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Page 20 of Duke of no Return (Wayward Dukes’ Alliance #23)

EPILOGUE

Twenty-One Years Later

H ad someone told Frances Seton, Duchess of Hargate, the greatest threat to her peace in middle age would be a roguishly charming twenty-year-old with her clever eyes and her husband’s irrepressible grin… she would have laughed.

And then locked up the wine.

The letter arrived in a pale blue envelope, sealed with wax, and heavily perfumed, to Frances’s dismay.

She unfolded it slowly, expecting an invitation or other polite correspondence.

What she got instead was a strongly worded note from her aunt in London.

It seems your eldest son has once again made himself the center of conversation in town. There was a scandal at Lady Featherstone’s supper. A duel threatened (though honor was technically preserved). And an heiress’s virtue is under spirited debate. I believe he is now being called ‘the Scandalous Duke-to-Be.’ You must act at once.

She read the final line twice.

Then she folded the letter, stood from her writing desk, and said aloud to no one in particular, “He is his father’s son.”

From across the sunny parlor, Johnathan looked up from the paper.

“Which one?” he asked, suspiciously cheerful.

Frances gave him a long, arch stare. “The eldest, Johnathan.”

He grinned. “Ah. Our future heir and current scandal-in-training.”

“He is running wild through London. And someone named Lady Agatha claims she caught him kissing her niece behind a rose trellis. At a garden party.”

Johnathan looked utterly unbothered. “That boy always did like horticulture.”

Frances groaned and collapsed into the seat beside him. “It is not amusing.”

“It is a little amusing.”

“Johnathan.”

“Frances.”

She glared.

He folded his paper with a snap and leaned closer. “I was once a rogue. A rather infamous one, if memory serves.”

“I remember. I was there. I was dodging bullets, scandal, and overzealous gossips.”

“And now,” he said, slipping his hand into hers, “you are the very picture of dignity and duchessness.”

“I am not.”

“No, you are better.”

Frances snorted but did not pull away. “We have five children. Five. And not a single one inherited my restraint.”

“Our second son has a fondness for gambling dens, I will admit,” Johnathan said, “but at least he wins. And the third? He plays piano so charmingly he could seduce half the peerage with a single sonata.”

“And the girls?” Frances asked, though her lips twitched.

Johnathan pressed a kiss to her hand. “They are dangerously clever and utterly beautiful.”

“They are entering society next year.”

“I plan to glare at every gentleman who so much as breathes in their direction.”

She laughed despite herself and glanced at her desk where another letter from her mother lay—more suggestion than apology, laced with stiff concern for her daughters’ reputations.

“She writes often now,” she said, picking up the letter. “Always skirts the word ‘sorry.’ But I think she means it.”

Johnathan brushed a lock of hair from her brow. “Some fences mend slowly.”

Frances nodded. “At least she asks after the girls now.”

“Progress,” he murmured, kissing her temple.

But her smile faded as she looked back at the letter from her aunt. “I need to speak with Edward. Before he ruins himself.”

Johnathan tilted his head. “Rogues do not ruin easily. Some of us—” he leaned closer, his voice dropping to a velvet murmur “—turn out quite well.”

Frances rolled her eyes, but her breath hitched just slightly when his fingers skimmed her wrist.

“You are distracting me,” she said.

“Absolutely,” he said.

“You think I am overreacting?”

“I think you are magnificent when vexed.”

She attempted to rise. “I shall send for him?—”

But Johnathan caught her waist, pulled her back into his lap, and kissed her to distraction.

“Johnathan,” she whispered, breathless against his mouth.

“I have a better idea,” he said, against her lips.

And before she could argue, he swept her up in his arms.

Frances let out a startled gasp and then burst into laughter. “You cannot possibly carry me across the house?—”

“You doubt me,” he said, already striding toward the French doors.

She clung to his shoulders, laughing, blushing, loving him with the same wild abandon she had at twenty.

They passed a footman in the hallway, who quickly turned on his heel.

Frances buried her face in Johnathan’s neck. “We are too old for this.”

“We are not,” he growled.

He kicked the door to their bedchamber shut behind them and set her gently on the bed.

The years had left their marks. A silver thread at his temple. A curve to her hips that had not been there in youth. But the love? The passion?

It had not dimmed.

It had deepened.

Johnathan’s hands were reverent, familiar, aching with a kind of devotion she felt down to her bones. And when he kissed her—slow, consuming, utterly hers—Frances forgot the letter, the gossip, everything.

There was only the man who had always, always been worth the risk.

They made love with the quiet intimacy of twenty-one years of knowing and being known. Of arguments and reconciliations. Of children and loss and laughter and late-night secrets.

Afterward, tangled in linen and sunlight, Frances rested her head against his chest, listening to the steady beat of his heart.

“We have had a beautiful life,” she whispered.

Johnathan kissed her head. “It is not over yet.”

She smiled. “Do you think he will be all right?”

“Our son?”

“Yes.”

Johnathan reached down and laced their fingers together. “He will make mistakes. He will charm and defy and test every boundary we ever set. But one day…”

Frances looked up. “One day?”

“One day, he will fall in love with a girl who looks at him the way you look at me.”

Frances pressed a kiss to his shoulder. “Poor thing.”

He laughed. “She will have your fire—unyielding and bright.”

“She will need a spirit to match his.”

“When he finds her,” Johnathan whispered, “he will stop running.”

Frances closed her eyes.

And as her husband held her close, she smiled—because she believed him.

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