‘You’re supposed to say something,’ he prompted gently.
It wasn’t the ring which swung it—though it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever clapped eyes on. And it certainly wasn’t a very feminine satisfaction that she of all people should be subjected to this most traditional of proposals. No, it was the look of love blazing from his grey eyes which made Roxy’s heart turn over. Which made her realise that there was only one answer she could possibly give.
‘Yes,’ she whispered shakily, her determination that he shouldn’t see her cry now melting away as tears of joy began to slide down her cheeks. ‘Yes, I’ll marry you, Titus.’
He slid the ring on her finger and slowly kissed the palm of her hand, before standing up to pull her into his arms so that he could kiss her properly.
After that, it all became a little frantic and conversation was reduced to gasped little words and whispered pleas until, several hours later, she lay wrapped sleepily in his arms in the giant bed. Reflectively, he stroked her hair and felt her long sigh of contentment as her breath fanned against his chest.
‘Just one thing puzzles me,’ he said slowly. ‘Well, two things, actually.’
‘Spill.’
‘If your greatest hits album is topping the charts in several countries, then why did you need to get a live-in job which didn’t pay very much?’
Roxy lifted her head. ‘You mean, why wasn’t I going out to put a deposit on a fancy apartment?’
‘Something like that.’
She drew a little circle around one of his nipples and enjoyed his instinctive intake of breath. ‘I don’t think people realise how long it takes for royalties to come in,’ she said seriously. ‘They don’t just land in a massive heap on your doorstep overnight. But the royalties are irrelevant, because I didn’t write the songs. Justina did—and so all the money will go to her.’
He lifted her distracting finger and raised it to his lips. ‘Then why didn’t you want to re-form the band?’ he questioned. ‘When you could have gone back out there on tour and made yourself a fortune?’
Roxy was silent for
a moment. She couldn’t deny she hadn’t been tempted by the possibility, until the reality of what it would be like had hit her. ‘Because immediately it became like a circus,’ she said quietly. ‘All those reporters asking all those questions again. The sense that I was nothing but a commodity. Touring was hard enough when I was nineteen—but at nearly thirty, it would have been a nightmare. And it would have been going back—revisiting the past instead of trying to move into the future.’ She was silent for a moment, because only a few hours ago her future had looked very different indeed. But it was important for her to acknowledge that she had planned to be proactive. That she had been making plans to move on and to live a useful life, with or without Titus.
‘I planned to study,’ she said, with a smile. ‘I thought I might do something useful, like speech therapy. I thought I might put my gift for mimicry to good use.’
There was a moment of silence while he considered this. ‘You might find the demands of being a Duchess and taking on a new career a little much—’
She placed her finger over his lips to silence him. ‘I know that, my darling,’ she whispered. ‘Marriage to you, and hopefully motherhood—that’s the only career I’m interested in now.’
He lifted her hand to look at the clutch of antique diamonds which was glittering on her finger. ‘I love you, Roxanne Carmichael,’ he said. ‘You make me laugh and you challenge me. You satisfy me and tantalise me and I can’t think of anyone else I could better describe as my equal, in every way that counts.’ He grazed his lips over her fingertips and as he heard her exultant little giggle he frowned. ‘You haven’t changed your scent, have you?’
‘No, why?’
‘It’s just that you definitely smell of chocolate.’
With a start, Roxy looked across the room to where her apron was lying in a heap with the rest of her discarded clothes. And there, just above the distinctive embroidered ‘G’ of the hotel crest, was a dark and spreading stain of finest Belgian chocolate. She looked deep into her new fiancé’s eyes and smiled.
‘Um, I think you may have to fork out for a replacement uniform, Titus.’
EPILOGUE
ROXY would have liked a quiet wedding in the Valeo chapel, followed by an unconventional picnic on a stretch of their own Norfolk beach. But she knew that it didn’t work like that. Not now. That as the new Duchess of Torchester, she would have to make certain sacrifices. That duty would often have to come before desire—but she knew it was a duty she would perform gladly, and with pride. Not that it seemed much of a sacrifice to marry Titus in the glorious space of Norwich Cathedral—with its Norman architecture and famously long nave.
Once the rather hysterical press coverage of their engagement had died down, there had been a lot of speculation about who would be on the guest list. Titus’s stepmother had already given a ‘tell-all’ interview to one of the tabloid newspapers, cataloguing the new Duke’s cruelty towards her. Titus Left Me Homeless! ran the rather pathetic headline in the Daily View. Which, as Titus pointed out to Roxy, was blatantly a lie, since he’d bought her a sturdy manor house in the heart of the Cotswolds as well as a mews house in London. But it was her comment about Roxy’s unsuitability to be a Duchess which gave him the perfect reason not to invite his stepmother to help celebrate their nuptials.
And in complete contrast, Titus’s mother had welcomed Roxy into the family with instant warmth. A tall, striking woman with dark copper hair, she took Roxy walking over the wild Scottish moors near her home one weekend, and thanked her for making her son so happy.
The wedding day dawned bright and sunny—a perfect example of English springtime at its most glorious, with hyacinths forming a fragrant white arch around the cathedral doors. The crowd of photographers who were waiting to see if the other two Lollipops would turn up had a field day when Roxy’s father arrived. He was wearing a crumpled linen suit and a hairstyle which was much too long for his years—and he was clutching the hand of a woman who was two years younger than his daughter.
‘And did that bother you?’ Titus asked her, much later.
She shook her head as she began to unbutton his shirt and smiled. ‘I can’t change him,’ she said thoughtfully. ‘I just have to try to love him.’
‘You’re good at that,’ he said softly.