Catching Captain Nash (Dashing Widows #6)(40)
Thank God. She sucked in her first full breath since this conversation started. New hope cautiously fluttered to life. Surely this meant that everything was going to be all right. She hadn’t been mistaken to trust that now Robert was back, they could solve every other problem. It might take time. But then with him here, fate granted them a lifetime.
“You could say it a bit more nicely.” She tried to speak lightly, but the tightness of her throat defeated her.
He loomed up beside her, tall and powerful, and above all hers, and she shivered with animal awareness. She’d only shared this link with one man—and she’d believed him lost to her forever. The fact that he’d come back remained a miracle in her eyes. She’d never take their love for granted.
“I don’t know whether I want to kiss you, or give you a good shaking,” he said drily.
His nearness warmed her skin, although he hadn’t yet touched her. “I think I know.”
He gave a low growl of frustration. “But first you want me to spread my heart out before you.”
“Yes, please.”
With him standing in front of the candle, she couldn’t see his expression. But when he cradled her face, his touch was tender. The sweetness seeped through her like new honey on fresh bread.
She waited for more reluctance, but his voice emerged serious and calm and certain. “Morwenna Nash, you’re the only girl I’ve ever loved. I’ll love you until the day I die. Without you, I’m nothing. Now I’ve come back to you, I swear I’ll devote every minute of the rest of my life to making you happy.”
Oh, dear. Be careful what you asked for. It was her turn to start crying.
“For...” She stopped to swallow the jagged rock blocking her throat. “For a man who had trouble stringing two words together, you can certainly rise to the occasion when you have to.”
Robert leaned in and kissed her. She tasted the salt of her tears—and perhaps a few of his, too. The kiss was gentle, the way they’d kissed when courting all those years ago. And it held a poignant touch of innocence that made her weep anew.
Robert drew away slowly, as if he, too, didn’t want the magic to diminish. “Now, my love and my wife, let’s leave this place of darkness, and go downstairs into the light.”
Epilogue
* * *
Richmond Park outside London, May 1837
“Here are Sally and Charles,” Amy said, waving to the newcomers from where she stood with Morwenna on a rise above the river.
As her friends’ elegant carriage rolled onto the broad field beside the Thames, Morwenna looked up from the baby daughter sleeping in her arms. Now everyone she loved was here, it was a celebration indeed. “Oh, how lovely. I thought they might have stayed in Italy this spring.”
“You know they hate to miss Vernon’s picnic.”
Every May, Vernon and Helena, Lord and Lady West, invited family and friends to this extravagant open-air gathering. Morwenna wasn’t sure what had started the tradition. It wasn’t anyone’s birthday, and when she’d asked if the date marked some anniversary, her brother-in-law smiled at his striking wife and didn’t answer.
Today the weather was perfect. Through some alchemy, it usually was, although once or twice they’d had to retreat to the Wests’ elegant house in Mayfair. Morwenna looked around at a scene that could have graced a medieval tournament. Flower-bedecked tents and pavilions, bowers of cushions and divans, tables groaning with food and wine. And for the guests’ entertainment, horses, gigs, dogs, boats, a maypole, archery butts, and a string quartet, doing their best to be heard above the shrieks and laughter of a crowd of overexcited children.
“I haven’t seen the Kinglakes since Christmas.” Sally and Charles had stayed at Belleville for a couple of weeks over the Festive Season. Morwenna had worried that her stylish, fastidious friends might find her rambunctious family too much to handle en masse, but it had turned out to be a happy reunion. She and Robert rarely came to London, and even when they did, Sally and Charles were often away traveling.
How she loved her life on the beautiful and now prosperous estate that Robert had bought from Silas seven years ago. Seven eventful years for the family, as a quick check around the field proved.
Silas and Caro were here with their four children, their oldest Roberta now fourteen and growing into a beauty like her mother. Traces of gray showed in Silas’s thick tawny hair, while Caro glowed with the contentment of a life well lived. Helena and Vernon, of course, with their three children. Fenella and Anthony Townsend had brought their son and daughter, Henry and Emily, while their older boys, Carey Townsend and Brandon Deerham, had come along to help keep the boisterous youngsters under control.
The first three Dashing Widows had found love and fulfillment and paved the way for the second trio of Dashing Widows to make their way to happiness.
Morwenna was certainly happy with how everything had worked out. Robert had wanted a big family, and fate had delivered one. Her sons, seven-year-old Michael and six-year-old Frederick, both lean and dark like their father, were playing around the boats along the riverbank. Robert’s fascination with sailing had continued into the next generation.
Her daughters Kate and Bella trailed their older sister Kerenza about the field, no doubt driving her mad. At twelve, Kerenza had to cope with endless adoration from the little girls of three and four, although most of the time, she took it in her stride. Kerenza, Morwenna was pleased to say, took most things in her stride.