He thought of another point. “Besides, you have a duchess and at least two marchionesses on your side, and more than one countess. Also, your sisters-in-law. Together, the eight of you hardly need anyone else’s approval, and only someone who is tired of living would dare to bully any of you. Can you imagine what Clara would do to them?”
To his relief, Melody giggled. Only a little splutter of a laugh, but a vast improvement.
“As to your age, you are thirty-two and I am thirty-eight. You are old enough and experienced enough to make a fit mate for me, and young enough to still give me more children, if God is kind. And if we have only daughters, or if our nurseries remain empty, I have one nephew and shall almost certainly have more in time.”
His last argument brought a grin to his face when he thought of it. “As to your work, have you not solved many mysteries for fashionable families?”
“A dozen or more,” Melody acknowledged. “They know how I have spent the past six years, and will tell their friends.”
“Two points, heart of my heart. One. They cannot disclose what they know without also disclosing that Aunt Agnes stole the watch, or James Junior seduced the neighbor’s daughter.”
He had invented Aunt Agnes and James Junior, for she was discreet to a fault when talking about former cases. Still, from his expression, his point was made.
“Second, the Duchess of Kempbury was in the same line of work, and she is accepted everywhere.”
Silence while he allowed her to digest his responses. After a while, she murmured, in a voice so quiet that he had to lean close to hear it, “Are you saying you do not mind?”
He took advantage of the closeness to kiss her, drawing away after an intense and passionate embrace just far enough to say, “Any other course of action, I would mind like hell. I love you, Melody Blackmore, and if you love me, we shall work out the rest.”
“I love you,” she told him. “That has never been the question.”
“Then let us have our wedding so we can face this latest challenge together. Will you, darling? I cannot promise you peace and unsullied happiness, but I can promise you my loyal and unwavering love, from now until the day I meet my maker. Yes, and beyond.”
He felt as if he could breathe again. He had been worried that she would not want to take him on. Certainly, she had good cause to reject him. Successive meetings with the men responsible for the marquisate—the lawyers, the stewards, and the men of business—showed that Teign had given up paying attention to his holdings a decade ago.
Fortunately, he had placed competent men in charge, but they were growing older, and some of them were beginning to lose control of the threads they held as part of the vast tapestry of the family’s holdings.
The family was not in danger of bankruptcy, but the wealth was certainly not flowing as it should. Allan had years of hard work ahead of him to recover the situation, especially since he was determined to give each of his brothers a fully-functioning estate to provide them with both a home and an income.
He explained all this to Melody, believing she had the right to be informed so she could choose whether or not to stand by him. Her reply startled him.
“I suggest we hold a family meeting, beloved. I fully support your wish to see to the welfare of your family, but why not ask them what they want? For example, you own warehouses with wharves on the Thames. Cornelius plans to make his life in France, and may not want the trouble of an English estate, but warehouses for his wine business might suit him very well. Baldwin plans to study in Edinburgh to become a doctor, and you own a row of townhouses in Edinburgh, which would give his family a place to live, and income to live on.”
Of course! She was brilliant! He grabbed her for a spontaneous hug. “We can show them the list of assets, and ask them to choose,” he said. “I do not suppose we can gift the properties outright until I am officially the marquess, but we can give them the use and the income from them.”
“We should ask for valuations where they haven’t been provided,” Melody mused. “That way, we can set an amount and give each brother equivalent value. We can tell them about it in the morning.”
“We can leave them with the list and discuss it after we arrive back from our week at Barcliffe Priory,” Allan proposed. All the brothers had spent most of their childhood at Barcliffe Priory, which was the Teign family seat on the coast in Hampshire. Allan had not been there in a decade, and looked forward to showing Melody the haunts of his boyhood.
He would do so under the unobtrusive watch of a team of Moriarty bodyguards, for Teign was still missing. Indeed, the news from all parts of the country was the same—nobody had heard anything from him since the morning of the fifth of January.
The Household Cavalry had searched the estate for Teign, and had questioned the servants and the tenants. After that, a couple of Bow Street runners did likewise. Mrs. Moriarty had also sent men to check.
The place was as safe as all those people could make it, and tomorrow night, Allan and Melody would spend the first night of their marriage there.
*
The wedding thefollowing day was well attended, with the brothers and their wives, Harmony and Phineas, the French aunts, and the children. Mel worried, right up until the vows were made and his ring was on Melody’s finger, that Allan would suddenly come to his senses and back out of the marriage.
He later told her that he had the same fear.
The wedding was only the beginning of a wonderful week. Mel and Allan set their duties and responsibilities—and their worries—to one side, and spent the week talking, playing chess, taking it in turn to read out loud, walking in the park, skating on the lake, and otherwise enjoying some rare leisure and one another’s company.
And they explored one another’s bodies. They went up to bed shortly after dinner, stayed under the covers in the morning, and often headed upstairs for an interlude during the day. Or they made good use of a nest of feather eiderdowns in the conservatory, or on the couch in front of the fire in the study, or in the room above the boathouse on the lake.
The physical side of marriage had been a revelation to Melody from their first time together.
Her previous husband was convinced that only scandalous women enjoyed such activities. He would not insult his lady wife, he had told her, by expecting her to get any pleasure fromtheir coupling. “Lie still,” he had said, on their wedding night. “I’ll make this as quick as possible.”
