I’m Only Wicked with You by Julie Anne Long

One year later . . .

The Mayor of Wolfdale and his bride made love like pagans all over their beautiful property.

On a blanket beneath towering trees on sultry summer nights.

On the shores of the lake after swimming naked, like otters.

In meadows, observed by squirrels and deer.

By the warmth of a leaping fire in winter, after they’d skipped flat stones across an icy pond to make them sing.

And then came the perfect clear night when she’d stretched her nude body out on green grass beneath a black sky full of stars and a fat half-moon, and he’d pretended to be Hades discovering her. The ensuing ravishing left them all but floating up among the heavens.

And as a result of that moonlit midnight magic, the lovemaking today—near a sheltered overlook, beyond them the mountains rippling outward in greens and blues, below them the sapphire wink of a lake, and behind them the pearly glow of the house—was slow and tender. They would be parents in seven months.

And their happiness gave everything a radiance.

Lillias had brought with her tiny scraps of silk and wool from clothes once worn by her mother and father and brother and sister.

The day she told Hugh about the baby was the day she laid them out on the balustrade rail for the hummingbirds who would soon be mothers, in solidarity and with blessings. Every nest was a miracle of strength and fragility. Even her own.

They’d at once dispatched one letter to Baltimore to Hugh’s sister, Maeve, who would come to stay with them when the baby arrived, and two letters across the ocean: one to Lillias’s family, and one to Mr. Delacorte. Lillias and Hugh had decided to ask him to be the baby’s godfather.

Lillias thought nothing could be more appropriate. Still, she was somewhat resigned to a certain inevitability. “His—”

“—or her,” Hugh said. They were talking about the baby.

“—first word is going to be ‘bollocks,’ isn’t it?”

Hugh laughed.

Hugh had learned from Lillias that it was Mr. Delacorte who waylaid the Vaughn carriage and sent her running back to The Grand Palace on the Thames.

“I saw how you looked at that girl,” Delacorte told him at the wedding celebration held in the new Annex ballroom, the first event apart from Hugh’s proposal to take place in the room. “The same way Hardy looks at Brownie, or Bolt looks at Goldie. I thought I’d see if I could prevent the two of you from being fools by breaking up your engagement, terrifying as she is.”

By the time they’d boarded the ship for America, Delacorte and Lillias very nearly liked each other.

Both letters took about six weeks to travel across the Atlantic. When Delacorte received his he let out such a whoop in the middle of The Grand Palace on the Thames that it traveled the thousands of miles across the ocean and soughed in the trees outside of the Hudson River Valley.

At least this was the story he and Hugh and Lillias told Hugh’s children for the rest of their lives.

The Earl and Countess of Vaughn were ecstatic about their first grandchild—many happy tears were shed—and while St. John was pleased enough at the idea of being an uncle, when his parents started intimating that it was high time for him to get leg-shackled and produce grandchildren, he was tempted to board the next ship to China. As it was, all of the Vaughns would be descending upon New York when the baby came. Claire missed her sister very much, and was beginning to wonder if there were any more handsome Americans roaming about in New York, a conjecture she was wise enough not to share with her parents.

Back at The Grand Palace on the Thames, Delacorte mourned the absence of Hugh—as dear as Captain Hardy and Lord Bolt were to him, Hugh was his bosom chum—but was consoled somewhat by the unlikely friendship of Lord St. John Vaughn, who often came around for chess lessons in the evenings and was soundly beaten every time.

From among her many friends, Mrs. Pariseau had located the perfect chaperone for Miss Amelia Woodley’s trip back to New York: a cheerful, shrewd, no-nonsense, worldly widow who was returning to America and would find keeping a young lady out of trouble child’s play.

The search for a footman seemed about to bear fruit right as Lillias and Hugh sailed to America. And just when there was a wistful lull and absences they began to truly feel at The Grand Palace on the Thames—with the Vaughns and Hugh Cassidy departing—Delilah and Angelique received a letter from a gentleman interested in a private (very private), quiet (very quiet) suite in which to write his memoirs. He was the kind of formidable war hero—a legend, really—who awed even Captain Hardy . . . and . . . they weren’t certain how they would break the news to Delacorte . . .

. . . he was also a duke.

Lillias and Hugh were so in love.

With each other, and with the land, and with Hugh’s new role as mayor and her new role as mayor’s wife. All the ladies of Wolfdale were kind and helpful and quite in awe of her, which was practically Lillias’s favorite combination of things for people to be. She looked and sounded like the daughter of an earl, but she was so enthralled by the beauty of the Hudson River Valley and so eager to learn everything about it that everyone was quite enchanted. They loved experiencing it anew through her eyes—the dramatic and brutal winters, the melting summers, the fiery autumns, the heartbreakingly beautiful springs. She’d brought with her gifts of pattern books and bolts of silks and velvet to share with them. The ladies of Wolfdale were now among the most stylish of New York State.

At the foot of the bed at night slept two cats, one gray and one ginger, both soft and fat. And in a basket by the fireplace slept a seven-month-old bloodhound called Happy, named for what he was all the time.

Hugh’s own awestruck happiness renewed itself, found new levels and heights, every time he shared something new with Lillias. Every time they learned something new about each other. From every skirmish (and there were skirmishes) and every reconciliation.

They stood and peacefully rearranged their clothes, helped smooth each other’s hair, rolled up their blanket, and stood and set out back to the house.

She’d gotten accustomed to a husband who kept a knife in a boot and a pistol in his coat. His rifle, locked, was slung over his shoulder. She found it rather thrilling, actually. Especially since she could shoot nearly as well as he could now.

They strolled back, hand in hand, when Lillias said, “We’ve a visitor. Somebody is standing on the porch.”

This wasn’t surprising, really. They frequently received visitors and had come to love entertaining. In a cozy parlor reminiscent of the one Hugh loved at The Grand Palace on the Thames—although, as both Hugh and Lillias had envisioned it, a trifle more plush with velvets and wools, furnished with fine locally made tables and sturdy chairs and cabinets and Lillias’s framed watercolors on the walls—conversation ranged freely over politics and investment and crops and animals and art and music and how Hugh was establishing an American outpost of the Triton Group. A visitor merely meant they would ask their cook to set another place. Lillias was hungry all the time now.

“What’s on his shoulder?” Lillias shaded her eyes to peer. “Is he . . . is he wearing a uniform? It looks a bit like . . . could it be epaulets?”

Hugh squinted. They could see that the man—and it was a man—was wearing a long dark coat and tall boots and a beaver hat. Like any gentleman of the day.

But against the backdrop of the cream-colored house, something a bit odd, brilliantly red and green, was visible on the man’s shoulder.

“Hugh?” Lillias turned to him.

Because he’d stopped abruptly.

His face was a stunned blank.

“Lillias,” he said slowly. “That’s a parrot.”

A thrill suddenly traced her spine.

Because even from this distance, something about the man’s posture . . . his height . . . his way of being . . . seemed deeply familiar.

And then she realized: the man reminded her of her husband.

Hugh’s face illuminated to a painful brilliance.

Her heart lurched with hope.

And then he reached for her hand. He gripped it tightly. They didn’t run. But the closer they got, the longer and swifter their strides became. They slowed as they climbed the porch, as if they were suddenly entering a dream.

His blue eyes were vivid in a face brown and creased from wind and elements, gorgeous with wear and experience, rugged as the mountains. A tiny gold loop glinted in his ear. A handsome parrot tipped its head and regarded them peacefully from his right shoulder.

“Hugh, my boy, you won’t believe what I’m about to tell you,” said Liam Cassidy.

His eyes were wet.

Hugh hurled himself into his uncle’s arms, and they were a blur. Lillias brushed the back of her hand across her eyes.

“This is my wife, Lillias.” Hugh’s voice was gravelly. He stepped back to let Liam and Lillias have a look at each other.

“Enchanté,” said the parrot, with great sincerity.

“Thank you,” Lillias replied politely.

Uncle Liam’s eyebrows went up and so did the corner of his mouth in a wicked grin. “Hugh, my boy, I think your story might be even better than mine.”

And then they all went inside.