“Hmm?”
“If our time together in the greenhouse had ended differently, if we’d been successful at keeping our little tryst a secret, would you have invested in the company?”
“Yes.”
“You have that much faith in the writing machine?”
“I have that much faith in you.”
Tears filled her eyes. She eased up until she could hold his gaze. “I love you so much. Even if you’d had no plans to invest, I still would.”
Rook studied the face of the woman who meant the world to him. “You’ll love me even more after tomorrow.”
She tilted her head to the side. “Why is that?”
“I’ve arranged for you to have a tour of the inner workings of the ship.”
She laughed fully and throatily. His Lady of Laughter.
He rolled her over and took her mouth because it was time once again to make her his Lady of Sighs.
Epilogue
On the Outer Edge of London
Some Years Later
Standing on the high platform that was situated outside her office, Leonora looked down on the activity taking place below her. It very much reminded her of a beehive, so much going on at once, so many people standing at various work stations attending to a single task, so many levers, pistons, switches, and knobs working in tandem to operate the pulley that slowly moved the products along a table that ran the length of the factory, the items becoming more and more what they were meant to be one step at a time.
Very much like people, she couldn’t help but think.
With the money Sam had made from the sale of the company to Rook, he’d purchased himself a pub. He’d always loved talking and visiting with people, and his business allowed him to do exactly that as he pulled pints. Seldom was there an empty chair in the place. People lined the walls. She’d never known him to be so relaxed and happy. And he enjoyed the work.
Her mother had decided if Leonora wasn’t going to use her title to assist her in getting into the ballrooms she craved, she’d handle the matter herself. She married an aging earl. Became a countess, herself. Made certain everyone knew of her elevated status. But twomonths after the wedding, her husband died and the title passed to the eldest of his five sons. The old earl hadn’t had a chance to change his will to provide for her mother. The new earl bought her a small cottage far from London and offered her a modest allowance—on the condition that she never attended any ball, soiree, recital, or gathering of any kind hosted by a peer. He and his brothers found her too crass, too loud, too rude. “Embarrassing really,” the new earl had admitted to Rook at a ball he and Leonora had attended. “Don’t know how you put up with her, old chap.”
On occasion, Leonora would provide her with passage to New York or bring her to London, but in spite of being a countess, she never received any invitations to elite affairs. Because of her unpleasantness, she was left to suffer the indignity of being ignored.
Unlike Rook’s mother, who had risen in esteem because of the years she’d dutifully tended her ailing husband. Having a handsome, young lover at her side who was not averse to occasionally dancing with wallflowers also garnered her invitations. She’d met him at Aiden’s club. Julian had once told her that while he might dance or even continue to flirt with the ladies, his kisses were only for her. Both Rook and Aiden ensured he kept to that promise. No one dared to cross the two brothers.
As arms came around her, she leaned back against her husband’s sturdy chest.
“It’s so damned loud here,” he said near her ear. “Reminds me of the Clock Tower.”
“It’s the sound of success. Although perhaps I should add bells to chime each time that one of our products is completed.”
Orders for the writing machine were increasing yearly—at both the factory in America and the one here. She’d hired an overseer for the one near New York, but she, Rook, and their children crossed the Atlantic occasionally to make sure all ran as well as it should. Her tallying machine had been a triumph. She was currently designing one with a money drawer that would open once a customer’s purchases were totaled. She expected it would meet with even more success.
Rook pressed his lips against the side of her neck. “We’ll need to leave soon.”
Taking one last look at the empire she was building, she nodded. “I’m ready.”
It had become an annual tradition that on the day the previous Earl of Elverton had passed, his children and their families would gather in the garden of the residence that was now Leonora and Rook’s home—the home where he’d once knocked over a statuette that had led to that awful late-night journey where he’d first realized the horrors his father could inflict.
Over the years, as word had spread that Rook was making atonement for his father’s sins, others who claimed to be Elverton’s children arrived to receive restitution. A few had alerted Rook that they no longer wanted the money—either out of guilt because they weren’t his father’s offspring as they’d claimed or because they felt they’d been paid what was owed. Then there were those who took the money offered and used it to better themselves. Leonora had even provided jobs in her factory to some of them.
“I can see the shadow of my late husband in somany of their faces,” Rook’s mother, standing beside her, said softly.
She’d begun coming to these affairs a few years earlier, to serve as a hostess and welcome the earl’s many by-blows into the fold. Leonora suspected she was also searching for the other two sons the earl had taken from her because she always asked a new arrival for the date when he was delivered to a baby farmer. Not all knew, of course, but occasionally one did.
