Page 112 of The Ladies Least Likely

“You should have.” Mal took a step forward, his voice lowering dangerously.

“The account books for both the house and the estates show that you and Popplewell have been diverting income to your own pockets for quite some time, since well before my father died. If you have not hoarded your ill-gotten gains enough to support you, I cannot find it in me to harbor any pity.”

Sybil’s eyes widened, and she looked nervously toward the door. “You—you’re threatening me. And lying. Again.”

“I have seen the books as well,” Amaranthe said. “I could swear to it in a court of law. I believe even duchesses can be convicted for stealing, can they not?”

Sybil’s pale face took on a hunted expression. Stealing was regarded much like forgery and punished with fines, transportation, or death, depending on the severity of the crime and the whim of the judge. Sybil had stolen a great deal.

“You,” she spat at Amaranthe. “I imagine you’re quite pleased with how all this turned out. Taking up with a bastard and contriving to make him a duke!”

“You will leave Amaranthe out of this,” Mal said.

“You will leave this house this instant. We shall not be troubled by you or your demands again, or those account books will be given to my solicitor for review. And if I hear one word—even the slightest intimation—that you have said anything ill, indeed anything at all about my brothers or sister…” His voice trailed off, the unspoken threat more daunting than anything he could have given voice to.

Camilla gave a choked little cry, and Ned firmed his arms around her. Hugh crossed the room to stand before them both.

Sybil rallied; she would not go down easily. Amaranthe had to admire her fighting spirit. “I spoke no more than what is the truth. If you’re the duke now, then they’re nameless bastards. They have nothing and no one.”

“They have me,” Mal said. “You had no right to tell them, Sybil.”

She licked her lips. “Someone had to. Hugh had the right of it. It’s only too bad you returned in time to stop him leaving. How can he live here, knowing?—”

“Enough!” Mal roared. “Ralph, you will open the door for the duchess, and if she does not throw herself through it this very instant, she may not leave this house unscathed.”

“Brute!” Sybil cried, but she picked up her massive skirts and scurried for the door. “I always knew you were uncivilized.”

“Then you know better than to cross me,” Mal said. “Out!”

She complied.

Mal faced his siblings, standing on the other side of the patterned rug, with a set of chairs and a small table between them. They stared back at him, forlorn.

“I—” Mal started and then stopped. Amaranthe had never seen him at a loss for words.

“I do believe it’s time for tea,” Amaranthe said as the cook peeked around the open door. “Excellent timing, Mrs. Blackthorn.”

“Is the she-devil gone, then?” Mrs. Blackthorn brought the tray into the room and deposited it on the small table beside Amaranthe while Mrs. Wheatley, the cook in training, and Eyde trooped in behind her.

“For now, and I hope for good,” Amaranthe confirmed. “Come here, children, and I will show you how to enjoy a cream tea. The proper way,” she stressed, “no matter what anyone else, including anyone from Devonshire, tries to tell you.”

Camilla came forward first but instead of taking a seat, she wrapped her arms around Amaranthe’s waist and pressed her face into her stomach. “I missed you,” she said, her voice muffled.

Amaranthe slid her arms about the girl and kissed the golden ringlets atop her head. It felt natural now to touch, to embrace, to give and receive affection. The wall she’d put up between herself and other people after her parents died, after the world betrayed her, could finally come down.

“I missed you as well,” she said. “It was very silly of me not to visit you as soon as I returned to town.”

“Can you still visit us?” Ned looked worried. “Even if we are bastards?”

“Lord—” She stopped. She’d been in the habit of using his title, another way to try to keep her distance from the children.

She no longer had a wish to keep her distance.

“My dear Ned,” she said firmly, “I hope to see even more of you now. You see, I stayed away because of a very foolish fear that I—well, that I would not be a very good influence for you. But your brother, I am glad to say, persuaded me to mend my ways.”

“There was some concern in the court today that Amaranthe is a forger,” Mal said.

He took his dish of tea from Eyde, who had commencing pouring since Amaranthe’s arms were full of little girl.

The maid froze and stared, teapot aloft, until Mal assured her, “I was happy to lay those suspicions to rest and prove that she is not.”

“By a very persuasive argumentation,” Amaranthe said. “Your brother would have made a rather fine barrister, had the Benchers ever called him.”

She thrilled at how easily he used her given name. She’d used his as well. She’d already stopped thinking of him as Grey, the angry stranger who’d burst into her house making wild accusations. He was Mal. Direct, unpretentious, still prone to temper, but also steadfast, loyal, and dear.

“And you are the duke,” Hugh said quietly. “Our father’s only legitimate child.” He winced, but his hands were steady as he accepted his dish of tea.

“Amaranthe found the documents that proved my mother’s marriage to our father was properly done,” Mal said.

“My mother hid her copy of the lines in the back of a book that our father gave her as a wedding gift. By some providential course the book made its way to Amaranthe in Cornwall and stayed hidden above the stables in her cousin’s house for years. ”

Eyde stopped with the sugar tongs hovering over Ned’s tea. “Your book, mum?” she whispered in awe.

“Thaker retrieved it and held it for me,” Amaranthe explained. “It’s been safe all this time.”

Mal continued, passing Millie her dish. “The old duke, our grandfather, tried to pretend the marriage had never happened. He pressed our father into wedding your mother without annulling his marriage to mine, most likely because it would have been expensive and possibly damaging, or possibly because he thought my mother was dead already. But she was still alive, which, I’m afraid, made our father’s marriage to your mother?—”

“Bigamy,” Hugh said grimly.

“And us bastards.” Ned stared into his cup.

“How I hate that word.” Mal winced. “It is my hope you will allow me to adopt you, so you may wear the Delaval name with honest pride. I swear to you, on my honor—no, on my life—that you shall never want for anything I can provide you. You all shall have incomes from the estate and my support in whatever vocation you choose. And Millie, you needn’t fear you won’t marry well.

I will see that your dowry makes up for any perceived lack. ”

Camilla made a face, but Ned rushed in before she could speak. “Speaking of marriage! When are you finally going to marry Miss Illingworth, Gr—” He broke off, looking baffled. A nervous look at his elder brother said he wasn’t ready to address Mal as Hunsdon. Hugh wasn’t ready for it, either.

“We shall all have some doing to get our tags and titles sorted,” Mal said gravely. “And I will wed Amaranthe as soon as she will have me.”

Amaranthe raised her cup to her lips, giving herself time to find her voice as her heart leapt wildly within her chest. “Are you asking me at last?”

“At last!” He looked confounded. “As if I haven’t asked you a dozen times already.”

“Commanded.” She sipped her tea. “Presumed. But never asked .”

He lowered his own cup, staring. “I didn’t?”

“You did not,” she confirmed.

“Well.” Mal cleared his throat as the children looked at him with a puzzled eagerness. “We can settle that directly. Amaranthe, won’t you?—”

“Whist!” Eyde hissed, bumping the back of his chair with her elbow. “’Er’ll want it done correctly, with the knee and the rest.”

“I’m to go on one knee?” Mal looked perplexed.

“Well, of course!” Camilla said in exasperation. “Honestly, have you never done this before?”

“As a matter of fact,” Mal said, “no.”

The admission thrilled Amaranthe all the more.

He’d never wanted to marry anyone else. In fact, he hadn’t thought of marriage at all until Oliver recommended he marry Amaranthe.

And he’d never objected to the idea, not even in the beginning, not until he—but she wasn’t a forger anymore, and never would be again.

And if he meant to ask her, really and truly ask her… Her breath stopped in her throat.

Mal left his chair and dropped to one knee. “Amaranthe,” he began again.

Eyde rolled her eyes. “’Ee must take her hand, sir.”

“Yes, Grey—er, Mal, you go on bended knee before her,” Hugh said. “You ought to hold out the betrothal ring you mean to give her, but if you don’t have one, a heartfelt declaration will do.”

“I haven’t a ring,” Mal said.

“Then you must have a flowery speech,” Ned exclaimed. “Come, haven’t you rehearsed one? If we’d known you needed this much help?—”

“She doesn’t want a flowery speech, she just wants to hear he loves her,” Camilla said impatiently.

While the children argued over the best way Mal was to deliver his proposal, he crossed the rug in a few strides and dropped to one knee before Amaranthe’s chair.

His hand when he took hers was firm, strong, and bore ink stains on various fingers.

Amaranthe smiled, her heart beating madly.

He was the man for her, in so many ways.

“Amaranthe Illingworth,” he said simply, holding her hand in both of his. “Will you?—”

“A bit louder, Your Grace, so’s we can hear proper!” Mrs. Blackthorn called from behind the door, where she stood peering with Ralph and Davey. Derwa’s head popped into the opening, her eyes alight.

Amaranthe bit back laughter at Mal’s look of exasperation.

“Amaranthe Illingworth,” he said in his resonant barrister’s voice.

“From the moment you came into my life, you’ve begun to fix things I didn’t know needed fixing.

You have made me aware of dreams I didn’t know I wanted for myself.

You have opened my eyes in so many ways to a future I could never have imagined. ”

She clung to his hand, hanging on his every word. His eyes were a clear, compelling blue. She wanted to fall into them forever. “Amaranthe, my dear, the most capable, astonishingly beautiful, dashedly clever woman I have ever met—will you do me the very great honor of becoming my wife?”

She smiled, letting her heart show in her eyes, through the sting of happy tears.

“I need some time to consider,” she said.

The look on his face was priceless. “What?”

“There is, for instance, the matter of my work. I wish to continue as a copyist. I love it, Mal.”

“Of course,” he said promptly. “The Duchess of Hunsdon, copyist. You will start a new fashion for duchesses entering trades.”

That idea was laughable, but she was not ready to laugh just yet. “There is the matter of my house. It is perfect for an antiquarian bookstore. And I have always wanted to open one.”

“You have a supply of manuscripts you’ve begun building to that effect,” Mal said. “Yes, I was listening to you chatter with Miss Pettigrew all the way to Bristol. What, I was going to listen to Joseph? Your bookstore you shall have, and as many books to go in it as the ducal estates can supply.”

“Speaking of Joseph.” She bit her lip. “Will he be able to continue his employment?”

“I will expect him to provide his services for free, if he is a member of the family,” Mal answered. “Oh, all right, we will increase his stipend. He must follow my example, however, and choose wisely when he next decides to fall in love.”

“And the children,” she said.

He held her gaze steadily. “I will adopt them, my love.”

“I know. I wish that as well. If—if they will have me as a mother.”

“By Jove, they will!” Ned exclaimed, and Camilla clapped her hands in joy.

Mal pressed her hands, examining her face. “You are still not certain?”

She bit her lip, coming to the last and worst objection. “It won’t benefit you a whit to marry me, Mal. A rector’s daughter, poor, plain, barely genteel—I’m not at all a fit wife for a duke. I bring nothing to a marriage, and?—”

He stopped her protest with his lips, uncaring of their audience.

That kiss held everything she needed to know to make such a great and treacherous leap.

She would sacrifice anything, pay any price, for the right to kiss him whenever she wanted.

She slid her fingers along his jaw, ready to sink into him and that kiss forever, but he gathered his senses and drew back.

“I don’t wish to rush you, and not that my posture is becoming uncomfortable, or that my tea is growing cool, but how much more time do you need to consider, my darling?”

This time she didn’t stifle the small laugh. “I have made my choice.”

The light in his eyes deepened, steady, bright. “Amaranthe Illingworth—soon to be Amaranthe Delaval, Duchess of Hunsdon—you are the author of my happiness and every beautiful thing that has come into my life. Say you will share it with me for always.”

She smiled even as the tears spilled over. “I will.”

He rose to his knees, anchored both hands in her hair, and kissed her again. Amaranthe gripped his forearms with her hands, clinging to him, laughing, crying, kissing him back. Camilla clapped her hands over her eyes. Ned whistled and looked at the ceiling. But the others—including Hugh—cheered.

And the feast that night in Hunsdon House was the merriest yet, with the promise of many more merry times—sweet, long days and sweeter nights—to follow.