Page 15 of A Pearl Seduced (5 Pearls for the Earl #4)

EPILOGUE

N umber Four Grosvenor Street

London

November, 1831

Lily shifted her infant daughter against her breast and sighed as Miss Camilla Titania Barker-Finch latched on and began to feast noisily. She glanced up at the two people bent over the large mahogany desk in the middle of what had been the upstairs drawing room but was now her library and her husband’s study. The two dark-haired heads laboring with noisy quills over a piece of parchment were the two most handsome in all of Christendom so far as she was concerned. Two of the three most precious souls in her world and she marveled at what her life had become.

“I did it, Papa. Look. I did it.”

Ari gazed over their four-year-old son’s head and smiled the smile only she and he understood. “And very well done it is, William. Show your Mama. She is very knowledgeable of the fields of reading and writing. He helped the boy down and handed him the piece of parchment.

“See, Mama,” William said as he ran across the room, giving the fat and sassy white cat on a cushion in the middle of the floor a wide berth. “I wrote my whole name.”

Lily draped a fichu over her breast and her suckling babe and took the parchment he presented to her. “William Derek Barker-Finch. A very fine hand, my darling. A hand such as this will be greatly appreciated by the clerks in your law offices to be sure.”

A scratch at the door drew her attention to he entrance of their butler, Fitz, followed closely by Ari’s devoted valet, Davies.

“The mail, sir.” Fitz handed Ari a stack of letters. “Ma’am.” He delivered a smaller stack to Lily.

“Look, Davies,” William cried as he ran to the valet. “Look what I did.” The valet lifted the boy into his arms and studied the piece of parchment clutched in his little hand.

“That is quite impressive, Master William. I know of no lad of four as talented as you. Do you, Mister Fitz?”

“Most assuredly not,” Fitz said as he came to look at William’s penmanship. “I believe this deserves one of Cook’s gooseberry tarts at least. Don’t you agree, Mister Davies?”

“At least one, and perhaps two. If your Mama agrees?”

“Go,” Lily said and waved them off with a laugh. “And you two will be sitting up with him this night when his belly pains him and he cast up his accounts all over the nursery.”

“Huzzah!” William cried as his two devoted minions carried him from the room.

“You do realize he will be impossible if those two continue to spoil him so,” Ari said as he came to sit beside her on the settee.

“Says the man who refuses to allow me or her nanny to pick Camilla up when she cries in the night, but insists on doing so himself.” She peeked under the fichu. “She is finally sated and asleep.”

“She prefers I pick her up, thank you very much.” Ari took her from Lily and cradled the babe in his arms. “Thank you, my Lily, for giving me such beautiful children.”

“You did play a slight role in their creation, sir.” She ran her finger across his bottom lip.

“The most enjoyable part of their creation to be sure. What is in your post?”

“Our invitation to Lionel and Nathaniel’s for Christmas.” She showed him the letter in Nathaniel’s elegant script. We are going are we not?”

“So soon after Camilla’s birth? Are you sure you’re fit to travel?”

Lily rolled her eyes. “It was childbirth, Ari. Not a deadly disease. I wouldn’t miss their Christmas gathering for the world. I do so love when we are all together. Not to mention Nathaniel will be in command of the kitchens.”

“Every man one of us thanks the Almighty that Charpentier prefers men. None of us would be married if that man preferred women. We’d all be thrown over, and he would have a veritable sultan’s harem. A chef, no less.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Lily said. “Charpentier’s cooking is not his sole attraction. According to Lionel he is a very skilled lover as well.”

“Good heavens, Mrs. Barker-Finch, not in front of our daughter. My mother would be appalled.”

“Where is your mother these days, my love?”

“Far away from us,” Ari replied. “That is all I care to know after the scandal she caused denying you to the entire ton.

“Hush,” Lily whispered and then kissed him tenderly. “We have our family. We don’t need her. We have our servants, the children, and we have the family life has given us. We will go and share Christmas with them, and nothing could be more loving and family than that.”

“You are my family, Lily. You are the reason my friends came back into my life and have become more than brothers to me. You are the reason I have a home and children. You are the reason CB and I are able to save so many of the people of Seven Dials from disease and injustice with our foundation. You are the reason for every good thing in my life.”

“And you are the reason I have returned to the stage, the reason I can read, the reason I rise in the morning with a smile on my face. You, my love, are the reason for my every happiness. And you always will be.”

And he was. And she was. And they were for the rest of their lives.

Wait a minute… If you’ve enjoyed the adventures of Lily and Ari on their way to their happily ever after, just wait until you see what happens to the Earl of Framlingwood’s remaining mistress in A Pearl Enraptured , Book 5 in our series, “5 Pearls for the Earl.”

Strong, scrappy Margot and her beloved lady’s maid Gabrielle meet their match in a pair of successful Mayfair drapers who come from Captain El’s undercover collection of former tough river smugglers.