Page 87 of His Forgotten Bride

“ThankGod,” Westwood said, with a surfeit of feeling, as Gabriel and Matthew at last entered the house. “Any longer, and I do believe they’d have had me measured for a gown.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Poppy said smoothly, sipping her tea. “Only a bonnet. You haven’t the figure for a gown.”

Matthew snickered, finding a seat upon the couch and accepting the cup of tea Claire handed across to him.

Gabriel took his seat beside Claire, searching the table for gingerbread and finding only an empty plate, devoid of anything but a few crumbs.

“I told you,” Claire said smugly. “If you were late for tea, there would be no gingerbread.”

“But,mum,” Matthew groused.

Westwood, still heartily put out over being abandoned to the dubious mercies of Claire and his wife, said cattily, “I hadthreeslices.”

Gabriel’s gaze latched onto the small plate secreted away at Claire’s other side, containing half a piece of gingerbread. Anticipating his aims, she snatched it before he could, and crammed the whole of it into her mouth, chewing with no small amount of satisfaction.

“I can’t believe you did that.” Crestfallen, Gabriel stared down into his teacup and plunked a lump of sugar in.

“Next time, don’t be late.” She’d give it another few minutes before informing them that a second pan of gingerbread was cooling in the kitchen.

∞∞∞

“Where do you think you’re going, little Lizzie?” Gabriel scooped up their youngest daughter, who had made a break for the nursery door whilst Claire had been occupied in changing Violet into her nightgown. “It’s bedtime for you, darling.” He danced her around the room as she squealed in delight, whirling to a halt near her crib, where he gently laid her down.

“Me next, Papa! Me next!” Violet wriggled out of Claire’s hold, her arms outstretched toward her father.

“Ah, of course,” Gabriel said. “How could I forget the lovely Lady Violet?” He gave a very proper bow and extended his hand. “May I have this dance?”

She grabbed his hand with both of hers, clinging to him like a little monkey until he swept her up in his arms in a childish parody of a waltz.

“I hope you’ll still want to dance with Papa when you’re grown,” he said, rubbing noses with her. “But I expect you’ll havefartoo many suitors to have any time at all for me.”

“That’syearsaway,” Claire said. But they were growing up a bit at a time, day by day, and she suspected the time would simply fly by. She soothed Lizzie with a murmur, and slowly the baby’s eyes closed as she drifted off to sleep.

“Time for bed,” Gabriel said, plunking Violet down on her mattress, where she landed in a puff of soft linen sheets. “It’s Mama’s turn to read tonight.”

It had remained their bedtime ritual, reading to their children each night. Lizzie was still too young to appreciate it, and Matthew was far too old—but Violet adored it. She and Gabriel crowded onto the mattress as Claire selected a book from the shelf and took her seat at the edge of the bed, positioning the book so that Violet could see the pictures.

“Mama does thebestvoices,” Gabriel confided to Violet, who grinned at him as she tucked herself into bed.

Within just a few minutes, Violet had nodded off, lulled to sleep by the even, soothing cadence of her mother’s voice. They’d yet to make it through a book complete—but she supposed it didn’t matter, so long as Violet was happy.

Carefully, Gabriel untangled himself from his daughter’s clinging arms, wrapping them instead around her pillow and dropping a kiss on her forehead. Baby Elizabeth, too, received a kiss, and her little rosebud mouth pursed into a pout at the mild disturbance of her sleep.

“They’re so beautiful, Claire,” Gabriel whispered as he took her arm.

“Yes,” she said. The best parts of each of them blended in their children. “Although I think Matthew would balk at such a description.”

Gabriel chuckled, closing the nursery door behind them. “He’s in the grip of his first infatuation,” he said. “There’s a scullery maid that works in the Eton dormitory whom he fancies.”

Claire suppressed a smile. “I suppose it’s not the sort of thing one tells one’s mother,” she acknowledged. “Your father will probably want to see him while he’s home. Best not to scandalize him with that. It was bad enough that you married a housekeeper; he’d probably have conniptions if he found out his grandson fancied a scullery maid.” The duke had unbent enough to acknowledge that his son’s marriage hadn’t beenquitethe disaster he’d feared it to be, and had even managed to gain Claire’s goodwill with his efforts on their behalf to have their marriage license—seven years out of date—declared legally valid. And hedidlove his grandchildren, in his own stuffy sort of way.

“Oh, now I simplymusttell him,” Gabriel said, laughing as Claire shoved him playfully. He caught her wrists and pulled her close. “I still love you,” he said, wrapping her in his arms.

Though he often told her that he loved her, it was thatstillthat she found meant the most. Every day it reminded her that his love had never changed, that it remained with her one day to the next, that the fear she had had of waking up one day to find his love withdrawn would never come to fruition. It was never a passive declaration of his devotion or indicative of absent affection—it was an active, living thing that grew a little more every day.

“I still love you,” she whispered back, curling into his embrace.

Gabriel caught her hand in his, rubbing his thumb over her ring, the symbol of a promise that had remained unbroken. Seven years of hardship and strife and loneliness had been overwritten by seven years full of love and laughter. That idyllic future they had imagined so many years ago had at last come to pass, and it was everything she had hoped it would be and so much more.

She could hardly wait to see what the next seven years would bring.