Captivated by a Lady's Charm (Lords of Honor Book 2) (32 page)

Final Lesson

All you need is love…

Three months later

F
rom where Prudence sat beside him, Christian took in his wife as she intently worked over the sketchbook on her lap. Occasionally, she would pause, angle the book slightly, and then resume her efforts. Her fingers flew over the page as she sketched…He squinted and leaned closer.

Feeling his gaze on her, she shot her head up.

“A…a…?” God help him, he didn’t have a deuced clue.

She turned the book around for his attention.

It might or might not have been a rose bush. “I do not have my spectacles, love.”

Prudence angled around and reached for the wire frames resting on the mahogany side table. “Here,” she said, thrusting them under his nose.

With a sigh, he placed them on and attended his evaluation of her latest… “It is a tree.”

She gave a vigorous nod.

“Your elm.” Except the jutting branches did not display the same limb-like stretch of the pages he long remembered.

“Decidedly not,” she muttered. “I detest that tree.”

He tweaked her nose. “I thought you loved that tree.”

“That was before it tried to kill my husband.” She tilted her head back to receive his kiss. “I love you and now hate that tree. It was a very good day when it was decided they would take it down.”

Following the shocking tale of the Marquess of St. Cyr’s near death under the deadened branches, there was an outcry to see that great elm removed. By all, except one. He furrowed his brow.

His perceptive wife narrowed her eyes. “What did you do?”

Christian coughed into his hand and turned over the sketchpad. “It was not truly dead.”

Not looking at the book, she tossed it behind her where it slid off the edge of the table and landed on the floor with a loud thump. “What did you do, Christian Villiers?”

Since he’d concocted his own scheme, he’d not truly thought she might protest. Of course he knew she spoke often of turning that great elm into kindling…but it was
their
elm.

“Christian?” she demanded.

He tugged at his cravat. “But it was not really dead. There were those leaves at the top branch—”

“Do you mean above the limb which nearly killed you?”

He nodded. “The same.”

“I was being sarcastic.”

“Oh, er, right. Well, as I said, it was not dead and so I managed to see that it remain standing with the promise to remove those dead branches.”

She stared at him, frozen, passing her gaze over his face and he braced for her explosive annoyance, but then she sighed. “Oh, Christian.” Prudence came up on her knees and took his face between her palms.

“I was quite content to celebrate its fiery demise alongside you, if that would make you happy, but then I thought of everything that happened under that tree. Patrina met her husband over by that very spot and he arranged for them to be married there.” Emotion filled her expressive, blue eyes. “It saw our chance meeting in Hyde Park.” He paused giving her a probing look. “They were not chance meetings, were they?”

“They were a little bit chance,” she said, a twinkle lighting her eyes.

“And that tree saw us wed.” He coughed into his hand. “Even if it was not the most romantic of wedding ceremonies.”

“It was the most romantic of all wedding ceremonies everywhere,” she countered.

Odd, the funny things love did to a person’s words and memories that his wife should forget the deuced foolish wager.

“All except the part about the wager,” she added as an afterthought.

“Er, right. Yes. As I was saying, I was happy to see the tree destroyed if it would see you happy, but then I realized it was something more.”

“Do you mean more than the tree that tried to kill you?” she asked with a droll edge infused into her words.

He nodded solemnly. “Indeed. I realized somewhere along the way it ceased to be your elm and became ours.” Christian ran his gaze over her face. Her lower lip trembled and dewy moisture misted her eyes. Ah, God, how he loved her. “But if you would rather I arrange to have it taken down…”

Her glare cut across his promise. “You are to do no such thing. That tree is ours. And there is so much more for it to see.”

“Is there?” he whispered, taking her in his arms with him as he lay down. He adjusted her slender form atop his frame and held her close. “And what will it see next?”

A slow, wide smile split his wife’s bow-shaped lips and she reached for his hand and drew it to her belly. His heart started at the gleam in her eyes. “Why, it needs to see our babe.”

“You are—?”

Prudence snuggled against his chest. “Yes, I am expecting.”

He stilled as emotion slammed into him. For years, he’d been convinced of his own lack of worth. He’d seen his mistakes as failings. Until Prudence had shown him forgiveness within himself.

She nudged him in the side. “Well, usually this is where a father-to-be says how elated he is and plans the names of his future son and heir.”

“I am going to be a father?” he blurted.

His wife pointed her eyes to the ceiling. “I thought I’d been rather clear, but yes. You are to be a father, in approximately six months’ time, according to the doctor.” He would be a father. And she would be the mother of his babe. He imagined a world filled with precocious little girls who loved to sketch and dance every set.

Some of the teasing light went out of her eyes, replaced with hesitation. “You are happy, are you not, Christian?”

A slow, triumphant smile turned his lips. “I am happy.” How could he not be? He’d been well and truly captivated by his lady’s charms.

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Christi Caldwell is the bestselling author of historical romance novels set in the Regency era. Christi blames Judith McNaught’s “Whitney, My Love,” for luring her into the world of historical romance. While sitting in her graduate school apartment at the University of Connecticut, Christi decided to set aside her notes and try her hand at writing romance. She believes the most perfect heroes and heroines have imperfections and rather enjoys tormenting them before crafting a well-deserved happily ever after!

When Christi isn’t writing the stories of flawed heroes and heroines, she can be found in her Southern Connecticut home chasing around her feisty five-year-old son, and caring for twin princesses-in-training!

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“Winning a Lady’s Heart”

A Danby Novella

Author’s Note: This is a novella that was originally available in A Summons From The Castle (The Regency Christmas Summons Collection). It is being published as an individual novella.

For Lady Alexandra, being the source of a cold, calculated wager is bad enough…but when it is waged by Nathaniel Michael Winters, 5th Earl of Pembroke, the man she’s in love with, it results in a broken heart, the scandal of the season, and a summons from her grandfather – the Duke of Danby.

To escape Society’s gossip, she hurries to her meeting with the duke, determined to put memories of the earl far behind. Except the duke has other plans for Alexandra…plans which include the 5th Earl of Pembroke!

“A Season of Hope”

A Danby Novella

Five years ago when her love, Marcus Wheatley, failed to return from fighting Napoleon’s forces, Lady Olivia Foster buried her heart. Unable to betray Marcus’s memory, Olivia has gone out of her way to run off prospective suitors. At three and twenty she considers herself firmly on the shelf. Her father, however, disagrees and accepts an offer for Olivia’s hand in marriage. Yet it’s Christmas, when anything can happen…

Olivia receives a well-timed summons from her grandfather, the Duke of Danby, and eagerly embraces the reprieve from her betrothal.

Only, when Olivia arrives at Danby Castle she realizes the Christmas season represents hope, second chances, and even miracles.

“Forever Betrothed, Never the Bride”

Book 1 in the Scandalous Seasons Series

Hopeless romantic Lady Emmaline Fitzhugh is tired of sitting with the wallflowers, waiting for her betrothed to come to his senses and marry her. When Emmaline reads one too many reports of his scandalous liaisons in the gossip rags, she takes matters into her own hands.

War-torn veteran Lord Drake devotes himself to forgetting his days on the Peninsula through an endless round of meaningless associations. He no longer wants to feel anything, but Lady Emmaline is making it hard to maintain a state of numbness. With her zest for life, she awakens his passion and desire for love.

The one woman Drake has spent the better part of his life avoiding is now the only woman he needs, but he is no longer a man worthy of his Emmaline. It is up to her to show him the healing power of love.