Her father turned to Jack where he’d been watching his sister with a half-smile. “Do you know about this?”
“We are to be their attendants,” Jack said. “With the greatest pleasure. We just must find a way to choose who gets Murphy.”
Georgie grinned. “I dare you to challenge Lully for him. Oh, and I’m taking Hattie, Mary, Maisy, and Tom. It only seems fair, since I trained them.” Turning back to her father, she kept her smile. “Well, Father?” she asked. “What say you?”
The marquess gave her a long, assessing look, his expression oddly vulnerable. “I only wanted what was best,” he finally admitted.
“I had what was best,” she assured him, her own voice softening. “I had my Jamie, and I had my Lully. And when you considered the title to be more important than your own children, I had Olivia and Little Jamie. And now, I have Jack back, and I have Adam. I would also like to have you and mother and the rest of the family back in my life. That is what has been important to me. If you can bend a little, you might realize exactly what ‘best’ is.”
It took a long moment during which the room hummed with unspoken tension. Finally, without his posture easing by an inch, the marquess waved one of his hands. “Call for Parker. He can get into the safe. I would also call for the children.”
Georgie had begun to sit down. Her father’s words had her on her feet again, even as the over-starched butler opened the door and bowed.
After dispatching the butler, her father lifted a hand in her direction. “I would know my granddaughter, Georgiana. She is a duchess now. I would like to introduce her to the dignity of her position.”
He looked confused when the younger people in the room began to laugh.
Their laughter was quickly enough explained when a few moments later the same butler opened the door, bowed as if at a court presentation, and grandly announced, “The Viscount Amberly and Miss Lilly Charlotte Grace.”
At which point a hand to each young shoulder, Hattie ushered them both into the room. Young Jamie came romping in followed by the lumbering Murphy who waited at the door for the very prim, very serene little girl who followed as if on the stroll in Hyde Park, her pretty green velvet dress spotless and unwrinkled, her green hair bow precisely placed in her bright red curls.
Jamie popped a quick bow to his grandparents and ran over to be folded into Olivia’s arms. Lully strode to the center of the room and gave Georgie her little-girl curtsy. “You called me, Mama? Hullo, Grace.”
Adam nodded, having long since given up trying to correct her. “Hello, Lully.”
“Lully,” Georgie said to her baby. “Allow me to introduce you to your grandparents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Wyndham. They felt you might like to learn a bit about the dignity of your family.”
Whereupon Lully turned her raised eyebrows at the couple who were now staring at her from their thronelike chairs. “Indeed,” was all she said.
Georgie’s father coughed. “She certainly has taken to her title well,” he managed.
Georgie laughed outright. “She has no idea about the title,” she informed him as everyone else chuckled. She lifted the marriage lines Parker had retrieved from the safe. “We haven’t told her yet.”
“What title?” Lully asked.
Georgie smiled. “Cutest sprite in England.”
Lully immediately let loose with one of her lovely giggles. “Silly.”
“Give your grandparents your best curtsy, please,” Georgie instructed. “Bi cúramach,Murphy.”
Lully wobbled a curtsy and straightened. Murphy stepped up right alongside his tiny mistress so she could lay her hand on his neck.
“This is our dog Murphy,” Lully informed her gaping grandparents with the gravity of a doyenne. “If you try to hurt me, he will eat you.”
And for the first time Georgie could ever remember, her father broke into a genuine smile. “I have no doubt. I promise he will have no cause, Lilly Charlotte.”
She nodded as if bestowing a boon. “Good. I want to like you.”
Then she did something the marquess’s children had never had the temerity to do. She ran up to the two very starchy gray-haired people seated on their stately chairs, motioned them to her and gave them a smacking kiss on the forehead.
The marchioness actually exhibited tears. “Thank you, sweet girl,” she whispered. “That was… the best.”
“Indeed,” the marquess acknowledged unsteadily, reaching out a hand that Lully accepted with aplomb. “Indeed.”
“Me, too?” Jamie demanded from his place alongside his mother.
His grandparents looked even more startled.
