As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(100)
“Whitby’s guarding her like a bulldog,” he assured her. “She’s fine.” And she was fine…for now.
They’d managed to keep the scandal of her elopement secret, and so far, Burton Williams was smart enough to keep his silence. Perhaps because he realized he’d just barely escaped marriage to a woman who had no money. Or more likely because the Carlisle brothers had vowed to tie him up and toss him onto a ship bound for Australia if he uttered one word about Evelyn. And anyone who asked about her absence during those days were all told the same story—that Mariah couldn’t have possibly gotten married without her sister at her side, even over the anvil in Gretna Green.
In fact, at this morning’s formal wedding for their friends and family at the medieval church of St Katharine’s by the Tower, Evelyn had stood up with Quinton for the ceremony, while his mother and his sister-in-law Annabelle sat in the front pew and wept. Good Lord. It was as if a spring had opened up in the church for all the waterworks that had gone on. The only flaw in the day was that Sebastian wasn’t there to share their happiness. But news arrived from Blackwood Hall just as the wedding breakfast was beginning and the first toasts were going round that Sebastian was now the proud father of a beautiful baby girl, whom they’d named Rose.
Distracted, Mariah looked down at the desk and the account books, and worry crossed her face. “What if there’s a problem and the accountant doesn’t know—”
He silenced her with a kiss. “Everything will be fine, darling,” he murmured, sliding his lips away from hers to kiss his way along her jaw to her throat.
Her pulse raced tantalizingly beneath his lips. Not for the first time since he saw her standing there in the church aisle on her father’s arm, he wondered how long they had to stay at the breakfast before he could take her home, carry her to their bedroom, and make love to her.
While he would have to wait for that, he couldn’t resist stealing a caress of her cheek. “Your mother would have been so proud of you today. I know that my mother is. Already she loves you like a daughter.”
Her eyes glistened, and she could say nothing, bringing her lips to his with a love and happiness so powerful that she trembled from it.
His arms tightened around her, and he brushed his mouth against her temple. “Think you can handle it—continuing to support the school while running the stores?”
“I can, with you at my side,” she whispered. “I can do anything as long as you love me.”
Closing his eyes, he held her pressed against him. He’d never been happier in his life.
A soft sound came from the doorway.
He looked up at his mother, a smile on her face at catching them in such a loving embrace. He stepped back from Mariah, but he didn’t lower his arm from around her waist.
“I thought I might find you two here.” She came forward and took their hands in hers, squeezing them affectionately. “I am so very happy for both of you.”
“Thank you, Mother.” He placed a kiss on her cheek.
She arched a brow. “Although it certainly took you long enough to figure out what the rest of us already knew.”
He rolled his eyes and repeated dryly, “Thank you, Mother.”
She smiled lovingly at him. “I know you want to get back to your guests, but I have something that I thought you might want to see.”
She pulled a small book from her reticule, and her smile saddened with wistful melancholy.
Robert tensed. “What’s that?”
“Your father’s journal. Annabelle found it while she was looking through the books in the library at Park Place.” She handed it to him. “I marked an entry that I think you should read.”
With a kiss to his cheek and another to Mariah’s, she retreated toward the door.
She called back to them, “Of all the accomplishments your father achieved, the one that he was most proud of was his family. He always believed that it was his children who gave him his greatest purpose in life.” She paused, a look of love shining in her eyes for her son. “He would have been so proud of you, Robert.”
She slipped away to go back upstairs to the party.
As Robert stared after her, the journal heavy in his hand, he felt Mariah’s reassuring touch on his shoulder. He ignored the stinging in his eyes and looked at her.
She said gently, “Read it, my love.”
Nodding wordlessly, with a dark dread settling on his chest, he opened the book and flipped through the pages filled with his father’s distinctive handwriting to the last entry. The one written just hours before his death, while he had once again been waiting up for Robert to return home. Holding his breath, he read over the entry.
Still sowing wild oats, yet with the potential to be the most successful of all my sons…Then his heart lurched into his throat— He tries my patience, but I take such great pride in him. He has become the good man I have always known he would be.
“I knew it,” Mariah whispered as she read over his shoulder. “Your father loved you, Robert, and he believed in you, always.”
He blinked hard as he tore his gaze away from the page, but her face blurred. He forced out hoarsely around the knot chocking in his throat, “How did you know when I didn’t?”
“Because I love you myself, and I recognized the same signs in all those stories your mother told about you and your father.” She wrapped her arms around him. “And just like him, I am so very proud to have you in my life.”