Even before he opened his eyes, Kit smiled. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to describe his expression as a grin. Despite a few sore muscles and a largely sleepless night, he could not remember a morning in which he’d awoken so satisfied.
Beth lay curled against his side, snoring softly. The realness of it made his heart squeeze. Their lovemaking had been beyond his wildest imaginings. But this—the sort of comfortable, ordinary, everyday thing that came with sharing a life with another person—was somehow even better.
His deep satisfaction with the present moment did not entirely erase the desire to rouse her with kisses and pleasure her again, however. Something slow and easy this time, with the morning sun streaming across the bed, across her body, and the—
He blinked toward the window. Morning sun, yes. Not terribly bright; it was, after all, still November, no matter that spring had sprung in his heart. And the angle of the windows here was less familiar to him than in his own bedchamber. But if he had to guess, by both the quality and quantity of light, it must be...
Good God. Midmorning, at least. The only possible explanation for their not having been found out by some poor housemaid sent to sweep the hearth and light a fire was that Mrs. Rushworth had declared Mrs. Goode’s room off limits. Had she suspected something? Certainly, the housekeeper would have had the staff up and at their tasks at the crack of dawn on such an auspicious day.
His niece and nephew could arrive any moment. And nothing was ready for them. Especially not their uncle.
Carefully, he extricated himself from Beth’s arms, from her bed, and scurried about gathering up his clothes. He dressed hurriedly, dropped a kiss on her bare shoulder before drawing the bed coverings more snugly over her, and slipped out of the room after a quick scan of the corridor.
His own chamber was also suspiciously empty of servants. But the valet’s earlier presence was marked by a basin of water and a pot of coffee, both now tepid. The door between the dressing room and bedroom stood open, and although the curtains were still closed, it was amply clear the bed hadn’t been slept in. Kit stripped off his shirt and washed with cold water, thankful not to have to look a whistling Winston in the eye.
Not that he was ashamed of having spent the night with Beth. Far from it. In fact, he intended to spend every night of the rest of his life similarly situated. But for a host of reasons—not the least of which was the previously spotless reputation of that paragon of domesticity, Mrs. Goode—he ought to have been more circumspect in his comings and goings.
Just as he finished knotting his cravat, he heard a tap on the bedchamber door.
“Come,” he said, hoping against hope that the visitor was Beth.
A footman stepped into the room, his face impassive. “Captain Fleming has arrived, my lord.”
So soon? He’d expected to have hours yet. Struggling to maintain his own exterior calm, he nodded. “Thank you.” The footman, taking his words for dismissal, bowed and turned to go. Kit stopped him with another question. “Have you seen Mrs. Goode this morning?”
He’d left her sound asleep. But he wanted to be able to judge the sort of gossip flying among the staff.
More important, he did not want to have to meet the children alone.
“No, my lord. I don’t believe she’s risen yet.” The footman’s expression betrayed nothing.
Kit’s second nod was crisper, unambiguous. The footman bowed again and was gone. He slid his arms into the coat he’d worn the night before, considering his comfort at present more important than a few wrinkles, though Winston would surely disagree. On the washstand, he spied his spectacles; the valet had a gift for rescuing them from whatever corner of the house in which Kit had laid them aside. As he tucked them into his breast pocket, his fingertips brushed the note Manwaring had handed him. No time to read it now. Kit drew a steadying breath and made his way downstairs.
Two children of about four or five years of age and dressed in traveling clothes awaited him in the entry hall. The boy was looking up at the painted ceiling, a cloying scene of cavorting cherubs against a blue sky the likes of which England had never seen. But the girl’s eyes were focused on his descent. She was the elder, Kit thought, though they were nearly the same height. She had the boy’s hand in a firm, almost painful grip. He knew that pose. Someone had told her to keep watch over her brother.
He found himself wondering if she’d ever once dared to release that hand over the course of their voyage.
At what Kit suspected was a firm tug from his sister, the boy redirected his attention to him. There was something of Edmund in the lad’s face, though not enough to make the recognition painful. He had loved his brother, even though Edmund had surely had occasion to doubt it.
Their somber appearances aside, however, he could not help but wonder whether either or both of the children might have inherited their father’s exuberance and mischievousness—the very qualities Kit had tried for years to stamp out of Edmund, thinking it was for the best.
Kit only hoped he had learned enough in the ensuing years to keep from making the same mistakes again.
“Good morning,” he said. “I am your uncle.”
Neither child spoke, only regarded him with wide eyes.
Captain Fleming, who had been standing off to the side examining a bronze sculpture of a salmon in the claws of some bird of prey, approached and bowed. “Good morning, Lord Stalbridge.” He was a barrel-chested man with sunburnt skin and hair like straw, and he spoke with a soft Scottish burr. “We had fine roads for our journey and made excellent time.”
“I am glad to hear it. It was kind of you to bring the children all this way.”
“Think nothing of it. They’ve been no trouble. Hardly said a word since we left Palermo.”
“Is it any wonder, sir?” Beth spoke unexpectedly behind him, and more sharply than was her wont.
Still, her presence was a balm. He might have managed perfectly well without her, but he would always prefer to have her by his side. “I’m glad you’re here,” he whispered.
“They are no doubt terrified, and still grieving besides,” she said to the captain, but her fingertip trailed over Kit’s arm as she brushed past him and dropped down to her knees to be eye level with the little girl. “Buon giorno, caro. Come ti chiami?”
“Isabella,” the girl replied softly, laying her free hand on her chest. Beth asked another question, which elicited a longer answer. Beth nodded as she listened.
Kit wasn’t surprised, exactly, to discover that she spoke Italian. It was the sort of accomplishment her parents would have cultivated. Speaking nothing of the language himself, he could not judge her fluency. The girl spoke more rapidly, to be sure, the words like music on her lips. But they seemed to understand one another well enough.
“I’ve spent my fair share of time in the Mediterranean,” said Captain Fleming, “but I never picked up the lingo. It’s grand that Lady Stalbridge can understand them.”
Kit didn’t bother to correct him over the matter of names. As soon as possible, he intended it to be the truth. He was watching as the two conversed, thinking about what Beth had said last night—about what he needed, and what she wanted. They could have it all, if they let go of the past, let go of old assumptions, and reached for something new—together.
She must have asked Isabella for her brother’s name next, for the boy piped up, “Luca!”
“After your father, do you suppose?” Beth said, darting a glance toward Kit.
Bending, he reached out a hand to Luke Killigrew’s grandson. The boy considered the offer before laying his palm across his uncle’s, not in a handshake but in a childlike gesture of trust. Kit gripped harder and did not let go.
Soon thereafter, Captain Fleming took his leave, explaining that the children’s trunks had already been unloaded. “Your servant said he’d see they were taken to the nursery.”
The nursery. Once the door closed behind the captain, Kit let a sigh escape his lips. Isabella posed some question and, her cadence more halting, Beth answered. “She wonders if she might see her room,” Beth explained to him.
“I haven’t even spoken with Mrs. Rushworth about where the children will sleep.” He spoke low, suspecting the children must know at least a few words of English, unless Edmund had simply cast off everything that connected him to family and home.
Beth appeared to give the matter some thought. “I believe we should take them upstairs and show them what will be theirs. Children have marvelous imaginations, and if their trunks are already there, that will be something familiar. They can at least change out of their traveling clothes.”
Luca had resumed staring about the entry hall with wonder, but he had not loosened his grip on Kit’s hand. “All right,” Kit agreed. Whatever her reservations to the contrary, he trusted Beth’s judgment.
And so, as a foursome, Luca’s hands clasped in Kit’s and his sister’s, and Isabella’s other hand in Beth’s, they turned and ascended the wide, polished stairs. He’d dreamed some variation of this scene many times: he and Beth, together, a family at Ferncliffe manor. Even unsure what they’d find when at the top of the stairs, he once more found the reality better than anything his imagination had fashioned.
By the time they reached the top floor—the children vacillating between awed quiet and anticipatory chatter—Kit’s heart was hammering, and not from exertion. He should have insisted on taking them somewhere else. The awful, empty nursery would be no welcome for Isabella and Luca. When Beth reached for the door, he almost begged her not to open it.
Before he could speak, however, she swung the door wide. Isabella gasped.
“Tell her,” he began, “tell them we hadn’t time to—no, tell them we wanted them to be able to choose...”
But Beth wasn’t listening. She was following Isabella through the doorway—well, being dragged along behind, more accurately. Luca went next, almost pulling free of Kit’s hand. What choice had he but to go along?
A few steps more and he stopped abruptly. Blinked. Twice, three times.
The room had been transformed. Panels of blue silk, into which tiny holes had been cut, swagged over one end of the room, creating the illusion of a starry night sky. Beneath that tent lay two plump mattresses, mounded with pillows and blankets. More stars, these crafted from paper, hung from the ceiling. Beneath one window, a table had been placed, its carved legs sawn off to make it a more comfortable height for little ones; instead of rigid chairs, its sides were surrounded by a trio of cushioned footstools, collected from various rooms around the house. And over the bare walls had been sketched the outline of an expansive scene, one which transitioned seemingly without effort from the Mediterranean Sea and Mount Vesuvius to Ferncliffe, nestled among the rolling hills of Hertfordshire—in other words, tracing the journey from one home to another.
Luca squirmed free of both Kit’s and his sister’s hands and scampered over to investigate the tent. Isabella, still attached to Beth, focused her attention on the mural, her questions and observations intelligible to him through their enthusiastic intonation. He watched Beth, her dark head bowed to catch every syllable, and wondered what she was thinking.
Eventually, Isabella was persuaded by her brother’s repeated summons to join him in admiring the silk version of the night sky. They lay side by side on one of the low beds, looking upward and nattering to one another, a contented murmur of sound punctuated occasionally by a giggle.
“I think it would take very little encouragement for them to fall asleep,” Beth said softly, stepping closer to him. Already, the stream of conversation was broken by stretches of silence. “They must be exhausted by their travels, by all the disruptions and uncertainties. Now they feel safe, just as I told you they would.”
Something burned in his chest, a sudden rush of love for these two children, though strangers. And for Beth, his dearest friend.
She was looking around at the room, not up at him. “Oliver must’ve stayed up all night.”
Kit nodded. “It appears he commandeered the draperies from the dining room.”
“Oh dear,” she said, sounding at once horrified and amused. “Well, Oliver has never played by the rules.”
Kit nodded. This was not at all what he’d had in mind for the nursery, nothing anyone he knew would consider appropriate for the niece and nephew of the Earl of Stalbridge. “Thank God,” he murmured, never in his life so happy to be wrong. “He took something I thought of as hopelessly dull and made it magical. I underestimated him, even after that grand speech he gave me last night, about the true value of the kinds of domestic work so many are prone to dismiss.”
“Including me,” she confessed with a low laugh. “But you see now why I was determined to protect ‘Mrs. Goode.’”
Kit fished for her hand. “I also see the person who encouraged his creativity, who inspired him.” Raising her fingers to his mouth, he brushed his lips over her knuckles. She watched him do it, wide-eyed, but not protesting. “You were his mentor, his first teacher—oh, maybe not in the skills needed to transform an empty room into the stuff of childhood fantasies. But in something more important. You taught him those dreams were worth having, that he didn’t have to stuff them into a box and tuck them away in the attic just to satisfy someone else’s notion of what his life should be.”
There were tears in her eyes, more than she could blink away. “Did I?”
“Look around, Beth,” he urged. The children had at last fallen silent, safe and cozy in their makeshift beds. “You may not be Mrs. Goode. But none of this would have been possible without you.”
She still looked dubious. “Does that mean I shouldn’t regret marrying Manwaring?”
Kit considered his answer. “I will not go so far as pretending to be happy about a marriage I would have prevented if I could. But I think the present Lord Manwaring has reason to be glad of his father’s choice. And if your parents hadn’t been determined you’d marry well all those years ago and had you educated accordingly, you might not have been able to speak words of comfort to Isabella and Luca today.”
“I suppose that’s true. I hadn’t really looked at things in quite that light before. Perhaps there is some use in a young lady’s accomplishments. But I’ll still never be a paragon of domesticity.”
By the hand he still held, he led her over to the low table and helped her to one of the footstools before sinking onto another himself. He would worry about how to get up from it later. “Rest assured, I’ll never ask you to be anything other than who you are—and who you want to be.”
“So,” she asked, in the manner of one posing a test, “you won’t mind if I do not wish to spend all my time in the country?”
“No, though of course I can’t abandon the estate entirely. And after so much time apart, I would prefer to avoid lengthy separations, with you in Town and me here.” She nodded. “But I like London too, and it’s past time for me to take up my responsibilities in the House of Lords.”
She let out a breath and dragged in another, as if relief of one worry only made room for the next. “What about...children?”
“Luca and Isabella, you mean? You are not eager to be known as their wise and fun-loving aunt?”
Her answering smile was weak. “Your children, I meant. I can’t give you a son.”
“I have no need of a son. I have an heir.”
“You would leave all this...” Her gaze wandered to the window, and he had the distinct feeling she was remembering as much as seeing. “...to Edmund’s son?”
“The earldom does not begin to make up for driving my brother away.” He twined their fingers more tightly together. “And it doesn’t matter more to me than you do.”
Her breathing grew easier, her blue eyes less stormy. “Thank you, Kit.”
“So that’s settled? We’ll return to London, acquire a special license, and marry before Christmas?”
She didn’t hesitate. “Yes.”
“And come January? I’ve often found it a dull, lonely month,” he confessed. “Though also an excellent time to resolve to make a fresh start on something, or to begin improvements one has been putting off. Perhaps I’ll work on brightening up the rest of Ferncliffe,” he suggested, glancing around. “How about you? Any projects you’d like to undertake?”
“I’m not...sure. I mean, yes. There’s something I want to do. But I don’t know exactly what it is—and doesn’t that sound perfectly ridiculous?” Her laugh was pained, humorless.
With his free hand, Kit reached into his breast pocket for the slip of paper Manwaring had given him. “Your stepson seemed to think this would help.”
“Oliver’s notes?” She turned the paper toward her and made a scoffing noise. “How?”
“Well, let’s see.” Releasing her hand, he retrieved his spectacles and threaded them over his ears, bringing the swooping print on the tiny sheet of paper into focus, though no clearer. “Something about Mrs. Goode and a conduct manual—no, magazine?” It didn’t sound much like Beth.
“Oh, I told him I wished I’d had a Mrs. Goode’s Guide when I was a young woman. Before I became a bride, in fact.” She lifted her gaze from the notes to Kit’s face. “Something that would have helped me make better—wiser choices.”
“But not a conduct manual?” He knew the sorts of books that fell into such a category, with their narrow view of what was proper for young ladies.
“No. More of a—” Her lips quirked, and then she giggled, the same merry sound he’d heard at some point last night, when he’d found an unexpectedly ticklish spot. “A misconduct manual.”
He lifted his eyebrows. Now he began to see a glimmer of his Beth in the project. “Ah.”
“Not serious misconduct, you understand. But real advice—not just to marry to satisfy their families. Perhaps reviews of the kinds of books they want to read, not merely what some stuffy old rector deems they should read. But as I told Oliver, no one would buy such a thing. Not even as a tuppenny magazine. Buyers would be expecting to find the latest fashions and stern lectures about the dangers of too much dancing. And if it didn’t contain those things, it would never be deemed acceptable for the young women I most hope to reach.”
He puzzled over the problem, studying each word Manwaring had jotted down as if it were a code to be cracked. “What if...what if your magazine appeared to be just what was expected on the surface, a sort of...false front? A disguise, if you will? Perhaps you could even find a way to borrow a bit of Mrs. Goode’s prestige,” he suggested, noting the words upmost on the paper. “The casual observer would see nothing to raise any alarms. And once parents and governesses and well-meaning maiden aunts were satisfied no harm would come to their charges, young ladies would be free to be...well, free.”
“Could that work?” Beth looked skeptical but thoughtful. “People are more than willing to dismiss anything specified as being for young women. So long as we could get the young women themselves on board...” Her fingertips drummed on the tabletop. “And of course, I’m no writer.”
“Hire young women to do the writing. You can be the publisher and editor in chief.”
She liked the idea. He could see it plainly written on her face. But her eyes narrowed. “As Lady Stalbridge?”
“Why not as Mrs. Goode?” Manwaring sauntered into the room, his curls dark with damp and his clothes uncharacteristically rumpled, as if he’d still been wearing them while snatching what little sleep he’d managed. Kit pressed a finger to his lips and then pointed toward the sleeping children. “Ah,” he said, softening his voice. “I’m sorry I missed their arrival.”
“The place is a marvel,” Kit said. “I’m not sure how you pulled it off.”
Manwaring’s shoulders lifted in a shrug that wasn’t quite modest. “Wasn’t sure what you’d make of it.”
“The children love it, and that’s all that matters. Now,” Kit said, picking up the note, “what were you saying about Mrs. Goode?”
“I can’t go on pretending to be her,” Beth insisted. “Particularly not after we’re married....” She sent a surprisingly shy glance toward Kit.
“Ah, you worked things out last night, then? Excellent.” Manwaring grinned mischievously as he looked between them. “Perhaps you ought to call your magazine Mrs. Goode’s Guide to Being Bad.”
“Oliver, be serious. What we have in mind could besmirch Mrs. Goode’s reputation.” Briefly, she told him Kit’s idea for a magazine aimed at young ladies and challenging society’s rules.
He looked unconcerned. “And you’re to be editor? Well, you’ve always been a marvelous manager, Mamabet. Seems like just the sort of thing Mrs. Goode would want to lend her name to. Perhaps she’ll even contribute a regular column.”
“Would you?” She jumped to her feet—Kit admired her nimbleness—and threw her arms around her stepson.
“Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” he reassured her. “Except, perhaps, the notion of you using your jointure from my father to fund such a thing.”
Their combined laughter roused the napping children, who came with shy smiles to be introduced to their cousin Oliver, the architect of their marvelous retreat. Manwaring, too, as it turned out, could manage at least a few phrases in Italian. “Six misspent months with an opera singer,” he explained to Kit in a low voice. “So, when do we return to London?”
“Soon,” said Beth before conveying the news to the children in Italian.
“Ah, excellent. And you’ll stay until summer?”
“We will,” Kit said, laying one hand atop Isabella’s head, while encircling Beth’s waist with the other. “I expect you will want to come back here and get started on the rest of the renovations.”
Manwaring blanched. Everyone else laughed, even the children, though they could not have understood why. Afterward, Manwaring lifted Luca on his shoulders to allow him to inspect some detail of the mural. Kit picked up the little sheet of paper to study the notes once more, but Beth plucked off his spectacles and laid them on the table before leaning in to whisper warningly, “You may live to regret this.”
“Never,” he said, pulling her down onto his lap. “Because I love you, Beth. With all due respect, I never wanted Mrs. Goode. Those high ideals may be admirable, but I prefer a flesh-and-blood woman. Who would choose the perfect house or the perfect hostess, when he could have a home, and a life, with his best friend?”
At just that moment, Isabella tried to clamber onto Beth’s lap, and the whole precarious arrangement gave way, with Kit tumbling off the footstool and Beth and Isabella landing in a giggling heap on top of him.
“Who indeed?” Beth laughed and kissed him.