A Gamble on Love (31 page)

“
Mama, mama, mama!” cried Miss Rosalind
Lanning, dashing across the width of the rotunda and skidding to a
halt before her mother. Arms crossed over her boyishly flat
ten-year-old chest, she declared, “Trevor says I cannot be the
pirate captain because I’m a girl. That’s not fair. It’s my turn.
He says I must be a wench,” she added on a sniff of great
disdain.

Relia turned solemn eyes on her eldest.
“A
wench
? Is this true,
Trevor?”

“
I’ll be a wench,” Julia Lanning piped
up from the floor of the rotunda where she had been building a
village of sticks and stones, framed by a carefully placed border
of wilting wildflowers.

“
You don’t know what a wench is,”
declared Master Geoffrey Lanning, nearly nine, whose first year at
Eton had, unfortunately, convinced him that he now knew everything
there was to know.

“
Do too,” his little sister
retorted.

“
Trevor and Rosalind will both be
pirate captains,” their mother pronounced, neatly side-stepping the
issue of wenches. “And Geoffrey and Julia may be your lieutenants.
You may then see who is first to find the treasure.”

“
What treasure?” Julia
demanded.

“
A pretend treasure, silly,” said
Geoffrey.

“
Oh, very well,” Trevor sighed. “Come
on then.” The three older children set off across the old wooden
bridge toward the pond, with Julia doing a run-run-hop-hitch in a
valiant effort to keep up.

Relia followed their progress, her
emotion best described as
awe
.
These four absolutely astonishing children were hers. Hers and
Thomas’s. They were real—every one a miracle. There had been no
squabbles in her childhood. Except for occasional visits from The
Terrible Twyford, she had been able to imagine herself as anyone
she wanted to be, for there was no one to gainsay her.

She had not learned to share. To compromise.
To think of someone other than herself.

Until she met Thomas Lanning. Who, truth be
told, was nearly as spoiled as herself. A hard lesson had suddenly
loomed before them—learning that the sun did not rise and set for
their exclusive benefit. And yet . . . if she had not been so
headstrong, so determined to save Pevensey Park, she would have
settled for so much less. She would never have met Thomas. Never
learned to love a Cit. Be proud of a Cit. Treasure a Cit.

And there he was at
last!
Bounding across the park at a far greater speed
than a man well past his fortieth birthday should ever—

Relia came to her feet, her breath catching
in her throat as she watched the precipitate arrival of that
anomaly, a Whig cabinet minister in a Tory government run by His
Grace, the Duke of Wellington. Though they had been separated only
for a fortnight—since Relia had left their townhouse on Berkeley
Square in order to be at Pevensey Park when the boys returned from
school—she was, as always, breathless at the sight of him.

Thomas striding over the wooden bridge, up
the marble steps to the rotunda . . . sweeping her into his arms.
His lips meeting hers.

“
Thomas,” Relia sputtered when he
finally let her go, “the children!”

Mr. Lanning lifted his head, eyed his
distant, still-squabbling children with a considering gaze. “Are
you quite sure we’ve managed the business correctly?” he asked his
wife with a perfectly straight face. “Perhaps we should try for
Number Five?”

After twelve years of marriage, Mrs. Lanning
demonstrated that she could still blush. But her contentment was
complete. Her Cit was home, and all was right with the world.

~ * * * ~

Author’s Note:
The varied and often bizarre election practices mentioned
in
A Gamble on Love
are all
true, continuing until the Reforms of 1832. (I like to think Thomas
had a hand in those reforms!)

About the
Author
:

Although Blair Bancroft is best known
as the author of numerous Regency novels, she has also been
published in romantic suspense, contemporary romance, and young
adult medieval. Under her alter ego, Daryn Parke, she is the author
of a mystery set at the Ringling Museum complex in Sarasota,
Florida. For more details, please see her websites at
www.blairbancroft.com
and
www.darynparke.com
. She also invites you to
visit her blog at
http://mosaicmoments.blogspot.com.