Page 116 of Chaperoned By Her Enemy Duke

“Oh, Cecelia! Do not believe that I care whether or not it is a boy!” George exclaimed, pulling her around to face him. He laid his hand on her stomach once more.

“You do not mind if it is a girl?” Cecelia asked, her smile broadening as tears started to streak down her face.

George pulled her close then, lifting her chin to make her look right into his eye as he said, “I do not give one fig what sex this baby has so long as he or she is healthy. Though, if it is a girl, I do hope she shall not have your eyes.”

Cecelia scowled at him then, those eyes darkening. “Why ever not?”

“Because I never could say no to you whenever you give me that look,” George said, and Cecelia began to laugh as he added, “if she too shall have them, then how shall I be able to get my own way ever again?”

“I think perhaps she and I might be willing to give you one day off,” Cecelia suggested playfully, tickling his chin where he had grown a short, well-groomed beard during their travels – George’s excuse that it protected his face from all of the sun while Cecelia insisted he ought to keep it because she liked it – and said, “perhaps your birthday?”

“And what of Christmas and New Year?” George said, tickling her gently just above her hip.

“I suppose we shall have to ask the boss when she arrives,” Cecelia said, laying her own hand upon her stomach once more.

George slipped his hand behind her ear, his fingers dancing in the roots of her hair as he held her head and kissed her with all the joy and happiness that she had just placed in him.

And when he pulled away, he realized that Cecelia was not the only one weeping. A single tear rolled down his own cheek, andhe quickly wiped it away, glancing down at the heart-shaped pendant that still sat around her neck. “Who would have thought that little thing would have survived all of these years?”

Cecelia raised her hand to the pendant, as she so often did, and said, “People might say the same of us.”

THE END?