“It was the most perfect wedding I have ever attended,” Serena corrected, dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief.
“Chaos is simply enthusiasm expressed creatively.”
The wedding party that followed was small and warm and full of laughter. There were toasts from Benedict and tears from Mrs. Kemp and a cake that Cook had prepared with evident pride. Brutus was confined to a terrarium for the remainder of the festivities, though Thistle visited him frequently to report on the proceedings.
As evening fell and the guests began to depart, Mel found herself standing at the window of the drawing room, looking out at the garden where so much had changed over the past months. Rhys came to stand beside her, his hand finding hers with the easy familiarity that had developed between them.
“How do you feel?” he asked. “Duchess of Trevane.”
“I feel like myself,” she said. “With a different title and a ring on my finger.”
“Is that enough?”
She turned to look at him, at the man who had been London’s most notorious rake and was now her husband. The father of three remarkable children. The person she would spend the rest of her life beside.
“It’s more than enough,” she said. “It’s everything I never knew I wanted.”
He pulled her closer and she let him. They stood in the quiet of the drawing room while the sunset began its slow work outside, and for a moment neither of them spoke, because there were, finally, no more arrangements to be made.
“I have been thinking,” he said, after a time.
“That is a dangerous admission from a duke.”
“It is a reckless admission from any man.”
She laughed, quietly, into his shoulder. She had been doing that with increasing freedom over the past weeks, and she did not know when she would stop being surprised by the sound.
“Tell me your dangerous thought.”
“I have three daughters,” he said. “I did not expect them. I did not plan for them. I arrived at them by a route I would not recommend to anyone. And I would not give up a single one of them for the entirety of my former life.”
“Yes.”
“I have been wondering what it would be to have a child whose arrival I did expect. Whose presence I did plan for. Whose first breath I could be in the house for.” He paused. “A child of ours. If you wanted one. If we wanted one.”
Mel was quiet. She had not expected him to say it first. She had, to her own considerable surprise, already been thinking it, though she had filed the thought away to be considered at a later date.
“I have been a governess for six years,” she said. “I have raised other women’s children with great care, and I have been very good at it. I did not permit myself to want children of myown, because wanting them would have required hoping for a life I did not expect to have.”
“And now.”
“Now I have the life.”
“Is that a yes?”
“That is a yes, subject to the ordinary interventions of fate.” She drew back far enough to look at him.
“I should like that very much. When it comes. If it comes. I should also like to continue teaching the girls their Latin, so I give notice now that the position of Duchess will be performed part-time at best.”
“Anna will demand a written schedule.”
“Anna will draw it up herself and submit it for my approval.”
“I accept your terms.”
“I thought you might.”
She rested her head against his shoulder again. He rested his cheek against her hair. Outside, the sunset continued its quiet arithmetic on the garden, indifferent to the two people who had just added a future to the several they already had.
