Abandoned to the Prodigal, page 25
Laughter surged up to the surface. “We are married. No one will raise an objection.”
No one did. They were more concerned with persuading Lord Myerly that he should come to Hornby.
“We haven’t spoken in a quarter of a century,” the old gentleman growled at Juliet’s father. “And now you want me to dine with you?”
“It’s customary,” the earl said gravely. He hesitated, then, “And it’s past time we stopped being stubborn. I’ve always known in my heart you were not to blame for Jenny’s elopement. She would always have married Stewart. I’m sorry I spoke to you as I did.”
Myerly glowered at him. “And I suppose you expect me to say I should have let you apologize sooner?”
“No,” her father said with the glimmer of a smile. “I will give you that one. If you join us to celebrate your grandson’s wedding to my daughter.”
*
Ten minutes later, changed into her riding habit with Betty’s aid, she emerged from her chamber on the half-landing to hear some commotion going on at the foot of the attic steps. Since Susan was supposed to be sleeping up there, Juliet frowned and hurried along to sort out the trouble.
Two men, neither of them servants at the house, were quarreling, shoving at each other, while a familiar older lady stood guarding the steps with an umbrella held like a sword before her.
“Mrs. Harper!” Juliet exclaimed.
The men stopped arguing at once, and both turned toward her. Susan’s farmer and her sergeant. Presumably, both had come to see her, and Mrs. Harper was preventing them.
Mrs. Harper’s face lit up. “Miss Smith! How amazingly fortunate! Is it within your power to have these brutes thrown out of this house and kept from my daughter?”
“Well, yes, probably,” Juliet said. “But…how is Susan?”
“Weak as a kitten, but so glad to see me. She wept, Miss Smith. Wept.”
“I’m not surprised,” Juliet murmured, wondering how to explain that her name wasn’t Smith. “But…has Susan said whether or not she wishes to see either of these gentlemen?”
Mrs. Harper’s jaw dropped.
“You have to ask her,” Juliet said gently. “You can’t protect her from everything, or you’ll make her run away again.”
Mrs. Harper looked outraged and then miserable. Without a word, she turned and hurried up the attic steps. Immediately, Owens charged after her, and the farmer grabbed him by the arm.
“I don’t think so!” Juliet cried, incensed. “Stay exactly where you are! There will be no fighting in this house unless you want to be barred from it for good. You will wait to be invited, and if you are not, you will leave. Is that clearly understood?”
The farmer gulped and tugged his forelock. “Yes, m’lady.”
She glared at the silent sergeant who eventually gave a reluctant grin. “Yes, ma’am, m’lady, whoever you are.”
“Mrs. Stewart,” Dan said severely, from behind her. Keeping his eyes on the love rivals, he drew her farther back. “Well?”
“You might need to deal with Sergeant Owens’s disappointment. Susan is making up her mind.”
Dan looked skeptical, which surprised her until Mrs. Harper reappeared at the top of the stairs. “Sergeant, she will give you five minutes. No longer.”
An expression of utter relief broke out on the sergeant’s face, softening it into something close to fatuous as he dashed upstairs, unhindered by his crestfallen rival who turned away, head bowed.
Juliet turned to Dan, open-mouthed. “How did you know?”
He shrugged. “He followed her here. He was angry, but never with her. There just seemed more feeling than either Susan or her mother credited him with. Such feeling usually has a reason, in my experience.”
“The reason being Susan actually loved him?”
“Perhaps. Come and look at this. They’re wheeling out the most ancient coach you’ve ever seen. And our horses are saddled.”
The ride to Hornby was just what Juliet needed—time alone with Dan to come to terms with the astonishing knowledge that he was her husband.
Her heartbeat quickened with more than the exercise of riding as they entered Hornby woods, and their horses slowed to a halt. While his mount cropped at the undergrowth, he reached out for the bridle of Juliet’s horse, drawing it close enough to his own that he could lean across and kiss her.
Somewhere, she was aware the birds still sang in the trees, that other small creatures scuttled beneath. The scents of the wood did not change. But his kiss, the first as her husband, seemed so momentous that everything else faded.
“Afraid?” he whispered.
“Of what?”
“Of what we’ve done.”
She smiled, shaking her head so that her lips brushed back and forth across his. “No. Are you?”
“I think I should be. But all I know is that you are my wife, and I have never been so happy in my life.”
*
The Alfords were stunned, although there was no time for them to work up to offense. After all, it was their son who had broken the engagement. They had claimed to have come to Hornby through mere friendship, with no promises, so they could hardly take it amiss when Juliet chose elsewhere.
Kitty wept and laughed and hugged her. “I was so afraid you would hate me for telling them where I thought you were! But of course, you married your Daniel!”
Ferdy just laughed and clapped Dan on the back hard enough to make him stagger.
“I hope that was affection,” Dan protested.
“It was,” Juliet assured him.
Considering the mix of guests at this very peculiar wedding breakfast, it passed with surprising joy. At least, if others were not joyful, Juliet was far too happy to notice. The air was even cleared between her mother and Dan’s, as before the dining room was ready, Mrs. Stewart came and sat beside them.
“I hope you won’t take this amiss, Lady Cosland, and I have no hesitation in speaking in front of Juliet. But I want to say how pleased I am to make your acquaintance, and to finally make peace with your husband.” She smiled rather ruefully at the countess’s sudden stiffening. “He and I would have made each other miserable, you know. He certainly knows. I behaved badly to him, but I hurt mainly his pride. He is lucky to have you, and I believe we are all lucky to be allied through our children.”
It was a handsome speech, and Jenny Stewart hadn’t needed to make it. Juliet’s mother acknowledged everything with a brief clasp of her hand.
*
It seemed both strange and wonderful to dance into her bedchamber with Dan that evening. He was humming a popular waltz tune and pushed the door closed with his shoulder as he spun her. They whirled dizzyingly across the room and landed, laughing, on top of the bed.
“What shall we do now?” Juliet asked as he leaned over her.
His eyes darkened. He swept his hand down the length of her body, leaving her breathless.
But she caught his hand, smiling. “No, I mean tomorrow, the next few weeks, the rest of our lives. It’s not as if we’ve had any time to plan this.”
“Unplanned fun is nearly always the best.” However, he seemed to bend his mind to it. “Tomorrow, we should rescue Gun from the garden at Myerly. Or, alternatively, rescue Myerly from Gun. Then…wedding trips are traditional. Your parents seem to want you to go to London to buy clothes.”
“Well, that is always fun. You should do the same.”
He sat up and shrugged off his somewhat threadbare coat. Tossing it aside, he said, “Perhaps you are right. And I would like to go to the theater with you.”
“And Vauxhall Gardens! Ranelagh!”
“Why do you want to go there? They’re hardly fashionable anymore. Or respectable.”
“That’s why,” she said happily. She caught his hand and held it to her cheek. “You are not a poor man anymore, Dan,” she said with difficulty. “Even without Myerly.”
“I know. Your father spoke to me. Apparently, we have an estate in Lincolnshire. And my grandfather, inspired by his determination to keep up with the generosity of his old enemy, has said I shall still have Myerly. Plus, a small allowance now. Apparently, my aunts and cousins have always had one. Now my mother and I will, too. He even said he would increase Aunt Hetty’s, for their…difficulty. And when he dies, he will divide his fortune between us.”
“And you will still have Myerly. I think you would have given up the rest for Myerly.”
“Except you,” he said, tossing his cravat and waistcoat carelessly on the floor. He leaned over her once more, tracing the outline of her lips with his fingertips, then trailing them down her chin and throat.
His lips followed, and her arms came up of their own volition to hold him. His hand slid beneath her, unlacing her gown even as he began to speak, rapidly and breathlessly.
“I will make light of things that are important. I will, from time to time, behave badly, though never unfaithfully. I may wander off forgetting to tell you and miss engagements, though I will try not to. I will laugh inappropriately and fail to be polite to supposedly important people who annoy me. Occasionally, or quite often, I am bound to annoy you. We will quarrel. But through it all, Juliet, never doubt that I love you, that I will always protect you, and love you, support you, and love you…”
“I am seeing a pattern,” she managed, and stopped his lips with her own. “Don’t apologize for crimes you have not yet committed. I love you, Dan, not some silly idealized version of what a husband should be.”
He smiled, tugging the gown and undergarments from her shoulders until her arms were free and then the rest of her, and she lay quite naked in his arms. “You are quite wonderful…” His eyes, thrillingly hot and clouded, devoured her. “My God, what did I do in my life to deserve you?”
She caressed his stubbly cheek and throat and tugged at his shirt. “You made that nasty porter give me a ticket for the stagecoach. You helped me and believed me. But it’s never a matter of deserving, is it?”
“No,” he agreed, obliging her by pulling his shirt up over his head. “And it’s probably as well you didn’t know exactly what was in my head at the time.”
“What?” she asked, just before he kissed her mouth long and deeply.
“This,” he said huskily, trailing kisses across her cheeks and shoulders and breasts. “And this, this, and this…”
All the delicious heaviness she remembered from previous encounters seemed to intensify. His lips, his hands, trailed fire and sweetness, coaxing, arousing her to bliss and increasingly powerful desire. His breath coming in short, hard pants, he dragged her hand to his body, encouraging her, showing her where to caress him. And his pleasure fed her own, like wind to a wildfire.
She cried out when he entered her, but it was more relief than pain. And then he was moving above her, and his caresses were inside as well as out. And this, this was the culmination of her love and his. Finally, they were one.
And when the groans of ultimate joy escaped him, they carried her, too, seizing all the abandoned, glorious pleasures and hurling them together into a wave that consumed her, that would always consume her.
Later, holding her in his arms, close against his body, he murmured, “It’s as well you married me, you know, for I’m not sure how much longer I could have kept my hands off you.”
She thought about that. “I didn’t want you to. Keep your hands off me, I mean. I’ve never met anyone like you, Dan Stewart.”
“Nor I anyone like you, Juliet Stewart.” He smiled into her hair. “Will you stay with me?”
“Always,” she whispered. “Will you love me?”
He turned her, moving over her once more. “Always,” he breathed.
Epilogue
Three months later…
Having pruned the last of the revived rose bushes at the front of Myerly Hall, Juliette straightened and shaded her eyes against the low autumn sun. She smiled and waved, for two figures on horseback were riding up the drive toward her.
Dropping her basket and knife, she hurried across to meet them. “How wonderful! You’re early!”
“Well, we didn’t go to Hornby first,” Kitty confessed. “We came straight here and thought we could go to Hornby tomorrow.” She slipped to the ground unaided to hug Juliet. “I am so glad to see you after all these weeks!”
Juliet hugged her back. “How was the wedding trip?”
“Wonderful,” Lawrence said fervently, kissing Juliet’s cheek. “Though I’m sorry about Lord Myerly.”
Juliet nodded. “Thank you. He died quite gracefully at the end. Not bitter, as he would have been when he summoned everyone to his so-called deathbed in August. I like to think Dan and I made him laugh and eased his last few days in this world.”
Kitty nodded. “I’m sure you did. He obviously loved Dan. And you.”
“Where is Dan?” Lawrence asked as they walked to the front door, leaving the grooms to take the horses.
“Oh, out in the fields. There is much to do before the new planting begins if they are going to make all the changes they want to. But he shouldn’t be long. He’s been looking forward to seeing you both.”
Kitty had paused, gazing up at the house in wonder. “But Juliet, what have you done with the place? It’s a beautiful house beneath all that grime! We almost didn’t recognize it.”
“We just had the stone cleaned and repaired, and the chimneys. And we’ve opened and aired all the rooms. It is not yet all as we want it, so you must excuse the chaos, but we have a few decent rooms.”
She was still showing them around, and they were still exclaiming over the lightness of the rooms and the beauty of the polished old carvings and the new carpet in the drawing room, when Dan shouted upstairs and strode in to join them like a fresh wind.
He wore his old clothes, somewhat muddied, but he grinned at his guests, kissing Kitty’s proffered cheek and shaking hands cordially with Lawrence.
“I am disappointed,” Kitty pronounced. “I had hoped to see you in a smock!”
“You can, some days,” Juliet assured her. “It depends how much laboring he plans to do.”
“It does,” Dan agreed, catching her round the shoulders and kissing her full on the lips. “But I have several coats now that even Hugh has pronounced acceptable, and a couple of natty waistcoats that he secretly envies. Give me ten minutes to change, and I’ll join you!”
“He seems happy in his new life,” Lawrence observed.
“He is. It’s as if he has come home.”
“And you?” Kitty asked, searching her face.
She smiled, knowing her sister would read the answer in her face. “Oh, one moment,” she said. “I have to tell the kitchen…”
But she did not go to the kitchen which, with several more servants, now ran itself without any interference on her part. Instead, she hurried upstairs, to the completely gutted and redecorated rooms she shared with Dan.
His hair was wet and his skin, scrubbed. He had donned a clean pair of pantaloons and was struggling into a fresh shirt when she came in.
She walked right up to him, flung her arms around him, and kissed him. His arms closed around her, and he cooperated fully.
He was smiling when he raised his head. “What was that for?”
“Just because I had the sudden urge. And I’ve never been so happy in my life.”
For an instant, his eyes were serious, and then his smile returned, and he kissed her again.
Somewhere in the house, a dog barked in delight, and someone squealed.
They broke apart. “Gun,” they said as one and fled back downstairs to rescue their guests.
About Mary Lancaster
Mary Lancaster lives in Scotland with her husband, three mostly grown-up kids and a small, crazy dog.
Her first literary love was historical fiction, a genre which she relishes mixing up with romance and adventure in her own writing. Her most recent books are light, fun Regency romances written for Dragonblade Publishing: The Imperial Season series set at the Congress of Vienna; and the popular Blackhaven Brides series, which is set in a fashionable English spa town frequented by the great and the bad of Regency society.
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Lancaster, Mary, Abandoned to the Prodigal
