Ambrose ignored it. He dropped to one knee right there in the dirt and grime of the London docks.
“Miss Imogen Lewis,” he said, his voice ringing with absolute certainty. “I am a difficult man, and my wards are a pair of terrors that rival the Devil himself at times, but we are yours. Entirely. Will you come home? Will you marry me and make me the happiest man alive?”
Imogen looked at the ship, then down at the man who had humbled himself before the world for her sake, his knees deep in mud. The weight that had been crushing her chest for weeks finally shattered as she let herself be swallowed by his sparkling blue eyes.
“Oh, how I love you,” she sobbed, throwing her arms around his neck, pulling him up as he stood to meet her. “I love you so much. And the boys… oh, I missed them so. Do you truly mean it?”
“More than anything, my angel,” he whispered as his lips brushed her cheek.
“Yes, Ambrose! A million times yes!”
Any residual distance between them vanished in a single, desperate embrace as they held each other tight. The kiss was a violent collision of two worlds that should never have met, and yet here they were.
“Oh, how I missed you,” she cried as she took her lips off his and planted a firm kiss on his bearded cheek.
“And I you, My Angel,” he said as he brought her lips back to his with his strong grip. “Kiss me like no one is watching.”
“Who am I to deny a Duke as handsome as you?” She teased, her anxiety quelled by their proximity.
“Or your husband, for that matter?”
“I like the sound of that.”
The kiss was desperate and starving as their mouths met in a clashing of tongues and lips. It tasted like the harbor’s salt spray, the tang of his brandy, the heat of her tears, and the future that stood before them.
“Ambrose,” she gasped against his mouth after a few moments, her hands clutching the rough wool of his coat as if he were the only solid thing in a world made of water.
For the first time in her life, the air she drew into her lungs didn’t feel like dead weight. The terrifying vastness of the water behind her shrank until it was nothing more than a backdrop to the manstanding before her. They were no longer the Duke of Welton and the governess who had dared to look him in the eye. Those were costumes they shed on the muddy cobbles of the Thames with that searing kiss.
As the gangplank began to groan and the sailors shouted for the final boarding, Ambrose pulled back just enough to look at her. She liked the way she looked in his gaze, his wild-eyed desperation settling into a terrifyingly beautiful clarity.
“Let us go home now, Imogen,” he commanded, though it sounded more like a gentle request.
She didn’t look at the ship. She didn’t look at the trunk containing her meager life’s possessions. She looked at the man who had ruined his reputation in a single afternoon just to stand in the mud with her.
“If I am in your arms,” she whispered. “Then, I am home.”
Epilogue
ONE MONTH LATER
This is the dream,she realized, the thought ringing like a bell in the quiet chapel.But it is real, and it is mine.
Imogen let the warmth of the moment sink in as she looked down the modest aisle from a small crack in the oak door that led into the chapel. The stone floor beneath her feet was cold, yet she felt as though she were walking on a warm, fluffy cloud.
She was no longer a ghost in the hallways of another woman’s house, nor a shadow fleeing through the fog of the docks. She had taken her mother’s tarnished legacy, the shame of her birth, the whispers of theton, and the jagged cruelty of Lady Julia Presholm, and polished it until it became something radiant and uniquely hers.
Standing there in her gown of ivory silk, she wasn’t merely a bride. She was an architect of her own fate. For every minute her mother and father had spent in the darkness of regret, Imogen felt a decade of light returning to the bloodline.
She wasn’t just happy. She was free.
And in that hard-won freedom, her mother’s memory finally found a place to rest. Her parentage was no longer a burden to be carried, but a story that had finally reached its grace note.
I have won, Mother.
The chapel at Welton Hall, a refined estate tucked deep into the emerald folds of the Shropshire hills, was filled with the scent of lilies and the soft, golden glow of a hundred beeswax candles. It was a small but elegant affair, by choice and by design. They had stripped away the grandiosity that usually accompanied a ducal wedding, leaving only the fervor and honesty of the commitment they were sharing.
There would be no herald to announce her arrival, no crowd of gossiping peers waiting to count the lace on her sleeves or search her belly for a swell of scandal. The world of judgment had been barred at the gates. Instead, there was only the rhythmic, quiet crackle of the wicks, the muffled, sweet song of a robin nesting in the eaves, and the steady, heavy heartbeat of the man waiting for her at the altar.
