Winnifred waited all morning and the early part of the afternoon for Asher to make an appearance, but he never came. Though he had sent a puzzling parcel earlier of a half-dozen black cravats and a note that read,
Eager for a fresh start. Do with these what you will.
Yours irrevocably,
Holt
Thankfully, both Jane and Ellie had arrived a short time ago, to distract her.
She’d sent them the news of her broken betrothal to Mr. Woodbine and her reconciliation with Asher. Over tea, she’d given them all the thrilling details—well, nearly all—about how she intended to marry Asher. If he should ever arrive on her doorstep.
“I’m glad it’s all settled between you,” Jane said, fishing through her enormous paisley reticule. “Because Lord Holt did, indeed, stop by my parents’ house and try to persuade me to give you some letters he’d written. Though, regrettably, I’d set my brothers on the attack before I’d bothered to look at them. Ah, here it is.” She lifted a fat, wrinkly scroll tied with a red ribbon and waved it like a baton, then placed it within Winnifred’s grasp across the low oval table. “But take care with how you unroll it. I didn’t have all the pieces and there are some parts missing altogether—I believe my brothers ate them—but you’ll soon see that they aren’t letters at all. They’re chapters.”
Winnifred stared at her in puzzlement.
“For our primer,” Jane added with a little nudge. “Go on, take a look and see for yourself.”
Strangely, her hands were shaking when she untied the ribbon. Asher had written chapters for the primer?
The instant she read the scrawled words “When a Scoundrel Meets His Match: And Why Drinking an Entire Pint of Rum Isn’t Always a Terrible Thing,” she smiled. And scanning farther down, her eyes misted over when she saw “How to Tempt a Scoundrel: And Twelve Reasons a Debutante Should Never Hide Her Freckles.”
Perhaps she was starting not to mind her freckles after all.
“You’re blushing,” Ellie said with a cheeky grin. “If you’re going to read the whole of it now, please do so aloud. Though you may whisper the more salacious parts, if you like. Just not too quietly.”
Winnifred didn’t have the chance to respond. In that same moment, the butler appeared at her side, presenting her with a letter on a salver. She set the scroll aside with tender care and inspected the letter.
“It’s from Prue,” she said, eagerly unfolding the single page to the crisp handwriting. They hadn’t heard from her for a fortnight. “‘Dearest Winnie, Lord F— has found me.’”
“Dear heavens!” Ellie exclaimed. “What an ominous beginning.”
“I shudder to think what will come next.”
Winnifred eyed her friends over the edge of the paper. “You would surely discover the answer sooner if I may continue.”
“No one is preventing you,” Jane said with an impatient swirl of her hand in the air.
“‘Lord F— has found me,’” she repeated for effect. “‘We met by chance at an assembly and he asked me to dance. I could barely speak, let alone refuse him. And before he handed me back to my aunt, he whispered that he would pay a call on the morrow. I was nothing but nerves and jitters all day. However, instead of a call, I received a missive through my maid, explaining that my aunt and uncle barred him from entering their house, and I nearly breathed a sigh of relief. Until I read what came next. If you can believe it, he asked me to steal away at midnight so that he might speak with me. I am in such a dither that I hardly know what to do. I should not slip out of my window in the middle of the night to see him. And yet . . . how can I not? I shall write again on the morrow with more news. Your muddleheaded friend, Prudence Thorogood.’”
“Lord F— is most definitely a scoundrel. There’s no question,” Ellie said.
Jane nodded, her lips pursed in contemplation. “We should expand our research. Not only should we scrutinize the methods of the marriage-minded gentleman, but we should learn absolutely everything there is to know about scoundrels. I’m certain it will be of use.”
Her friends nodded in commiseration, then looked to Winnifred.
She swallowed. “All I can say is that they are quite persuasive and far too easy to fall in love with.”
“What’s this?” a low, familiar drawl said from the doorway, causing tingles to race over her skin. “Surely you haven’t fallen in love with anyone else since we last saw each other, Winn.”
She grinned without turning to face Asher. “I suppose that depends on what you have to say to me.”
Her friends gawked at her.
Ellie said, “But you’ve gone to the window a thousand times— Ouch!”
She stopped when Jane pinched her and held a finger to her lips.
“I have a question for you, Miss Winnifred Humphries,” Asher said, sending her heart skittering beneath her breast.
Unable to bear their separation a moment longer, she stood and found herself gathered in his arms as he swung her around in a circle. She smiled, her greedy gaze roving over his dark features as if it had been years instead of hours since she’d seen him. And he looked quite splendid in a fresh white cravat.
“Are your trunks packed?”
She set her hands on his shoulders and her slippers on the ground. “That isn’t the right question.”
“Very well, then,” he said with a rakish grin. “How would you like to set sail by week’s end and visit my Great-Aunt Lolly in the south of France?”
She gasped. “Truly?”
He nodded.
But then she shook her head. “I want to say yes, but that is still not the right question.” After all, she recalled how willing he was to take her on a ship without marrying her first.
“Would you like to travel till your heart’s content, then live in Ashbrook Cottage—with me, of course—for the rest of your life?”
“Ashbrook Cottage? But I thought your father . . .”
He shrugged smugly. “I hold the deed now. Not only that, but a friend of mine and I took care of matters with Lord Seabrooke and his henchmen as well.”
“That’s rather mysterious.”
“Would you have me any other way?”
She arched a brow and stepped apart from him. “I’m not certain I’ll have you at all.”
“Stubborn,” he said and leaned in to steal a kiss. Then he knelt down.
Ellie gasped. Jane issued a huff of impatience. Her father cleared his throat at the door, and her mother said, “Hush,” and swatted Father’s arm.
“I have your father’s consent, and a special license,” he said softly. Then he tsked her and stood again, removing a handkerchief from his pocket. “I’ll never get through this if you cry, because then I’ll have to kiss you.”
Her father cleared his throat again.
She blinked rapidly as if that would dry up the flood gathering along the lower rims of her lashes. “It’s just that everyone I care most about in the whole world is here in this room and I’m so happy.”
He dabbed away the tears that dropped as he whispered, “I fell in love with you when we were standing at the crossroads. It started to rain and it just washed over me—the feeling that my life would be empty without you by my side. Marry me, Winn? Be with me for every adventure, and for every quiet moment, and for everything in between?”
Blubbering in earnest now, she nodded. “Of course I will. Just . . . not quite yet.”
Her scoundrel was leaning in to kiss her again when he stopped and blinked in confusion. Then Asher, her friends and her parents all exclaimed a simultaneous “Whot?”
Winnifred sniffed, taking hold of the handkerchief in his lax fingertips. “As you know, Jane, Ellie and I are writing a book. I cannot possibly abandon them. They are my dearest friends and—”
He silenced her with a gentle fingertip to her lips. “I know how important this is to you, and it is your loyalty to your friends that makes me love you all the more.”
“Oh, Winnie, for heaven’s sakes!” Jane declared, rising to her feet. “If you don’t marry this man—”
“This instant,” Ellie chimed in with watery-eyed vehemence.
“—then we’ll never forgive you.”
“But what about our book?”
Asher took her hand in his. “You could always write your chapters in letters to them.”
“Brilliant notion, Lord Holt,” Jane offered. Then, looking a bit chagrined, she shrugged. “And I apologize for threatening to poison you with a vinaigrette and for sending the horde after you.”
“Perfectly reasonable under the circumstances.” He inclined his head. Then he turned back to Winnifred, expectation in his gaze.
She didn’t leave him wondering. “Yes! I’ll marry you without delay.”
Since it was official, she expected him to kiss her. Instead, he kneeled down again.
“There’s one more thing you should know,” he said, unsheathing his pearl-handled knife from his boot.
She gasped, eyes wide. “But how did you get it back?”
“Winn,” he said with a grin and a lift of his dark brows, “have I got a story to tell you.”