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Final Lesson:

Letting a rake into your heart? Utterly reckless—and absolutely worthit.

J uliet tilted her hand into the band of sunlight slipping through the murky windowpanes of Dorian’s East End office.

The sapphire glowed, casting azure facets that danced across his desk.

It was his beloved grandmother’s ring, the one he’d slipped onto her finger the morning after they’d promised never to leave each other again.

Where it would remain, like his heart, with her, until the end of time.

“When I rushed into my bedchamber and found you snooping through my unmentionables, I thought surely you’d discovered it,” he said, his gaze drawn to her by the little blue diamonds skipping across his ledger. “I’d kept it for five years, waiting for you.”

Glancing up, she found his eyes, nearly the color of his grandmother’s stone, fixed lovingly on her. “I was looking through your valet’s box, not your unmentionables. I hadn’t gotten to those yet.”

Reaching across the desk, he linked his fingers with hers. “I love you, Mrs. Montrose.”

She set her pen on the desk, leaving work on her fourth novel behind for the moment. The third, thanks in no small part to her husband’s able assistance, had been the greatest success yet for the gothic author, Thaddeus Meredith. And it hadn’t included buying every copy in England.

It was time to tell him.

“You know,” she said, drawing a small circle around a nick in the desk, “we need to come up with another name, since Thaddeus Meredith has been taken out of circulation.”

Dorian scribbled a notation in the margin of his page, his tone offhand. “Of course. We have time.”

“Not so much time, perhaps.”

His hand stilled. His head lifted. Thoughts churned, then his face went ashen. “Truly?”

She smiled, humming softly.

He was around the desk in seconds, pulling her from her chair and into his lap. His arms tightened about her as a frayed sigh broke against her cheek. “My God, Jules. A baby .”

They’d been trying for a year, without doing anything more than loving each other as they’d always wished to. She had begun to worry. She wanted his child with a depth of longing she hadn’t known existed.

He laid his hand gently atop her stomach, his breaths tangled. “I’ll be good, darling. The best father I know how to be.”

Her tears came then, rolling down her cheeks. He wanted to be everything his father hadn’t . “You’ll be incredible, Dare Montrose.”

He dabbed at her tears, equal parts amused and exasperated. “Not that nickname again.”

Juliet laughed, giving a little wiggle in his lap that had him groaning for an entirely different reason. “I’m actually coming to like being the wife of a Rookery Rebel. Now all we need to do is find a wife for your fearsome leader. Our children could grow up together. Wouldn’t that be wonderful?”

With a sigh, Dorian dropped his head to her shoulder. “Not this again.”

Juliet had grown close to Jackson Dorsey, stepping in to instruct his wayward sisters as they navigated the strange space they now occupied as heiresses to a rookery fortune.

“He’s quite a different man from the one he shows the world.

Aside from you, I’ve never known someone as devoted, to his family, to his community.

A generous spirit with a temperament as cold and bright as a blade.

With love in the mix, imagine how he’d move mountains for her. ”

“How like a writer you sound, Jules.”

Juliet pressed her lips to his, happiness tunneling through her, straight to her heart. “He’s lonely, though he’d never admit it. Playing papa to that rebellious gaggle of sisters. I want him to have what we have.”

Scooping her into his arms, her husband deepened the kiss as he crossed to the sofa he kept in his office for very pleasurable reasons. “I don’t think Jackson Dorsey is cut out for love of that kind. Trust is hard to give when a man has power and women throw themselves at him. Daily .”

“ Oh ,” Juliet growled, twisting in protest. “If you’re going to remind me about your scandalous antics, I’ll—”

Dorian silenced her with a kiss as he dropped onto the sofa, pulling her atop him. “There’s no one else. There never has been, darling wife of mine.”

“Just us, darling husband,” she whispered, “just us.”

But still, Juliet held out hope that their friends would find love, too.

It was the delighted romantic in her.

The End