The Black Sheep's Return (18 page)

Her son exchanged a quick joke with the darkly handsome young devil someone whispered was a gypsy king among his own people and the little tanned woman Freya had insisted must be one of her daughter’s godmothers, who nodded knowingly at whatever her son-in-law had said and added some pithy observation that made Rich roar with laughter. Melissa felt intensely blessed to be able to stand among her family and watch her beloved elder son live and love and laugh again at last.

Her darling Telemachus meant so much to her and she loved her daughters dearly, admired their husbands and thought all her grandchildren quite ridiculously wonderful and talented, but with Rich back home it felt as if something had clicked back to rightness about the Seaborne clan as it hadn’t been since the day her own beloved Henry had died. She watched Richard’s own young Henry, Marquis of Lundy, and his son in every way that counted, lean against his side and whisper something significant to the monstrous great dog Rich insisted had the right to follow his family everywhere they went nowadays and was glad nothing about Rich and his Lady Freya’s life was conventional or predictable.
He was never one for rules and schedules and neither was his lady, now she dared be her true self, and Melissa knew her daughter-in-law enjoyed their different ways of life as much as he did.

‘You’ll have to revise your opinion of how clearly the Seabornes stamp their mark on their progeny now,’ she informed Miss Bradstock with a very happy smile as that lady emerged from the crowd of very mixed guests.

‘Aye, our latest young miss has her own views on the subject,’ the little girl’s great-great-aunt agreed, clearly very happy Miss Miranda looked so much like her mother.

‘The younger generation should always defy the expectations of their elders,’ Lady Henry said with an affectionate glance at her daughter-in-law, who had certainly confounded anyone who remembered Lady Freya Buckle, husband hunter, by wedding a commoner, even if he was Rich Seaborne and very uncommon indeed. ‘Only think what a poor marriage she and Jack would have made if he had proposed to Lady Freya four years ago instead of Jessica.’

‘They were wrong for each other in almost every way,’ Freya’s great-aunt scoffed as she
watched Lord and Lady Bowland sceptically as they made a few weak attempts to join with the radically mixed throng of guests at a Seaborne christening with a difference.

‘Rich loves it when Freya puts on her queen-of-all-she-surveys look and does her best to put him in his place. She and Jack would have brought out the worst in one another.’

‘So now we’re surrounded by a pack of disrespectful whelps and their ridiculously besotted wives and must endure a constant stream of impudent Seaborne and Forthin brats disrupting our peace and quiet morning noon and night.’

‘I know—isn’t it wonderful?’ Lady Henry said with a blissful sigh.

‘Aye,’ the vital lady Lady Henry would never regret inviting to share her home admitted. ‘My Freya is as happy as a pig in muck and I’ve seldom felt less bored in my life.’

‘And my errant son has become the man I always prayed he might be. There seems little left for a mother to wish for.’

‘Then you’re not planning the most sensational come out a girl ever experienced for that flighty young miss of yours in a few years’ time, I suppose?’

‘Maybe, but Penny will follow her own path
to happiness, whatever plans her proud mama makes for her. The Seabornes always did insist on going their own way, whatever I had to say about the matter.’

‘And they travel with such style while they’re doing it,’ Miss Bradstock admitted as she eyed the assembled pack of partially tamed wolves with their extraordinary wives and the promising families they all doted on.

‘True,’ said Lady Henry, a Seaborne wife with remembered stars still in her eyes, ‘but it’s a journey whomever they startle, charm and seduce into sharing it with them will never forget,’ she confirmed.

‘I can’t argue with that, considering Alex Forthin, Antigone Seaborne and my lovely Freya look as if they don’t know how they managed to be so happy.’

‘Aye, and my Helen is growing up with her fine young lord and Jack’s more in love with his Duchess than he ever dreamt he could be in his worst nightmares.’

‘Five down, one to go,’ Miss Bradstock said with a wickedly conspiratorial smile.

‘What mischief are you two hatching?’ Jack asked as he subjected his own far-too-innocent-looking aunt and Lady Freya’s frankly devious
one to the acute green gaze they’d been talking about just now.

‘The best sort, my love,’ Lady Henry said sweetly.

‘What a terrifying prospect,’ he said with the relaxed resignation of a man who had already experienced the best and worst a matchmaking conspiracy could drag him into for his own good.

‘Rich and his Freya don’t look as if they’ve suffered unduly from our interference,’ Rich’s proud mama said as her gaze once more rested on her eldest son, as if she would never tire of looking at him after six years of being deprived of the sight.

‘Since they found each other without any help from either of you, I can’t see how you can claim the credit for that match.’

‘A good enough
grande dame
will always claim the credit for any good thing that happens within a hundred miles of her, my boy,’ Miss Bradstock informed him sagely, ‘and it took a great deal of guile to push the two of them back into each other’s arms where they belong, once your totty-headed cousin was fool enough to let my niece get away from him.’

‘At least I had the sense to know my fate
when I met her,’ he said as if meeting and marrying the love of his life had been his idea all along and two great ladies exchanged knowing glances.

‘Of course you did, my love,’ his aunt told him soothingly and smiled delightedly when Freya came to join them with Sally trotting determinedly along behind her so she didn’t lose her beloved Prudie in the crush.

‘Happy now?’ Miss Bradstock said and Freya smiled a blissful assent.

‘More than I ever dreamed I could be the day I got lost, then found Orlando Craven in the wild wood.’

‘Papa,’ Miss Sally Seaborne said wisely.

‘My Sally,’ Rich agreed as he followed with Hal proudly holding his littlest sister and Master Matthew Frederick making it very plain he wasn’t intending to relinquish their father’s attention before he finally had to give in and sleep. ‘Was ever a man so undeservedly blessed?’ he asked nobody in particular.

‘Never,’ his wife informed him with a sharp nod to remind him how undeserving he’d been on more than one occasion before he realised it.

‘Or so recklessly brave in taking on a proud and arrogant female like you as his lady,’ he taunted her with a conflagration of desire and love for Lady Freya and her eager alias in his hot green gaze.

‘That wasn’t bravery—it was the coming of wisdom,’ she informed him and met his challenge with one of her own.

‘You will excuse us, won’t you?’ Rich asked as he somehow signalled to his family’s eager helpers that his youngest children were both as near asleep as made no difference at long last and young Lord Lundy and his enterprising little sister not much better after so much excitement.

‘Why should we? It’s your house and your party,’ Jack argued with a disgruntled stare at his own love and his six-month-old heir, surrounded as they were by admirers.

‘Because I’m a Seaborne and she was a Buckle and we arrogant aristocrats deserve each other,’ Rich said with an unrepentant grin that admitted he was indeed intending a detour to their aristocratic bedchamber as soon as the children were safely asleep and Jack would just have to envy them until he came up with an excuse to get his Duchess alone.

‘True,’ said the Duke of Dettingham with well-contained ferocity and stalked off to contrive one at the double.

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents are pure invention.

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First published in Great Britain 2013
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of Harlequin (UK) Limited.
Harlequin (UK) Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise Road,
Richmond, Surrey TW9 1SR

© Elizabeth Beacon 2013

eISBN: 978-1-472-00401-7