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“This place has so many joyful memories for me, and so many painful ones. But I’m glad to be here.” He stared into her eyes. “With you and the children.”
“Today, Adele told me she either wanted to be a mathematician or a poetess.”
He laughed. “Or both. Words like sums. Equations like poems. A passionate nature balanced by pragmatism. I don’t fear for Adele. She’s very strong-minded.”
“She said she thinks she won’t mind if Michel goes to Eton.”
“He told me the same thing. If he can overcome his night terrors, he’ll be ready.”
“Give him time. Stay to the schedule. Explain any changes to him thoroughly, before they happen, if possible.”
“It’s all because of you, Mari.”
“It not all me. They respond to you as well.”
“I thought the children were frightened of me. I didn’t know how to interact with them, but now they seem to... like me.”
“Yes, they do.”
He laid his hand over hers on the blanket for a moment.
A brief touch, but her entire body responded, igniting with desire.
Oh Heavens. She was definitely in trouble. She’d given her heart to a devilish duke. Relinquished it completely.
This would end badly. But for now, with the sea stretching beyond their toes, she was determined to pretend that life could be simple.
“I wish...” he said, staring at the gray horizon. “I wish I could have held them as babes. Seen them grow week by week. Year by year. Helped them take their first steps. Collected their baby teeth in a jar.”
“You’re here with them now. You’re collecting new memories.”
He gazed at her. “So I am.”
Just over those hills the road stretched back to London, back to the danger of discovery and the buried secrets of her past. Even if Edgar could accept her being a charity-school girl, would he ever be able to forgive her for deceiving him?
All she wanted to do was stay here forever, the four of them, in this land of make-believe.
Chapter 27
“Tell us a story about P.L. Rabbit, Miss Perkins,” Adele said later that evening, after Mari had tucked the twins into bed.
Mari perched on the edge of the bed. “Aren’t you too tired?”
“We’re not a bit tired,” said Michel, suppressing a yawn.
“Miss Perkins isn’t the only one who has stories to tell.” Edgar strode into the room. “How about I tell you one tonight?”
Garbed in black trousers and a black coat over white linen, he was so handsome it stole Mari’s breath away.
The twins made room for Edgar in the middle of the bed and Mari settled in a chair by the window. The light was beginning to fade from the sky.
Soon the sun would be gone and the moon would rise.
And she would be alone with Edgar. The thought shimmered in her mind like moonlight over ocean waves.
“Are you ready?” Edgar asked the children.
“Ready,” said Adele.
