“You truly mean it?” she whispered, not daring to believe he could be hers so soon, finally, and in every way.
“Whatever you want, love.” His grin faded into seriousness. “I don’t care how or where, Mariah, as long as I get to be your husband.”
Tears of happiness stung her eyes as she whispered, “I love you, Robert.”
“Dear God, I hope so! I’d hate to think how you’d torment me if you didn’t.” When she slapped gently at his shoulder at his teasing, he caught her hand. He rose up to touch his lips to hers, a slow and lingering kiss that tasted of both promise and possession. “On to Scotland, then?”
She nodded, unable to speak around the knot in her throat.
“Just one more thing,” he added in afterthought.
Her heart skipped with a spark of dread that something might stop them after all—
“Instead of bringing my brothers with us, can we pick them up on the way back?”
She laughed, then her hand flew to her mouth in horror at how she’d just reacted at his brothers’ expense. The two men were now going to be brothers to her, as well.
He pulled her hand away, his eyes gleaming. “I love you, Mariah,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with emotion. “And my family loves you, too. They’ll think you the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Her smile faded. “Even if I cost you a place with Winslow Shipping?” Her chest grew heavy with remorse as she admitted, “You deserved it, Robert. You truly did.”
“There will be other partnerships, other business opportunities.” He leaned in to kiss her, so softly and with so much love and tenderness that a tear slipped down her cheek. “But I’ll always have you, Mariah.”
“Yes, you will,” she breathed, unable in her joy to find her voice. Always.
He murmured against her lips, “I won’t need anything else.”
EPILOGUE
A Warm Spring Day in London
One Month Later
There you are.” Robert leaned against the doorway to the small office in the basement of the Gatewell School and smiled at Mariah as she sat behind the desk, still wearing her wedding dress even as she combed through the school’s account books. Typical Mariah. And he loved her for it. “It isn’t proper for a bride to flee her own wedding breakfast.”
She looked up at him and gave the guilty smile of a caught-in-the-act criminal. “It’s such a crush upstairs that I wanted a few moments to myself.”
He corrected with a lift of his brow, “You wanted to go over the books one more time, you mean.” That, too, was typical Mariah.
She grimaced, not even bothering to pretend that he was wrong. “Can you blame me? I’ve handled the school’s accounts for the past five years. Now I’m supposed to simply hand them over to a stranger.”
“To a well-trained and greatly qualified accountant,” he corrected. And a man whom she interrogated for over an hour when she interviewed him for the position of overseeing the school’s funds. “Our lives have changed, darling. You have to learn to adjust.”
She stood and circled around the desk to him, slipping her hands around his waist as she stepped into his arms. “I think I’ve done a good job of adjusting to all the changes recently.”
He only smiled at her, knowing better than to engage in that battle.
At least she was right about one thing. There had certainly been an immense amount of change in their lives since they returned from Scotland.
The first change was Henry Winslow himself, a transformation that Robert never would have imagined would have come to pass. When they first returned to London and told him they’d eloped, her father had reacted exactly as Mariah had predicted—denying her a dowry and refusing to give Robert a position within the company. He didn’t understand why an attack on St Katharine’s felt like an attack on her mother or that relocating the school made her grieve all over again. She and her father had never talked about Beatrice Winslow or how her death affected all of them, but Robert insisted that they did so now, having learned himself the importance of sharing grief.
Her father grudgingly came around. Not only did he welcome Robert into the family, he also gave both of them joint partnerships. To Mariah because Winslow now realized why she needed to be part of the company the same way she needed air to breathe, and to Robert because Winslow couldn’t afford to lose his political connections. But a lingering distrust borne from the debacle with her uncle made him carefully split their interests. Robert would work with him on the shipping interests, while Mariah would oversee the expansion into stores, selling exotic merchandise from all over the world and bringing the faraway places and foreign ports she loved to London society.
Scuttling the king’s plans for new docks in St Katharine’s, however, had been more of a fight. Robert did what he swore he would never do—he used his influence with friends and family in Parliament. But he did it to halt the new docks rather than to profit from them. St Katharine’s and the Gatewell School for Orphans of the Sea were both given reprieve.
And for the first time, the company truly belonged to the Winslow family. All of the family.
“Did you see Evelyn before you left the party?” she asked, a frown creasing her brow. “Is she all right?”
“Whitby’s guarding her like a bulldog,” he assured her. “She’s fine.” And she was fine…for now.
They’d managed to keep the scandal of her elopement secret, and so far, Burton Williams was smart enough to keep his silence. Perhaps because he realized he’d just barely escaped marriage to a woman who had no money. Or more likely because the Carlisle brothers had vowed to tie him up and toss him onto a ship bound for Australia if he uttered one word about Evelyn. And anyone who asked about her absence during those days were all told the same story—that Mariah couldn’t have possibly gotten married without her sister at her side, even over the anvil in Gretna Green.
In fact, at this morning’s formal wedding for their friends and family at the medieval church of St Katharine’s by the Tower, Evelyn had stood up with Quinton for the ceremony, while his mother and his sister-in-law Annabelle sat in the front pew and wept. Good Lord. It was as if a spring had opened up in the church for all the waterworks that had gone on. The only flaw in the day was that Sebastian wasn’t there to share their happiness. But news arrived from Blackwood Hall just as the wedding breakfast was beginning and the first toasts were going round that Sebastian was now the proud father of a beautiful baby girl, whom they’d named Rose.
Distracted, Mariah looked down at the desk and the account books, and worry crossed her face. “What if there’s a problem and the accountant doesn’t know—”
He silenced her with a kiss. “Everything will be fine, darling,” he murmured, sliding his lips away from hers to kiss his way along her jaw to her throat.
Her pulse raced tantalizingly beneath his lips. Not for the first time since he saw her standing there in the church aisle on her father’s arm, he wondered how long they had to stay at the breakfast before he could take her home, carry her to their bedroom, and make love to her.
While he would have to wait for that, he couldn’t resist stealing a caress of her cheek. “Your mother would have been so proud of you today. I know that my mother is. Already she loves you like a daughter.”
Her eyes glistened, and she could say nothing, bringing her lips to his with a love and happiness so powerful that she trembled from it.
His arms tightened around her, and he brushed his mouth against her temple. “Think you can handle it—continuing to support the school while running the stores?”
“I can, with you at my side,” she whispered. “I can do anything as long as you love me.”
Closing his eyes, he held her pressed against him. He’d never been happier in his life.
A soft sound came from the doorway.