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Sara danced up the steps, smiling at their butler as he opened the door. “Mr. Augustus, we met such a strange lady in the bookstore!”

Livie smiled ruefully. “Thank you, Augustus. Sara, please remember to be polite and kind in your description.”

Sara handed her pelisse to a footman. “Her name was Lady Regina, and she had her nose so high in the air, like this!” Sara squared her shoulders and pointed her little nose toward the heavens. “When Mama greeted her, the lady looked as if she had swallowed a flea—the same expression Papa had when that pulga flew into his mouth—but I was very polite and did not laugh even a little bit.”

“Lady Regina was merely surprised to see me,” Livie said. “Nanny will be waiting for you in the nursery, Sara. Augustus, will you please ask a nursemaid to take Freddy?”

“I shall be happy to escort Master Frederick to the nursery,” their butler replied, holding out his arms.

“Thank you,” Livie said, handing over the baby. “Is my husband in his study?”

Freddy opened his eyes, nuzzled against Augustus’s chest, and went promptly back to sleep. After three years serving under Joshua’s command, Lance-Corporal John Augustus had sold out, donned a different uniform, and spent the last five years running their household, including the country estate Joshua inherited and the house in Madrid where they planned to spend several months a year.

“Major-General FitzRoy is upstairs with your cousin, overseeing another furniture delivery,” Augustus said, tucking Freddy carefully in the crook of his arm. “Also, Lord Frederick FitzRoy-Paget is in the library.”

Thanks to Daisy’s exquisite taste, their house had been furnished with great elegance before they arrived in London, but chairs and smaller pieces were still arriving every week.

Livie handed a footman her wet pelisse and paused for a moment before a mirror to tweak the chignon currently fashionable in London. She wrinkled her nose, thinking of Regina’s horrified expression on seeing her again. True, Livie’s skin had been tanned to golden hue and she carried a baby in a sling, but surely that wasn’t enough to cause Regina to slap her hand to her bosom and appear likely to faint from shock?

Or perhaps it was.

After all, Regina’s skin had clearly been whitened with arsenic powder, which Livie strongly suspected to be poisonous. She followed a commonsense rule: if you couldn’t swallow it, you shouldn’t put it on your skin.

She poked her head into the library. “Hello, Frederick.”

Her brother-in-law glanced up from his book, a snifter of golden liquid at his side. “Darling Livie, good morning. Oates-Plagitt sent me forth to take exercise, so I walked all the way here, where I am now hiding from the rain.”

“That was a five-minute walk,” Livie pointed out.

“More than enough,” Frederick stated. “I am weak from lack of my normal sustenance. You’ll be happy to learn that I am eschewing brandy, after Joshua informed me that my spirituous breath might stifle my young namesake. Also, I mean to play spillikins with my niece when she returns from the park, and I need my wits about me.”

“Bravo!” Livie said, eyeing his glass.

“What you see here is a snifter of the very best … tea. Oates-Plagitt suggested that I drink tea in snifters since I’m used to sipping. I must say, it seems to help.”

“Double bravo!” Livie cried, running across the room to give Frederick a kiss on the cheek. “I’ll happily join the game of spillikins.”

Upstairs, she followed the sound of voices to the bedchamber she shared with Joshua, paused in the doorway, and burst into laughter.

Two footmen had just moved a large armoire into an alcove designed for a writing desk. Daisy was supervising the process; she twirled about and clapped her hands. “There you are! What do you think, dear? Joshua’s idea, obviously.” She gave the armoire an affectionate pat. “Now I must rush. I’m already late to the palace!”

She darted over to kiss Livie’s cheek. Half of her curls were confined in her chignon; the rest tumbled past her shoulders. “Your hair,” Livie prompted, giving her a squeeze.

“I’ll fix it in the carriage. I mustn’t keep the queen waiting. Goodbye, darlings,” Daisy cried, trotting out the door and down the stairs.

Joshua dismissed the footmen and moved to stand behind Livie, wrapping his arms loosely around her waist. “Good morning again,” he said, kissing her neck. “Please tell me it’s naptime.”

“That armoire looks very familiar,” Livie said, tilting her head back and smiling widely up at her husband. The blue armoire was unmistakably that in which Joshua had seduced her, all those years ago at the masquerade ball. “How on earth did you talk the duke into selling it to you?”

“I offered him twice its worth. He laughed and gave it to us as a belated wedding present.”

Livie leaned back against her husband’s strength, happiness saturating her being. They were home, and Joshua was safe. As much as she loved traveling and living in new countries, she had begun to find the anxiety of watching Joshua march off to battle at the front of a battalion wearing.

“I’m so grateful that you left the army,” she said, not for the first time. “Even though you would have been a general in a few years.”

Joshua kissed her neck again. “My ambition waned when I considered the possibility of leaving you, Sara, and Freddy in the world without me.”

Livie turned around in his arms, draping her arms around his neck. “I love you, husband of mine.”