"Would you buy them all?"
"I already have." His shoes crunched on the gravel of the drive as he moved toward his waiting carriage.
Her eyes widened. "You're going to be very hard to handle."
Leaning through the open carriage door, he deposited her on the seat. "So will you."
She grinned. "It should be interesting."
"It'll be more than that, darling." His smile was tantalizingly close as he sat down beside her, his voice heated, low. "It will be pure, undiluted pleasure…"
Epilogue
The viscount's family enlarged apace, with a baby born in each of the first three years of their marriage. The two boys and a girl brought enormous joy to Sam, who had given up the hope of ever having children. While Alex found that happiness wasn't so much in independence as in the heart of the whirlwind that made up her life as wife and mother. Her golf improved as Sam designed more courses; their children turned into youthful prodigies on the Lennox fairways. And the parents who had questioned the suitability of the match came to be the most partial advocates of the union-not to mention the most adoring of grandparents.
As a great admirer of his wife's artistic talents, Sam encouraged Alex to open a gallery of her own, and in the bargain he had his own private gallery of all her portraits he'd purchased. And now when Alex chose to sit as subject, in deference to the man she loved she posed in a modicum of clothing.
They would remark from time to time, with loving glances, how lucky they were to have run into each other that day at Leighton's. In the interests of harmony, Sam always refrained from mentioning he would have found her wherever she was. In those days, he'd been single-minded in pursuit.
With marriage, his former amusements were no longer of interest. He'd found love and contentment in full measure, and even the most skeptical in society were silenced. The Viscount and Viscountess of Ranelagh, despite the brevity of their courtship, were truly a love match.
It just went to show, the gossips would say-not without a certain incredulity-even the most unbridled libertine could be tamed.
Susan Johnson
