The Bridgertons Happily Ever After - By Julia Quinn Page 0,11
to see them blacken and shrivel.
“There’s nothing worth saving,” he said. He leaned down and kissed her, once on the nose and then once on the mouth. “Let’s go to bed.”
“What are you going to tell Colin and Penelope?” she asked as they walked arm in arm toward the stairs.
“About Georgie? The same thing I told them this afternoon.” He kissed her again, this time on her brow. “Just love him. That’s all they can do. If he talks, he talks. If he doesn’t, he doesn’t. But either way, it will all be fine, as long as they just love him.”
“You, Simon Arthur Fitzranulph Basset, are a very good father.”
He tried not to puff with pride. “You forgot the Henry.”
“What?”
“Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset.”
She pfffted that. “You have too many names.”
“But not too many children.” He stopped walking and tugged her toward him until they were face to face. He rested one hand lightly on her abdomen. “Do you think we can do it all once more?”
She nodded. “As long as I have you.”
“No,” he said softly. “As long as I have you.”
The Viscount Who Loved Me
Without a doubt, readers’ favorite scene in The Viscount Who Loved Me (and perhaps in all of my books) is when the Bridgertons get together to play Pall Mall, the nineteenth-century version of croquet. They are viciously competitive and completely dismissive of the rules, having long since decided that the only thing better than winning is making sure your siblings lose. When it came time to revisit the characters from this book, I knew it had to be at a Pall Mall rematch.
The Viscount Who Loved Me:
The 2nd Epilogue
Two days prior . . .
Kate stomped across the lawn, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that her husband was not following her. Fifteen years of marriage had taught her a thing or two, and she knew that he would be watching her every move.
But she was clever. And she was determined. And she knew that for a pound, Anthony’s valet could feign the most marvelous sartorial disaster. Something involving jam on the iron, or perhaps an infestation in the wardrobe—spiders, mice, it really didn’t matter which—Kate was more than happy to leave the details up to the valet as long as Anthony was suitably distracted long enough for her to make her escape.
“It is mine, all mine,” she chortled, in much the same tones she’d used during the previous month’s Bridgerton family production of Macbeth. Her eldest son had casted the roles; she had been named First Witch.
Kate had pretended not to notice when Anthony had rewarded him with a new horse.
He’d pay now. His shirts would be stained pink with raspberry jam, and she—
She was smiling so hard she was laughing.
“Mine mine mine miiiiiiiiiiiine,” she sang, wrenching open the door to the shed on the last syllable, which just so happened to be the deep, serious note of Beethoven’s Fifth.
“Mine mine mine miiiiiiiiiine.”
She would have it. It was hers. She could practically taste it. She would have tasted it, even, if this would somehow have bonded it to her side. She had no taste for wood, of course, but this was no ordinary implement of destruction. This was . . .
The mallet of death.
“Mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine miiiiiiiiiine,” she continued, moving into the hoppy little section that followed the familiar refrain.
She could barely contain herself as she tossed a blanket aside. The Pall Mall set would be resting in the corner, as it always was, and in just a moment—
“Looking for this?”
Kate whirled around. There was Anthony, standing in the doorway, smiling diabolically as he spun the black Pall Mall mallet in his hands.
His shirt was blindingly white.
“You . . . You . . .”
One of his brows lifted dangerously. “You never were terribly skilled at vocabulary retrieval when crossed.”
“How did you . . . How did you . . .”
He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. “I paid him five pounds.”
“You gave Milton five pounds?” Good Lord, that was practically his annual salary.
“It’s a deuced sight cheaper than replacing all of my shirts,” he said with a scowl. “Raspberry jam. Really. Have you no thought toward economies?”
Kate stared longingly at the mallet.
“Game’s in three days,” Anthony said with a pleased sigh, “and I have already won.”
Kate didn’t contradict him. The other Bridgertons might think the annual Pall Mall rematch began and ended in a day, but she and Anthony knew better.