The Dissolute Duke(37)

‘A lucky escape. It could have been so much worse.’

‘Lucinda could have fallen instead of me.’ Taylen had relived this horror during so many nights that the dread of it was like a familiar stranger walking with him.

‘No, I meant for you, Tay. You could have died.’ Amber eyes looked grave.

‘But instead I found everything I was looking for.’ He gestured to Lucinda and to the Wellingham family all about him.

‘And as Cris said, once we claim someone we keep them for ever.’ Taris added this from behind, and laughter accompanied the group as they walked on to the overcrowded dance floor.

A few hours later Lucinda and Tay lay in bed with moonbeams across their bodies and the winds off Hyde Park making the trees sway as shadows on their walls. Swan the dog lay in his own bed of fur by the window, tucked into sleep. He accompanied them everywhere now, his fearful demeanour changed to one of contentment.

‘I love you,’ Lucinda said softly to her husband, her fingers moving across the skin of his chest and feeling his heartbeat strong and even.

‘And I love you back,’ he replied, the smile in his voice bringing her in further. It was colder tonight and he always felt so very warm. ‘When I found you at the Croxleys’ ball and offered you money for a legitimate Ellesmere heir, I did not realise that it was my heart I was giving away instead.’ He stilled her hand. ‘You have it all, Lucinda, every piece of my love and if anything was to happen to you …’

‘It won’t.’ She turned over and lay across him, his face within the veil of her hair and his worry vanished to be replaced by a look that simply took her breath away.

‘That first time when you came to my room at Alderworth I thought …’ He stopped and swallowed. ‘I thought that you might be the one to save me and I was right, sweetheart.’

‘We saved each other, Taylen, and this child shall be the beginning of a whole new dynasty of Ellesmeres.’

Turning her beneath him, his lips came down across her own, all the magic that she had felt from the very first second of meeting him beginning over again.