Epilogue
Julien had imagined this moment a thousand times.
In every version, he’d wanted to feel something monumental—triumph, vindication, the ten-year-old boy inside him finally standing up.
Instead, watching Silkin’s face pale each passing second, he felt only relief.
Relief that it was done. Over. This man could never touch his family again.
“Outside the building, the Duke of Mortimer is waiting with his men to drag you off to where you belong. Be sure to apologize to your wife and children for what you did to them.” God knows, he would never get an apology. Neither did he need one.
“Y-you, you can’t do this!”
“You got twenty years more than you ever deserved.”
He conjured his wildflower’s face in his mind’s eye. She was the only thing that mattered now. She had saved him that night she stepped into the drawing room at Cranbrook’s. In more ways than she could ever imagine. She was the reason he wouldn’t give up his soul to destroy the man before him.
“Your own family didn’t even care!” Silkin spat. “If they did, they’d come after me with all that they had.”
“Wrong,” Julien said calmly. “That was one family member that cared. And there was one family member that came after you with all that they had. After all, look at where you are now.”
“You don’t have proof!”
“I have my word. And the word of a duke means much more than the word of a nobody.” Julien stepped forward, his eyes hardening.
“Do you know how many nights I’ve lain awake imagining how I slit your throat?
More than a thousand. Be glad that these days, I prefer to imagine a thousand ways,” to kiss my wildflower, “to do more important things than waste another thought on you.”
He didn’t wait for Silkin’s response. There was nothing the man could say that mattered anymore. Julien turned his back on the man and walked out the office, and for the first time in twenty years, the weight he’d carried into every room he’d ever entered didn’t follow him out the door.
He could return to Elowyn a free man.
***
“Mark my words, Mandeville! You will regret this day!”
Elowyn peeked from the window of the carriage at the sound of the commotion outside.
Julien, her duke, stepped out of the shipping company, ignoring the shouts of that blackguard and nodded at the Duke of Mortimer, who, along with officers of the law, waited outside for him.
Heh. Silkin would rot in prison for the rest of his life.
That’s what you get for murdering Julien’s mother.
It had been two days since the confession in the drawing room, and they’d been practically inseparable since then.
He’d even sneaked into her house through the door she’d left open for him and stayed in her bedroom.
Her friends had not been surprised but they were thrilled.
Her brother didn’t approve. Her father was on his way back to address their sudden engagement.
Elowyn didn’t care. Everything would work out.
After all, she’d not only found the man of her dreams, but she was also now engaged to be married. And she was never letting him go.
Was there a better man for her than him?
Only her duke would dare to ruin a lady, allow himself to get beaten by his future brother-in-law to gain an audience with her, and take such meticulous revenge on his mother’s murderer.
How she adored her ruthless duke.
She opened the door as he approached, and he stepped inside, ducking his head and taking a seat, his lips hooking up when his hot, all hot and no cold, gaze hit her. “Wildflower.”
She flung herself in his arms, and he circled his arms around her, his head dropping to the column of her neck.
“It’s done.”
“It’s done,” Elowyn echoed, reassuringly.
“Thank you,” he rasped.
She could feel him shaking, and she rubbed his back. “No need to thank me. This is what I’m here for.” For you. Always.
He didn’t answer right away. His arms only tightened, his face pressed into her hair, and she let him stay there, let him breathe her in.
She thought of everything he’d carried alone for so long—the blood he couldn’t seem to scrub from his hands, the grieving boy who’d sworn revenge in a house that didn’t care—and understood that this silence was its own kind of confession.
He didn’t have the words for what he felt yet.
Perhaps he never would. But he didn’t need them, not with her.
“It’s really over,” he finally murmured against her temple.
“It really is.” She pressed a kiss to his jaw.
He was silent for a long moment before he rapped on the roof and called gruffly, “Hyde Park.”
Elowyn pushed away from him, brows furrowing. “Hyde Park?” He wanted to go to Hyde Park at a time like this?
His head lifted, his lips lifting in a faint smile. “Is that not on your list of things to do this season?”
She blinked at him. “What? How did you know that?”
His arms tightened around her. “A guess. Seems I was right.” Julien dragged his nose along the arch of her throat, nipping at her skin. “This is what I’m here for.”
Oh, Lord. The man was completely disarming. Where had her cold duke gone? Thankfully, she loved both the cold and the warm sides of him. “You just achieved your lifelong revenge? Shouldn’t we celebrate?”
“I am celebrating,” he said deeply. “Celebrating by giving you a life-long dream of yours. Did I tell you I have a list, too?”
“Your revenge list?” She scoffed. “Our lists are very different. No Hyde Park today.”
“Kissing in a carriage should be one of the thousand ways to kiss, too, no? Through Hyde Park?”
Ah, drat. He knew just how to provoke her heart!
“No! We can’t do that in a carriage.”
He grinned against her skin, his hand dragging up against her calf. “Why not?”
“Because, because, because we can’t! The driver . . .”
“Won’t hear a thing if you don’t make those pretty sounds of yours.”
“Julien!” she hissed.
He chuckled.
Don’t get caught up in his madness, Elowyn. You still wanted to ask why he called you wildflower.
His tongue caught her lower lip.
It seemed that question would have to wait.
***
Thank you for reading Only a Duke Would Dare!