"Optimist."
"I love you," he said suddenly, seriously.
"I love you too. Even in your fancy duke clothes."
"Especially in my fancy duke clothes?"
"No, especially in your flour-covered apron that doesn't fit."
"I knew that apron would win you over eventually."
"It was definitely the apron, not the man wearing it."
"Of course."
“I love you” they said in unison and all the cares of the world drifted from them, light and harmless, as flour once scattered in their happiest play.
The End
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Extended Epilogue
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Married to the Frozen Duke
“I am a cold man, Miss Coleridge. You should leave before you regret this marriage.”
Chapter One
The seventh Duke of Montclaire was dying magnificently.
It was, Alexander thought with the sort of detached appreciation one might reserve for a particularly dramatic opera, exactly the sort of death scene his grandfather would orchestrate. The massive bedchamber had been transformed into a theater of finality—heavy curtains drawn against the cheerful spring sunshine, fire burning low in the grate, the air thick with that peculiar stillness that preceded momentous occasions.
The duke himself lay propped against a fortress of pillows, his face bearing the waxy sheen of a man whose business with this world was drawing to its inevitable close. Yet his eyes, those infamous grey eyes that had made lesser men quake in parliamentary sessions, still glittered with their characteristic command.
Alexander stood at a precise distance from the bed, neither too close to suggest unseemly emotion nor too far to imply disrespect. At two and thirty, he had mastered the art of appearing precisely as engaged as any situation required and not one degree more. His morning coat was impeccable black, his cravat a study in architectural precision, his expression carefully neutral.
Around him, the family had assembled like a flock of well-dressed carrion birds. Cousin Margret clutched her handkerchief with anticipatory grief. Uncle Bartholomew consulted his pocket watch with the dedication of a man whobelieved punctuality might somehow postpone the inevitable. Great-Aunt Wilhelmina sat straight in the corner, her disapproval of death's timing evident in every line of her ancient face.
Mr. Hedgley, the family solicitor, hovered near the writing desk, his implements of legal documentation arranged with military precision. He had the look of a man who had witnessed many deathbed proclamations and found them all equally uncomfortable.
The duke's breathing rattled like dice in a cup; appropriate, Alexander supposed, given how much of the family fortune Uncle Charles had once gambled away.
"Come closer, all of you," the duke commanded, his voice thin as parchment but still capable of commanding obedience. "What I have to say concerns every Montclaire living and those yet unborn."
The assembled relatives shuffled forward with the reluctance of students approaching a particularly stern headmaster.
The duke's gaze swept over them all before settling on Alexander with uncomfortable intensity. "Too long," he began, each word requiring visible effort, "have Montclaire and Coleridge lived at daggers drawn."
The temperature in the room seemed to drop several degrees.
