Page 99 of Impetuous

Philip snorted. “As if I cared for that. I was already determined to marry you. You know that. I knew I loved you when I took you down to the gazebo. We would not have gone, else.”

Cassandra swallowed. “Oh, Philip!” She flung her arms around his neck. “I love you, too.”

“It’s about time you admitted it. I was beginning to think I would have to wait until we were married to hear you say so.”

He bent and kissed her.

“Well, I promise you that you won’t have to wait again to hear it.” Cassandra threw her arms around his neck. “In fact, I fully intend to say it at least ten times a day. I love you.” She punctuated the words with a kiss. “I love you. I love you.”

Philip laughed and wrapped his arms around her. With a contented sigh, Cassandra melted against him. She realized that now she had truly found the treasure she had been seeking.

EPILOGUE

“IT IS ABSOLUTELY beautiful.” Cassandra gazed up at the walls of Chesilworth from where she sat in the garden, and a smile curved her lips.

Philip had insisted on restoring the old mansion himself, telling Cassandra that it was his wedding present to her. Now, a year and a half after their wedding, most of the renovations were complete. There was still scaffolding all over the west wing, where the damage was so drastic that it would take more than a year to fully repair. But the roof had been replaced, and the old dilapidated carpets and threadbare draperies had been ripped out and replaced with new ones. New paint gleamed on the interior walls, except where wallpaper was hung. Stairs had been repaired, and squeaking floorboards had been replaced. The fireplaces had been fixed so that they no longer smoked, and the vast kitchen had been brought up to date.

It was beautiful outside, as well. A full-time staff of gardeners, under the watchful eye of old Chumley, had pulled weeds, trimmed hedges and planted flowers until the gardens were prettier than Cassandra could ever remember them. Even the maze in the back had been restored.

She turned with a smile toward the man who sat in the chair beside her. “Thank you for doing so much for Chesilworth.”

Philip shrugged off the thanks. “They have done an excellent job with the place. I think we shall find it quite pleasant to spend part of the year here.”

It was another kindness on Philip’s part. As lovely as Chesilworth was becoming, it was not his home, and Cassandra knew that his offer for the family to spend part of each year there was for Olivia’s and the boys’ sakes, especially Crispin. He did not want them to have to grow up entirely cut off from their home just because he had taken them in.

“It is lovely,” Joanna piped up, and Cassandra turned to stare at her cousin, who sat on the other side of the small wrought-iron garden table. “I never could understand what you saw in the moldering old place, but now it’s actually quite attractive,” she added, sounding more like herself.

Joanna was lovely today, as always, in a gown of pale pink that set off her porcelain beauty. Her fiancé, a quiet man given to stuttering when he talked, looked at her with admiration. His name was Anthony Gordon, and his father was a Scottish peer whose title Anthony would one day inherit. Cassandra found him a trifle boring and even dim at times, but his admiration of Joanna was obvious, and he seemed content to sit and listen to her self-centered babble for hours, murmuring only an occasional, “Yes, dear.”

He was an acquaintance of Philip’s, and Philip himself had introduced the two of them at his and Cassandra’s wedding. When Cassandra had mildly teased him about his matchmaking efforts, he had said, “I suspected he would be perfect for Joanna—not too bright, quiet, an admirer of beautiful things—and, best of all, his family seat is far away in Scotland, which means that we shall have the pleasure of your cousin’s company only rarely.”

It was Joanna’s wedding that had brought Philip and Cassandra and all their family to Chesilworth this week. Even Violet had come with them, though the elder Lady Neville had declined, citing old age as an excuse to stay at Haverly House. Privately, she told Cassandra, who was becoming more and more a favorite of hers, that she was sure that Joanna Moulton’s wedding would be an insipid bore.

“Cassandra!” Crispin and Hart called to her from the other side of the garden, then waved and dashed off around the corner of the house, engaged in some boyish pursuit. It seemed to Cassandra that they had each grown at least two inches this past year. Soon, she knew, they would be sprouting up to the height of full-grown men. It was a thought that brought a curious pang of both pleasure and pain. In just another year they would go off to Eton. Cassandra was afraid that she would feel like a mother hen without her chicks.

At the thought, she glanced over to the shady bower where Georgette and Olivia were sitting on a blanket, playing with the baby, tickling his stomach and listening to his delighted laughter while his rosy-cheeked nurse looked on. Cassandra and Philip’s son was five months old now and a constant delight to his parents and everyone else in the family. Blond-haired and blue-eyed, he was a healthy, chubby baby possessed of a sunny disposition.

Of all those who spoiled him, perhaps the worst were his two young aunts, Georgette and Olivia. They were bent over him now, the dark head and the blond one close together. Their instantaneous friendship had only grown closer in the last year and a half. Though Georgette would be due to make her debut this next season, she was insisting upon waiting until the next year so that she and Olivia could make their coming out at the same time. Since both girls seemed to grow more lovely every day, Cassandra suspected that they would take the polite world by storm.

Philip reached over and touched her arm. “Would you care to take a stroll with me in the garden, Lady Neville?”

Cassandra smiled. “Indeed, I would, Sir Philip.”

She took his hand and rose to her feet, picking up the lacy blue parasol beside her, which matched perfectly the blue of her dress. She was dressed, as always, in a simple dress of excellent cut. Dressing well was still new enough to her that it sometimes surprised her to see herself in her mirror. Both Lady Nevilles had supervised a massive infusion of new clothes into her wardrobe from the time she and Philip first became engaged. Violet had taken her on marathon buying sprees to London, and Cassandra had been amazed by the languid woman’s stamina and energy when it came to selecting and purchasing clothes.

Cassandra opened her parasol and propped it on her shoulder, then took her husband’s arm, and they strolled in a leisurely manner through the garden.

“Have you heard anything about Miss Yorke?” Cassandra asked after a moment.

“Yes. Miss Emmings writes that she is doing much better.”

Neither Cassandra nor Philip had had the heart to have Miss Yorke arrested and tried for her crimes. When she had come to, she had been a sobbing, incoherent wreck. Philip had placed her in a home close to the seashore, where a kind, firm woman by the name of Emmings cared for several individuals whose minds were no longer functioning properly and whose families could not bear to send them to a place like Bedlam.

Under Miss Emmings’s care, Sarah had improved and even helped Miss Emmings work with the other patients in artistic endeavors and schoolroom matters. Of course, Miss Emmings said that Sarah also still told people that she was Sir Philip Neville’s secret wife, but at least she no longer exhibited any sort of violent behavior, and her life seemed to be as happy as one could hope for.

“You know,” Cassandra said, “I was just thinking. I don’t believe that things could be any more perfect.”

“I’m glad.” Philip took the hand curled around his arm and raised it to his lips. “Certainly you have made my life perfect.”

“Only you would say so—being pursued and threatened by thieves, having a whole family of children put in your care, being burdened with an old, decaying house.”

“And having more fun than most men have in a lifetime,” he added to her list. “Hunting for secret maps and buried treasure, having children around to make me laugh, being handed a project to keep me entertained, having a handsome and intelligent baby with a smile like an angel…most of all, being given the most beautiful and intelligent of women for a wife. I think that I have had the best of the bargain.”

Cassandra smiled.

“My only problem is getting you to myself. It seems that there are always people around.”

They had left the garden and were now strolling across the green yard. “Where are we going?” Cassandra asked.

“I thought that we might explore the reconstructed maze.”

Cassandra lifted her brows. “I’m not sure that I remember how to get out of it anymore. We could be trapped in there for hours, and no one would be able to find us.”

Philip bared his teeth in a wolfish grin. “My dear, that is exactly what I had in mind.”

Cassandra laughed and lifted her skirts above her ankles. “What are we waiting for, then?” she asked and took off at a run for the maze, with Philip right behind her.

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