“I did not make Darius do anything.”

“Yes, you did.” Another kiss, this one damp and salty with her tears. “You threatened to treat Darius to some fisticuffs if he didn’t allow us to help him, all in aid of saving face, I’m sure, because Darius is quite fierce, but oh, Nicholas…”

She subsided to the seat beside him, which was fortunate, because the coach had been standing still for some moments. Nick took his thoroughly wrinkled handkerchief from her grasp and blotted her tears. “I did not want to upset you, Wife. This should be a happy day.” He took her hand in his, the better to comprehend the emotions rioting through her. “Why the tears, Leah? Is John to come stay with us at Belle Maison? Leonie alone will create a commotion. Two children at once, children who are strangers to each other and strangers to you, is hardly how I wanted you to begin your duties as my countess.”

* * *

Leah could hardly speak for the feelings thundering inside her.

“Nicholas.” She clutched his hand, trying to find words. “I want to call you lovey, too. Did you know that? It’s such a wonderful endearment.”

He smiled, a man purely indulging a daft female. “I would be honored to be your lovey, but that’s not what you wanted to tell me, is it?”

She shook her head. “For years—years—I was alone. I was barely tolerated. My father called me a walking disgrace to English womanhood and worse. My brothers did what they could for me, but that just made me feel worse, more ashamed. You have given me your daughter, and that… that…”

Leah bit her lip, trying not to let more tears fall, because Nick looked nigh to panic when she cried. She tried again, before the urge to kiss her husband could overtake the need to find the words. “You assumed I would make a place for John in our household. You faced down my father and exiled him to Hampshire. You’ve recruited Lady Warne to look after Emily’s come out, you, you…”

“I love you,” Nick said, sounding bewildered. “Of course I will do those things. It’s my privilege and honor to do them, because you are my wife and my countess, and I pray to Almighty God we have decades upon decades to raise our children, love our family, and love each other in every possible sense of the word.”

He understood. He understood what she’d been trying to say, the magnitude of the bounty she’d acquired when he’d taken her to wife. “Yes, and when you are clodpated, I will love you, and when I am wrong-headed, you will love me.”

Nick’s smile was tender and luminous. In her heart, Leah said a prayer that he’d always have that smile for her, even when they were old and gray.

She made the acquaintance of her very small brother John, and she agreed with Nick that the boy should join their household at Belle Maison. When she offered John her hand, that he might drag her off to the stables and introduce her to his pony, Leah caught Nick giving her that same tender, indulgent smile again.

As it turned out, even after they’d had decades upon decades to raise their many delightful children, love their family, and love each other in every possible sense of the word, he still smiled at her like that. Just exactly, wonderfully like that.

Acknowledgments

Nick and Leah’s story is dear to me, but preparing it for publication at the same time Darius and Vivian’s tale is in production (along with other related stories) has put significant demands on the folks at Sourcebooks, Inc., who turn my manuscripts into pretty books. I’m especially indebted to my book people for ensuring that Nick and Leah’s romance has found its way into readers’ hands, with specific thanks as follows:

My editor, Deb Werksman, can turn straw into gold. I swear to peaches, this is so. Even after eight books, I’m not sure how she does this, but the knowledge that she’s going to read every word of every manuscript, and pluck from a draft the potential for a great read amazes me and inspires me to keep coming up with the drafts.

Susie Yoder Benton is our scheduling goddess, and has kept the raw material for five series, a smattering of enovellas, and a few stray single titles moving into and through the Magic Tunnel of production without her once climbing through the phone or cyberspace and ’splaining to me the precise meaning of the term deadline. Deb spins straw into gold, but Susie can stretch time.

Cat Clyne has the dubious honor of extracting from me the dreaded marketing synopsis, positioning statement, and (muahaha music goes here) the tagline necessary to appease the voracious shifters who inhabit the shadowed realms of marketing and sales. Whether she wants it or not, Cat also gets a generous serving of whining with every attempt on my part to generate marketing material. Susie stretches time, but Cat sprinkles the magic dust of good humor at the right moment to prevent me from having tantrums.

Skye Agnew, in truth, has security clearances so classified we aren’t even allowed to know what they’re called, and she uses them to run some complex, advanced, invisible, alternate universe. She only masquerades as a production editor so she’ll have an excuse for lapsing into thoughtful silences when other people would roll their eyes and bellow, “Are you nuts? I don’t have time to look up when the word “sandpaper” was first used in southern England!”

Skye knows the older term was glasspaper, and she knows why, and she has the cites. Scary.

Danielle Jackson is my publicist—it’s fun to write that, as if I’m her sole concern from morning until night, but Danielle is responsible for supporting dozens of books every year. She organizes blog tours, splatters Advanced Reader Copies across the known universe and the blogosphere, has a grasp of market mechanics that leaves me agog, and can pull off a thirty-author signing like rolling off a log. More impressive than all that, she answers emails lickety-split. How cool is that?

Dominique Raccah is our publisher, the owner, visionary, and chief alchemist at Sourcebooks, Inc. Dominique has a growing company to run, many planes to catch, and a calendar full of international conferences to dazzle with her insight and imagination, but when one of my books felt like it needed the exasperating, elusive “something” tweaked, Dominique read the entire manuscript and pinpointed the difficulty. Wow and double wow.

With people like this to work with book after book, an author can only be grateful and humble.

About the Author

New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Grace Burrowes hit the bestseller lists with both her debut, The Heir, and her second book in The Duke’s Obsession trilogy, The Soldier. Both books received extensive praise and starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Booklist. The Heir was also named a Publishers Weekly Best Book of The Year, and The Soldier was named a Publishers Weekly Best Spring Romance. Her first story in the Windham sisters’ series—Lady Sophie’s Christmas Wish—received the RT Book Reviews Reviewers’ Choice award for historical romance, and was nominated for a RITA in the Regency category. She is hard at work on more stories for the Windham sisters, and has started a trilogy of Scottish Victorian romances, the first of which, The Bridegroom Wore Plaid, was a Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2012.

Grace lives in rural Maryland and is a practicing attorney. She loves to hear from her readers and can be reached through her website at graceburrowes.com.