She smiled, with love in her eyes, her heart, her very being. Nic, her Nic, was hers for ever. The man she knew she loved and always would.
‘Together...’ she breathed. ‘Always together.’
He gunned the engine, turning his flashing desert wolf smile at her, the one that turned her heart over and over.
‘Sounds good to me,’ he said, in the laconic, laid-back way she loved so much. He headed out towards the road. ‘But we stop at the first motel we find, OK?’
His glinting glance at her, so rich with bone-melting promise, brooked no disagreement.
Fran laughed. As carefree as the wind.
‘Definitely!’ she agreed. ‘The very first.’
EPILOGUE
THE VAST GREAT HALL at Beaucourt Castle, its bare stone walls bedecked with a fearsome array of medieval weaponry, was freezing—despite the half a tree trunk burning in the cavernous fireplace to one side.
Fran and Nic, newly arrived, walked up to the elderly man standing four-square by the hearth. As Fran kissed him on the cheek, then greeted her aunt, uncle and cousins, his gimlet eyes skewered the man standing beside her.
‘So,’ announced His Grace the Duke of Revinscourt, ‘you think you’re going to marry my granddaughter, do you?’
‘Yes,’ said Nic.
‘Hmmph! Well, you’ve plenty of money, so I hear, but nothing of anything else!’
‘No,’ agreed Nic.
‘Hotels, they tell me?’ His Grace expanded.
‘Yes,’ said Nic again.
He was holding his ground. Fran had told him to, but he’d have done it anyway. No way was he being put down. Not now. Not ever.
‘And you intend to hold the wedding in one of them—is that it?’
‘I didn’t want to upstage Adrietta’s wedding at home,’ Fran put in. ‘So Nic’s given me the pick of all his properties.’
‘She’s opted for one that’s on a private island in the Caribbean,’ elaborated Nic.
‘Caribbean? What’s wrong with whatever you’ve got in town here? Mayfair, so I’m told—perfectly respectable!’ the Duke expostulated irately.
‘The Caribbean is warmer at th
is time of year,’ Nic explained.
‘Well, don’t expect me to fly out there!’ His Grace barked testily. ‘Not at my time of life!’
‘We understand that, Gramps,’ Fran put in placatingly, not mentioning that that was exactly the reason her father had suggested it, knowing the occasion would be a lot more comfortable without the crotchety old Duke there. ‘But we’re holding an engagement party at the Falcone Mayfair, and of course we want you there.’
‘Hmmph,’ said His Grace—again. His eagle eyes skewered his prospective grandson-in-law. ‘Falcone, eh?’
His eyes lifted to the lofty armorial hatchment over the cavernous stone fireplace. Above the ducal coronet carved into the stone a fierce falcon hovered. Firelight glimmered on the same image on the Duke’s signet ring. Then the grey eyes snapped back to Nic. Something in them had changed.
‘Well, I don’t hold with signs and portents, and I could do without you being another damned foreigner, like your father-in-law, but there it is. She’ll do what she wants, this granddaughter of mine, just like her mother did. Marry who she wants and do what she wants. A doctor of astrophysics... What use is that, eh? Just like there’s quite enough hotels in this world for my liking. But if the two of you want each other, that’s enough. If you’ve come from nothing, then you’ve clearly got grit, and that counts for a lot.’
He shot a look towards his grandson, Harry, whose expression was a study as he tried to catch Fran’s eyes and see her roll them along with his own at their grandfather’s inquisition.
‘And besides, this young idiot—who, one day, God help us all, is going to be running this place—tells me he’s going to rope you in for rugby.’ The gimlet grey eyes turned approving and he nodded. ‘Definitely a forward. Just what we need.’