It Had to be the Duke - Christi Caldwell Page 0,42

here, and I railed, and I wept.”

Oh, God. She couldn’t bear this. Her heart cracked open all over again. “G-Geoffrey,” she whispered, her voice breaking, and she raised a fist to her mouth.

“Mmm-mm,” he said with a ducal sternness and a shake of his head. “That’s not what this is about. I’ve not invited you here to resurrect old pains and hurts, but rather, to heal. I asked you to come here because I want to convert this place, Lydia, into what it once was, a place filled with love and laughter with you.” Reaching inside his jacket, he withdrew a flat, faded flower.

Lydia looked the item over before it hit her. She gasped.

“I kept it, and pressed it, and saved it. I also did research on the yellow rose, Lydia. Do you know what I learned?” he asked in solemn tones.

Weakly, she shook her head, words failing.

Geoffrey twirled the fresh bud between his fingers, staring at it contemplatively. “I learned it symbolizes happiness… friendship.” He looked up, and with their eyes locked, he extended that lush rose. “New beginnings.” He opened his left palm, the one holding the ancient flower, and it fluttered to the ground, landing on the earth between them.

Her heart jumped, and she went absolutely still. “What are you saying?” Her voice emerged breathy and barely there to her own ears.

He moved his eyes over her face, his gaze like the most tender of caresses. “I’m saying I want to replace that one agonizing moment here with joyous ones.” Geoffrey took a step closer. “I’m saying I want a future together with you, at last. Of course, you are settled in your life and likely not needing or wanting a husband. All I would have to offer would be my love and a promise to make you happy for—”

Sobbing, Lydia threw herself at his chest, and Geoffrey immediately caught her to him, folding his strong, powerful arms about her.

Catching his cheeks between her fingers, she drew him down so she might see his beloved face more clearly through the tears filling her eyes. “I love you,” she rasped. “I have always loved you. Letting you go was the h-hardest, the most painful—”

“Shh,” he murmured, touching a fingertip to her lips. “Don’t let the past and sorrow in.”

He held the rose between his fingers out to her, and she automatically reached out to catch that offering. “New beginnings, Lydia. Let this moment and these grounds be our new beginning.”

A giddy light suffused her breast, and she laughed. “Y-yes. I want that.” She wanted that so very much. Another happy sob escaped her, and Geoffrey tenderly brushed her tears away. “It had to be you, Geoffrey. It always was you.”

He smiled. “No, Lydia. It was always us.”

Us.

Together, at last.

With a smile, Lydia lifted her mouth and gave herself fully to his kiss and their future—together.

Epilogue

When Lydia had been a girl of seventeen, she’d imagined her wedding.

The groom had always in her mind been Geoffrey.

The celebration to follow would have been boisterous and joyous, if not because of her and Geoffrey’s then-proper parents, but because of the friendships she and Geoffrey had.

And in the end, she’d proven correct in all of that.

Just a good many years later than the imagined date.

The breakfast table swelled with the din of lively discussion. Her children and friends, combined with Geoffrey’s friends—and his son Wesley—made for a crowded wedding breakfast. And a boisterously happy one.

She sighed. She wouldn’t have had it any other way.

At her side, Geoffrey caught her fingertips and raised them to his mouth, placing a kiss upon them. “Happy, love?”

Lydia leaned over to answer him with a kiss. “Incandescent—”

“Of course she’s happy,” Althea called over the loud laughter and chattering taking place. “We knew what the girl needed. Didn’t we, Dorothy?”

“Indeed.” Lydia’s other friend answered with a nod and a smile, and also a wink for Lydia.

Lydia’s brows came together. Why… why… Were they suggesting…? Were they saying…?

“As much as it pained me to work with those two.” Althea flicked her thumb in the direction of the pair of noblemen who were Geoffrey’s friends.

Surprise brought Lydia’s eyes shooting wide, and she glanced over to Geoffrey, whose shocked expression mirrored her own.

“Had it been on behalf of anyone but my boy Bentley, I would have rejected just out of the sheer fact that I had to work with you,” Mowbray shot back.

“Because you had to work with me?” Althea sputtered. “Furthermore, you hardly did anything.”

“I suggested the wicked soiree,” Mowbray shot back. “That was, after all, the place where they reunited.”

And just then, the entire room chose that very moment to fall quiet.

Lydia’s sons, seated directly across from her, straightened at the same time.

“Wicked soiree?”

Her younger son, Johnathan, said in time with Benedict’s question. “What wicked soiree?”

Lydia resisted the urge to slap a hand over her eyes. “Nothing,” she said in perfectly calming tones. “It was nothing.” The more than a dozen stares, all on Lydia and Geoffrey, marked a room full of people who believed that lie not at all.

At her side, she felt Geoffrey’s laughter.

“This is not amusing,” she said from the side of her mouth.

Her husband immediately flattened his lips and adopted a somber expression. “Of course not.”

“I daresay if you are attending wicked events, it isn’t nothing,” Thomas insisted with an indignation better suited to a disapproving parent than her son. “In fact—oomph.”

Glaring, Caroline drew her fingers back. “Oh, hush. They are married now,” Lydia’s youngest daughter chided.

“But—”

Caroline brandished her striking hand menacingly. “Don’t make me hit you a second time, Thomas.”

Wisely, Thomas fell silent.

Alas, Althea was not content to let the matter of go. “See what you did, Mowbray? It would be your idea for the wicked soiree,” she groused. “Only you would come up with such an idea.”

As the gentleman and lady who’d bickered as badly as children launched into a bit, Lydia looked to her new husband.

“Have they played matchmaker with us, Geoffrey?”

Geoffrey chuckled. “It appears that way, love.” He glanced off to the quarreling quartet, while around them, the couple’s children attempted to quell the bickering.

At his opposite side, Wesley, who’d stood up with Geoffrey, took in the long table filled with Lydia’s and Geoffrey’s families. With his dark hair and blue eyes and tall frame, Wesley was very much the image of his father. His frame was slightly broader, no doubt from the work he’d done as a miner. He was a quiet, contemplative young man, who’d also proven exceedingly gracious and warm to Lydia.

“They are certainly not what I’d expected of a duke’s friends or of the peerage,” Wesley murmured more to himself. He eyed the gathering the way a scientist might study a new species. In the past fortnight leading up to her wedding, Lydia had been afforded the opportunity of meeting and becoming friendly with Geoffrey’s youngest son. Wesley had proven even more accepting than Lydia had anticipated.

Another boisterous round of laughter went up among Geoffrey’s friends as Lydia’s shook their fingers and challenged the noblemen over some latest matter. “At all,” the young man tacked on.

“They are much,” Geoffrey said with a chuckle.

“They are… very real,” his son corrected and looked to Lydia. “As is Her Grace.”

She smiled gently. “Please, you must call me Lydia,” she reminded him.

“Lydia,” Wesley murmured.

At his opposite side, Lydia’s daughter put a question to Wesley, pulling his attention away.

Geoffrey leaned in and placed his lips close to her ear. “What think you, love, of our new journey so far?”

Lydia paused and took it all in. Geoffrey’s son speaking with her daughter. Their friends laughing together and teasing. Her children—even her sons—smiling. “It is perfect.” She slipped her fingers into his. “At last, it is perfect.”

She held on to his hand tightly.

This time, she wasn’t going to let him go.

This time was… forever.

The End

If you enjoyed It Had to Be the Duke, be sure and check out Along Came a Lady, Book 1 in the All the Duke’s Sins series, where you’ll meet the Duke of Bentley’s son…Rafe Audley, and Edwina Dalrymple, the woman tasked with bringing Rafe to London for his presentation before Polite Society!

Along Came a Lady

Biography

Christi Caldwell is the bestselling author of historical romance novels set in the Regency era. Christi blames Judith McNaught’s “Whitney, My Love,” for luring her into the world of historical romance. While sitting in her graduate school apartment at the University of Connecticut, Christi decided to set aside her notes and try her hand at writing romance. She believes the most perfect heroes and heroines have imperfections and rather enjoys tormenting them before crafting a well-deserved happily ever after!

When Christi isn’t writing the stories of flawed heroes and heroines, she can be found in her Southern Connecticut home with her courageous son, and caring for twin princesses-in-training!

Visit www.christicaldwellauthor.com to learn more about what Christi is working on, or join her on Facebook at Christi Caldwell Author, and Twitter @ChristiCaldwell!