Beloved Imposter (46 page)

None of that mattered now, though.

Alina leaned down and picked up the baby. Felicia knew it was only a matter of time before Alina and young John wed. John had a crippled arm and Alina a crippled leg but their love, youthful as it was, made everyone else seem crippled instead.

“Now you know the end of the tale,” Felicia said to her. “The prince came from the woods. He did not want to be a prince but he could not avoid what he was.”

Rory now knew the tale she had started long ago. The whimsy that had a delayed ending.

Felicia reached out a hand to him, and he took it, clasping it tightly. “It is gone,” she whispered. “The curse is gone forever.”

Lachlan entered after a small knock. Just returned from a voyage to be by his brother’s side during this event, he had been hovering outside. He held young Jamie, who, at eighteen months, was scrambling to be put down.

“See your sister,” Lachlan said, leaning over so the lad could get a better look.

Jamie grabbed his sister’s tiny hand, and wee Margaret’s fist went around one of his fingers. Jamie grinned happily.

His heart brimming over, Rory watched as his wife put her hand around both her children’s hands. She would protect them as fiercely as she protected all that was dear in her life.

He knew then the curse was gone, destroyed by her great spirit.

And a love that he knew now could conquer anything.

In 1988,
Patricia Potter
won the Maggie Award and a Reviewer’s Choice Award from
Romantic Times
for her first novel. She has been named Storyteller of the Year by
Romantic Times
and has received the magazine’s Career Achievement Award for Western Historical Romance along with numerous Reviewer’s Choice nominations and awards.

She has won three Maggie awards, is a three-time RITA finalist, and has been on the
USA Today
bestseller list. Her books have been alternate choices for the Doubleday Book Club.

Prior to writing fiction, she was a newspaper reporter with the
Atlanta Journal
and president of a public relations firm in Atlanta.

She has served as president of Georgia Romance Writers and board member of River City Romance Writers, and is currently a member of the national board of Romance Writers of America.