The Heiress Who Dared Me (The Debutante Dares #8)

Epilogue

April 1822

“The best man is one you love who loves you wildly in return.” –the working memoirs of Mrs. Georgiana Evans

F rom across the crowded London ballroom at Sarah’s first event as hostess, Georgiana watched her husband eat cake. A brute, he was, shoving the dense, fruit-heavy slice right into his mouth without a care for the raisins that had dropped by his boots or the crumbs dotting his evening jacket. With a sigh, she bustled across the room. She’d have to clean him up. He saw her coming before she arrived, and the grin that grew on his lips—slow and knowing and hot-blooded—put speed into her steps.

When she reached his side, she opened her mouth to read him a lecture and found a bite of cake between her lips instead, attached to his fingers. She tried to stay strong, but the sugar melted her as it melted on her tongue, and she chewed and swallowed her lecture with the cake. She took the plate from his hands and helped herself to more.

He chuckled, then said, “You have been watching me all evening.”

“Have I?” Oh, a crumb fell on her decolletage.

He found it, swiped it away with the pad of his thumb, and sucked that thumb right into his mouth.

Her mouth went dry.

“I demand you stop,” he said, “watching me.”

“Do you?” She managed to lift an eyebrow, unable to take her gaze from his lips. “Just because the hostess is your sister-in-law does not mean I’ll—”

“Let me seduce you? Drag you off to a bedchamber and have my wicked way with you?”

“I was going to say tolerate shenanigans.”

“Ah, yes, Wife, I remember. Shenanigans, fortune hunters, and fools. All things you do not tolerate. What about aroused husbands? Do you tolerate those?”

“Most decidedly, I”—she licked her lips, letting him wait—“do.”

“You’re sure?” He folded his arms behind his back as if to keep himself from temptation and tempered his smile. “I’ll not interrupt your evening if you do not desire it. You’ve missed almost every ball this Season. Musicals, teas—all of it missed because you’ve been languishing with me in the country.”

“You call it languishing, Josiah, but I call it living.” She bounced up on her toe and whispered in his ear, “Happily. You taste better than cake. And better our little cottage than some crowded ballroom. I miss my garden and my library. And teasing your father. He turns a very funny shade of red that simply does not exist anywhere else in the world. And who but me will make sure Peter and Henry don’t pick up their father’s silliness when they are home from school. Sarah is running her hospital, and you and Xavier tend to the estates. There is no one but me to reform your father and educate your brothers. I do it selflessly for the women they will one day meet.”

“You enjoy lecturing them.” He tapped the tip of her nose.

“Of course not.” She fluttered her eyelashes as if she were one of the debutantes dancing around the room in anxious gentlemen’s arms.

“You want to boss them about.”

She leaned forward and dropped her voice low. “I want you .”

The cake dropped to the ground as his arm stole around her waist, and she gasped loud enough for the nearby string quartet to miss a note. The colors of the ballroom—black and white and pastel pink—blurred together as he whisked her away. To an abandoned room for now, but later he’d whisk her back home, to a house in the country where she was never quite alone, not on Christmas day or a springtime evening, not on snowed-in mornings or rainy afternoons. Her own family had sold her away, but she’d found a new one, and with Josiah’s kiss on her lips and words of love in her heart, she’d never be alone again.

The End

Thank you for reading The Heiress Who Dared Me , a Christmas novella in Charlie Lane’s USA Today bestselling The Debutante Dares series? If you haven’t read all books in the series, make sure to check them out now!

In the glittering ballrooms of Regency London, a group of unconventional debutantes is turning heads and breaking hearts. The Debutante Dares series follows these audacious young ladies as they defy societal norms, challenging the ton's most eligible bachelors to fall madly in love. Get ready for a whirlwind of passion, wit, and scandalous romance that will leave you breathless.

If you are looking for a brand new series, make sure to not miss Never Woo the Wrong Lady , book 1 in A Gentleman’s Guide to Courtship .

In this fun Regency romance, newspaperman Tristan seeks the perfect wife to protect his brother. Lady Andromeda, with a scandalous secret—a hidden erotic lending library—is in a fake engagement. When Tristan enters, sparks fly. With a persistent newspaperman, a fake engagement, and desires igniting, will love expose secrets or steal hearts?