He let out a choke of laughter. “You are wonderful, you know. He didn’t hurt you, did he?”
“No, no,” she said, holding tighter to his arm in case he went back upstairs. “I don’t believe I have even a hair out of place. But, Travis, are you sure about this?”
He paused at the foot of the stairs, from where she could hear voices drifting from the drawing room, and turned to face her, frowning slightly. “I’ve never been more sure of anything in my life. Are you?”
She smiled. “Oh yes.”
It was very strange, for while his sudden kiss caused her to fall against the wall, and she was positively hemmed in by his urgent body and his hungry mouth, she knew no fear, only delight and tenderness. With a muffled sob, she threw both arms around his neck and kissed him back.
The moment went on and on, each kiss folding into another, whispers of love tangling with lips and tongues and sweet, increasingly bold caresses. Carina forgot where she was, knew only who held her and whom she never wanted to let go.
Until, abruptly, Lady Grandison’s sharp voice broke into the idyll.
“I do hope I am addressing the future Lady Durward?”
Durward lifted his head, his eyes ablaze with mischief as well as passion. More than that, they invited her to share the joke before he turned to face their hostess.
“You do indeed, ma’am. Miss Jasper has just agreed to be my wife.”
There was a gasp, and Carina realized there were several people with her ladyship. Hastily, she smoothed her ruffled hair before Durward took her hand and drew her to his side. It was Lady Mansel who had gasped and still stared at her as though in outrage—though whether at the breach of propriety or the prospect of being outranked by her despised secretary was not clear. At any rate, she was quickly blocked from Carina’s view as Grandison came to shake hands with Durward, and Lord Wolf and the Duke of Isbourne pounded him on the back.
Lady Grandison kissed Carina’s cheek with a mixture of pleasure and regret—for she was losing a governess.
“I’ll stay until Lady Sanderly returns,” Carina said hastily, and her employer laughed.
“We’ll see, my dear, we’ll see. The important thing is, we all wish you very happy. Very happy indeed.”
I already am, Carina thought with awe. Her hand crept into Durward’s and she felt the responsive squeeze of his fingers.I am in love, I’m to be married, and I am happy.
Durward’s lips almost touched her ear. “Now you can never tell me to bugger off.”
Laughter caught in her suddenly tight throat. “I hope you never will.”
“I won’t,” he promised.
And he never did.
Epilogue
Ayear to the day from the great Mullins fight—or so Durward assured her—Carina found herself at the Duck and Spoon Inn with her husband and several friends while they waited for the innkeeper’s attention.
“It’s quite pleasant when it’s quiet,” Harriet, the Countess of Sanderly said in some surprise as she gazed around the room.
“I’m afraid it won’t be quiet for long,” Eve Wolf said, eyeing her sleeping baby with a strange mixture of contentment and resignation. “Not with the future baron here ready to exercise his lungs at the drop of a hat.”
“He can’t make more noise than we did,” Durward said.
“True,” Harriet agreed.
“We sat atthere,” Lord Wolf said, wandering toward a large oak table against the side of the staircase. “Durward, Sanderly, Berry, that swine Illsworth, and me. And Sanderly kept winning.”
“The rest of you were quite literally drunk as lords,” Sanderly remarked without heat.
“I wasn’t,” Jonathan Berry said. Everyone looked at him pointedly, for he had, apparently, been up to no good when he had encountered his old friend Sanderly here. His wife, Chloe, slipped her hand into Berry’s.
“Where were you?” the new Duchess of Isbourne asked her husband, as though unsure quite why they had been invited along to the reunion.
“In the stables,” Sanderly said. “Escaping like the rest of us, though rather more efficiently. In fact, he was the only one of us to succeed. Ah, landlord. A decent wine if you please, to lay the dust of travel. Are our rooms prepared?”
