Page 99 of Secrets of the Marriage Bed

The other men chuckled and Alistair burst into laughter.

Families. Who needed ’em? He did. He had the most perfect family in the world and who was he to deny his brother his abiding love for his mother.

He raised his glass. ‘To Olivia. The latest addition to the Crawford family.’

The men drank to this toast with a will.

‘The new stables have turned out well,’ Dart said, looking out of the window.

‘It was a good thing all of your beasts were out to grass.’ Beauworth said. ‘I suppose you never did discover how she managed to set them on fire.’

‘Knocked over a lantern,’ Luke said.

‘Since most of the lads were at the tavern in Boxted,’ Alistair added, ‘there was no one around to help her saddle a horse, the one man on duty being up at the house for his dinner.’

Beauworth frowned. ‘Odd that she was there at all.’ The man loved a mystery. Beauworth took his duties as peer very seriously and events in his past made him keen on seeing justice done.

‘Let it lie, Beauworth,’ Luke said. ‘The family is satisfied it was an accident.’

‘As you say.’ Beauworth sipped at his drink and talk turned to other more important matters like crop yields and the best time for haying.

* * *

Later, when Julia and Alistair stood at the front door watching their guests depart, Olivia having been whisked off to the nursery by a doting Digger and an equally doting nanny some time before, Alistair could not resist a kiss on his wife’s cheek. ‘You need your rest.’

She smiled a naughty smile. ‘That is just an excuse and you know it.’

‘You know, it is a while since I have seen you wearing the Dunstan rubies.’ It was their own private code for the naughty things they did in their bed.

‘You are right. It has been too long,’ she said, her lovely eyes smiling up at him. ‘We have time with Olivia off having her nap.’

He put an arm around her waist and to the devil with the footman gazing at the ceiling and Grindle pretending to be invisible, he kissed her full on her delicious mouth.

Together they walked inside, there to beget the next Duke of Dunstan, who learned to love all of his myriad brothers and sisters very well indeed.

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