Page 66 of Who’s That Earl

“Aye,” agreed Thomas, leaning toward her, brushing her lips with a perfectly scandalous kiss. “An’ after seven years of waiting, ’tis sure I’ll never love you less.”

Epilogue

Staring down a blank page—pen at the ready, though no words would come—Thomas wondered how Jane managed to do it again and again. The Brigand’s Captive was still flying off the bookshop shelves, and she was already at work on The Pirate’s Prisoner.

Pretending a pose of thoughtfulness, he glanced around the room. Very little had changed in its transformation from Jane’s study to Lady Magnus’s, though he had enlisted Dougan’s help in silently swapping the miserable sofa for its more comfortable twin from the gatehouse. Jane’s brother, Jonathan, who had gladly accepted the offer of the post as Dunnock’s steward and would soon take up residence in the gatehouse, need be none the wiser.

Near the empty hearth lay Athena and Aphrodite’s cushions and toys, though at the moment, the dogs were distracted by Jane herself, kneeling on the rug to brush their slick, spotted coats. They continued to tolerate Thomas’s presence in their house, though he always carried a few cheese parings in his pocket, just in case.

“How’s the letter coming, my dear?” Jane asked without turning her eyes away from her task.

Thomas once more focused on the blank page before him and heaved a quiet sigh. “I canna do it, lass. What is it you would have me say?”

“Do you not wish your general to know you’re enjoying civilian life? How well things get on at Dunnock and in Balisaig?” She twisted to study him over her shoulder. “His last order to you was to send you here, Thomas. I know you’ve resigned your commission, but surely he deserves the courtesy of a letter about all that’s happened since.”

“But I’ve told you, he’ll ken all that without my telling him.”

“Oh, Thomas.” Shaking her head, she rose from the floor and brushed the loose fur from her skirts. Since their wedding, she’d continued to wear her rich brown hair in a comfortable knot at the nape of her neck, with a few wisps playing about her throat and ears. The tighter style had always tempted him to pluck the pins and set her free, but this one was even more distracting, putting him in mind of how she looked when she’d been well-tumbled.

“I know you told me he’s a spymaster.” As usual, she spoke the last word on a whisper, though none but the dogs were in earshot. He had weighed carefully whether or how much to tell her about his time in the army, the years in Dominica. But in the end, he’d decided he was done with secrets, though he could not shake the habits of watchfulness and wakefulness upon which his survival—and so many others’—had once depended.

With a saucy sway to her hips, Jane approached the desk, coming around the corner to lay a hand on his shoulder and tsking over the blank sheet before him. “But really, Thomas, how could he possibly know what goes on all the way up here?”

“I canna say how. I’m only certain he does.”

Increasingly convinced that General Scott had known exactly who and what Thomas would find when he arrived at Dunnock, he could not persuade himself to believe the man needed a letter to convey the details of both momentous events and more mundane ones. If he wrote at length about Davina and Theo’s quaint little wedding at the kirk, or the improvements in Mr. Shaw’s leg, about the larger than usual number of wobbly lambs and curly-haired calves with which the Dunnock farms had been blessed that spring, or Elspeth and Mrs. Abernathy’s joint venture of a tea shop next door to the pub where the ladies of the village could gather—absolutely none of it would be news to the general. Of that he was certain.

“Well,” she said, tracing one finger up his cheek and around his ear, “I can think of one thing he can’t possibly know.”

“Oh, aye? And what’s that, lass?” he asked, favoring her with a skeptical lift to his brow.

For answer, she plucked the quill from his fingers and laid it aside, then took his hand in hers, laying the flat of his palm over the curve of her belly.

A long minute passed before the full meaning of the gesture managed to make its way to his brain. Then he was on his feet with his arms around her, the letter forgotten. “A baby? Jane, my love, my lass, are you sure?” After all, they’d only been wed a few weeks.

She laid her cheek against his chest and nodded. “Much like your general, I can’t say how I know,” she said, and he could hear the smile in her voice. “I just do.”

He dropped a kiss on the top of her head, drawing in the sweet fragrance of her hair—not night-blooming jasmine now, but the fresh, wild scent of a Scottish spring. She was going to bear his child, their child.

A family. A home. All the things they both had imagined could never be theirs. And now they would have them. Together.

* * * *

General Zebadiah Scott tossed the letter onto his disconcertingly empty desktop—Captain Collins had been straightening up again—and tilted back in his chair. Once more, he’d failed in his chief duty to the Crown: to train and retain the best intelligence officers in the world.

But did he not have a parallel duty to his men? A duty to ensure their health and welfare and even happiness?

These brash young men all seemed to consider themselves indispensable. Scott, however, had been at this long enough to know that enemies came and went. If one war ended, another soon began. Anyone, even he, could be replaced.

So on occasion, when an opportunity presented itself—an unexpected inheritance, for instance—he seized the chance to remind one of those obstinate fellows that there was more to life than spying. Or at least, more to life than the sort of spying he’d been doing.

With a smile that even a stranger would recognize as self-satisfied, Scott picked up the letter again and tucked it into a file in a drawer no one but he ever opened. A good agent, even when he resigned his commission, was never really lost to His Majesty’s service. Thanks to a little strategic maneuvering—what civilians called matchmaking—he had spies in places no one would suspect.

Now including Balisaig.

Before he could push the drawer shut again, a rap sounded on the door between his office and his aide’s.

“Enter.”