deepened his voice. “You’re already so much more than I deserve.”
Eyes shining, she reached up to frame his face, cradling his jaw in the silken curve of her small hands. “What has deserve got to do with anything? Do you think I deserve you? That I deserve any of this? But it’s mine. You’re mine. And tomorrow, my love, we’re going to take that special license Lord Allendale procured and you and I are going to get married.”
A slow smile tugged at his mouth. “Is that so?”
“It is. Unless you have something else planned?”
His smile broadened. “Not a thing.” He bent his head to hers, his beautiful blue-eyed hellion. And love surged within him. The same love that had led him back here like a beacon, guiding his way home. Not to a place, but to her. Back to her side where he belonged. Where he’d always belonged. “Tomorrow is yours,” he vowed. “All of my tomorrows.”
“Tomorrow, then,” she said. And standing up on the toes of her slippers, she kissed him again, softly, deeply, promising him all of her tomorrows, too. Promising him forever. Her heart and soul. The very world.
Beasley Park
Somerset, England
Spring 1823
Maggie brought her bay mare to a standstill at the top of the rise. A fragrant breeze ruffled the skirts of her riding habit as she gazed out over the blooming countryside. In the springtime, the forget-me-not-covered landscape of Beasley Park was still the most beautiful place on earth. “Look at that view, my darling. Is there anything more glorious?”
The Honorable James Aldrick Nicholas Beresford slowed his plump pony to a halt beside her. His dark-blond hair was disheveled, his small hands steady on the reins. At five years of age, he was a natural equestrian, as confident in the saddle as Maggie was herself. “You’re not supposed to gallop, Mama,” he reminded her. “Papa says—”
“Even your Papa wouldn’t forbid a gallop on such a day as this.”
“Oh, wouldn’t he?” St. Clare rode up the crest of the hill to join them. His jet-black horse was bigger than both hers and James’s combined. An intimidating creature, and one Maggie had been yearning to ride ever since her husband had purchased him last month.
“Perhaps after the new baby comes, and you’ve recovered your health,” St. Clare had suggested.
He was right, of course. But the new baby’s arrival was more than six months away. And in the meanwhile, Maggie was yearning for excitement.
“You promised to take care.” St. Clare drew his horse up alongside hers. His expression was stern. But there was no masking the tender concern in his stormy gray eyes, the love that shone there as brilliantly as ever, even when he was at his most exasperated. “Have you already forgotten?”
“An uphill gallop isn’t dangerous.” She stretched out a gloved hand to him. “I told you to race me.”
He took her hand in his, holding it safe. “You were gone before I could formulate a reply—and our son along with you.”
James’s eyes brightened. They were the same color gray as his father’s. “Did you see how fast I galloped, Papa?”
“Frighteningly fast. You very nearly managed to outpace your mother.”
“I could beat Mama if I had a horse instead of a pony.” James patted his tiny steed’s neck, as if in consolation for the insult. “I’m big enough now.”
Maggie gave her son a speaking glance. The subject of a horse was one that had already been addressed, and often. Despite James’s insistence to the contrary, he wasn’t yet ready for a full-sized mount. Besides, both she and St. Clare had promised Lord Allendale that his young heir would be restricted to a pony until he was ten years of age. A minor concession to put the earl’s mind at ease.
“Well, I am,” James said under his breath.
He was growing up faster than Maggie would like. Indeed, the happier she was, the more quickly time seemed to pass. It felt like a lifetime ago that she’d sat inside the house in her mourning blacks, frail and restless and longing to be out from under the oppressive control of the Burton-Smythes.
Sir Roderick had passed away after an episode of apoplexy during the winter of 1820. And Fred—now Sir Fred—had married a sturdy village girl of eighteen, someone who properly adored him, and who had promptly given him a son.
Fred avoided Maggie’s family for the most part, as much as was possible with them being neighbors. And on those rare occasions they happened to meet, in the village or on