“You can leave now, Samuel,” Juney called out. A hand on his back gave a little push, and when he looked over his shoulder, there she was, glaring at him.
“We’ll leave later, Beetle.”
“We can walk in the park on our own.”
Beside Juney, Briar snorted. “We will not be on our own. There is Aunt Georgie and all your older sisters and their husbands and—” She groaned. “Somanychaperones. A veritable plague.”
Emma laughed, leaning her head against Samuel’s shoulder. “We are unwanted, it seems.”
“A fine welcome for all we do for them.” At the end of their interlocked arms, Samuel’s fingers were threaded through Emma’s, and he squeezed her hand, tipped the corners of his lips into a smile just big enough for her to see. “What if we wish to stretch our legs before entering the cramped coach? What if we wish to enjoy a stroll on steady land before walking across rolling ship boards?”
“They think nothing of our legs.” Emma shook her head with a heavy sigh.
“Is it me,” Glenna whispered much too loudly, “or are they quite insufferable?”
A chorus of agreement behind him.
“Insufferable?” Samuel caught his wife’s eye. “Do you hear that, luv? We are insufferable.”
“I think they exaggerate. It might be insufferable if I, oh, I do not know, fluttered my eyes at you?” She did just that.
“Or,” he said, “it might be insufferable if I raised your hand and kissed it.” He placed his lips on her knuckles, the soft cotton warmed by her skin, and held her gaze, loved the soft pink heating her cheeks.
The girls behind him groaned.
“I think it’s sweet,” Felicity mumbled.
“Perhaps we might be insufferable,” Emma said, “if we called one another names.”
“Such as sweetling.”
“Or darling.”
Samuel leaned closer and whispered in his wife’s ear, “Or moon maiden. Or Duchess Clearly Lusting.”
That soft pink raged into red, and she swatted his shoulder. “Shh.”
“I amshh. Besides, they are no longer listening.”
And they weren’t. Hyde Park had appeared, and they’d rushed off to greet it with raised arms and loud voices, crying out to older sisters and new brothers dotted about the green.
“Hoydens.” Samuel sniffed.
“Our hoydens.”
“I’m going to miss them.”
“Let us see as much of the continent as we can as quickly as we can and return home.”
He kissed her knuckles again. “We are of one mind.” Amazing how responsibility felt less like a burden when it was shared.
The shade of Hyde Park, the soft rumble of voices gossiping, sharing, celebrating, and mourning, gathered them in, and Samuel slowed his stride as he set them on the same path he walked every week with his family. Better to make the moment last. It would be some time before he next stepped foot here.
“Thank you,” he said, “for delaying our departure an hour or two. I’ve been on this same walk every week for a decade, but I cannot imagine doing without it.” He laughed. “They used to be so nervous, darting around to different acquaintances, whispering as if afraid of their own voices, exchanging…” Hell. Had he missed something? He’d missed something. He groaned. “Books. They were exchanging books. Do you think…?”
“They were naughty books? I do.”
“I’m a nodcock.”
