“I will,” Ellie blurted out. “Oh, I will.”

Beside her, she could feel Charles shaking with laughter.

And then he slipped a heavy gold band onto the fourth finger of her left hand, and Ellie realized that in the eyes of God and England, she now belonged to the Earl of Billington. Forever.

For a woman who had always prided herself on her pluck, her knees felt suspiciously watery.

Mr. Lyndon completed the ceremony, and Charles leaned down and placed a fleeting kiss upon Ellie's lips. To an observer it was nothing more than a gentle peck, but Ellie felt his tongue flick along the corner of her mouth. Flustered by this hidden caress, she'd barely had time to regain her composure when Charles took her arm and led her over to a small group of individuals she assumed were his relatives.

“I did not have time to invite my entire family,” he said, “but I wanted you to meet my cousins. May I introduce Mrs. George Pallister, Miss Pallister, and Miss Judith Pallister.” He turned to the lady and two girls and smiled. “Helen, Claire, Judith, may I present my wife, Eleanor, Countess of Billington.”

“How do you do,” Ellie said, not sure if she was supposed to curtsy, or if perhaps they were supposed to curtsy, or if none of them needed to at all. So she just smiled in her most friendly manner. Helen, an attractive blond matron of about forty years, smiled back.

“Helen and her daughters live here at Wycombe Abbey,” Charles said. “Since the death of Mr. Pallister.”

“They do?” Ellie said with surprise. She looked at her new cousins. “You do?”

“Yes,” Charles replied, “as does my maiden aunt Cordelia. I don't know where she's gone off to.”

“She's a bit eccentric,” Helen said helpfully. Claire, who looked to be thirteen or fourteen years old, said nothing, a sullen expression firmly fixed on her face.

“I'm sure we will get on very well,” Ellie said. “I have always wanted to live in a large household. Mine has been quite lonely since my sister left.”

“Eleanor's sister recently married the Earl of Macclesfield,” Charles explained.

“Yes, but she left home many years before that,” Ellie said wistfully. “It has been just my father and me for eight years.”

“I have a sister, too!” Judith chirped. “Claire!”

Ellie smiled down at the young girl. “So you do. And how old are you, Judith?”

“I am six,” she said proudly, flicking back her light brown hair. “And tomorrow I will be twelve.”

Helen laughed. “‘Tomorrow’ tends to mean any day in the future,” she said, leaning down to kiss her daughter on the cheek. “First you must turn seven.”

“And then twelve!”

Ellie crouched down. “Not quite, poppet. Then eight, then nine, then—”

“Ten, then eleven,” Judith interrupted proudly, “and then twelve!”

“Correct,” Ellie said.

“I can count to sixty-two.”

“Is that so?” Ellie asked, using her best “impressed” voice.

“Mmm-hmm. One. Two. Three. Four—”

“Mother!” Claire said with a beleaguered sigh.