Too Wilde to Wed (The Wildes of Lindow Castle, #2)(95)

“What on earth do you mean?” Lady Gray cried. “I hate it when you use large words, and you know it. We haven’t had money for years.”

“That’s impossible.”

“I took Willa in,” her mother said. “An orphaned child.”

Lavinia felt a sudden wave of sickness. “Please tell me that you didn’t use Willa’s inheritance.”

“Use? I took care of her, as her parents asked me to do.”

“Do you mean to say that Willa’s inheritance paid for our servants, our clothing, our travel . . . everything? School? Carriages?”

“No one can say that I didn’t do my duty by her, because she married the son of a duke. If you were a better daughter to me, and less selfish, you’d be engaged to the heir to the dukedom now, and none of this would matter. Why do you think I allowed you to leave Paris, where we were so comfortable, and come to Lindow Castle? You were supposed to marry the heir!”

“Oh, no,” Lavinia whispered. Willa had no idea; she was certain of that. Lavinia had to tell her. Repay her, somehow. And she had to tell Diana, obviously. How on earth could she ever repay the emeralds? They had to be worth a king’s ransom.

“After Willa married, Lord Alaric’s solicitors wouldn’t pay any more bills.” There was a shrewish note in Lady Gray’s voice, as if she believed Willa’s estate should have kept sending money.

Lavinia looked numbly around her mother’s bedchamber in Lindow Castle. The pretty, festive hat she’d purchased for her mother was one of three. The duke had paid for them, and she’d told him that Lady Gray would repay him.

“The question is, what are we going to do now?” her mother said. “If you hadn’t been such a ninny, turning down those marriage proposals, you could be married by now and no one would know the difference!”

“My dowry,” Lavinia said dully. “Do I still have one?”

Her mother hesitated.





Epilogue





Palazzo Wilde

Florence, Italy

July 3, 1784

Four years later



Diana walked out into the large enclosed garden behind the palazzo, and shaded her eyes against the bright Italian sun. North was supervising the completion of an octagonal wrought-iron pergola designed from his own sketch; a pair of workmen were presently perched atop of it, putting into place its crowning detail, a magnificent twisting finial.

For a jarring moment, she had a memory of years earlier: North in his wig, powder, and heels, versus the man who stood before her now. It wasn’t just that North’s skin was golden from the sun, or the thin linen shirt hastily tucked into his breeches. Or that he wore a wig only if she made him.

Or even the bundle tucked in his left elbow, a bundle with a small fist waving in the air.

No, the difference was written plainly on North’s face, and it was happiness. Happiness, it seems, isn’t elusive. Not when you have a partner to laugh with, eat with, travel with, and sleep with.

A partner to love.

Her husband came toward her. “She’s fine,” he said. “Doesn’t mind the banging at all. Rose is a true Wilde, as stouthearted as can be.”

Diana took their baby, kissing her on a button-sized nose graced with three adorable freckles. Rose had her father’s blue eyes, and her mother’s hair, and a temperament so sweet that Diana swore she’d inherited it from her namesake, Diana’s sister. The baby cooed in greeting before smiling so widely that dimples appeared on both plump cheeks.

Diana looked up from Rose and surveyed the pergola. “It’s marvelous, North.”

“It’s almost complete,” he said, pointing to the exuberant finial at the top. “This afternoon, they’ll stretch the canvas roof, hang the curtains, and bring in the furniture.”

“I still wonder if we should have chosen diaphanous silk, so the sunlight would filter through,” Diana said. “I suppose we still might, if the curtains seem heavy.”

She remembered why she’d come out to the garden. “Where’s Godfrey?” she asked. “We’ve had a letter from Aunt Knowe, and Artie included an excellent watercolor depicting a fight between Fitzy and Floyd watched by the new finch family. Apparently the pair nested in the ivy outside the Prussian Dining Room again, and there are three baby finches this time.”

North tipped his head back and called, “Godfrey!”

A pair of dirty legs descended through the thick foliage of a nearby plum tree, followed by the rest of their owner, and Godfrey dropped lightly to the ground.

“Artie sent you a painting,” Diana told him.

He put a sun-warmed plum in her hand in exchange for the watercolor, then trotted away down one of the paths that wove through their garden.

“When he becomes the laird,” North muttered, “he’ll be a welcome change from all the chattering ninnyhammers leading the English government.”

Their honeymoon trip to Italy had never ended. Now the family—larger by Rose and her three-year-old brother—lived in a graceful mansion near Florence’s Piazza Strozzi that North had designed and built. Assorted Wildes were always presenting themselves; the duke and duchess had fallen into the habit of scooping up Artie and any other available offspring, and sailing to Italy every August. Naturally, North had foreseen this, and designed their home to be airy, beautiful, and large enough for any number of guests.