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Three Weeks With Lady X(64)

By:Eloisa James


He nodded.

"But you hate the river, Thorn. And look what happened: it nearly killed  you." Her hand brushed back his hair, caressing the wound that would  remain on his brow, a permanent gift of the river. "No jewelry is worth  your life!"

"Your parents loved you, just as I love you," Thorn told her. "They  weren't leaving you, just as I will never leave you. I shall prove it to  you this very afternoon."

India was completely confused. "How could you possibly prove that?"
                       
       
           



       
"You believe yourself to be unlovable," Thorn said, ignoring her  question, "but I was in love with you after five minutes in your  company, and Vander was only ten minutes behind me. All those men who  asked to marry you-the ones you say wanted to marry you for your  title-they were in love with you too. Not to mention the stonemasons,  and painters, and the rest of the men whose hearts you stripped bare."

"Oh," she whispered.

"I did the same thing as you," he continued.

"What do you mean?"

"I tried to keep you in your place, even to drive you away, because I  could not believe that you would love a mudlark and a bastard." His  voice was raw with emotion.

A hot flush washed over India, a wave of feeling so deep that she could  hardly put it in words. "You humble me," she said, stumbling into  speech. "You make me-"

The stones tumbled off the bed. No one noticed.

Later that day, a polite man by the name of Mr. Farthingale appeared in  Thorn's library and explained to India and Adelaide that he was a  jeweler who had met, years ago, with the Marquess of Renwick.

"Oh," India said, clasping Thorn's hand very tightly.

"I know your shop quite well," Adelaide said brightly. "Just off Blackfriars, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is, my lady," Mr. Farthingale said, inclining his head. Then he  gave India a kindly look and said, "Lady Xenobia, I understand that you  wish to know more of my encounter with your father."

"Yes, I would," she managed, her heart thumping.

"His lordship was in possession of a diamond demi-parure, which had  descended through his wife's family. He asked me to value the pieces, as  he was considering sale."

India didn't know what to think, so she nodded.

"The marquess and the marchioness were considering the sale in order to  fund their daughter's debut and dowry." Mr. Farthingale paused  delicately.

"For me?" India whispered.

"There was a reason your parents didn't immediately sell the jewelry to Mr. Farthingale," Thorn said, smiling at her.

Mr. Farthingale inclined his head, his eyes compassionate. "I believe  they would have eventually consigned the pieces to me, but they wished  to consult with their daughter, that is, with you, Lady Xenobia, before  doing so."

A few minutes later, India rose to say goodbye, feeling lightheaded, as  if her head were filled with air. Her parents hadn't been running away  from her. They had loved her. They had been thinking of her future.

"Your news was very welcome," she told Mr. Farthingale.

"If you ever wish to sell the pieces . . ." he murmured, bowing.

"Never," Thorn intervened before India could say the same.

The pieces were her only tangible tie to her mother and father, and they  represented all that Thorn had given her . . . and that which he had  almost lost for her.

After they made love that night, India curled against Thorn's side,  staring into the darkness, allowing herself to remember her parents.

Her mother used to throw back her hair and laugh in a deep-throated,  joyful way. Her father wasn't much good at being a gentleman, or  managing an estate, but she recalled how he'd sat with her for hours,  helping her arrange glass tiles in just the right order. He taught her  the skills that allowed her to make any room into an enchanting oasis.

She even remembered the way her mother would laugh and say, "I knew you  would work it out, poppet," when India went to find them to say that  she'd succeeded in locating a chicken for supper, or had made mushroom  soup.

Her mother's cheerful confidence had pushed her to learn how to bake bread, how to apply stucco, how to polish silver.

Her parents had been the wind at her back in every house she had  reorganized and refurbished, and she had never thanked them, or even  realized it.

Thorn had given her parents back to her. They hadn't been conventional,  or particularly aristocratic, and certainly not protective. But they had  loved her.

The following evening, Messrs. Bink, Dusso, and Geordie had the singular  experience of dining at the grand home of a duke and duchess, who were  deeply grateful to them for saving the life of their eldest son.

Not only were they seated across from the Duke and Duchess of Villiers,  but another future duke, Lord Brody, had also joined the meal. News of  Thorn's near demise had spread through London, and Vander had turned up,  as he said, "because he knew that Thorn's head was harder than a rock  but he wanted to see for himself."

All that nobility at one table meant that Geordie, in particular, had  trouble shaping a single word until Villiers's butler took pity on them  and brought tankards of ale to the table.                       
       
           



       

Thorn grinned at his father, who fastidiously declined the ale; his  stepmother, who not only accepted it, but was drinking it with every  sign of enjoyment; his closest friend, who had accepted defeat with  utmost grace; and finally at the woman who would soon be his wife.

Earlier that afternoon the archbishop had reluctantly given Thorn's  solicitor yet another special license-this one not blank but specifying  the union     of Mr. Tobias Dautry to Lady Xenobia India St. Clair.

They would be married in the morning, the ceremony witnessed by a duke  and duchess, and three members of the fraternity of mudlarks. Evander  Brody, heir to the Duke of Pindar, would stand as Thorn's best man, even  though he was laughingly offering the bride a last chance to become a  duchess.

"Never," Thorn growled, pulling his fiancée close in an entirely  improper manner and bending his head to drop a kiss on a neck that  glittered with diamonds . . . restored through Mr. Farthingale's expert  ministrations.

"Those joowels looked like rubbish when Bink fished them up," Dusso told  the Duke of Villiers. "I'd never know they was the same, now they're  cleaned up."

Dusso grinned, and so did Bink and Geordie. They'd been in the Thames, and it hadn't conquered them.

Thorn felt the same. The river had almost killed him, but it had brought  him India, and that was worth everything. If he hadn't been a mudlark,  he never would have become the man whom India wanted.

He held her hand tightly under the table.

With a wicked little smile playing around his mouth, the Duke of  Villiers began telling India about why he'd sent Thorn off to  Piggleston. "I thought that Tobias needed to be made to understand how  much he loved you." He raised his heavy-lidded eyes and glanced at his  own wife. "He is my son, after all. We're fools when it comes to women."

Eleanor bent near, her hair brushing the duke's magnificently clad  shoulder. "My husband was playing Cupid," she said. "He likes to do  that."

India laughed, and Thorn thought, once again, that he could spend his  life listening to this woman, this particular woman, laugh.

The night he'd waited in Piggleston, believing India had been on the eve  of marrying Vander, had scored him to the heart. But his father wasn't  wrong: it had also taught him what he most wanted.

Not just what he wanted, but the only thing that was important in life.

Under the table, he tightened his hand around India's. Then he  remembered that he wasn't a gentleman-he was a mudlark, sitting at a  table with three other mudlarks.

He caught India's face in both his hands and kissed her. Her arms wound around his neck.

It was scandalous.

Outrageous.

Just right.





Epilogue



May 12, 1807

From Miss Adelaide Dautry at Starberry Court,

to her parents at 40 Hanover Square, London

Dear Papa,

I miss you very much. When are you and Mama coming home? Rose has been  perfectly horrid to me all day. She says that now she's 14, she shan't  play with me any longer. She hurt my feelings, and I did something bad,  and now Mr. Twink says I have to write to you and confess. I want to say  first that I'm not sorry, because she should have read me a story when I  asked, and besides, she doesn't play with Antigone anymore.

I cut a little bit of Antigone's hair.

Please come home now. You've been gone for years.

Adelaide



From Miss Rose Summers at Starberry Court, to her guardians at 40 Hanover Square, London