“We should have gone to Scotland,” Ezra muttered to Iris, who stood at his side, bouncing on her toes with barely contained energy. “Just you, me, and Letitia. It would have been so much easier.”
Iris gave him an appalled look. He had forgotten to consider his audience when lodging this particular complaint.
“What isScotland?” she asked. Apparently, her objection was not based on dislike of their northern neighbors. “Also, this issofun. Don’t be silly, Uncle Ezra.”
“I am just being silly,” he told his niece, chucking her under the chin. “This is so fun.”
“I know,” Iris said before skipping off and abandoning him to his fate.
His house waspackedwith Lightholders.
The announcement of the betrothal between the Duke of Rutley and some common-born woman that nobody had ever heard of had, as predicted, caused a great deal of upset among the people of theton. Greater outrage sparked with each successive detail. The bride was a former governess. She had red hair. She wasover thirty years old.
Ezra had been deeply angered by the gossip, which had amused Letitia to no end.
“I told you!” she had crowed whenever he had shown any sign of his temper. “I told you that everyone would talk. And you said, ‘I don’t care, Letty. I love talk, Letty.”
“I don’t think I said that second part,” he grumbled. “And Idon’tcare what they think. I just think that they are saying it all wrong. I like your hair. And you are a bloodywonderfulgoverness. That is not a bad thing. And I should not want to marry some half-grown girl barely out of the schoolroom. I have seen those debutantes, Letty. They arechildren.”
She had laughed even harder, and she looked so pretty when she laughed that, really, any man in his position would have taken the opportunity to drag her up to his bedroom.
Still, he positivelyrefusedto let Letitia’s wedding day be tarnished by the nattering of ill-tempered gossips, so he had obtained a special license, which allowed them to be married in the privacy of their own home.
But Letty had mentioned it to Clio and Persephone. It really would only have taken telling one of them, but Letitia had become fast friends with both of them.
And once the two women knew,allthe Lightholders knew.
The fact that they had not been formallyinviteddid not affect any of them. They flocked from far and wide. And they all ended up in Ezra’s parlor.
There were Catherine and Ariadne, Xander’s two sisters, standing with David, Ariadne’s husband, while Catherine cooed over Clio’s new baby. Clio, visibly exhausted but happy to be here, sat on a nearby settee, her husband hovering protectively as she spoke to Daphne, Hugh’s younger sister. Hugh, Aaron, and Jason watched over a distressing number of children while their wives gossiped nearby. Catherine’s husband looked haunted as the triplets explained to Iris that, even though he was named Percy, they called him “UncleOtherPercy,” since Persephone had been granted her nickname first.
It was noisy. It waschaos.
Xander watched it all, gently rocking a baby, looking extremely pleased with the scene before him. Ezra didn’t even think that was Xander’s baby, though God only knew whose it was. He felt like another child appeared every time he turned around.
He could not even be angry about it, though, because they had all come to celebrate Letty. Well, him, too. But the part that mattered to him was the way his love—the woman who, as ofan hour ago, had become his wife—was blooming under their outpouring of adoration.
Like now. Now, Letty was standing with Helen and Phoebe, Aaron’s wife. He could not hear what they were saying from here, but she was laughing so hard that it looked like she could barely catch her breath.
“It’s incredible, isn’t it?” Aaron, having evidently extracted himself from the snare of children, appeared at Ezra’s side.
“Hm?”
“These women.” Aaron’s face was intensely scarred from his time at war, but when he looked at his wife, the clear love in his expression made those scars seem far less terrible. “We are the luckiest bastards in the world, aren’t we?”
Ezra chuckled. “And not for the reason that anyone thinks, either.”
Aaron held out his glass to clink, and Ezra obliged.
As long as he talked to them one at a time, maybe it wasn’tsobad to have his whole extended family here. That said, he wouldnotbe sorry when they all left and he finally,finallyhad Letitia all to himself. Persephone had even volunteered to take Iris for a few days so that he and Letty could enjoy their newlywed bliss alone.
Andthatwas why she was his favorite member of the family.
Aside from his wife and niece, of course.
“Oh, good afternoon, Duchess Rutley,” Ezra said when they had finally given Iris the last hug goodbye, then deposited her onto Jason’s shoulder. Xander’s younger brother had been drafted into helping rally the half-sleeping children back to the Blackwoods’ home.
Letty pressed a hand to her cheek, where a blush flamed. She had been going bright pink all day, at every single compliment delivered her way, which had been numerous enough that it was a surprise that she had any blood remaining in her body at all.
