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  “Aye, but not fairly. Even Stryder pointed out that he won only because your saddle failed you. Not that it mattered in the end. Malcolm changed his mind because he thought a man so loyal to his friends, one who would sacrifice his own happiness to see Stryder safe, was worthy of marrying me. More so, in fact, since Malcolm figured you would never try to overthrow him.”

  “But I’m not titled.”

  Draven snorted. “You are now, Lord Simon of Anwyk. King Henry has a small barony for you to swear fealty over. Seems he rather likes the thought of having a baron who is married to a Scottish princess.”

  Simon looked back and forth between them, still not sure if he hadn’t addled his brain in the fall. “Are you jesting?”

  Draven shook his head.

  “Nay, love,” Kenna said with a bright smile. Then she turned serious. “Of course, you could always divorce me…”

  “Nay,” he said emphatically. “Never.”

  She smiled again. “I somehow didn’t think you would mind.”

  Epilogue

  Simon paused outside the small donjon in Anwyk to watch his wife direct the servants who were helping her plant rosebushes in her private courtyard.

  To his chagrin, a light blue veil covered her brown tresses. How he loved to brush his hands through those long, wavy locks at night. Bury his face deep in the fragrance of it every time they made love.

  She grew more beautiful, more dear to him every day.

  She looked up and saw him watching her.

  The smile on her face made his heart pound.

  “Greetings, my lord,” she said. “Care to help us?”

  “Nay,” he said, closing the distance between them so that he could pull her into his arms. “I rather like watching you.” Then he leaned and whispered in her ear, “Especially when you bend over.”

  She squealed playfully at that. “You are in a mood this day.”

  “My lady, I am in that mood every time I look at you.”

  She laughed at him, then gave him a smart, chaste kiss. “Be off with you, knave. I have work to be about.”

  Simon turned his head so that he could watch the youngest member of the work crew. The youth had been nothing more than a boy when he’d been imprisoned.

  Stryder had sent him to them so that they could watch over and help him adjust to his newfound freedom. Under Kenna’s care and kindness, the boy had come a long way in only a few weeks.

  “You do great work, my lady,” he said seriously. At least until the imp in him took over again.

  He lifted Kenna up in his arms.

  She shrieked in protest. “What are you doing?”

  “It seems to me you still have a promise to fulfill.”

  “And what promise is that?”

  “That you’d give me a child by next summer.”

  He kissed her then and carried her away from the others. Carried her to the castle that belonged to a man who had once had no prospects at all.

  Well, he had them now, and he intended to make sure that he spent his life letting Kenna know just how grateful he was to her.

  Simon sprinted to their upstairs room. He closed the door and frowned as he saw a letter on his bed.

  Setting his wife down, he went to it.

  Kenna came to stand behind him as he saw his own baronial seal. “What is this?” he asked. They hadn’t written to each other since before their marriage.

  She shrugged. “Read it and see.”

  He broke the seal and opened it.

  My dearest champion,

  Since all good news seems to come in written form, I thought I should tell you this.

  I have kept my promise.

  Ever your lady,

  K

  Postscriptum

  The K is for Kenna just in case you might mistake me for another.

  Simon’s hand shook as he understood her meaning.

  She carried his child.

  He wanted to shout out in jubilation. He turned to face her. “Are you sure?”

  She nodded.

  Laughing aloud, he grabbed her up in his arms and whirled her around.

  “Thank you,” he said, then he lowered her down his body to capture her lips.

  Every dream he’d ever possessed had come true, and he owed it all to one woman….

  His Kenna.

  Julia Quinn

  A Tale of Two Sisters

  This one’s for all those folks at all those Star-bucks, who made me all those triple grande, nonfat, light vanilla Caramel Macchiatos, and then didn’t say a word while I sat for hours, tapping away on my laptop.

  And also for Paul, even though he says coffee is a “nasty, dirty, filthy habit,” and that “no good ever came of it.” (This apparently includes the time my mother almost missed her flight because we stopped for a latte on the way to the airport.)

  I don’t know how you ever made it through med school, babe.

  Chapter 1

  Ned Blydon let out a weary exhale and looked both ways before nudging his horse out of the stables. It was exhausting work, avoiding three women at once.

  First, there was his sister. Arabella Blydon Blackwood had firm opinions about how her brother ought to live his life, opinions she wasn’t shy about sharing.

  Opinions that Ned had consistently ignored for the past eight or so years.

  Belle was normally a perfectly lovely and reasonable person, but she seemed to feel that her status as a married woman gave her the right to dictate to him, even though he was, as he often reminded her, her elder by over a year.

  Then there was his cousin Emma, who was, if possible, even more outspoken than Belle. The only reason she wasn’t tied with his sister on his current list of women-to-be-avoided-at-all-costs was that she was seven months with child and couldn’t move around very quickly.

  If Ned was a bad person because he would run to escape a waddling pregnant woman, then so be it. His peace of mind was worth it.

  Finally, he was ashamed to admit, there was Lydia.

  He groaned. In three days’ time, Lydia Thornton would be his wife. And while there was nothing particularly wrong with her, the time he spent in her company was all awkward pauses and looking at the clock.

  It wasn’t what he’d imagined for marriage, but it was, he had come to accept, all he could expect.

  He’d spent the last eight seasons in London, a charming man about town, a bit of a rake, but not so much that nervous mamas steered their daughters away from him. He’d never consciously avoided marriage—well, not in the last few years, anyway—but at the same time, he’d never met any woman who inspired passion within him.

  Desire, yes. Lust, most certainly. But true passion? Never.

  And so as he approached the age of thirty the practical side of his mind had taken over, and he had decided that if he wasn’t going to marry for love, he might as well marry for land.

  Enter Lydia Thornton.

  Twenty-two years of age, pretty blond hair, attractive gray eyes, reasonably intelligent and in good health. And her dowry consisted of twenty acres of very nice land that ran right along the eastern border of Middlewood, one of the Blydon family’s smaller estates.

  Twenty acres wasn’t much for a man with family holdings scattered across the south of England, but Middlewood was the only property that Ned could truly call his own. The rest belonged to his father, the Earl of Worth, and would until he died and passed the title on to his son.

  And while Ned understood that the earldom was his birthright and privilege, he was in no hurry to assume the rights and responsibilities that went with it. He was one of the few men in his circle of acquaintances who actually liked his parents; the last thing he wanted to do was bury them.

  His father, in his infinite wisdom, had understood that a man such as Ned needed something of his own, and so on Ned’s twenty-fourth birthday, he’d deeded over Middlewood, one of the earldom’s unentailed properties.

  Maybe it was the elegant house, maybe it was the s
uperb trout pond. Maybe it was just because it was his, but Ned loved Middlewood, every last square inch of it.

  And so when it had occurred to him that his neighbor’s eldest daughter had actually grown old enough to marry—well, it had all seemed to make perfect sense.

  Lydia Thornton was perfectly nice, perfectly dowered, perfectly attractive, perfectly everything.

  Just not perfect for him.

  But it wasn’t fair to hold that against her. He’d known what he was doing when he’d proposed. He just hadn’t expected his impending marriage to feel quite so much like a noose around his neck. Although in truth, it hadn’t seemed so wretched until this past week, when he had come to Thornton Hall to celebrate the upcoming nuptials with his and Lydia’s families. Not to mention fifty or so of their closest friends.

  It was remarkable how many complete strangers could be found among such a group.

  It was enough to drive a man mad, and Ned held little doubt that he’d be a candidate for Bedlam by the time he left the village church that Saturday morning with his ancestral family ring firmly ensconced on Lydia’s finger.

  “Ned! Ned!”

  It was a shrill female voice. One he knew all too well.

  “Don’t try to avoid me! I see you!”

  Bloody hell. It was his sister, and if all went as it usually did, that meant that Emma would be waddling along behind her, ready to offer her own lecture as soon as Belle paused for breath.

  And—good God—come tomorrow his mother would be in residence to complete the terrifying triumvirate.

  Ned shuddered—an actual physical shudder—at the thought.

  He spurred his horse into a trot—the fastest he could manage so close to the house—planning to move into a full-fledged gallop once he could do so without endangering anyone.

  “Ned!” Belle yelled, clearly unconcerned with decorum, dignity, or even danger as she came running down the lane, heedless of the tree root that snaked out into her path.

  Thud!

  Ned closed his eyes in agony as he drew his horse to a halt. He was never going to escape now. When he opened them, Belle was sitting in the dust, looking rather disgruntled but no less determined.

  “Belle! Belle!”

  Ned looked past Belle to see his cousin Emma waddling forward as fast as her rather ducklike body would allow.

  “Are you all right?” Emma asked Belle before turning immediately to Ned and asking, “Is she all right?”

  He leveled a gaze at his sister. “Are you all right?”

  “Are you all right?” she countered.

  “What kind of question is that?”

  “A rather pertinent one,” Belle retorted, grabbing onto Emma’s outstretched hand and hauling herself to her feet, nearly toppling the pregnant woman in the process. “You’ve been avoiding me all week—”

  “We’ve only been here two days, Belle.”

  “Well, it feels like a week.”

  Ned could not disagree.

  Belle scowled at him when he did not reply. “Are you going to sit there on your horse, or are you going to dismount and speak with me like a reasonable human being?”

  Ned pondered that.

  “It’s rather rude,” Emma put in, “to remain on horseback while two ladies are on their feet.”

  “You’re not ladies,” he muttered, “you’re relations.”

  “Ned!”

  He turned to Belle. “Are you certain you’re not injured in any manner?”

  “Yes, of course, I—” Belle’s bright blue eyes widened once she discerned his intentions. “Well, actually, my ankle feels a little tender, and—” She coughed a few times for good measure, as if that might help to prove her claim of a turned ankle.

  “Good,” Ned said succinctly. “Then you won’t require my help.” And with that he spurred his horse forward and left them behind. Rude maybe, but Belle was his sister and she had to love him no matter what. Besides, she was only going to try to talk with Ned about his upcoming marriage, and that was the last thing he wanted to discuss.

  He took off heading west, firstly because that was the direction of the road offering the easiest escape, but also because he could soon expect to find himself among Lydia’s dowered lands. A reminder of why he was getting married might be just the thing he needed to keep his mind on an even keel. They were lovely lands, green and fertile, with a picturesque pond and a small apple orchard.

  “You like apples,” Ned muttered under his breath. “You’ve always liked apples.”

  Apples were good. It would be nice to have an orchard.

  Almost worth marrying for.

  “Pies,” he continued. “Tarts. Endless pies and tarts. And applesauce.”

  Applesauce was a good thing. A very good thing. If he could just keep equating his marriage with applesauce, he ought to retain his sanity until the following week, at the very least.

  He squinted into the distance, trying to judge how much farther it was until he reached Lydia’s lands. Not much more than five minutes’ ride, he should think, and—

  “Hello! Hello! Hell-oooooo!”

  Oh, wonderful. Another female.

  Ned slowed his mount, looking around as he tried to figure out just where the voice was coming from.

  “Over here! Please help!”

  He turned to his right and then behind him, and immediately ascertained why he hadn’t noticed the girl before. She was sitting on the ground, her green riding habit a rather effective camouflage against the grass and low shrubs around her. Her hair, long and medium brown, was pulled back in a manner that would never have passed muster in a London drawing room, but on her the queue was rather fetching.

  “Good day!” she called out, sounding a bit uncertain now.

  He drew to a reluctant halt and dismounted. He wanted nothing more than a bit of privacy, preferably on horseback as he rode hell-for-leather over rolling fields, but he was a gentleman (despite his admittedly shabby treatment of his sister), and he couldn’t ignore a lady in distress.

  “Is something amiss?” he inquired mildly as he approached.

  “I’ve turned my ankle, I’m afraid,” she said, wincing as she tried to tug off her boot. “I was walking, and—”

  She looked up, blinked her large gray eyes several times, then said, “Oh.”

  “Oh?” he echoed.

  “You’re Lord Burwick.”

  “Indeed.”

  Her smile was oddly lacking in warmth. “I’m Lydia’s sister.”

  * * *

  Charlotte Thornton felt like a fool, and she hated feeling like a fool.

  Not, she supposed, that anyone was particularly fond of the sensation, but she found it especially irritating, as she had always judged common sense to be the most laudable of traits.

  She’d gone for a walk, eager to escape the throngs of rather annoying houseguests who’d invaded her home for the week preceding her older sister’s wedding.

  Why Lydia needed her nuptials witnessed by fifty people she didn’t know, Charlotte would never understand. And that didn’t even count everyone who was planning to arrive on the day of the ceremony.

  But Lydia had wanted it, or rather, their mother had wanted it, and so now their house was filled to the rafters, as were the neighbors’ homes and all the local inns. Charlotte was going straight out of her mind. And so, before anyone could flag her down and beg her assistance in some terribly important endeavor, like making sure that the best chocolate was delivered to the Duchess of Ashbourne, she’d donned her riding habit and made her escape.

  Except that when she’d reached the stables, she’d discovered that the grooms had given her mare to one of the guests. They had insisted that her mother had given them permission to do so, but that had done little to brighten Charlotte’s foul mood.

  So she’d taken off on foot, stomping down the lane, looking for nothing but a bit of blessed peace and quiet, and then she’d gone and stepped in a mole hole. She hadn’t even hit the ground before she�
��d realized that she’d turned her ankle. It was already swelling in her boot, and this day progressing as it was, of course, she was wearing her boots that pulled on, not the ones with the flimsy black laces that would have made removal so quick and easy.

  The only bright spot in her morning was that it wasn’t raining, although with her luck lately, not to mention the gray sky above, Charlotte wasn’t even counting on that.

  Now her savior was none other than Edward Blydon, Viscount Burwick, the man who was supposed to marry her older sister in three days’ time. According to Lydia, he was a complete rake and not at all sensitive to a woman’s tender emotions.

  Charlotte wasn’t precisely certain what constituted a tender emotion, and in fact she rather doubted that she herself had ever possessed such a feeling, but still, it didn’t speak well of the young viscount. Lydia’s description had made him sound like a bit of a boor, and an overbearing one at that. Not at all the sort of gentleman best suited to rescue a damsel in distress.

  And he certainly looked like a rake. Charlotte might not be the romantic dreamer that Lydia was, but that didn’t mean she was oblivious to a man’s aspect and appearance. Edward Blydon—or Ned, rather, as she’d heard Lydia mention him—possessed the most startlingly bright blue eyes she had ever seen grace a human face. On anyone else, they might have seemed effeminate (especially with those sinfully long dark lashes), but Ned Blydon was tall and broad, and anyone would have realized that he was rather lean and athletic under his coat and breeches, even someone who wasn’t really looking, which she most assuredly was not.

  Oh, very well, she was. But how could she help it? He was looming over her like some dangerous god, his powerful frame blocking out what was left of the sun.

  “Ah, yes,” he said, somewhat condescendingly, in her opinion. “Caroline.”

  Caroline? They’d only been introduced three times. “Charlotte,” she bit off.

  “Charlotte,” he repeated, with grace enough to offer her a sheepish smile.