“I will.” He rose to his feet, took her upturned face between his palms, and kissed her.
“Philip,” she said when he released her many minutes later, “what did Lady Harriet mean when she said there aremushroomsin the gossip column?”
He smiled, and then he started to chuckle. He laughed hard enough he needed to sit, dragging her onto his lap when he did.
“I promise to answer every question you ever ask me concerning the strange ways of the nobility, as long as you promise never to write another book about us.”
Taking his face in her palms, she said, “I promise.”
Epilogue
As the music came to an end, Philip and Miranda heard the bell. He took her hand, and they hurried off the dance floor near the Turkish Tent and into the darkness beyond the Grove.
The night was warm and the Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens were filled with happy guests, but the newlyweds managed to beat the throng, meeting up with Helen and Peter, who’d gone early to the copse that contained the famed Cascade.
“Everything has been wondrous,” Helen said. “I don’t see how this can top the other entertainment or even the lamp-lighting.”
“It will,” Miranda assured her, linking her arm through her cousin’s. “This shall make your visit to London worthwhile.”
Helen laughed. “Too late for that. My stay in Town has exceeded my every expectation.”
“Then my letters didn’t do it justice?” Miranda asked.
“Not by half,” her cousin said.
Peter shushed her. “It’s starting.”
He had merely a single crutch tucked under his right arm. Sometimes, if the walk was short, he used only a cane. His legs had strengthened with the use of two crutches for months, allowing him to walk better than he had in years.
When Peter had come to London to handle Philip’s brandy imports, managing the business with his keen mind, Miranda’s kind husband had made certain her cousin was in the capable care of a former army doctor who’d had great success with all types of physical rehabilitation.
At first, Helen had not accompanied her brother. And Miranda realized her cousin had stayed in the country all those years not because she’d needed to tend her brother but because of her own timidity.
While still proclaiming the neighboring farmer’s son had possession of her heart, Helen finally agreed to a month’s visit. They were two weeks into it, and Miranda had an idea her cousin would like to stay for the upcoming Season, but they would decide later.
After the artful scene played out with the roaring cascade and the false pedestrians and carriages crossing the bridge, the crowd clapped and cheered. Philip reclaimed his wife’s arm, and they turned toward the exit with Peter and Helen following. They had come by boat this time, much to Miranda’s delight, and they would return by a wherry lit with lanterns through the darkness that stretched over the Thames.
“I am deliriously happy,” Miranda said.
“I will beafterI get you alone. It seems we are always in a party of four lately.”
“Shh,”she whispered, but she was thrilled by his unceasing desire, especially when he leaned close and brushed his mouth across her temple.
As usual, he’d been very generous to her cousins. But she couldn’t deny how she looked forward to their time alone and the passion she and Philip shared nearly every night, and some mornings, too.
“I’m glad we did not wait forty years to return to the Cascade,” he said.
Briefly puzzled, then she smiled. “The older couple! That was a lovely night. I recall how sweetly you helped them.”
“I recall how I nearly lost my mind when you disappeared onto the Dark Walk.”
She squeezed his arm by way of apologizing for her bad behavior.
“But the moment the old man mentioned you being my wife, he put the seed into my brain, and it grew from then on.”
“But I trapped you and you were leg-shackled,” she mimicked him.
He laughed.
