Page 53 of One Night for Seduction

Epilogue

June 1824

London, England

At half midnight, the black sky above the Palace of Westminster was speckled with stars. The moon’s waxing crescent lent its shimmering glow to the rows of gas lights flanking the Westminster Bridge.

The Duke of Colehaven cared about none of this.

He sailed from the palace to his waiting coach without so much as a glance at the night’s beauty. The carriage door was scarcely shut before he was urging his driver to fly to Grosvenor Square with all haste. But Cole was not fleeing Parliament. He was racing home to tell his wife the good news.

Diana was not in the nursery or playing with kittens or organizing her notes in her private study. She was bending over a barrel in their brewing room, her journal in one hand and a mug of beer in the other.

She barely had a chance to set down her sloshing ale before Cole swept her off her feet and swung her in mad, giddy circles.

He tried to cover her with kisses, but couldn’t stop grinning long enough to make proper work of it. “We did it, darling!”

She grinned back at him. “You managed to pick out a fashionable waistcoat?”

“Minx.” He set her down in order to thrust a painstakingly copied sheaf of documents into her hands.

Her eyes lit up even before she glanced at its contents. “This calls for a celebration! Pour yourself a beer, my love.”

“There’s no time for ale.” He flapped his hands toward the papers. “Read, read!”

Diana cleared her throat and affected the pompous, ramrod-straight posture of a court crier. “An Act for ascertaining and establishing Uniformity of Weights and Measures.”

It was all Cole could do not to bounce about the brewing room like a mischievous kitten. He consoled himself by downing half of his wife’s ale.

“Whereas it is necessary for the Security of Commerce, and for the Good of the Community, that Weights and Measures should be just and uniform…” Diana continued, her posture relaxing and her grin widening with each new word. With a squeal, she dropped the papers upon the brewing table and launched herself back into Cole’s arms. “Wediddo it!”

“No grams and meters,” he warned her as they spun about the room.

“I’m thrilled with the demise of twenty-seven different kinds of bushels,” she assured him, laughing. “You’ve achieved a miracle. Imagine—one single size for a gallon!”

“I don’t have to imagine,” he informed her solemnly. “The document I showed you clearly states that a ‘gallon’ is a standard unit of volume, defined as ten pounds of distilled water weighed in the air at the precise temperature of sixty-two degrees of Fahrenheit’s thermometer, with the barometer configured at—”

She pressed her lips to his, sending all thoughts of imperial measures scattering to the wind with the magic of her kiss.

His friends might have teased him for breaking his ten-year winning streak with the loss of the wedding wager, but Cole knew the truth. The passionate embrace of the clever, stubborn, irresistible woman in his arms was worth far more than any bar-room bet. He’d lost nothing but loneliness and won the love of a lifetime.

He’d wager nothing on earth could be better than that.

THE END