One Night With A Prince (40 page)
“Very good, sir,” Jane retorted.
He cast his children a stern look. Or attempted to, anyway. “And if I hear one word about your giving Nurse any trouble, I’ll tell Grandmama Byrne and Grandpapa Lyon. They’ll be very disappointed to hear how their grandchildren are behaving.” He turned to offer Christabel his arm. “Shall we, my love?”
She took it, but as soon as they’d left the room, she said in a low voice, “Tell Grandmama Byrne and Grandpapa Lyon, indeed. As if that would do anything—they spoil the children almost as much as you do.”
“Every child deserves some spoiling,” he said.
She glanced up at him with a soft smile as they headed down the stairs. “Yes, I suppose they do.”
“But I wish I knew why they consider Tweedledee to be ‘bad’ and Tweedledum ‘good.’ In the bloody nursery rhyme, the two are interchangeable.”
Christabel chuckled. “Ah, but they’re children, Gavin. Logic doesn’t enter into it. Sarah decided that Tweedledum sounds like drums, so she associates it with Grandpapa’s tales of battle. Whereas, according to her, Tweedledee is the sound a bird makes, and that’s just ‘silly.’”
“And if Sarah says it, John follows right behind.”
“That won’t last once he’s old enough to assert himself, I suspect.”
He laughed. “True, true.” They’d reached the next floor and were heading for the staircase that led down to the drawing room when he suddenly pulled her into an alcove and kissed her hard. As he drew back, she was staring at him, bemused. “What wasthat for?”
“For marrying me. For giving me two beautiful children.” He settled his hands on her waist. “For believing in me when no one else in their right mind would have.”
It was her turn to kisshim, her mouth so warm and sweet that their kiss soon erupted into something hotter. This time when he drew back, her face was flushed, and her breath came in little staccato gasps that only enflamed him further.
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“We don’t have to go downstairs right away,” he murmured. “We could keep them waiting a few minutes more.”
“Don’t tempt me,” she warned, pushing him out into the hall and tugging him toward the stairs. “You know what happened the last time we kept your brothers waiting. We never heard the end of their teasing. ‘So, Byrne, did you and Christabel get lost on the way down? Perhaps we should send you a floor plan for next time. The drawing room is the one thatdoesn’t have a bed.’”
He laughed at her fairly accurate imitation of Iversley. “Point taken. My brothers are idiots.”
She snorted. “You’re as bad as they are with your swaggering answers.”
“You do know we only say such things to make our wives blush.”
“Yes, I know very well the whole lot of you are wicked scoundrels.”
Yet despite her grumbling, she’d never wavered in her faith in his character. She’d never been the clinging, distrustful woman she’d threatened to be as his mistress. And oddly enough, her trust in him made him even more determined not to disappoint her.
He bent to press a kiss to her ear. “That’s why you never find us boring.”
She gazed up at him with an earnest expression. “Do you ever miss your old life, Gavin?”
“You mean my whining mistresses, long, lonely nights at the club with drunken cardplayers, parties at Stokely’s where I had to be on my guard against treachery every waking hour—”
“That’s a no, I take it,” she said with a small smile.
“A definite no.”
They’d reached the drawing room now, but he paused outside the doors to take her hands in his.
“Never doubt for one minute that I love my life, I love my children, and I love you.”
“I don’t doubt it,” she replied, her own love shining in her eyes. “But we’d better go in. I amnot going to be fodder for their teasing again.”
“I’m not sure you can ever entirely avoid that. You’re married tome , after all, and it will be some years before my brothers stop making me eat crow for the many times I swore never to marry.”
How true it was. The minute they walked in, Draker hailed them with a smug smile. “You know, Byrne, once you marry, your appetite is supposed to decrease, not increase.”
“And how’s that working for you?” Gavin shot back, as one of his footmen offered him a glass of wine.
“Here we go again,” Christabel murmured under her breath.
But then a cannon shot from outside the window made them start.
“They’ve been at it all day,” Iversley said, gesturing to the window with his own glass of wine. “Prinny
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has been ruling for years already, yet you’d never know it to hear them.”
“Did you attend the coronation?” Gavin asked Draker.
“I did. The Queen turned it into a damned fiasco.”
“One thing you can say for Prinny.” Gavin remarked, “He’s never boring.”
“Rather like his sons,” Christabel said from beside him.
Gavin smiled. “Yes. Exactly.” He took a glass of wine from the footman and handed it to her, then lifted his own. “On this day, of all days, we need a toast, don’t you think, gentlemen?”
“Absolutely.” Iversley lifted his glass, and said, “To the Royal Brotherhood of By-blows.”
They echoed the toast as one, even the ladies.
As they drank, Gavin looked round at the men who’d truly become his brothers and at their wives, who would walk through fire for one of their own. Just like his mother. Just like his own wife. He stared down at Christabel, who was beaming at him, her face brimming with love. He raised his glass again. “And to our royal sire. Long live the king.”
Author’s Note
Rumor has it that George IV and Maria Fitzherbert did indeed have a son, James Ord, who was given to a ship’s captain and his family to raise, first in Spain, where the captain was given a job as a dockyard inspector by George’s brother, then in America. Supposedly James Ord wrote Mrs. Fitzherbert once to ask if she was his mother. She never replied. And with good reason—since her “marriage” to the prince had always been disputed, if she’d admitted to having a child by him, it would have seriously damaged the prince’s chance to be king. England could not afford any more disputes over successions. At the time of my story, Princess Charlotte had indeed broken her engagement with the Prince of Orange, but at this point was already considering Prince Leopold of Saxe-Coburg, whom she married in 1816. So she definitely wouldn’t have liked being forced to marry Lord Stokely!
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