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“Aye,leannan,” he said, already hauling her atop him and into the bed. “I think that can be arranged.”

EPILOGUE

When Grace had idly wondered aloud if they might go to London for part of the Season, the year after they were wed, Caleb turned her down flat.

“No,” he said, laying his newspaper down flat. “There’s much I would do for ye,leannan, but not that.”

On a normal day, Grace might have argued with him, teased him about putting limits on what he would do for her, but today was not a normal day. She’d spent half the night up with the baby, whose primary nursemaid had a cold and thus feared passing the illness onto the child. As baby Diana—named in what Grace called an homage and Caleb called an act of revenge against the Duchess of Hawkins—was only three months old, this was a reasonable precaution.

Grace just wished that her daughter would accept the other nursemaid in the night, just for a little while, to give her mama a break and a nap. But little Anna, as her father had taken to call her, had inherited that Gulliver stubbornness.

Thus, instead of arguing, Grace had put her head down on her arms right there at the breakfast table, rules be damned.

“Oh, very well,” she said. In truth, she didn’t want to attend any Society events either; she just wanted to see her friends. “I just miss Emily, Diana, and Frances.”

“Have them here,” he offered dismissively.

Grace’s head shot up so fast shefelther brain rattle around in her skull.

“You want me to invite my friendshere?” she asked.

He looked at her sullenly, as if he could not understand why she was acting so surprised…though a glint in his eye said that he was teasing her more than anything else.

“Oh, aye,” he said with a great sigh. “Yer brother is nae so bad, I suppose, and I like sparrin’ with the tall one. Frances is good company.”

“You know all their names,” Grace insisted crossly.

Caleb grinned, unrepentant.

The only visitors they’d had north to Montgomery Estate since their marriage had been Evan and Frances, who had come themselves to finalize the sale of the mill from the Grahamestate to the Montgomery one. Graham had ultimately not been fully stripped of his title, though he had been sentenced to a decade long prison sentence and had lost any of the privileges in accordance with his title. Evan was now, officially speaking, the head of the Graham dukedom, even if he still technically sported the Oackley title.

Though the visit had ostensibly been about business, Grace’s brother had made no secret that he was truly interested in making sure she was safe and secure with her husband and in her new life. Evan had admitted—with agreatdeal of reluctance—that hesupposedthe enormous, ancient keep and its well-managed outbuildings were good enough for his sister.

“And Montgomery is fine, too,” he’d grumbled.

Frances and Caleb, meanwhile, had gotten on quite well…mostly because, Grace thought, she’d once observed them sit in the same room for a full half hour without exchanging a single word. Frances had overcome the worst of her shyness since her marriage, but she was still not unsettled by silences.

And Caleb was Caleb, of course.

Inviting six people to stay was not a large party by most standards, but Grace wondered if it would stretch her husband’s capacity for socializing.

Not that she planned to argue, however. She wanted them to come very much. So, she agreed and quickly skipped off to pen invitations before he could change his mind.

To Caleb’s credit, he did not change his mind in the intervening months between when Grace sent out the invitations and when her friends were set to arrive. He regarded the event more with grim acceptance than excitement, of course, but he did not put up a real protest.

That was, not until the morning that they were scheduled to appear.

Grace woke to her husband’s arms tight around her, his face pressed into the space between her shoulder blades. This had become one of his preferred positions for sleeping, though Grace couldn’t understand how he bore being tickled by her hair all night long.

“That’s the part I like,” he’d once mumbled sleepily when she’d asked.

He was, she thought fondly, an unusual man.

“Leannan,” he said, his voice still creaky with sleep. “We’ve made a mistake.”

“Have we?” she asked, tracing her fingers lightly over the corded muscles of his forearms.

It hadn’t taken long for her husband to find that the inactivity of the average duke’s life left him restless, particularly after so many years in the army. He’d taken to aiding the tenants with vigor, one that they had at first eyed with suspicion.