Epilogue
Nate held Edmund Groby close around the waist as he dipped the little boy’s feet into Lake Windermere. The child giggled and screamed with delight each time his toes touched the water.
Bridget sat on a blanket next to Jane, now big with child, and Alice, who held her daughter on her lap and watched Nate with a smile on her face.
“I shall miss this place,” Jane said mournfully.
“And I shall miss you,” Bridget said, turning her attention to her friend. “I do wish you didn’t have to go to London.”
“I know. But Lady Darby insists. She says if we want her money, then we must return. She won’t have her grandnephew growing up so far from proper society.”
“What if you birth a girl?” Alice asked.
“I shouldn’t mind a little girl.” Jane smiled at Alice’s cherub-faced daughter. “But I’m afraid it would mean that Lady Darby would cut us out of her will.”
“How awful,” Bridget said.
“Perhaps you will be like me and have one of each,” Alice said.
Jane dropped her gaze and caressed her stomach, and Bridget knew what she was thinking.
With a barren husband, this babe was likely to be her only child.
Only Bridget, Nate, Mr. Harley, and Dr. Elias knew that George was the father of Jane’s child—aside from Miss Jennings, of course, and she’d been locked away in an asylum with no hope of ever being freed.
“Mr. Squires will make a good papa,” Alice said. “I wonder why he does not marry.”
The comment shot through Bridget’s heart like an arrow.
Despite being unmarried, Nate was not free.
Lady Luxton had left him at the altar, but she had him in her control.
Bridget watched Nate play with Edmund in the water, and she knew how painful it was for him now that Lady Luxton had taken Henry back to Scotland.
There was no doubt in her mind that Nate cared for her as much as she cared for him, but if they were ever to marry, Lady Luxton would cut him off from Henry.
She’d have no reason to ever visit Villa De Lacey again.
“You must come and visit me in London,” Jane said, interrupting Bridget’s thoughts. “It’s a shame you never had a Season. You would have been—would be—hailed as the greatest beauty of London.”
“Would be? What are you implying? I am two-and-twenty and too old to debut into society.”
“Two-and-twenty is hardly an old maid,” Jane scoffed. “You would be inundated with offers of marriage.”
Bridget laughed, but inside her heart cracked. The truth was that if she ever wanted to marry and have a family, she would have to leave Villa De Lacey and Nate behind. But the alternative was to grow old while living in Lady Luxton’s shadow.
Just then, Bennett appeared with a silver tray in his hand and stood on the shore a few feet from Nate.
Nate stepped out of the water, put Edmund down, and took an envelope off the silver tray Bennett held.
Bridget watched as he opened the envelope and read the letter enclosed within.
She saw the color drain from his face as he finished reading, and her chest tightened. Had something happened to Henry?
She stood and went to him. “What is it? Is something the matter?”
Nate dismissed Bennett and then turned his attention to Bridget. “It’s my brother,” he said. “He and the countess were both killed in a carriage accident.”
Bridget gasped.
“I am summoned to London as the new Earl of Westerly.”