Lady Bridget's Diary (Keeping Up with the Cavendishes #1)(82)

Darcy gave a half smile and nodded, and was clearly out of sorts to be below stairs. Bridget found it adorable.

“Well you weren’t wrong about our informality,” she said to him. “Though we shall see if it is the downfall of civilization.”

He smiled, and took her hand, and kissed her palm. “As long as we’re together for it.”

Claire interrupted the moment with an offer of cake.

“Don’t mind if I do,” the duchess said grandly. And then to their surprise, Josephine joined them at the table for tea and cake and chatter about wedding plans. In the kitchen. With servants milling about.

“I do believe this occasion calls for champagne,” the duchess declared. James rummaged around and found a bottle and some flutes.

They all toasted to family and love and happily ever after.





Epilogue


It was the morning after their wedding and, as one would expect, Darcy and Bridget were to be found in bed. Tangled up in soft white sheets, tangled up in each other. There were kisses and soft sighs, quiet moans and gasps as they made love in the lazy, leisurely way of a couple who had the promise of a lifetime together and no need to rush.

It was only when the sun was high in the sky that husband and wife deigned to leave their bed, dress, and go down to breakfast. There were freshly ironed newspapers by Darcy’s place at the table, and a present near Bridget’s.

“What is this?” She glanced over at him and smiled in that mischievous way of hers.

“It is a present for you,” Darcy answered, nervously. He wanted to give her something that would not only please her, but demonstrate that he loved her, just the way she was. Needless to say, he’d agonized over finding exactly the right thing. “A wedding present, to be precise.”

“What is it?”

“I should have known,” he said, shaking his head, closing his newspaper, and setting it aside.

“What should you have known?”

“I should have known that you are the sort of person who asks what is in a present rather than just opening it.” He couldn’t help it. He grinned.

She laughed. “And I suppose you are the sort of person who oh--so--slowly and oh--so--carefully unwraps gifts so as not to wreck the wrapping. As if you needed to save it or economize.”

“You say that as if there were something wrong with that method. It is a very dignified way of unwrapping a gift.”

“Ha! I knew it.”

“Are you going to open it?” he asked impatiently.

She unwrapped in a manner that was the opposite of his, which was to say not neatly or carefully at all. She dropped the crumpled paper by her place at the table.

“Oooh,” she sighed. “It’s beautiful.”

It was a book. To be specific, it was a book full of empty pages, waiting to be filled with Bridget’s thoughts, feelings, and observations. It was a thick, leather--bound volume in “the prettiest shade of lilac,” according to the shopkeeper. The thick pages had silver edges, and a silver filigree design was stamped into the leather.

“And look at this, it has a lock,” Bridget said, smiling. She glanced up at him and batted her dark lashes. “Are you tempted to see what I shall write?”

“Not in the slightest. I would never read the private writings of another person.”

“I suppose it is in the event that my diary once again falls into the clutches of a nefarious creature with malicious intentions. Don’t those words just give you shivers?”

“No. I told you grown men don’t get shivers,” he replied. “I thought a lock would be appropriate for the times when Amelia is here for a visit.”

She laughed. “How well you know the Cavendishes now! It is perfect, Darcy, I love it. I love you. Thank you.”

She swept over to him, leaned over, and kissed him. He tugged her down into his lap, dismissed the servants, and they did things at the breakfast table that gentlemen did not discuss.



Later that afternoon Bridget sat at the delicate writing desk in her private drawing room at Darcy’s house. Correction: the home she shared with him. She traced her fingers along the leather cover of her new diary, thinking of all the wonderful things with which she hoped to fill up the pages.

On the first page she wrote:

Lady Bridget’s Diary, Volume the Second

But that didn’t seem quite right. This was her first day as a married woman, the first day of the rest of her life. This wasn’t another volume about her trying to fit in, but what she would do now that she found the place where she belonged. Oh, there was so much she could do now that she wasn’t fretting over silly little things, like how her hair didn’t hold a curl or whether she had too many sugars in her tea.

So she crossed out the words

Lady Bridget’s Diary, Volume the Second

And instead she wrote

Lady Darcy’s Diary

She turned the page and began to write.

Things I love about my Dear Darcy

I love that I can say MY dear Darcy.

I love the way he always does the right thing and protects those he loves.

I love the way he kisses me.

I love the way he would become adorably embarrassed if I were to write any more about that.

Bridget caught herself staring into space with a dreamy smile on her lips and wicked thoughts in her head. Thoughts of kisses and more than that.