Simply love.

He kissed her as he released into her and something in her flowed to meet him.

It was surely the most glorious moment of her whole life. She could smell grass and water and sunlight and sex.

“Anne,” he whispered to her. “You are so beautiful. So very beautiful.”

“And clean,” she said, smiling sleepily at him as he withdrew from inside her. “Clean again. And whole again. Thank you.”

His lips rested warm against hers again as she sank into sleep.


“They have gone? Already?”

The Duchess of Bewcastle sank into a chair in the drawing room at Alvesley and held her hands out to warm them at the fire.

“They left this morning,” Lauren said. “How disappointing that you missed seeing them.”

“You will be thinking me very rag-mannered,” the duchess said, smiling at the countess and Lauren, “as if I came here only to see Mr. and Mrs. Butler when in reality I came just as much to see you. But it is a disappointment to find them gone, I must confess, Lauren. It has been bothering me that they did not have much of a wedding.”

“We were upset about that too, Christine,” the countess said. “But they were in a hurry to marry, you know, because…Well, because they were in love, I suppose.”

The duchess dimpled.

“Yes,” she said, “David told us all about that. The poor child even had to endure the full force of Wulfric’s quizzing glass as a consequence.”

All three ladies dissolved into laughter.

“Sydnam is painting again,” Lauren said, leaning forward in her chair, “with his left hand and his mouth. And the one painting he showed us was wonderful, was it not, Mother, though he declared that it was perfectly dreadful. He said it with a smile, though, and it was clear he was pleased with himself and determined to try again. Father had to leave the room in a hurry, but we could all hear him blowing his nose very loudly outside the door.”

“Oh,” the duchess said, her hands clasped to her bosom, “Wulfric will be pleased-about Mr. Butler painting again, that is. And so will Morgan. I must write to her.”

“And it appears that it is all Anne’s doing,” the countess said. “We must thank you, Christine, for inviting her to Glandwr during the summer and giving Sydnam a chance to meet her.”

“But it was Freyja who invited her,” the duchess said. “Joshua and David’s father were cousins, you know, and Joshua is very fond of the boy. But I will take credit if you insist. If I had not decided to go to Wales with Wulfric after James’s christening, after all, then no one else would have gone there, would they? And Anne would not have been invited.”

“We have grown exceedingly fond of her,” Lauren said.

“We all tried very hard to bring them together during the summer,” the duchess told them. “All except Wulfric and Aidan, who have the peculiar and very male notion that true love never needs a helping hand.”