“I just like her books a great deal, that’s all,” he muttered.

“I like Yorkshire Pudding, but I don’t take offense if others don’t.”

He had no response to that, so she just shrugged and turned back to the stone in her hand, trying to imitate the grip he’d shown her earlier.

“What don’t you like?” he asked.

She looked up, blinking. She’d thought they were done with that conversation.

“Is it the plot?”

“No,” she said, giving him a curious look, “I like the plot. It’s a bit improbable, but that’s what makes it fun.”

“Then what is it?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She frowned and sighed, trying to figure out the answer to his question. “The prose gets a bit unwieldy at times.”

“Unwieldy,” he stated.

“There are quite a lot of adjectives. But,” she added brightly, “she does have a way with description. I do like the slanted light of dawn, after all.”

“It would be difficult to write description without adjectives.”

“True,” she acceded.

“I could try, but-”

He shut his mouth. Very suddenly.

“What did you just say?” she demanded.

“Nothing.”

But he had definitely not said nothing. “You said…” And then she gasped. “It’s you!”

He didn’t say anything, just crossed his arms and gave her an I-don’t-know-what-you’re-talking-about expression.

Her mind raced. How could she not have seen it? There had been so many clues. After his uncle had blackened his eye and he’d said that he never knew when he might need to describe something. The autographed books. And at the opera! He had said something about a hero not swooning on the first page. Not the first scene, the first page!

“You’re Sarah Gorely!” she exclaimed. “You are. You even have the same initials.”

“Really, Annabel, I-”

“Don’t lie to me. I’m going to be your wife. You cannot lie to me. I know it’s you. I even thought the book sounded a bit like you when I was reading it.” She gave him a sheepish smile. “It was actually what I liked best about it.”

“Really?” His eyes lit up and she wondered if he realized that he’d just admitted it.

She nodded. “How on earth have you kept it a secret for so long? I assume no one knows. Surely Lady Olivia would not have called the books dreadful if she knew-” She winced. “Oh, that’s awful.”

“Which is why she doesn’t know,” he told her. “She would feel dreadful.”

“You are a very kindhearted man.” She gasped. “And Sir Harry?”

“Also does not know,” he confirmed.

“But he’s translating you!” She paused. “Your books, I mean.”

Sebastian just gave a shrug.

“Oh, he would feel terrible,” Annabel said, trying to imagine it. She did not know Sir Harry very well, but still…they were cousins! “And they’ve never suspected?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“Oh my.” She sat down on the big flat rock. “Oh my.”

He sat down beside her. “There are some,” he said carefully, “who might think it a rather silly, undignified pursuit.”

“Not me,” she said immediately, shaking her head. Good gracious, Sebastian was Sarah Gorely. She was marrying Sarah Gorely.

She paused. Perhaps she ought not to think about it in quite those terms.

“I think it’s marvelous,” she declared, tipping her face up toward his.

“You do?” His eyes searched hers, and in that moment she realized just how very important her good opinion was to him. He was so confident, so comfortable and easy in his own skin. It was one of the first things she had noticed about him, before she’d even learned his name.

“I do,” she said, wondering if she was awful for loving the vulnerable look in his eyes. She couldn’t help it. She loved how much she meant to him. “It will be our secret.” And then she laughed.

“What is it?”

“When I first met you, before I even knew your name, I remember thinking that you smiled as if you had a secret joke, and that I wanted to be a part of it.”

“Always,” he said solemnly.

“Perhaps I can be of help,” she suggested, giving a sly smile. “Miss Winslow and the Mysterious Author.”

It took him a moment to catch on, but then his eyes lit with the fun of it. “I can’t use mysterious again. I’ve already had a mysterious colonel.”

She let out a snort of mock irritation. “This writing business is so difficult.”

“Miss Winslow and the Splendid Lover?” he suggested.

“Too lurid,” she replied, batting him on the shoulder. “You’ll lose your audience and then where will we be? We have future gray-eyed babies to feed, you know.”

His own eyes flared with emotion, but still, he played along. “Miss Winslow and the Precarious Heir.”

“Oh, I don’t know. It’s true you probably won’t inherit, although thankfully I won’t have anything to do with it, but still, ‘precarious’ sounds so…”

“Precarious?”

“Yes,” she agreed, even though his sarcasm had not been disguised in the least. “What about Mrs. Grey?” she asked softly.

“Mrs. Grey,” he repeated.

“I like the sound of it.”

He nodded. “Mrs. Grey and the Dutiful Husband.”

“Mrs. Grey and the Beloved Husband. No, no, Mrs. Grey and Her Beloved Husband,” she said, with an emphasis on “her.”

“Will it be a story in progress?” he asked.

“Oh, I think so.” She reached up to give him a kiss, then stayed there, their noses touching. “So long as you don’t mind a new happy ending every day.”

“It does sound like an awful lot of work…” he murmured.

She pulled back just far enough to give him a dry look. “But worth it.”

He chuckled. “That didn’t sound like a question.”

“Plain speaking, Mr. Grey. Plain speaking.”

“It’s what I love about you, soon-to-be Mrs. Grey.”

“Don’t you think it should be Mrs. soon-to-be Grey?”

“Now you’re editing me?”

“Suggesting.”

“As it happens,” he said, looking down his nose at her, “I was right. The ‘soon-to-be’ has to be placed before the ‘Mrs.,’ else it sounds like you were Mrs. Something Else.”

She considered that.

He gave her an arch look.

“Very well,” she gave in, “but about everything else, I am right.”

“Everything?”

She smiled seductively. “I chose you.”

“Mr. Grey and His Beloved Bride.” He kissed her once, and then again. “I think I like it.”

“I love it.”

And she did.

Epilogue

Four years later

The key to a successful marriage,” Sebastian Grey pontificated from behind his desk, “is to marry a splendid wife.”

As this was announced for no apparent reason, after an hour of companionable silence, Annabel Grey would normally have taken the statement with several grains of salt. Sebastian was not above beginning conversations with extravagant compliments when he wished to gain her approval, or at the very least agreement, about matters entirely unrelated to the aforementioned praise.

There were, however, ten things about his pronouncement that could not help but warm her heart.

One: Seb was looking particularly handsome when he said it, all warm-eyed and rumple-haired, and Two: the wife in question was her, which pertained to Three: she’d performed all sorts of lovely wifely duties that morning, which, given their history would probably lead to Four: another gray-eyed baby in nine months, to add to the three already pitter-pattering in the nursery.

Of minor but still happy significance was Five: none of the three Grey babies looked a thing like Lord Newbury, who must have been scared witless after his collapse in Annabel’s bedchamber four years earlier, because he’d gone on a slimming regimen, married a widow of proven childbearing prowess, but Six: had not managed to sire another child, boy or girl.

Which meant that Seven: Sebastian was still the heir presumptive to the earldom, not that it mattered overmuch because Eight: he was selling scads of books, especially since the release of Miss Spencer and the Wild Scotsman, which Nine: the King himself had declared “delicious.” This, combined with the fact that Sarah Gorely had become the most popular author in Russia, meant that Ten: all of Annabel’s brothers and sisters were well settled in life, which in turn led to Eleven: Annabel never had to worry that her choice to pursue her own happiness had cost them theirs.

Eleven.

Annabel smiled. Some things were so wonderful they ran right past ten.

“What are you grinning about?”

She looked up at Sebastian, who was still seated at his desk, pretending he was working. “Oh, many things,” she said blithely.

“How intriguing. I am also thinking of many things.”

“Are you?”

“Ten, to be precise.”

“I was thinking of eleven.”

“You are so competitive.”

“Grey Most Likely to Outrun a Turkey,” she reminded him. “To say nothing of the skipping of stones.”

She’d got up to six. It had been an excellent moment. Especially since no one had ever actually seen Sebastian do seven.

He raised a brow at that, gave his best imitation of condescension, and said, “Quality over quantity, that’s what I always say. I was thinking of ten things I love about you.”

Her breath caught.

“One,” he announced, “your smile. Which is rivaled only by Two: your laugh. Which is in turn fueled by Three: the utter genuineness and generosity of your heart.”

Annabel swallowed. Tears were forming in her eyes, and she knew they’d soon be pouring down her cheeks.