Banished to the garden with his uncle, while his papa remained in the drawing room cooing at the new addition to the Dunstan line, Jeffrey, small and blond and not in the least bit angelic, kicked at a rock. ‘Babies are horrid. Girl babies are the worst.’
Alistair didn’t think his baby was horrid. His was a perfectly beautiful little girl who already looked very much like her mother, even if she had come as a complete surprise to her parents. He was, however, quite in sympathy with Jeffrey in regard to the other two infants currently squalling in his drawing room.
There was the Beauworths’ little boy, and strangely enough, his erstwhile amanuensis, Lewis, who turned out to have a title tucked away somewhere on his person, had arrived to wet the baby’s head with his own infant progeny in tow. And a wife.
Or rather they’d come to attend the christening and enjoy a little libation afterwards.
Alistair, like Jeffrey, had found it all wonderfully overwhelming. ‘You were a baby once. As was your brother Daniel.’ The latter had remained firmly affixed to his father’s side. ‘Be assured, Jeffrey, a gentleman likes the ladies a whole lot more when he is older.’
‘Yuck. Then I am never growing older.’
‘But then you will never graduate from a pony to a horse and if I am not mistaken, your papa was talking about going to Tatts very soon.’
Young Jeffrey halted as if turned to stone. He gazed up at Alistair. ‘You wouldn’t jest about such a thing, would you, Uncle Alistair?’
A duke only jested with his duchess in private. ‘It is too important a matter for jests.’
The lad clenched a fist and jabbed at a hapless red rose in the border of the walk. ‘I’m getting a horse.’
‘So shall we rejoin the party? I think Her Grace has ordered lemonade and cream cakes for tea.’
‘A growing boy needs his sustenance,’ Jeffrey said and tucked his hand around Alistair’s arm.
Together they strolled back to the drawing room.
Sitting beside the Marchioness of Beauworth on the sofa, Julia met his gaze with a beaming smile when he entered the room.
They had been very happy together these past two years, and a child, heaven help him, had added icing to the delicious cake of an extraordinarily sweet marriage.
With Jeffrey making straight for the desserts, Alistair felt perfectly comfortable taking his baby girl from her mother’s arms. He was in love. With them both.
‘Next time we will have a boy,’ Julia whispered, getting to her feet.
‘I’m not sure if I could survive a next time,’ Alistair said. Not that his wife had been anything but healthy throughout, but the anxiety, knowing his mother had died in childbirth, had been hell on him.
Luke wandered over, cake plate in hand, to gaze down at Olivia. Smiling, his brother stroked the baby’s petal-soft cheek. ‘You are going to have your hands full with this one when she starts noticing there are two genders.’
‘As you have your hands full now?’ Alistair glanced over at Jeffrey and Daniel scrapping over the last bit of shortbread.
‘Get your heir and a spare and we will all stop fretting.’
Alistair ignored the jibe. ‘We’ll take what we get.’
A baby set up a long drawn-out wail and Alistair barely managed not to cover his ears.
‘What plot are you two hatching?’ Beauworth asked, joining them. ‘It wouldn’t be a nice glass of brandy in the library, would it?’
Alistair glanced at Julia and she gave a small nod, interpreting his question with ease.
‘Men,’ Eleanor muttered. ‘Julia, let me get you some of that delicious cake.’
Having rescued Lewis, or rather the Marquess of Dart, the men retired to the library, where Alistair poured them all a drink. ‘To Isobel,’ Luke toasted.
They stared at each other in contemplative silence.
Luke shrugged. ‘If not for my mother, our family might never have been reunited.’ He looked at Alistair. ‘What? She loved me in her way. She was just a bit misguided. She would be thrilled to see you had a daughter.’
The other men chuckled and Alistair burst into laughter.
Families. Who needed ’em? He did. He had the most perfect family in the world and who was he to deny his brother his abiding love for his mother.
He raised his glass. ‘To Olivia. The latest addition to the Crawford family.’
The men drank to this toast with a will.
‘The new stables have turned out well,’ Dart said, looking out of the window.
‘It was a good thing all of your beasts were out to grass.’ Beauworth said. ‘I suppose you never did discover how she managed to set them on fire.’
‘Knocked over a lantern,’ Luke said.
‘Since most of the lads were at the tavern in Boxted,’ Alistair added, ‘there was no one around to help her saddle a horse, the one man on duty being up at the house for his dinner.’
Beauworth frowned. ‘Odd that she was there at all.’ The man loved a mystery. Beauworth took his duties as peer very seriously and events in his past made him keen on seeing justice done.
‘Let it lie, Beauworth,’ Luke said. ‘The family is satisfied it was an accident.’
‘As you say.’ Beauworth sipped at his drink and talk turned to other more important matters like crop yields and the best time for haying.
* * *
Later, when Julia and Alistair stood at the front door watching their guests depart, Olivia having been whisked off to the nursery by a doting Digger and an equally doting nanny some time before, Alistair could not resist a kiss on his wife’s cheek. ‘You need your rest.’
She smiled a naughty smile. ‘That is just an excuse and you know it.’
‘You know, it is a while since I have seen you wearing the Dunstan rubies.’ It was their own private code for the naughty things they did in their bed.
‘You are right. It has been too long,’ she said, her lovely eyes smiling up at him. ‘We have time with Olivia off having her nap.’
He put an arm around her waist and to the devil with the footman gazing at the ceiling and Grindle pretending to be invisible, he kissed her full on her delicious mouth.
Together they walked inside, there to beget the next Duke of Dunstan, who learned to love all of his myriad brothers and sisters very well indeed.
* * * * *