“No.” She turned her face up to his, her eyes bright with merriment.
“They are the words of a former rake, Edward-and never to be again. Does that sound dreadfully dull to you?”
He grinned down at her. “It sounds dazzlingly wonderful actually,” he said. “Pamela and only Pamela forever after. Are you comfortable?”
“Mm,” she said and snuggled against him. “And you?”
“A feather bed could not compete with this settle for softness and ease,” he said. He kissed her again, his lips lingering on hers. “Happy Christmas, my love.”
“Happy Christmas, Edward,” she said, closing her eyes and sighing with warm contentment.
Upstairs, in the room the Marquess of Lytton had occupied the night before, Tom kept watch over the mother of his child, who slept peacefully, and over his newborn son, who fussed in his sleep but did not wake. Tom stood at the window, gazing upward.
A single star almost directly overhead bathed the inn with soft light and glistened off acres of mud. It was not a pretty scene. Not a noticeably Christmas-like scene. The inn, somewhere in Wiltshire, was neither large nor picturesque nor thriving. No one has ever mapped its exact location.
Mary Balogh
