“Fanny didn’t understand…perhaps I didn’t understand…that when I came to Kent’s Row I found a family, a far better one than the one I was born into. Sisters in the duchesses, a brother in Theo.” She shifted as she prepared to make the most terrifying confession of her life. “And…and you.”
He caught his breath and she saw how deeply her words moved him. “Valaria.”
“You are the love of my life,” she continued, and found strength with every word that fell from her lips. “The whole of my heart. The person I can trust with my secrets and my body and my soul. And I know that this beginning was not…” She laughed a little. “Optimal. But if you still wish to make me your wife, I want us to be happy. To love each other. To make a future that is so beautiful and bright that it blinds even the sun.”
He blinked down at her, seemingly stunned by this, by her. “You love me?” he asked.
She nodded. “I do.”
His breath grew shaky and she was surprised that tears leapt into his bright eyes. “Then I am the luckiest man in this world or any other. And I cannot wait to make you mine.”
“I’m already yours,” she whispered, and drew him closer, leaning up for a kiss that felt like a lifetime in the making.
A kiss that sealed them as much as the way he backed her toward her bed and proved to her, over and over and long into the night, that he was hers, too.
Forever.
EPILOGUE
Nine months later
“Her Grace, the Duchess of Blackvale,” Valaria breathed close to Callum’s ear as they spun around the dancefloor at their wedding exactly one day after her mourning period had ended.
Not that they had been acting as anything but man and wife for all the months before that. They had been going back and forth between each other’s homes almost every night. And yes, there had been a stir at the beginning, thanks to the whispers caused by Lady Pittsgreen, but Valaria’s friends had eased that. Flora and Bernadette, along with the Duchess of Amberleigh, had spread a very different story. The truth: that Callum had comforted her in her worst moments. That they had fallen deeply in love. That it was the height of romance and a triumph of the heart over grief and pain.
And Society had, as promised, eaten it up. An invitation to the day’s festivities had been one of the most sought after of the Season.
“That is music to my ears,” Callum said, drawing her from her thoughts. “Say it again.”
“Your wife,” she repeated. “In body now, as well as soul.”
“A body I happen to adore,” he said.
She laughed, lighter now than she had ever been. Thanks to him. This wonderful man who had been everything she ever needed. Who would always be that. He had lifted the weight of the world from her shoulders and eased not only her fears, but Fanny’s, as well. Her maid had come to adore him as he proved his honesty and protectiveness over the months. Even now Fanny beamed from across the room, all fear erased from her countenance.
Fanny had earned that, and Valaria was so happy to see her at ease again.
Which meant now she only worried about her friends. She scanned the ballroom looking for them. Flora stood on one side of the room, but she was not alone. Her last few months had been interesting, to say the least, and her new happiness was reflected on her face.
She found Bernadette stood on the other side of the floor, standing beside Theo. In the months since Valaria’s engagement, Theo had come around more and more often. And his renewed friendship with Bernadette had grown. Bernadette refused to speak of it, of course, dismissed any question about how she felt when it came to the handsome duke.
But now the two were engaged in deep conversation, one that did not look entirely happy.
Valaria shook her head. “I only hope my two friends will soon be as happy as I am.”
Callum tucked a finger beneath her chin and tilted it up so that suddenly all there was was him. And as always, the fears fell away as he smiled at her. That was the gift of his heart and his love. He just made everything in her life better.
“They will be happy,” he assured her. “Though happy as we are could be a stretch. No one in the world could quite reach these heights.”
“No,” she agreed as she clung to him tighter and let him spin her around the floor. “No one in the world.”
ENJOY AN EXCERPT OF NOT ANOTHER DUKE
BOOK 2 OF THE KENT’S ROW DUCHESSES
Fall 1815
Roarke Desmond made a slow count of ten in his head and schooled his expression so that his utter disgust with his surroundings would not be clear. It was something he had been doing for most of his life when he was forced to visit his three hateful cousins, so he was very good at it. After all, he had no other choice.
“Do you remember little Gregory Parson?” his cousin Thomas was asking now, drawing Roarke back into the conversation.
Roarke inclined his head. “Er, yes. I think so. He lived out near your father’s estate in Sidmouth, did he not?”
“My estate in Sidmouth,” Thomas snapped, and Roarke clenched his jaw.
His eldest cousin had been impossible to take for his entire life. Thomas was always lording his elevated position over Roarke and anyone else he deemed less than worthy. Roarke had hoped he might grow out of such immature nastiness, but Thomas’s entitled posturing had only increased in the three years since Roarke’s uncle Stuart had died and his oldest cousin had become duke.
There was almost no bearing him now.
“Of course,” Roarke soothed with a stifled sigh. “Your estate. What about him?”
“Do you know that Gertrude saw him scuttling about Cheapside the other day?” Thomas pivoted his head and speared his younger sister with a glare. “Tell him.”
Gertrude had been staring into her tea, apparently as bored by all this as Roarke was, but now she lifted her gaze and gave a smile. It seemed cruelty was a trait all his cousins shared. “I did. He owns a shop there—can you imagine?”
Roarke drew in a long breath and once again schooled his tone. “It’s a very successful mercery, if I recall. They import and sell the finest fabrics for furnishings. He and his wife run the shop.”
All three of his cousins pulled a face, clearly unimpressed by the success of their old neighbor’s business. But of course, so many of their rank were like that.
“Well, that’s quite a fall from his upbringing,” his third cousin, Philip, snorted as he chewed a biscuit from the tea set on the sideboard, little flecks of food flying from his mouth as he did so. “Then again, I suppose you know about that, don’t you, cousin?”
The three of them laughed, as if this were good-natured ribbing, not cruel taunting. Roarke shifted in his seat. It wasn’t as if he could deny the charge. He had certainly fallen far further than the man they were discussing. Although his connection to their family was on their mother’s side, rather than their duke father, Roarke had still been raised with a level of privilege and expectation.
Both of which had been ruined over the last two years. His father had started it. Francis Desmond had been a kind man, a good man, but he was a dreamer. Sometimes that led him to be too trusting or too certain of an investment. He had whittled down every bit of money he had available to him by the time of his death in a carriage accident.