force, shattering the library window in the process. Brandon had been nettled by her carelessness, but Pandy was Pandy, and that meant that, generally speaking, wherever she went, mischief inevitably followed.

“Are all the windows intact?” he asked.

“As far as I am aware.” She reached for his hand, twining her fingers through his. “Come with me, my love.”

He clasped her hand, allowing her to guide him to a pair of wingback chairs by the hearth. Lottie seated herself primly in one, and he sank into the other.

“Well, darling? What is it that you need to tell me?”

She stared at him for a moment, eyes wide, and then she blinked. “How would you like for our family to grow a bit larger?”

Instantly, he thought of the dog and the cat who were forever chasing each other about, up and down the halls of their town house. “I’m not certain I can bear to add one more furred creature to the mix. These two are bedlam enough. Unless you’re considering a bird? Perhaps a dove or a parrot, even. Something more contained.”

“Or a child,” she said.

They had already taken in two children from the orphanage in two years. Little Albert had just begun to toddle about. Pandy and Jane were growing like weeds. The thought of another child joining their family was both wonderful and daunting.

“Perhaps we might wait just a bit,” he cautioned. “Albert is yet young, and Jane and Pandy have only just begun to calm in their mischievous rivalries.”

Lottie licked her lips, and he found himself momentarily distracted by the hint of that talented pink tongue, wanting to kiss her. “I’m afraid we may not be able to wait for longer than early summer.”

He frowned at her. “Early summer is months away.”

She nodded. “Approximately six months.”

Brandon still didn’t understand. “So, you would like to add another child to our family, but in six months?”

“Yes.”

“Well, then I reckon we shall have ample time to ponder the notion and to see what the children think before we make our decision.”

“I’m afraid not,” she said, biting her lip.

“There’s something you’re trying to tell me, isn’t there, Venus?” he asked, using his sobriquet for her as he did often when they were alone.

So often that she didn’t even bother to correct him any longer with nonsense protestations that she wasn’t a goddess. Just as well. They both knew she was, and Brandon wouldn’t accept arguments to the contrary.

“What I’m trying to tell you is that I am having a baby in early summer,” Lottie said.

He blinked, thinking he must have misheard. But no, his beautiful wife was still staring at him in expectation, the gentle rays of morning sun bringing to life the golden hues hidden in her glorious hair.

“You’re having a baby,” he said, his voice sounding rusty.

Feeling rusty, too.

“Yes.”

“But you… I thought that we couldn’t…”

He spluttered, trying to make sense of everything she had said. It had never mattered to him that they might be incapable of physically having children. They had built a family of their own together, one filled with love. He hadn’t considered that her becoming with child was even a possibility.

The notion now seemed astonishing for how very foreign—and terrifying—it was.

“I thought so as well,” she said gently. “But I have missed my courses, and the doctor assures me that I’m going to have a baby come summer.”

“We’re going to have another baby,” he said in wonder.

“Four children in less than three years,” she agreed. “Do you think that’s too many?”

“I think that our family is perfect.” He reached for her hand again, bringing it to his lips for a reverent kiss. “ You’re perfect. I’m petrified at the very thought of you enduring what you must for this. But you’re perfect, my love, just as you’ve always been.”

“You will be brave for me,” she said, her eyes glittering with unshed tears.

“You’ve been brave enough for the both of us,” he countered, cupping her face and catching a tear as it fell with his thumb. “What’s this, my love? Tears of sadness?”

“No.” She pressed a kiss to his palm. “Tears of happiness. I never thought I would find such contentment, such joy, as I have with you and our children. And yes, even our cat and dog.”

“I remain firm on no more furred creatures,” he said, feeling the prickle of answering tears in his own eyes. “Cat and Dog are quite enough for the moment. I shudder to think of what will be next. A fox named Hen? A canary named Duck?”

“I suppose it could be anything,” Lottie said, smiling. “Only think of what shall happen when Albert is old enough to make friends in the garden. Or this little one.”

She patted her midriff.

Brandon couldn’t remain where he was a moment more. He stood and, in one graceful move, scooped Lottie into his arms. “For the moment, there’s only one thing I want to think about, and it hasn’t a thing to do with creatures or gardens or our children.”

“Oh?” Her smile turned knowing.

He kissed her swiftly, softly, tenderly before lifting his head again. “It’s making love to my wife.”

She cupped his cheek, love shining in her eyes. “I wholeheartedly approve.”

Thank you so very much for reading Duke with a Reputation ! When I first wrote Lottie and the Duke of Brandon years ago, I had no idea how many readers would reach out to me, asking for their story, and I thank you all for caring so much about these two and wanting their story to be told. Giving them their happily ever after at last, along with their children and mischievous pets, was a true delight for me. I hope you loved them all. Do read on for a sneak peek of Duke with a Debt (Wicked Dukes Society Book 2), featuring Miss Rosamund Payne and the Duke of Camden. (And we can’t forget Megs, of course.) Theirs is an enemies-to-lovers marriage of convenience tale you won’t want to miss, filled with revenge, betrayal, mystery, and steam. And if you’re looking for Hyacinth and Viscount Sidmouth’s happily ever after, you can find it in Her Virtuous Viscount .

Please stay in touch! The only way to be sure you’ll know what’s next from me is to sign up for my newsletter here: http://eepurl.com/dyJSar . Please join my reader group for early excerpts, cover reveals, and more here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/scarlettscottreaders . And if you’re in the mood to chat all things steamy historical romance and read a different book together each month, join my book club, Dukes Do It Hotter right here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/hotdukes because we’re having a whole lot of fun!

Now, do read on for that sneak peek of Duke with a Debt I promised!

Duke with a Debt

Wicked Dukes Society

Book 2

Stuart Gilden, the arrogant and cold Duke of Camden, is suffocating beneath a mountain of debt caused by his wastrel father and gambling brother. To make matters worse, he’s being blackmailed by a mysterious enemy who has threatened to destroy him. Enter Miss Rosamund Payne, London’s greatest heiress, who has the wealth Camden so desperately needs. There’s just one problem: she’s his scoundrel brother’s former fiancée.

For years, the unassuming Rosamund has been plagued by fortune hunters, but one hurt her more grievously than the rest. When that rogue’s brother comes to her with a shocking proposition, she’s cautiously intrigued. Soon, Rosamund finds herself exchanging venomous barbs and searing kisses with the insufferable duke, lured by the prospect of revenge and the undeniable heat smoldering between them.

With their marriage of convenience secured, Camden’s problems should be at an end. But in truth, they’ve just begun. Because his enemy has only grown bolder and more dangerous. And the once unwanted wife beneath his roof is proving a maddening temptation he can’t resist, no matter the cost.

Chapter One

The African grey parrot balanced calmly on its perch was glaring at him.

“Gormless shite,” the bird pronounced, flapping its wings as if to punctuate its words.

Stuart Gilden, Duke of Camden, glared back at the feathered creature who had just paid him insult, walking slowly toward it, hands clasped behind his back. He stopped before the parrot, cocking his head and holding its unique silvery stare.

“Do you know,” he said pleasantly, “I could wring your neck with one hand?”

“Landlubber,” the parrot squawked. “Pistols at dawn.”

His eyes narrowed. “Did you just challenge me to a duel?”

Incredulousness rose within him. This was indeed the strangest bird he had ever met. Intelligent, complex, and just a touch mad. Rather like its owner, whose presence he was awaiting.

“Megs want a biscuit,” the parrot told him.

“I haven’t a biscuit,” he said. “And to be perfectly candid, if I had one, I’m not sure I’d share it with you. You’ve been rather rude thus far, haven’t you?”

“Gormless shite,” the parrot said, extending its wings again.

“Megs, my love, I’ve told you about your language.”

The familiar, feminine voice had Stuart turning away from the feathered menace to find Miss Rosamund Payne gliding toward him. It had been some time since their paths had crossed, for their circles had only overlapped thanks to Wesley. But little had changed since he had seen her last.

Her hair was the same, indistinct shade of neither gold nor red, but an odd color all its own. Her eyes were sharp and dark in her pale face. Her chin was stubborn and pointed, her forehead high. She still had the mouth of a courtesan, the only overtly sensual feature she possessed and quite incongruous with her unassuming spinsterish air. Her figure was trim and not overly curvaceous as he preferred, her breasts small and hidden in her modest silk bodice, her height slightly taller than most ladies’ and yet still no match for his. No one could ever call Miss Rosamund Payne a great beauty.

Still, there was something compelling about her. He had always found her presence magnetic in a painfully unwanted way. She had been meant to be his sister, and it hadn’t been his place to notice her. Yet, notice her, he had.

But she scarcely seemed to notice Stuart now as she bustled past him to her infernal parrot.

“Do be a good parrot, and I’ll give you a pistachio,” she purred in a tone that would have been better suited to a lover than a feathered beast.

“Megs want pistache,” the African grey declared.

Stuart stepped to the side, granting Rosamund and her bustle more room, trying not to take note of her perfume, which also had not changed—a decadent blend of rose, violet, bergamot, and ambergris that was rich and alluring.

“Will Megs behave?” she asked the parrot, holding up a small pouch.

“Megs behave,” the bird chirped, then whistled.

Rosamund carefully removed one small oval nut and offered it to the parrot, who gleefully took the object in its beak. Stuart was distinctly aware that he was being ignored, and the novel sensation wasn’t a pleasant one.

Rosamund trailed an elegant finger over the bird’s head. “Good parrot, Megs.”

And then, at last, ever so slowly, she turned the full force of her attention upon him, her dark stare burning into his. “Good afternoon, Camden. I cannot think of a single reason you would have for paying a call upon me.”

No curtsy. Nary a smile. Not a Your Grace , and most definitely not a hint of welcome. Stuart wasn’t certain what he had expected.

“Rosamund,” he greeted in turn, offering a slight bow. “It is good to see you.”

She arched a brow. “Is it?”

Heat crept up his throat.

“Of course,” he fibbed.

She pursed her lips. “I suppose we should sit. Comfort is important when one is being lied to, I find.”

Her observation was sharper than any blade.

But he was at her mercy, and far more than she yet realized.

He inclined his head. “As you wish, madam.”

“I’ve called for a tray of tea as well,” she said coolly before swishing past him.

She moved to the seating area across the room and gingerly settled on a settee, smoothing her seafoam-green skirts. He followed, folding his taller frame into a narrow chair nearby, sparing her his proximity on her seat even as part of him was tempted to do otherwise. Belatedly, it occurred to him that her navy bodice bore the outline of gold scales as if she were a mermaid, the entire affair accented with seafoam ribbon on the sleeves and decolletage.

The fanciful dress, so incongruous with what he knew of her, took him by surprise.

“I must thank you for accepting my call,” he forced himself to say, though they were both more than aware that she had kept him waiting, in the presence of the insult-wielding parrot, for half an hour.

“It was unexpected.” She watched him, unsmiling, so very poised. “And not entirely pleasant, if I am honest.”

Her forthright nature was something he recalled well. But what disturbed him now was that he also remembered her tears, the accusation in her sharp, dark eyes. He remembered how shattered she had looked, like a hand mirror that had been dropped upon a stone hearth.

Stuart brushed aside the memory as he winced. “I’ll admit that I had harbored some hope that the intervening years might have rendered you more amenable to a tête-à-tête with me.”

She laughed then, the sound throaty and pleasant and full, before her levity faded, and she continued regarding him with her unnerving gaze. “I regret to report that they have not.”

God. She would not make this easy on him, then. Why had he supposed she would?

He gripped the arms of his chair. “I am sorry for that, Rosamund.”

“As am I,” she said, unsmiling. “Actually, I’m sorry for a great many things.”

“A great many things,” the parrot chimed in, apparently having finished with its pistachio.

Rosamund’s searing stare made his necktie feel more like a noose. He turned his attention to the African grey for a moment to find the bird was watching him as closely as its mistress was.

“Gormless shite,” the bird repeated, before issuing another whistle.

He clenched his jaw and snapped his attention back to Rosamund. “It would seem the bird has made his opinion of me quite clear.”

“ Her opinion,” Rosamund corrected. “Megs is a female parrot. She was also quite bonded to her former master, who was a sea captain, hence some of her more…colorful vocabulary.”

He was suddenly dying to know how an heiress dressed as a mermaid had acquired a sea captain’s foul-mouthed parrot, but the question would have to wait. He had far more pressing matters to attend at the moment, none of which were pleasant.

“I beg your pardon. I assumed the creature was male.”

“Naturally.” She gave him a pained smile that was more of a taunt than aught else, those full lips that would have been better served on a courtesan distracting him.

Her one-word response felt like an insult, and Stuart knew he ought to let the matter go, but he was as obstinate as she, and he couldn’t.

“Why do you say that?” he asked.

“Because it is very much like a man to assume that every creature in his path must also be male, in his mold,” she said.

“Your opinion of my sex is clearly poor.”

Again, her brow arched upward. “Can I be blamed?”

The past lay unspoken, a heavy burden. They stared at each other, two unsmiling enemies—Rosamund with her shrewd gaze and the airs of a queen and Stuart with his swallowed pride and a disgust for his scoundrel of a brother that surely rivaled hers.

“Of course not,” he relented. “What my brother did to you was unconscionable.”

Her smile was serene. “What he did made me stronger and wiser.”

She was utterly unflappable, and this was new. He did not remember such self-possession in her, the ability to flay a man with nothing more than her eyes and tongue. The line of buttons bisecting her bodice drew his attention as she inhaled, the urge to undo them, to muss her irritating perfection perversely rising from nowhere.

“I am relieved to hear it,” he forced out.

A tap at the door heralded the arrival of the tea tray. They were silent as a servant bustled in, laying the tray on the table separating them before excusing herself with a curtsy. The dishes of tea which had been laid out looked as if they were antiques, fashioned of fine porcelain lined with gold and decorated with enamel Libra scales on the cup and a water carrier on the saucer. He watched as she prepared his tea precisely as he had always liked it: a splash of milk first, followed by tea and two lumps of sugar.

She had remembered.

Her attention to detail felt somehow strangely intimate, particularly when their fingers brushed as she handed him his tea. The sweet bergamot of Earl Grey rose from the steaming cup.

“Thank you,” he said, deciding the fine porcelain he held was likely Meissen.

He wondered if Rosamund had purchased the cups and saucers herself or if they had belonged to her mother, whose eccentricities and affinity for collections had been rather notorious.

She finished preparing her own tea. “You are most welcome. To the tea if not at my home.”

The reminder that they were bitterest enemies was pointed. She would serve him tea and recall precisely how he liked it made, but she drew the line at false pleasantries.

“Megs want a tea cake,” the parrot called from across the room, reminding him of her presence.

Well, at least she hadn’t called him a gormless shite again.

Progress.

“You shall have one in a few minutes, darling,” Rosamund returned, her voice gentling as she responded to the bird.

And Stuart found himself suddenly, irritatingly envious of the feathered menace still glaring at him from her perch.

“Now then,” Rosamund said suddenly, returning the full, disconcerting force of her attention upon him. “I don’t imagine you came here for idle conversation or tea. What is it that brought you to me, Camden?”

His heart thumped hard. Here was his opportunity. And yet, the words felt thick and heavy and improperly formed. His tongue was stuck, his mouth dry. He, who had faced death and destruction and the hells of war, was terrified of four little words that, taken separately, were all rather inconsequential save one.

He could do this.

He had to do this.

The contents of the letter he had received yesterday was still burned upon his soul.

Stuart took a deep, steadying breath, holding Rosamund’s dark stare. “Will you marry me?”

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