He didn't speak. He didn't know what to say.

"I'm not surprised that if you do finally decide to read them, it will be to help someone else."

He swallowed, then grasped her hand like a lifeline.

"Do you want me to open them?"

He nodded, wordlessly handing her the stack.

Daphne moved to a nearby chair and sat, tugging at the ribbon until the bow fell loose. "Are these in order?" she asked.

"I don't know," he admitted. He sat back down behind his desk. It was far enough away that he couldn't see the pages.

She gave an acknowledging nod, then carefully broke the seal on the first envelope. Her eyes moved along the lines-or at least he thought they did. The light was too dim to see her expression clearly, but he had seen her reading letters enough times to know exactly what she must look like.

"He had terrible penmanship," Daphne murmured.

"Did he?" Now that he thought about it, Simon wasn't sure he'd ever seen his father's handwriting. He must have done, at some point. But it wasn't anything he recalled.

He waited a bit longer, trying not to hold his breath as she turned the page.

"He didn't write on the back," she said with some surprise.

"He wouldn't," Simon said. "He would never do anything that smacked of economization."

She looked up, her brows arched.

"The Duke of Hastings does not need to economize," Simon said dryly.

"Really?" She turned to the next page, murmuring, "I shall have to remember that the next time I go to the dressmaker."

He smiled. He loved that she could make him smile at such a moment.

After another few moments, she refolded the papers and looked up. She paused briefly, perhaps in case he wanted to say anything, and then when he did not, said, "It's rather dull, actually."

"Dull?" He wasn't sure what he had been expecting, but not this.

Daphne gave a little shrug. "It's about the harvest, and an improvement to the east wing of the house, and several tenants he suspects of cheating him." She pressed her lips together disapprovingly. "They weren't, of course. It is Mr. Miller and Mr. Bethum. They would never cheat anyone."

Simon blinked. He'd thought his father's letters might include an apology. Or if not that, then more accusations of inadequacy. It had never occurred to him that his father might have simply sent him an accounting of the estate.

"Your father was a very suspicious man," Daphne muttered.

"Oh, yes."

"Shall I read the next?"

"Please do."

She did, and it was much the same, except this time it was about a bridge that needed repairing and a window that had not been made to his specifications.

And on it went. Rents, accounts, repairs, complaints . . . There was the occasional overture, but nothing more personal than I am considering hosting a shooting party next month, do let me know if you are interested in attending. It was astounding. His father had not only denied his existence when he'd thought him a stuttering idiot, he'd managed to deny his own denial once Simon was speaking clearly and up to snuff. He acted as if it had never happened, as if he had never wished his own son were dead.

"Good God," Simon said, because something had to be said.

Daphne looked up. "Hmmm?"

"Nothing," he muttered.

"It's the last one," she said, holding the letter up.

He sighed.

"Do you want me to read it?"

"Of course," he said sarcastically. "It might be about rents. Or accounts."

"Or a bad harvest," Daphne quipped, obviously trying not to smile.

"Or that," he replied.

"Rents," she said once she'd finished reading. "And accounts."

"The harvest?"

She smiled slightly. "It was good that season."

Simon closed his eyes for a moment, as a strange tension eased from his body.

"It's odd," Daphne said. "I wonder why he never mailed these to you."

"What do you mean?"

"Well, he didn't. Don't you recall? He held on to all of them, then gave them to Lord Middlethorpe before he died."

"I suppose it was because I was out of the country. He wouldn't have known where to send them."

"Oh yes, of course." She frowned. "Still, I find it interesting that he would take the time to write you letters with no hope of sending them to you. If I were going to write letters to someone I couldn't send them to, it would be because I had something to say, something meaningful that I would want them to know, even after I was gone."

"One of the many ways in which you are unlike my father," Simon said.

She smiled ruefully. "Well, yes. I suppose." She stood, setting the letters down on a small table. "Shall we go to bed?"

He nodded and walked to her side. But before he took her arm, he reached down, scooped up the letters, and tossed them into the fire. Daphne let out a little gasp as she turned in time to see them blacken and shrivel.

"There's nothing worth saving," he said. He leaned down and kissed her, once on the nose and then once on the mouth. "Let's go to bed."

"What are you going to tell Colin and Penelope?" she asked as they walked arm in arm toward the stairs.

"About Georgie? The same thing I told them this afternoon." He kissed her again, this time on her brow. "Just love him. That's all they can do. If he talks, he talks. If he doesn't, he doesn't. But either way, it will all be fine, as long as they just love him."

"You, Simon Arthur Fitzranulph Basset, are a very good father."

He tried not to puff with pride. "You forgot the Henry."

"What?"

"Simon Arthur Henry Fitzranulph Basset."

She pfffted that. "You have too many names."

"But not too many children." He stopped walking and tugged her toward him until they were face to face. He rested one hand lightly on her abdomen. "Do you think we can do it all once more?"

She nodded. "As long as I have you."

"No," he said softly. "As long as I have you."

The Viscount Who Loved Me.

Without a doubt, readers' favorite scene in The Viscount Who Loved Me (and perhaps in all of my books) is when the Bridgertons get together to play Pall Mall, the nineteenth-century version of croquet. They are viciously competitive and completely dismissive of the rules, having long since decided that the only thing better than winning is making sure your siblings lose. When it came time to revisit the characters from this book, I knew it had to be at a Pall Mall rematch.

The Viscount Who Loved Me:.

The 2nd Epilogue.

Two days prior . . .

Kate stomped across the lawn, glancing over her shoulder to make sure that her husband was not following her. Fifteen years of marriage had taught her a thing or two, and she knew that he would be watching her every move.

But she was clever. And she was determined. And she knew that for a pound, Anthony's valet could feign the most marvelous sartorial disaster. Something involving jam on the iron, or perhaps an infestation in the wardrobe-spiders, mice, it really didn't matter which-Kate was more than happy to leave the details up to the valet as long as Anthony was suitably distracted long enough for her to make her escape.

"It is mine, all mine," she chortled, in much the same tones she'd used during the previous month's Bridgerton family production of Macbeth. Her eldest son had casted the roles; she had been named First Witch.

Kate had pretended not to notice when Anthony had rewarded him with a new horse.

He'd pay now. His shirts would be stained pink with raspberry jam, and she- She was smiling so hard she was laughing.

"Mine mine mine miiiiiiiiiiiine," she sang, wrenching open the door to the shed on the last syllable, which just so happened to be the deep, serious note of Beethoven's Fifth.

"Mine mine mine miiiiiiiiiine."

She would have it. It was hers. She could practically taste it. She would have tasted it, even, if this would somehow have bonded it to her side. She had no taste for wood, of course, but this was no ordinary implement of destruction. This was . . .

The mallet of death.

"Mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine mine miiiiiiiiiine," she continued, moving into the hoppy little section that followed the familiar refrain.

She could barely contain herself as she tossed a blanket aside. The Pall Mall set would be resting in the corner, as it always was, and in just a moment- "Looking for this?"

Kate whirled around. There was Anthony, standing in the doorway, smiling diabolically as he spun the black Pall Mall mallet in his hands.

His shirt was blindingly white.

"You . . . You . . ."

One of his brows lifted dangerously. "You never were terribly skilled at vocabulary retrieval when crossed."

"How did you . . . How did you . . ."

He leaned forward, his eyes narrowing. "I paid him five pounds."

"You gave Milton five pounds?" Good Lord, that was practically his annual salary.

"It's a deuced sight cheaper than replacing all of my shirts," he said with a scowl. "Raspberry jam. Really. Have you no thought toward economies?"

Kate stared longingly at the mallet.

"Game's in three days," Anthony said with a pleased sigh, "and I have already won."

Kate didn't contradict him. The other Bridgertons might think the annual Pall Mall rematch began and ended in a day, but she and Anthony knew better.

She'd beaten him to the mallet for three years running. She was damned if he was going to get the better of her this time.

"Give up now, dear wife," Anthony taunted. "Admit defeat, and we shall all be happier."

Kate sighed softly, almost as if she acquiesced.

Anthony's eyes narrowed.

Kate idly touched her fingers to the neckline of her frock.

Anthony's eyes widened.

"It's hot in here, don't you think?" she asked, her voice soft, and sweet, and terribly breathless.