Page 75

EPILOGUE

MELROSE HOUSE, CHATHAM, KENT, SIX WEEKS LATER

S omething was tickling Emmeline’s back, brushing her spine and making her arch and shiver. She might have mistaken it for Johnathan’s fingertips or his lips, as he often woke her with teasing caresses, but the touch was cool, and slightly damp.

It felt like…

“Is that a rose?” she murmured sleepily, a smile curving her lips. “Are you tickling my spine with a rose, my lord?”

“Mmmmm.” The warm drift of Johnathan’s breath fanned over the loose waves of hair tumbling in wild disarray around her face, and she could feel the warm press of his bare skin against hers.

“Which rose is it?” Her eyelids dropped closed as the wicked caress continued, gliding over the dip in the middle of her back before inching sideways to follow the curve of her waist. “It has a divine scent.”

“It’s the Lady Emmeline.”

Emmeline opened one eye. “The Lady Emmeline? There isn’t a rose named the Lady Emmeline that I know of.”

“There is now. Margaret, Harriet, and Sarah have renamed the Great Maiden’s Blush the Lady Emmeline, in your honor. They said it has the sweetest scent of any rose in the garden, and so it should be named after the sweetest countess in all of England. I could hardly argue with that logic, could I?”

A laugh bubbled up in Emmeline’s throat. “ They said so, or you did, and they agreed with you?”

“Hmm. I can’t quite remember.” Johnathan traced her earlobe with the rose, a soft laugh leaving his lips when she caught her breath at the caress. “But we all agreed the Great Maiden’s Blush will hereafter be known as the Lady Emmeline, at least in the Melrose House gardens.”

“Dear, sweet things.” Emmeline had been apprehensive about meeting Johnathan’s younger sisters, but she needn’t have been.

All three of them had been crowded onto a window seat the day Johnathan brought her home to his country estate, their noses pressed to the glass.

Her foot had hardly had a chance to touch the gravel drive before they burst through the front doors and gathered around her, chattering excitedly, each of them asking a dozen questions at once.

They were so like her own sisters Emmeline had felt instantly at home with them. Since then, what had begun as an eagerness on both sides to think the very best of each other had blossomed into a deep, genuine affection.

“Harriet and Sarah have declared they intend to become botanists themselves. As for Margaret, she’s bursting with excitement over Tilly’s visit next week, and has talked of nothing else.”

“I wish we could have persuaded Phee to come,” Emmeline said with a sigh.

Phee had been astonished to find the Earl of Melrose in the cramped entryway of Hambleden Manor the day he’d arrived to claim Emmeline. Her shock had quickly turned to quiet joy, but for all Phee’s happiness for Emmeline, she’d so far resisted a visit to Kent.

“Give her time, love. She’ll come, when she’s ready.”

In her worst moments, Emmeline worried that Phee would never be ready, that she’d spent too much time hiding at Hambleden Manor to ever willingly leave its secure embrace.

She understood the urge to hide, the need to feel safe, but there was a great deal more to life than safety.

Love, laughter, passion, hope—she wanted all of those things for all of her sisters—but sometimes she worried Phee would never give herself a chance to have them.

Johnathan, who could always tell when Emmeline was fretting over her sisters, shifted closer to her side, sliding one long, bare, hair-roughened leg between hers.

Ah, now that was Johnathan’s mouth. There could be no mistaking those full, soft lips, open and demanding, the warm tip of his tongue tracing the line of her neck for any species of rose, no matter how divine.

“Turn over, my lady,” he whispered in her ear.

Another delicious shiver skittered down Emmeline’s spine as she wriggled onto her back, her cheeks heating just a little as Johnathan’s gaze roved over her, the desire in his eyes warming every inch of bare skin it touched.

“Dear God, that blush drives me mad.” He followed the rose as he teased it down her throat, his eyes darkening as he let it rest between her breasts. “The creamy white petals with the hint of pale pink are just the same color as your skin when you blush.”

He traced the rose down her abdomen, pausing to tease her belly button with the impossibly soft petals before he drifted lower still, his blue eyes glittering as he dragged it over the slight curve of her lower belly.

Emmeline’s blush deepened, and Johnathan’s mouth curved in a slow, lazy smile. “Still so shy, after all these weeks as my countess?”

“It’s not shyness, my lord.” That wasn’t entirely true, as there was a part of her that would always find her handsome husband’s desire astonishing, but that rush of color to the surface of her skin had more to do with her consuming desire for Johnathan than it did with maidenly bashfulness.

“No?” Johnathan moved the rose back up her body to circle one taut nipple, his hot gaze darting to her face when a soft, breathless cry left her lips.

She swallowed at the breathtaking sight of him hovering over her, with his tousled golden hair and sensuous lips, his powerful chest and hard, flat stomach.

How amazing, that any man could be so handsome, and that that man could be hers …

But he was hers, body, heart, and soul. Since that fateful night in Lady Fosberry’s library, Johnathan had shown her in a thousand different ways that his love belonged to her, and her alone.

“Tell me what it is, then, sweetheart,” he crooned as he drew the rose across her chest to torment her other nipple, stroking and teasing until she was squirming against the bed, soft whimpers falling from her lips.

“Shall I show you, instead?” Emmeline closed her fingers around his wrist and pressed his hand against her body.

Johnathan’s eyes burned, his lips parting further as she guided his hand to the warm, wet place between her thighs. He let out a low, tortured groan at the evidence of her desire, then tossed the rose aside, his game forgotten as passion overwhelmed them both.

There were no more words after that—just his hot, demanding mouth on hers, his tongue sliding between her lips to take her, stealing every thought from her head but the delirious pleasure of his touch, his quickened breath, his hungry mouth devouring hers, and his hoarse groans as his powerful body moved inside her, hard and hot, stroking so deeply Emmeline was lost to him, gasps tearing from her throat until with one deep thrust, he sent breathtaking waves of pleasure shuddering through her.

He held her close afterwards, murmuring drowsily, words of love and passion as he pressed tender kisses to her temple, her lips, the slowing pulse at the base of her throat. She stroked her fingertips over his back, through his damp hair, a smile that belonged to him alone on her lips.

They dozed in each other’s arms for a while, Emmeline sure she’d never before been as warm as when she was in his embrace, until at last he stirred, and dropped a playful kiss on the tip of her nose. “I have something for you, my lady.”

Emmeline shook her head, but her smile was dreamy. “Not another gift?”

Johnathan knew she didn’t care much about silks or jewels or other extravagant trinkets, but he insisted it gave him pleasure to surprise her, so she’d ceased protesting, though occasionally she teased him about his countess being the most elegantly-dressed botanist in England.

“A gift for you to wear the next time we’re in London.” Johnathan fetched a square box of lovely, heather-colored velvet from the table beside the bed. “The ton must have something to gossip about.”

There was still a great deal of talk in London over the Lady in Lavender.

There were those who steadfastly maintained it was Juliet, while others claimed it had been Emmeline all along.

Still others insisted that Lord Cudworth and Lady Christine—now Lady Cudworth—had fabricated the entire story, and there was a small but shrill contingent who would tell anyone who listened that Emmeline had bewitched poor Lord Melrose with a mysterious perfume, an elixir of roses that made him fall madly in love with her.

There were even some who whispered there’d been a wager between Lady Fosberry and the Templeton family over an ingenuous matchmaking scheme the Templeton sisters had invented, but Lady Fosberry had maintained a strict and uncharacteristic silence on that subject, much to the ton ’s disappointment.

The only thing they all seemed to agree on was that Lord Cudworth was a great fool who couldn’t distinguish one color from another, and Lady Christine a spiteful gossip.

Emmeline didn’t pay much attention to any of it. She and Johnathan had spent little time in London since their marriage, preferring to remain on their quiet estate in Kent. So, it was easy enough for her to let the ton wear themselves out speculating.

She did, however, find it amusing they’d all so readily forgiven her for her part in the Lady in Lavender scandal, but they had their own reasons for choosing to so generously overlook her shocking behavior.

Simply put, the ton was mad to get their hands on the Countess of Melrose’s infamous perfume, and since she was said only to give it away to her friends, all the ton was now clamoring to become Lady Melrose’s dearest friend.

Of course, they had it all wrong, just as they usually did. Emmeline had never given that perfume to a single soul. Not to her friends, and not even to her sisters.

That scent belonged to Johnathan alone.

He laid the velvet box on the pillow between them. “Indulge me. This one is…special.”

He opened the lid, and there, nestled in a bed of white silk was a parure, simple but heartbreakingly lovely. “Oh, my goodness.” Emmeline reached out a hesitant finger to touch one of the dozen amethysts that made up the necklace. “Oh, it’s beautiful. I’ve never seen anything like this.”

The stones had each been intricately cut to resemble the petals of a rose, then inlaid with tiny, sparkling diamonds made to look like dew. They flashed with deep purple fire in their setting of delicate silver filigree leaves.

“I had it made for you.” Johnathan took up the necklace and draped it around her throat, his blue eyes going so soft at the sight of the jewels dangling around her neck that Emmeline couldn’t scold him for the extravagance of the gift.

She pressed a hand to his cheek, her throat tight. She didn’t know what she’d done to deserve such a man, but fate had put them together in defiance of science, logic, even rationality, and who was she to argue with fate?

“Madame Toussaint is creating a gown to match the jewels.” Johnathan brushed a stray lock of hair from her face with tender fingers. “Amethyst silk.”

Emmeline smiled. “Not lavender?”

“No. Amethyst, of a very particular shade, and the only one of its kind, so you’ll never again be mistaken for another lady.” Johnathan took her hand and pressed a sweet kiss to her fingertips. “There is now, and will always ever be, only one Lady Emmeline, Countess of Melrose.”