As the Devil Dares (Capturing the Carlisles #3)(99)

“You truly mean it?” she whispered, not daring to believe he could be hers so soon, finally, and in every way.

“Whatever you want, love.” His grin faded into seriousness. “I don’t care how or where, Mariah, as long as I get to be your husband.”

Tears of happiness stung her eyes as she whispered, “I love you, Robert.”

“Dear God, I hope so! I’d hate to think how you’d torment me if you didn’t.” When she slapped gently at his shoulder at his teasing, he caught her hand. He rose up to touch his lips to hers, a slow and lingering kiss that tasted of both promise and possession. “On to Scotland, then?”

She nodded, unable to speak around the knot in her throat.

“Just one more thing,” he added in afterthought.

Her heart skipped with a spark of dread that something might stop them after all—

“Instead of bringing my brothers with us, can we pick them up on the way back?”

She laughed, then her hand flew to her mouth in horror at how she’d just reacted at his brothers’ expense. The two men were now going to be brothers to her, as well.

He pulled her hand away, his eyes gleaming. “I love you, Mariah,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with emotion. “And my family loves you, too. They’ll think you the best decision I’ve ever made.”

Her smile faded. “Even if I cost you a place with Winslow Shipping?” Her chest grew heavy with remorse as she admitted, “You deserved it, Robert. You truly did.”

“There will be other partnerships, other business opportunities.” He leaned in to kiss her, so softly and with so much love and tenderness that a tear slipped down her cheek. “But I’ll always have you, Mariah.”

“Yes, you will,” she breathed, unable in her joy to find her voice. Always.

He murmured against her lips, “I won’t need anything else.”





EPILOGUE



A Warm Spring Day in London

One Month Later



There you are.” Robert leaned against the doorway to the small office in the basement of the Gatewell School and smiled at Mariah as she sat behind the desk, still wearing her wedding dress even as she combed through the school’s account books. Typical Mariah. And he loved her for it. “It isn’t proper for a bride to flee her own wedding breakfast.”

She looked up at him and gave the guilty smile of a caught-in-the-act criminal. “It’s such a crush upstairs that I wanted a few moments to myself.”

He corrected with a lift of his brow, “You wanted to go over the books one more time, you mean.” That, too, was typical Mariah.

She grimaced, not even bothering to pretend that he was wrong. “Can you blame me? I’ve handled the school’s accounts for the past five years. Now I’m supposed to simply hand them over to a stranger.”

“To a well-trained and greatly qualified accountant,” he corrected. And a man whom she interrogated for over an hour when she interviewed him for the position of overseeing the school’s funds. “Our lives have changed, darling. You have to learn to adjust.”

She stood and circled around the desk to him, slipping her hands around his waist as she stepped into his arms. “I think I’ve done a good job of adjusting to all the changes recently.”

He only smiled at her, knowing better than to engage in that battle.

At least she was right about one thing. There had certainly been an immense amount of change in their lives since they returned from Scotland.

The first change was Henry Winslow himself, a transformation that Robert never would have imagined would have come to pass. When they first returned to London and told him they’d eloped, her father had reacted exactly as Mariah had predicted—denying her a dowry and refusing to give Robert a position within the company. He didn’t understand why an attack on St Katharine’s felt like an attack on her mother or that relocating the school made her grieve all over again. She and her father had never talked about Beatrice Winslow or how her death affected all of them, but Robert insisted that they did so now, having learned himself the importance of sharing grief.

Her father grudgingly came around. Not only did he welcome Robert into the family, he also gave both of them joint partnerships. To Mariah because Winslow now realized why she needed to be part of the company the same way she needed air to breathe, and to Robert because Winslow couldn’t afford to lose his political connections. But a lingering distrust borne from the debacle with her uncle made him carefully split their interests. Robert would work with him on the shipping interests, while Mariah would oversee the expansion into stores, selling exotic merchandise from all over the world and bringing the faraway places and foreign ports she loved to London society.

Scuttling the king’s plans for new docks in St Katharine’s, however, had been more of a fight. Robert did what he swore he would never do—he used his influence with friends and family in Parliament. But he did it to halt the new docks rather than to profit from them. St Katharine’s and the Gatewell School for Orphans of the Sea were both given reprieve.

And for the first time, the company truly belonged to the Winslow family. All of the family.

“Did you see Evelyn before you left the party?” she asked, a frown creasing her brow. “Is she all right?”