He nodded to acknowledge he had been quite difficult these past few years. “I suppose you had reason to despair that I would marry again.”
His mother cast him another smug look. “Oh, I knew you would eventually. But I fretted that it might not be to Eden. You see, I knew it had to be Eden for you. No one else would ever do.”
“Me?” Eden’s eyes widened. “This was your doing all along?”
Connor regarded both in confusion. “All right, I am being dense again. Why invite every simpering peahen to this party if all you wished me to see was Eden?”
His mother cast him a long-suffering look. “The two of you have been in front of each other all along, and neither would say a word to the other. I had to shake things up, make both of you open your eyes and find the courage to reveal your feelings.”
Eden shook her head and laughed. “It was no coincidence that my parents arrived at Chestnut Hill on the same day, was it, Evelyn?”
Connor’s mother, looking every inch the elegant and wise dowager duchess, cast her a warm smile. “No, my dear. I hope you will forgive me for forging your signature to those letters inviting each of them here. I knew they would never behave, and this would chase you straight to Lynton Grange to escape them, and hopefully into my son’s arms.”
She turned to each of Eden’s parents. “Do forgive me, Lord and Lady Darrow. But I love your daughter and had to do something drastic.”
“You are quite forgiven,” her parents said at the same time, perhaps the only time they had ever had a compatible thought.
Eden was obviously pleased they approved, but not above gently admonishing them. “Let it be noted that you did not fail Duchess Evelyn. Indeed, you behaved exactly as she’d hoped. Mama, you almost killed Papa within minutes of your arrival.”
Her mother’s chin shot up in indignation. “He should have ducked.”
“He survived and the matter is concluded,” Connor insisted, not wishing to dredge it up again when they ought to be talking about wedding plans.
His mother cast both of her parents another apologetic look. “Well, I did not wish for your mother to almost kill your father. But I was truly afraid my son would never let Eden know what was in his heart. And I knew she had always loved him.”
Eden blushed. “You did?”
His mother cast her a doting smile. “Yes, my dear.”
“How could you know when I did not always know it myself? I would never have acted upon my feelings or acknowledged them while Connor was still married.”
“My dearest, you’ve been in love with him since you were two and fell into that fishpond.” She turned to study Connor, and he felt the force of everyone’s gaze on him. “And as for you…”
“What in blazes did I do but pull her out of that pond?”
“A mother feels these things… Well, I certainly did. It was in the way you looked at her.”
Connor was still confused. “How did I look at her?”
“As though you had silently resolved in your heart that you were always going to protect her.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I was barely fifteen, and she was an irritating two-year-old. I made her cry because I told her that if she fell in again, I would let the fish eat her.”
Eden gasped. “You said that to me?”
He grunted. “Well, I didn’tmeanit.”
She playfully swatted his shoulder. “All these years, I remembered you as my savior and protector.”
“I was always going to protect you,” he said. “But you were sobbing and howling in my ear, so I told you the first thing I could think of to make you stop crying. Gad, you were such a little duck. Pudgy cheeks and pudgy legs that held you up as you waddled around. You had the brightest red hair. Biggest hazel eyes.”
He laughed in recollection and continued. “When you stopped crying, I assured you I would always rescue you if you fell into the pond again. You made me promise. You did not know a lot of words, since you were so young, butpromisewas one of them. So I did.”
“The two of you were still stubbornly staring at each other as we all rushed to you,” his mother added. “A fifteen-year-oldmarquess being stared down by a strawberry-haired, stubborn two-year-old. I knew it then. You two were going to fall in love.”
Connor tried to deny it, but his mother would not hear of it. “I was so happy for you both, so hopeful that in the fullness of time you would realize you were in love with each other. But my biggest heartbreak happened several years afterward when you went off to fight Napoleon.”
“I had to do it,” he said. “Was it not my duty to defend England?”
