The only thing brighter in the room was Lucien’s and Angelique’s dazzling faces.
And just like the very first time Lord Bolt entered the room (or entered most rooms, really), everyone was frozen in place like so many statues littered about, staring.
A collective gasp when he suddenly dropped to one knee before Angelique.
“Lucien,” she said hoarsely. Her hand flew to her heart.
“Angelique...” His voice was low, soft, soft as the voice from the next pillow. “You once told me you would never hold me to promises I can’t keep, and I took you at your word. But it is so easy to make these promises to you: I will keep you safe. I will make you laugh. I will make you beg for more.”
“Oh, my,” Mrs. Pariseau murmured, and fanned herself.
“I will make you certain that you know that you are loved every day of your life. I will teach our children to fight, to love, and to be kind, and to forgive. And if I should ever again hurt you, I will do anything,anythingto make it right. Because only two imperfect people could create such a perfect love. I am yours and you are mine.”
He reached for her trembling hands and brought them to his lips. And his voice cracked on a sort of awestruck amusement, an acknowledgment of pure surrender. “I would have come at once, but I wanted to have something to offer you. The building is yours. Angelique... I love you so.”
The words were scarcely more than a whisper.
“I love you, too.” She whispered it, too, inches away from his beloved face. As if this was a miraculous secret that only the two of them could share or understand. This love of theirs.
Her tears glittered like little diamonds on her eyelashes.
And then his beautiful voice rose, just a little, but it was for everyone to hear.
“Angelique Breedlove. It would be the honor of my life if you should entrust me your heart. And if you would consent to be my wife, I shall endeavor all my years to deserve you. Will you be my wife?”
She allowed those words to echo, to reverberate through her.
“Oh, yes,” she said, her voice cracked and joyous. “Please, thank you, yes.”
A great cheer went up and everyone rose to their feet and fell upon each other in happy congratulatory embraces as Lucien drew Angelique up to her feet and kissed her so thoroughly yet reverently it brought tears to everyone’s eyes.
“And that’s why,” Dot told all the maids later, “living here is much more entertaining than the broadsheets, and I don’t even bother reading them anymore.”
Epilogue
Some months later...
Dot discovered to her delight that the news part of the newspaper could be just as interesting as gossip, when heretofore she’d thought of it as the cod-liver oil to gossip’s blancmange.
For instance, in an article about a surge in aristocrats supporting charitable causes and donating to charities, not typically the liveliest of topics, she found this to read aloud to the maids in the kitchen:
The recent surge of charitable giving can be attributed in part to theton’s general awe of the piety and humble generosity of Lord Geoffrey Cuttweiler, who took it upon himself to join a five-year missionary excursion to the South Seas and donated half of his fortune to various causes supporting orphans and the poor in London ahead of his departure.
As it turned out, Lucien’s own sense of charity could not quite extend to the need to be civil to Cutty every time he visited White’s, or anywhere else, really. It seemed he could, after a fashion, forgive, but forgetting was quite another thing altogether. The solution he’d arrived at accomplished the twin objectives of amusing him and horrifying Cutty, but he’d presented it as nonnegotiable, so off Cutty went. Lucien’s own character had been built across the world; with luck, Cutty would return with some character of his own, if he was not eaten by cannibals.
“Ain’t he kind to do that, then?” the new maid, Rose, who’d been hired on to help with the duties at the Annex, said dreamily. “Lord Cuttweiler. Are all lords kind?”
“‘Aren’t,’” Dot corrected gently, but a little grandly, after the fashion of Lady Bolt, Angelique Breedlove Durand, whom she admired fiercely. “And good heavens, no. They most certainly are not all kind.”
“Aren’t,” Rose repeated dutifully, because she was a little in awe of Dot, who was clearly so important to the running of The Grand Palace on the Thames and so close to the kind proprietresses with their very tall, grand husbands.
She raised her head to see if Mrs. Breedlove or Mrs. Hardy were coming. They were safe for now, so she read on.
And in an article about new travel destinations, Dot found this fascinating sentence:
Whereas her contemporaries favor trips to sunny Italy, the Duchess of Brexford claims Russia is her favorite travel destination and will undertake her journey at the start of June and is uncertain as to when she will return.
“Thank goodness. Russia is soveryfar away,” Helga said, indulging in a bit of martyred self-satisfaction. One of the burdens of being a culinary artist was the fact that she had been lured to work for aduchess, of all people. She was a hideously difficult woman.