Page 26

The following spring...

A listair had not intended to return to Haythorne House quite so soon. But the noise at Rylemoor—a combination of workmen making repairs and Freddie and Georgie’s repeated pleas to be allowed to join some of their friends in Town for the end of the Season—had at last driven him to write to his tenant and ask whether an earlier than planned end to their lease would be a great inconvenience.

Fortunately, his tenant’s daughter had succeeded quickly and well in her matrimonial efforts and was already settled in her new home. The man and his wife had been thinking of summering in Brighton to be closer to her. And so, with remarkably little fuss, the house in Marylebone was once more Alistair’s.

The house...but not the library.

Or rather, the library was no longer his sole province, as three-quarters of it at least had been given over to his wife.

“It really is very sweet of you to let me paint here,” Constantia said. She was blocked from his view by two easels, a half dozen canvases turned this way and that, a tall, narrow-mouthed tin filled with a spiky assortment of brushes, and a large mahogany and brass chest of shallow drawers containing cakes of watercolor paint, one in each of the seventy-six colors sold by Rudolph Ackermann.

“Really, it’s a far better use of the space,” Alistair answered honestly from his corner. He had never before realized how bright and airy the room could be. He admired the gauzy new curtains fluttering in the breeze of an open window. The plant he had long since given up for dead, she had moved to the windowsill, and he saw with amazement that it was beginning to turn green. “But I do think I may have to consider getting a smaller desk.”

At that, a pair of mischievous hazel eyes peered around the corner of a canvas. Those eyes were crowned by a tangle of red curls pinned up by, of all things, a paintbrush, fortunately free of paint. “Don’t do anything rash, my love. That one looks delightfully”—her fair eyebrows lifted suggestively—“sturdy.”

Alistair was just on the point of asking his wife whether she would like to test that proposition when Harry waltzed in with the morning post and handed off most of the stack to him. “Latest issue of the Magazine for Misses is here,” she announced as she threaded her way to the sofa, plopped down, and began to page through it.

“Ooh,” said Constantia, rattling a brush in a can of water, “what’s Miss Busy B. have to say this month?”

“As if you don’t already know,” said Alistair a bit grumpily as he began to sort through the letters, dividing them into neat stacks of invitations and bills, and plotting to disorder them by tumbling his wife on the desktop at the first opportunity.

His not quite gloating note to Miles had produced one entirely unexpected outcome: It had established a regular correspondence, some might even say friendship, between their wives.

“Well, yes,” Constantia acknowledged. “But there’s nothing quite like seeing it in print—and I have it on good authority this column might be one of her last.” Daphne was in the process of completing a book advocating for new—and in some circles, controversial—methods for the education of young people, especially girls. In addition to many other notable women, the Princess Constantia von Friedensfeld had contributed handsomely to support its publication.

“What a shame. I miss the theatrical reviews, too,” said Harry. “Oh, but here’s a description of Lady Clarissa Sutliffe’s pianoforte concert last week—what an event that was. Who would have thought her father would ever allow it?”

“Yes, society has certainly seen its fair share of changes since the Magazine for Misses began its run,” said Constantia, who had once more retreated fully behind her canvas.

The Unfashionable Plates continued to be the magazine’s most popular feature—and the only pages at which Alistair steadfastly refused to look. “Don’t you think I’ve learned my lesson?” Constantia had asked him once, as she’d put the finishing touches on her first contribution as “Miss C.” since becoming Lady Ryland.

“Do you know,” he’d told her with a kiss, “I rather hope not.”

“Mrs. Goode must find it difficult to keep up with everything,” Constantia mused now, bringing him back to the present moment.

“Speaking of,” said Alistair as his eyes lighted on the next letter in his stack. “Here’s something for you—from Mrs. Goode herself.”

The letter was really from Lady Stalbridge, of course, but Harry didn’t need to know that. She had gleaned a great deal too many secrets about the magazine already.

“Oh! Will you read it for me, please, Alistair? My fingers are quite covered in paint.”

“Of course they are, dear,” he said as he broke the seal and scanned through the letter’s contents once and then again.

“I meant aloud,” Constantia prompted when he did not speak for several minutes. A tuft of red-gold hair poked around the edge of a canvas. “Is everything all right?”

“I’ll let you be the judge of that. ‘My dear Lady Ryland,’” he read.

He paused when he heard something clatter to the floor.

“Truly?” gasped Harriet, closing the magazine and laying her hand reverently on the cover, obscuring one of the two caryatids that framed the title. “Would that make you the new Mrs. Goode?”

“Certainly not,” said Constantia, bending to retrieve her brush. “There will only ever be one Mrs. Goode. But to think that she...That I might...”

Alistair, better than anyone, knew what the magazine meant to Constantia. How she had drawn courage from its mission to entertain, to educate, and most of all to empower young women, to teach them the strength of their own voices and to give them confidence in their choices.

However, he had not known until that moment, when he heard the eagerness in her voice, that she had also dreamed of one day doing more than illustrating it.

“I have the most marvelous idea,” said Harry. “If the magazine needs a new advice columnist, and you’re the one who gets to help decide who it should be, you should pick Danny. She’s wonderfully good at ordering people about.”

From the corner, Constantia laughed. “I suppose she is a bit like Miss Busy B., now you mention it. But if Danielle were to contribute to the magazine, I always thought she might do an excellent job of speaking to another set of readers—those who find themselves in the sorts of situations in which she once was. You know, ladies’ companions and the like. We could call it Miss D.’s—”

“Degradations?” muttered Alistair. The mortification of what his sister must have had to endure all those months with Aunt Josephine still had not lost its sting.

“Or Decapitations?” suggested Harry in an alarmingly bloodthirsty tone. It seemed she hadn’t forgiven their aunt either.

“I was thinking ‘Miss D.’s Directions for Managing Difficult People,’” said Constantia, with a tinkling laugh.

“I’m going to tell her, right now,” Harry announced, bouncing to her feet and hurrying from the room. Constantia made no attempt to stop her.

Alistair stood too and approached the corner where his wife was painting. “So, you’re considering it?” he said. “The added responsibilities won’t interfere with your art?” She was already juggling several portrait commissions and entries in two exhibitions.

“I could do a bit of rearranging. Perhaps some retrenching.” He heard the swish of the wet brush as she dragged it across the canvas. “What would you say to Harry taking over as Miss C.? She would bring a fresh pair of eyes to the magazine.”

Harriet alone had continued her drawing lessons since the wedding and had made remarkable progress. “She would, at that,” Alistair had to acknowledge.

“And I know some of the strain Lady Stalbridge has felt had to do with, well, geography. She desires to spend more time in the country, with her family.” At last, Constantia emerged from behind the easel, wiping her hands on a paint-stained rag. “While we’ve already discussed living mostly in Town.”

“We have.”

While she had been busy painting, he had taken a more active role in the Lords and found that politics suited him. It had felt good to be of use, speaking out on behalf of those who were vulnerable, the plights of orphans and refugees in particular. He had been advised on the latter issue by Dieter Schenk, who had decided, after years of displacement and wandering, to stay in London.

Rylemoor Abbey would, of course, always be Alistair’s home. But now it was Samuel and Eddie’s home too. After their joint marriages had been celebrated, Samuel had agreed enthusiastically to Alistair’s request that he take over managing matters in Devonshire. And truth be told, a small country estate didn’t require as much attention as a large one; rather than repurchasing extensive farmland, Alistair and Constantia had chosen to invest her fortune in several modern enterprises, and those investments were already paying off. They would support the earldom’s dependents well into the future.

Lord and Lady Ryland were now at liberty to enjoy all that the metropolis had to offer.

Hungrily, he raked his eyes over his wife. He knew he was imagining a slight swelling of her belly—it was far too soon for that. She’d only told him of her suspicions that morning. Still, he wanted to wrap his arms around her, around them, and caution her against doing too much.

But he knew that however busy he and Constantia were, their child—their children—would never want for familial affection and attention. They would grow up surrounded by doting aunts, and soon more uncles, if the number of suitors trailing after Freddie and Georgie was any indication. Eventually cousins. And they would know the steady but quieter love of their great-grandparents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Brookworth, who were a far cry from Constantia’s ruthless imagining of them and had been thrilled to learn of the existence of a granddaughter they’d believed lost to them, along with their daughter, so many years ago.

“You should do it. Because I want everyone to see you as I do, a woman fulfilled by her work and happy in her life. And especially if this baby is a girl,” he said, running his palm over her still-flat abdomen, “I want her to grow up knowing just how much a determined miss is capable of achieving.”

At that, she dropped the rag and threw her arms around his neck. He suspected he now had paint on his cravat. “But if it’s a girl,” she cautioned, looking up at him with bright eyes, “we do run a greater risk of her falling in love with Miles and Daphne’s son someday.”

Geoffrey Alistair Deveraux, Lord Lyne, was at present only a few weeks old.

“I don’t doubt but what he’s destined to be a heart-breaker, given that he’ll grow up surrounded by the combined influences of his father’s charm, his mother’s intelligence, and his godfather’s devastating wit,” Alistair teased, brushing his mouth across her upturned lips.

“Our daughter will have to be strong, to withstand all that.”

“Oh, she will be.”

Out of habit, he nudged a wild red curl from her brow and watched it spring right back to the place where it had been. He could feel even more chaos encroaching, straining the seams of his previously well-ordered life.

Reaching up, he plucked the paintbrush from her hair and sent its glorious waves tumbling around them as he set his mouth to hers for a more thorough kiss.

He wouldn’t have it any other way.