EPILOGUE
“I do believe that the lack of a blue unicorn with a sparkly purple horn will forever live in Sylvie’s heart as the only imperfection in our wedding ceremony.” To the casual ear, Tyne doubtless sounded his usual self: calm, self-possessed, articulate. The typical English lord offering his opinion on the weather.
Lucy’s was not the casual ear, and her new husband was smiling like a Viking with a longship full of plunder.
The coach rattled away from the wedding breakfast, Sylvie and Amanda tossing rose petals at the boot, the crowd of family waving and cheering in the midday sun. Lucy’s brothers had brought their families to Town for the event, as had Tyne’s many siblings, and talk of a house party had already started.
Tyne took Lucy’s hand and kissed her gloved knuckles, then began undoing the pearl buttons that ran from her wrist to her elbow.
“The wedding was perfect,” she said, “because you were my groom. I still say we ought to have wed by special license.”
Tyne had refused her request, insisting on every propriety—while anybody was looking. Behind closed doors, he’d subjected Lucy to diabolically skilled kisses, whispered promises, and caresses of shocking intimacy. On every occasion, though, he’d stopped short of anticipating the vows.
He paused with her glove half unbuttoned. “Our siblings would not have had time to assemble had the ceremony been performed on short notice, and you deserved to meet my family before you became part of it. They’re a loud, opinionated, rumgumptious lot of—”
“Of wonderful people. Much like my own family.” She switched arms, so he could start on her other glove. “You did not want our firstborn to arrive too soon.”
He held her palm against his cheek, and through the thin kid of her glove, Lucy felt the heat of his skin.
“How can I focus on these thousands of buttons, how can I attend to anything, when you tempt me with talk of progeny?”
“Get used to it, my lord. You are married now, and you have tempted me without mercy for the last month.” She patted his thigh— not his knee—and he drew down the window shade. A week before the wedding, Lady Eleanor had whisked Lucy and the girls to her ladyship’s household, which had been wise but irksome.
The girls had needed some time to sort out Lucy’s transition from governess to step-mother. A new governess had to be interviewed—Tyne had ceded that decision to Lucy—and fittings without number had to be endured.
“I nearly stole into your bed more times than I could count,” Tyne said. “With my valet sleeping in the dressing closet, I did not want to start talk below stairs.”
“Did you ask Eleanor to open her home to me?” Tyne would do that, would be that discreet and considerate—also that dunderheaded.
“No, I did not, though my valet will be sleeping elsewhere henceforth.” He had both of Lucy’s gloves half undone, loose enough that he could draw them off. “That veil business next.”
“All you need do is remove some of the hairpins,” Lucy said, “but be careful. I hope our daughters might wear that veil someday.”
He paused, leaning his forehead against Lucy’s shoulder. “ Our daughters. Have I told you that I love you? Have I told you that our daughters love you? The damned pantry mouser had better love you, or I’ll banish him to the stables.”
This demonstrativeness was either a benefit of marrying a widower, or simply Tyne’s way of being conscientious. He told Lucy he loved her, told her he loved to look at her, to touch her. He was surprisingly affectionate, taking her into his lap, sitting beside her of an evening in the parlor, holding her hand when they walked into church services on Sunday mornings.
His fingers searched gently through her hair for pins, though he found rather too many, and before Lucy could tell him to stop, not only her veil, but the chignon fashioned at the nape of her neck had come undone. He drew the veil away and piled it atop the gloves on the opposite bench.
“You’ll arrive to Boxhaven’s estate looking ravished. I like that idea.”
“If I’m to look ravished,” Lucy said, “hadn’t you ought to look ravished as well?”
“Valid point.” He took Lucy in his arms, and for the few miles they had to travel before breaking their journey, she did her best to kiss, caress, and tease him into a nearly ravished state. When they alighted from the coach in the estate’s forecourt, Tyne’s cravat sported two entire wrinkles, his hair was a trifle mussed, and he was missing one glove.
Nonetheless, he was every inch the polite guest when he addressed the housekeeper.
“Her ladyship and I will take dinner in the library after we change out of our wedding attire. We will ring for assistance if we require it.”
The housekeeper beamed at them, Lucy beamed back. Tyne had prevailed on the Marquess of Boxhaven for use of one of his rural properties to break their journey. The marquess, the same fellow who’d hosted the masquerade ball, had cordially obliged.
“I’m not used to being a ladyship,” she said, taking Tyne’s arm as they ascended a curving staircase. “I’m not used to being a mama, not used to being a wife.”
Tyne knew where he was going, for he’d visited Boxhaven at this property in years past. “We will learn together, my dear. I have been a husband before, but I haven’t been your husband. Nobody would call me a quick study, though I’m diligent and motivated to excel in my new role. I’m also motivated to get all that damned frippery off of you.”
“Language, my lord.”
He bowed her through a doorway to an elegant parlor that adjoined a sizable bedroom. A bed of enormous proportions sat under green velvet hangings, and trays holding tea and sandwiches were on the sideboard.
“Right now,” Tyne said, “I am entirely yours, and not a lord at all. Would you think me very forward if I suggested we put that bed to use in the near future?”
How polite. How aggravatingly self-disciplined. “I’d think you completely backward if you so much as reached for a sandwich, when all I want is to reach for you.”
Tyne came to her, wrapped his arms around her, and all the kissing and teasing in the coach was so much dithering compared to the passion he unleashed on Lucy. His embrace was possessive rather than polite—as was hers. His kisses were plundering, his patience with her clothing nonexistent. He growled—Darien, Lord Tyne—growled—and buttons hit the carpet. Fabric tore, and Lucy tossed his beautiful morning coat in the general direction of a chair.
“We must—” He tried to step back, but Lucy was having none of that. “We must repair to neutral corners.”
Like pugilists. “You must undo my buttons.” Lucy swept her hair off of her nape and gave him her back.
“I have grown to loathe buttons.” Nonetheless, his fingers were swift and competent, and he was equally proficient with her stays. He insisted on removing her shoes, kneeling before her, but Lucy insisted on undressing him too.
She took her time with his sleeve buttons, his cravat, his watch, all the trappings of the lord that covered up the reality of the man: fit, muscular, and endlessly desirable. When she had him down to his breeches, he tugged on her braid to draw her near.
“If you touch me even once more, I will have you on your back on the rug, Lady Tyne.”
She pressed her hand over his heart, loving the slow tattoo beneath her palm. “Do you promise?”
Ah, that smile. The Viking smile that assured her, yes, he promised. He promised to love her thoroughly and often, to make all the waiting worth the wonder to follow.
“I have married a goddess,” he said, scooping her into his arms and striding into the bedroom. “May I be worthy of that honor.”
Oh, to be plundered by a god who knew how to wield his hammer. Tyne gently set Lucy on the bed, stepped out of his breeches, and settled over her without once taking his gaze from her.
She wiggled beneath him, wrapping her legs around him. “My shift?”
“Is the only thing holding my dignity together,” Tyne replied, kissing down the side of Lucy’s face, from her temple, to her cheek, to her neck. “Though that won’t last long. I’ll make it up to you, Lucy. For the next three decades, I’ll make it up to you if you’ll excuse my haste on our wedding day.”
She did not excuse his haste. She abetted it, with slow caresses and long kisses, with wandering hands and well-aimed shifts of her hips. When Tyne had eased inside of her, and Lucy was nearly weeping with frustrated desire, he stilled.
“I have dreamed…” he whispered. “I have longed for this moment with you.”
“For all the moments,” Lucy replied. “To hold you as physically close as I hold your love in my heart.” He’d been right to have the banns cried, right to give her weeks to anticipate this joy, but she’d have to tell him that later, for he’d begun to move.
His loving was relentlessly controlled, his tempo escalating by maddeningly deliberate degrees, no matter how Lucy urged him on. She surrendered to his superior command of strategy—for now—and nigh unbearable pleasure was her reward. When she was drifting down from torrents of marital bliss, Tyne let go of his ferocious self-restraint, and the pleasure cascaded through her again.
They were both panting when he eventually stilled over her. The covers had been kicked halfway off the bed, and Lucy’s shift was hanging from one corner of the cheval mirror.
Ye gods, ye Norse, Greek, and Roman gods and goddesses.
“I like that,” Tyne said as Lucy’s hand smoothed over his backside. “I think you left claw marks there.”
How smug he sounded. “Don’t gloat.” Lucy pinched him in the same location, and he laughed. “What a wonderful sound,” she said. “My lover’s laughter.”
He eased from her and crouched on all fours, passing her a handkerchief from the night table. When had he thought to put that there?
“You’ll need sustenance now,” he said, climbing from the bed and strutting into the sitting room. “I’ll need sustenance. I am her ladyship’s devoted lover.”
He was also—yet another surprise—unselfconscious about his nakedness. What a delightful quality in a husband and lover.
The smile he wore as he brought Lucy the tray from the other room was frequently in evidence in the ensuing weeks, months, and years, the smile of a happy, much-loved Viking. He wore an even more tender smile when—forty weeks to the day after the wedding—she presented him with little Thor.
And little Freya.
And all the rest of the Tyne pantheon who came after the twins. The first time Sylvie was permitted to hold her baby siblings, she declared them even better than a blue unicorn, in which opinion, even her sister (who had begun to put up her hair) concurred.