“The theater?” Roberta said, startled into paying attention. “As an actress? Really?”

“As a hair dresser. Apparently the manager of Drury Lane was so impressed by her London Bridge effect that he’s invited her to dress wigs for all the performances of the coming season. I shall handsomely endow her, of course. But it means, my dear, that Mrs. Grope will no longer be part of our lives.”

Damon looked as if he might be about to walk into another room, and Roberta didn’t want to let him out of her sight. He paused to talk to Lord Corbin, so she turned back to her father.

“But Papa, what of the mermaid?”

“What of her?” he said, looking a bit sly and a bit happy.

“Will she return home with you?”

“Absolutely not!” he roared. “She’s a decent young woman, daughter of a vicar in Somerset, not to mention a gifted poet.” He started rocking back and forth on his heels. “Do you know, Roberta, that she began as the versifying mermaid at only ten years of age?”

“How old is she now?” Roberta asked, half listening.

“I believe she is around thirty, and…”

She couldn’t let Damon out of her sight, not when her heart was still pounding with fright. So she dropped a kiss on her papa’s cheek and slipped away. Finally Damon swept her off to the yellow sitting room and offered to play her at dollymop dominoes if she would let him go to the privy.

So she did.

But by the time he came back, she was crying again, and she couldn’t stop, even when he kissed away her tears, and laughed at her, and finally tickled her.

“It’s just that I might have lost you,” she said, hiccupping.

“Never,” he said, cupping her face in his hands.

“You might have died!”

“I can’t tell you never when it comes to death. But when I die, Roberta, I swear it to God that unless it’s an accident I shall do it in my own bed, with you by my side. In other words, I wouldn’t put myself in harm’s way, not when I have you and Teddy and”—He smiled at her and there was something so tender in his eyes that she hiccupped again—“we might have a babe in a few months too, Roberta. Have you thought of that?”

She dismissed that thought as fit for another day. “How could you possibly know you would beat Villiers? It was all so sudden, and violent.”

“Had you never seen a sword fight before?”

She shook her head. “I’m certain he almost stabbed you straight to the heart several times.”

Damon actually laughed. “Sword fighting is tiresomely predictable, Roberta, and Villiers had no chance of injuring me. Truly. If he had really wished to kill me, he would have chosen pistols, because that changes the whole nature of the meeting. I knew that Villiers was an excellent swordsman. I also knew that I was better.”

“How could you know that you were better?” she cried. “You haven’t met him before; Roberta told me so!”

“Oh ye of little faith,” he said, gathering her close. “I practice several times a week with Galliano, that’s why. He’s the best fencing master in London.”

“It’s not that I don’t have faith in you,” she said, her voice muffled against his chest. “But—”

He held her away, just enough so that she could see his eyes. “I knew I would win because I love you.”

“What?”

“Because I love you.”

“You—You wouldn’t lose to Villiers because—because—”

He was grinning at her like the fool he was. “Because I love you too much to lose.”

“You—You!” she cried and flew at him, but whether it was to hit him for his male foolishness or what, she never knew because he kissed her so hard that the idea flew straight out of her head.

“What about you?” he asked, sometime later, when she was clinging to his shoulders.

A crooked smile played on the corner of her mouth. “Will I win a duel fought for your honor?”

“No.”

“Are you asking whether I love you?”

He didn’t say anything. It was, Roberta realized, the very first time that she’d seen a shadow of anxiety in that huge, confident man, so easy with his smiles, so unassuming about his skills. So she relished it.

For a short time.

“Of course I love you,” she whispered, cupping his face in her hands. “And I always will.”

“Even if I take to poetry and start writing poems to your toe?”

“Yes.”

“If I fall on my knees in the street and beg you to take me back to bed?”

She was starting to smile, but: “Yes.”

“I am on my knees, Roberta. I am begging.”

A passing footman heard laughter from the sitting room and shook his head.

Beaumont House had certainly changed since the duchess came back from Paris. Used to be the place was respectable. But now…wait till Fowle heard what that French piece named Mademoiselle Caro was thinking of doing for the duchess’s next ball. Every one of them nekked ladies would have peacock feathers at their behinds, that’s what he heard.

With a sigh he pulled the sitting room door shut so that no one would accidentally see something they shouldn’t.

Epilogue

When the Villiers/Beaumont chess matches

were fading in memory

“I think,” Roberta said, “you might have let me win that one.”

Who do you think you are, His Majesty himself?”

“It was very nice of you to allow the prince to win last night,” she conceded.

Her husband pushed away the chess set that lay between them on the bed. “You know how to play now. Perhaps we can try something else. I’m very fond of dominoes.”

“You find it tedious partnering me?” She dimpled at him.

“Nothing with you is tedious, except perhaps chess.” He dropped a kiss on her ear. “There are so many more interesting things to do.”

“Such as?” she murmured, falling back onto the cushions.

He took her invitation in a second, rolling on top of her and propping himself up on his elbows. “Such as kissing you,” he said, suiting action to words.

“But what,” she said, “if I told you a surprise? Would that interest you?”

“Can there be any surprises, after hearing that your father married a mermaid?”

“After a proper courtship,” she reminded him.

“Yes, but once you’ve brought a fish into the family, there’s no saying what will come next. Is it about Teddy? Because I think he’s turning into a fish as well. His nursemaid told me that he was in the river for hours yesterday.”

“What about a baby?” she whispered.

He froze for a second and then practically levitated off her body. “Did I injure you?” he gasped.

She sat up, laughing. “Damon?”

He came back to the bed and sat beside her, spreading his huge hands on her belly, his face a mixture of tenderness and love. “Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

“Your belly is as flat as ever.”

She started giggling. “Babies take a long time, Damon. Talk to me about flat bellies in a few months!”