Page 32 of A Rogues & Gentlemen Christmas

Epilogue

“Wherein a Christmas tradition.”

20thDecember 1822. Ivy Cottage. Devon.

“Must we really leave?” Chance grumbled, pulling the covers up about them and tugging Odette closer. He spooned around her back, one hand settling over her burgeoning stomach.

“You know very well we must, and don’t pretend you don’t want to go. You adore Christmas at Blackdown.”

Chance chucked and kissed her shoulder. “What, all my six sisters in one place with their dreadful children and husbands? Good heavens. Whatever gave you such a fanciful notion?”

“Well, you’ve been counting the days since November,” she said dryly. “That was my first clue.”

He harrumphed but did not argue the point. They both loved Christmas at the castle, complete with chaotic family. It was strange how Odette had once seen Blackdown as being cold and frightening, when now the sight of the big old place coming into view gave her a burst of happiness, a sense of coming home. Not that they didn’t have their own home, too. They had chosen one of Chance’s smaller properties to make their own, and had rebuilt it extensively. It was wholly theirs, their joint project, and they loved it dearly. They had travelled a lot in the first years of their marriage, just as Chance had promised, until Odette had fallen pregnant, and then she had not been sorry to go home, too excited by the prospect of their baby to think of much else. Coming home to the castle, though, that was special too. Chance adored seeing his sisters and had become especially close to his half-sister, Marie.

They shared their father’s blue eyes and were obviously siblings, bickering amicably and involving all their sisters in their ridiculous arguments. They quite obviously adored each other’s company and saw each other as often as was possible. They looked forward to Christmas most of all, though, as they shared it with Lord and Lady Blackdown, whose happiness in seeing them all was bright and honest on each occasion.

“Father will spoil Oliver rotten again,” Chance grumbled. “He’s a very different grandfather than a father. I never got treated that way, I can assure you.”

Odette turned to face him, a complex manoeuvre, as her large stomach hindered her progress.

“He’s mellowed,” she said, reaching up to stroke her husband’s face. “And he’s so proud of you, mon beau. Of you and Oliver. It shines from him. Haven’t you noticed he drives your poor brothers-in-law distracted, forever retelling stories of your heroics during the war? They can’t possibly live up to your legend.”

Chance frowned over that. “He does do that, doesn’t he? Do you know, I didn’t even realise he knew those stories, that he had followed my career? He was always so angry with me for going.”

“Because he was afraid of losing you.”

“I thought it was just the title,” he admitted, shaking his head. “For such a long time I thought that was all he cared about, but now, seeing him with our son….”

“He finds it hard to say things aloud, Chance, that is all. You must read between the lines. Or, failing that, ask your mother.”

“Or you,” he said, nuzzling into her neck.

Odette shivered as his lips feathered kisses over her skin.

“Or me,” she agreed, closing her eyes and smiling.

“It is lovely here, though,” he murmured. “And I shall be sorry to leave.”

“It is.”

It had become their tradition to return to Ivy Cottage for a week before going to the castle for Christmas. This was where they had spent the first blissful week of their marriage, and every year they added to the memories. They came in the summer, too, as Chance had done when he was a boy. This year he had begun to teach three-year-old Oliver to swim, much to both of their delight.

“Perhaps we should come back here after Christmas, too,” Chance murmured, stroking a lazy hand over the curve of her stomach. “Once we return home, you’ll be swept up in a whirl of activity, and the house will be full to the brim with your friends from morning till night. I think I shall be a masterful and cruel husband, and insist on having you all to myself for another week.”

“Indeed, how cruel you are, monseigneur,” she sighed, knowing why he was doing it. He didn’t mind a bit if her friends came, he only fretted that she was doing too much, that she was tired, and he wasn’t entirely wrong so she would not fight him over it. “But I am a good, biddable wife, and so I shall do as I am told.”

There was a snort of such amusement that Odette felt compelled to smack his hand.

“Devil,” she said, laughing.

“Biddable,” he crowed, the bed shaking with his mirth. “Oh, I shall have to share that one with Father. He worships the ground you walk on, but even he wouldn’t have that.”

“I am most biddable, providing you bid me to do something I believe to be a good idea,” she retorted with a dignified little sniff. “There’s no sense in being foolish about it.”

“No, dear,” he soothed. “None at all.”

His hand crept up from her stomach to cup her breast, so much fuller now with her pregnancy in full bloom.