The Day of the Duchess (Scandal & Scoundrel #3)(109)

“What did you tell me the last time we were here? That this was a place for men of purpose?”

He was kissing her neck, making little circles with his tongue at the place where it met her shoulder, where she was sensitive enough that he could make her sigh with a mere touch. He smiled there, against that impossibly soft skin, his hands finding the round swell of her bottom as she pushed his coat from his shoulders. “I seem to recall such a description.”

The coat gone, his hand stole to her breast, cupping it, testing its heavy weight, and she groaned softly at the touch. “And what have you to say about it?”

His lips tracked down the slope of that breast. “I have purpose right now, don’t you think?”

She burst out laughing, the sound carrying down the staid, venerable halls of Parliament, out of place and perfect. And Mal set about making her laugh again and again, until she was making entirely different sounds altogether.

And then he was making them, too.

When they returned to earth, on the floor of his office, wrapped in his heavy velvet robes—robes he would never again be able to wear without summoning his wife to his offices to help him remove them—he pressed a kiss to her temple and said, softly, “I suppose I’ve got to get round to the news today.”

She lifted her head, confusion furrowing her brow. “Whatever for?”

He smiled down at his former and future wife. “We should announce our engagement, don’t you think? The Duke of Haven and The Singing Sparrow?”

That laugh again, beautiful and perfect and his. “Most definitely. We wouldn’t want people to talk.”





Epilogue



Bevingstoke Babe: Haven Can’t Wait!




Six Years Later



“Your Grace, it simply is not done!”

Mal ignored the midwife as he pushed into the room, shucking his gloves to the floor and sending his coat after it, eyes only for his wife as he climbed onto the bed.

His wife, who appeared entirely too serene, considering she was minutes from giving birth. “You’ll give the midwife the vapors.”

“She’ll be fine,” he replied, taking her hand and bringing it to his mouth for a firm kiss. “I’m never touching you again.”

She laughed, as though they were out for a stroll. “That’s what you said the other times.”

“This time, I mean it.”

“You said that last time.”

He didn’t remember, but he imagined he did. Three months after their second wedding—a glorious spectacle attended by half of London at the insistence of his sisters-in-law—Sera and Mal had discovered that Sera was increasing, to equal measures of surprise, delight, and terror.

Miraculously, an easy birth produced a healthy son, Oliver, now five and wild about horses and paints. Two years later, they’d welcomed Amelia, as brilliant as her mother, and full of opinions. Just that morning, at breakfast, she’d looked Mal dead in the eye and pronounced, “If you and Mama can have a baby, it’s only fair that Oliver and I have a kitten.”

Mal had spent the morning in the stables, selecting the perfect pair of cats to live in the manor house. After all, Amelia had pointed out, the baby should receive a gift upon its arrival. That was only polite.

Needless to say, the doctor who had pronounced Sera barren after the birth of their first child had been wrong. And the happy life into which Sera and Mal had settled, had become an equally happy chaos.

“Any word from the Sparrow?” Sera asked, as though she were in the gardens playing lawn bowls and not preparing to birth a child.

“Caleb arrived yesterday,” Mal replied. “Your tavern is in fine hands while you attend to other business.”

The family lived most of the year in London, close enough to The Singing Sparrow that Sera could manage the daily operations, and that the Sparrow herself could find time to sing on rare, wonderful occasions, always with the Duke of Haven in attendance.

But all of their children had been born at Highley, and this one would be no different.

A wave of discomfort hit Sera and she gasped. “It’s time.”

Mal rolled up his sleeves and moved behind his wife. While he was properly besotted by his children, and thanked God above for them every day of his lucky life, it did not change the fact that he had no love for the getting of them. “I am reminded I don’t like any part of this.”

“You like the bits leading up to it quite a bit, husband,” she said dryly. “As do I.”

The midwife tutted her disapproval, and Mal raised a brow. “You know they say I am the scandal, now, don’t you? And here you are, scandalizing the room with your talk of the bits leading up.”

She smiled. “Considering my current state, Mad Malcolm, I’m fairly certain the room is aware of the bits leading up.”

He laughed, wild for his wife, as ever beauty and steel.

A wave of pain hit her then, and Mal did his best to retain his composure as the midwife looked to Sera. “The babe comes, Your Grace.” She looked to Mal then. “You are certain you wish to remain?”

Sera clasped his hand. “He is certain.”

As though there were anywhere else he would be.

He offered his wife his hands and his strength as she did the immense, magnificent work of bringing their child into the world. Not that she needed him.