Marjorie fashioned me another studio?”
“No studio.” Jacob’s ferret nibbled his hair. “Just boxes.”
“Shh,” hissed the others. “Spoilsport!”
Elizabeth flung open the door to a small room beyond the landing. “Et voilà!”
Lawrence blinked. It was indeed a closet stuffed with nondescript wooden crates.
“Thank you,” he said politely. “What is it?”
Tommy grinned at him. “Your housekeeper gave us your ledgers. These crates contain all of the books and paintings you’ve had to sell to make ends meet since you started helping Chloe. Your ugly carpets are just behind.”
He started. “Mrs. Root handed over my private ledgers?”
“Oh, all right, I sneaked in and took them.” Tommy plucked a ring of keys from a hook on the wall and tossed the jangling set to Lawrence. “You can have these back.”
He gaped at her. “You have my housekeeper’s keys?”
“Of course not!” Graham brushed this away with great offense. “We made our own.”
“We also made you our own.” Chloe gave him a saucy grin. “Lawrence Gosling, eighth Duke of Faircliffe, seventh Wynchester in Crime.”
He covered his face with his hand. “I cannot believe you incorrigible wretches duplicated Mrs. Root’s keys.”
“No reneging,” Elizabeth informed him cheerfully. “Once a Wynchester, always a Wynchester.”
“In fact”—Graham turned to face him—“now you can join in our adventures!”
Jacob’s face lit up with enthusiasm. “How are you with controlling birds of prey?”
“Do not give our new sibling a pet hawk,” Tommy said firmly.
“Or teach him the call,” Chloe added.
Jacob lifted a hand to his mouth and let out a horrific gurgling noise.
Seconds later a rhythmic tapping rattled the closest window.
“That’s Hippogriff.” Jacob’s chest expanded with pride. “I’ll introduce you in a moment.”
“Tomorrow will be soon enough,” Chloe informed her brother, then turned loving eyes to Lawrence. “Weren’t you about to whisk me off for an evening in your crumbling castle, Handsome Pauper?”
“Why, yes.” He pulled her into his arms at once. “That’s exactly what I want to do.”
And so he did.
Epilogue
14 June, 1817
Faircliffe Town House
Chloe swirled in her husband’s arms in the center of a grand ballroom, filled with lights and people and music. By any standard, the Gosling-Wynchesters’ end-of-season gala was a splendid crush, if perhaps not precisely the sort her husband’s ancestors might have envisioned.
For one thing, the jewel of tonight’s rout was not the orchestra and the dancing but rather the once-private library now open to guests. A hundred people were on the dance floor, but dozens milled about the renovated library, settling into a plush sofa to thumb through the pages of an intriguing book, or admiring the angelic vase on its pedestal of honor or the artwork upon the walls.
Thanks to Marjorie’s tutelage, Lawrence had even hung one of his own paintings: a landscape featuring Elderberry and Mango.
He and Chloe split their sets evenly: one to dance, one to mingle with guests, and back again. It was the best kind of exhausting. She had never smiled so much in her life. Her cheeks ached from laughter, her feet were numb from dancing, and her throat was sore from delightful conversations with so many friends, old and new.
Chloe tilted her mouth toward her husband’s ear as they waltzed.
“Is the Leader of the House of Commons fighting with Lady Quarrington over marzipan?”
“Your brother has Tiglet stuffed in his waistcoat,” Lawrence whispered back. “We can unleash him if necessary.”
Chloe grinned back at him.
At first she had worried that it would be a struggle for him to learn to rule society rather than allow society to rule him, but her spirited duke had been more than a match for the challenge.
As for her fear that she would never be memorable enough to be bon ton, Chloe had discovered that their prejudices were irrelevant. She didn’t need their approbation. The Duchess of Faircliffe did—and wore—what she wished. Hadn’t they seen the caricatures?
She and her husband had gleefully accumulated their own circle of powerful people: some peers, some from the fashionable world, some thinkers, some poets. A few statesmen and agitators. A smattering of artists. And every single member of Chloe’s reading circle, a few of whom appeared to have brought Chloe’s book recommendation with them to the gala: Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’s shocking Les Liaisons dangereuses.
Over the last weeks of Parliament, she and Lawrence had worked day and night disseminating pamphlets, participating in charities, parsing research, rewriting proposals for parliamentary acts, and putting together planned remarks and incisive questions to fashion a series of watertight speeches. He had been magnificent.
“After this,” her husband murmured, “it will be heaven to do absolutely nothing for a