The Wicked Wallflower (28 page)

 

Epilogue

Lady Penelope's Anniversary Ball

London, 1824

A few months later

F
INALLY,
FINALLY,
THE
moment Emma had both dreaded and anticipated in equal measures had arrived. Any minute now she would be announced at the anniversary ball celebrating one hundred years of Lady Penelope's Finishing School for Young Ladies of Fine Families. In the entire history of the school not one graduate had failed to make a match by the conclusion of her fourth season. Fortunately, Emma would
not
be the exception, as she had often feared during her first season. And second. And third.

Any minute now the butler would announce her not as Lady Emma Avery or the Buxom Bluestocking or even London's Least Likely to Misbehave. Because she had succeeded at the great husband hunt—­beyond everyone's wildest expectations, including her own—­Emma was now addressed as Your Grace.

“The Duke and Duchess of Ashbrooke,” the butler intoned.

Heads turned to look at the sensational ­couple. The great Lady Penelope herself (great-­grand-­daughter to the founder) beamed up at her former student. Emma held her head high and proudly smiled—­even if it was a bit crooked. Her husband found it alluring, which was all that mattered.

“We must go find my friends,” Emma murmured. Blake led the way through the crowd until they found Olivia standing off to the side.

“You look lovely, Olivia!” Emma exclaimed.

“Thank you. You look fine as well, although I'm not sure you have enough diamonds,” Olivia remarked with an upturn of her lips as she eyed the diamond and sapphire necklace, earbobs and ring that Emma wore with her blue silk gown.

“A gift from Blake,” Emma replied, smiling up at her husband.

“You mean a gift from your handsome, charming, utterly besotted husband,” Blake said. He gave her a roguish smile, which
still
left her breathless.

“That's what I said,” Emma replied. They gazed into each other's eyes. Neither Emma, Olivia, nor Prudence had been able to agree whether the duke's gaze smoldered or sparkled when he looked at his wife. Emma just knew that it made her feel very loved and wonderfully wicked.

“Have you seen Prudence?” Olivia interrupted anxiously.

“No. Have you not? She should be here by now,” Emma replied.

“She cannot miss this ball,” Olivia declared, glancing around through narrowed eyes at the other guests—­all graduates of Lady P's and all with husbands.

“It's just not done,” Emma murmured as Olivia excused herself in order to seek out Prudence.

“Darling wife, would you care to waltz?” Blake asked. Then furrowing his brow in concern, he asked, “You
can
waltz in your condition, can you not?”

Emma barely had a chance to say yes before he swept her into his arms and whirled her around the ballroom. She felt lighthearted and light-­headed, deeply happy in this moment and desperately excited for what pleasure awaited when they returned home. Or perhaps sooner?

The duke waltzed them off the dance floor and toward the open terrace doors.

“Blake, what are you doing?” That rogue of hers just smiled, making Emma's heart skip a beat.

Blake waltzed them across the terrace, to the curious stares of the guests. Emma grinned as she guessed what he was about.

“The letters?” she asked.

“The letters,” he murmured.

She knew what happened next because once upon a time they had written a dramatic and romantic love story. It had been just pretend—­until it was very, very real.

Scandalously, Blake waltzed them into the darkened gardens, where they disappeared under the sparkling stars and moonlight for quite some time.

The next day the gossip columns would compliment the duchess's gown and jewels—­the Wallflower had blossomed quite nicely! They would also remark upon the Duke of Ashbrooke's devotion to his wife and the heart-­melting smiles the young ­couple exchanged—­as if they shared quite a secret.

A few months after that, the gossip columns would report the following:

To the surprise of no one who has ever seen the Duke and Duchess of Ashbrooke's enormous affection for one another, the happy ­couple just announced the arrival of a healthy baby girl named Agatha. We hear she is already enrolled at Lady Penelope's Finishing School for Young Ladies of Fine Families.

 

Author's Note

T
HE
D
IFFERENCE
E
NGINE
is widely considered to be the world's first computer. The inventor was the Englishman Charles Babbage, who had the idea in 1821 while reviewing a set of mathematical tables riddled with errors. “I wish to God these calculations had been executed by steam,” he is said to have exclaimed. This brilliant mathematician, inventor, philosopher, and charming man about town spent thousands of pounds of his own money and government funds to design and build a machine to reliably perform mathematical calculations.

While Babbage is considered a pioneer of computing, he's also known for failing to build the machines he designed. The Difference Engine wasn't built until 1991—­just in time for the 200th anniversary of Babbage's birth—­when a dedicated team from The Science Museum in London endeavored to build it once and for all from the original plans—­and to finally discover if it would work. (It did! Brilliant!)

I am completely indebted to Doron Swade's book
The Difference Engine: The Quest to Build the First Computer.
It was a marvelous and riveting account of Babbage's life and the modern-­day quest to build the engine using Babbage's original plans.

As I embarked on a series of interconnected historical and contemporary romance novels (of which
The Wicked Wallflower
is the first), I was deeply pleased to learn that the computer—­of all things!—­could be a link between Regency London and modern-­day New York City. Heroes of subsequent books in my Wallflower series will succeed where Babbage did not (because it's my fictional world and I said so). The hero of my contemporary series,
The Bad Boy Billionaire,
is a brilliant tech entrepreneur who, like so many men and women today, carry on the pioneering work of innovators like Babbage.

Keep reading for an exclusive excerpt from
The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement
, the contemporary version of
The Wicked Wallflower.

 

Discover the secret love story behind

The Wicked Wallflower!

Meet Jane Sparks . . .

She's a modern-­day girl trying to make it in the big city—­while writing a novel shamelessly based on her own romantic misadventures.

Do become acquainted with Duke Austen . . .

He's a bad boy billionaire with the kind of smile most often found on rogues in romance novels.

Be careful what you post on Facebook . . .

When a post appears on Facebook announcing their engagement, they do the unthinkable: play along with the ruse. And then the unexpected happens: they start falling in love.

An exclusive excerpt from

 

The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement

 

The Bad Boy Billionaire's Wicked Arrangement

Hudson Bar and Books

New York City

@TechCrunch: Duke Austen's startup, Project-­TK, files for 100 Billion IPO. Here's why it might not happen.

Is the third time a charm for Silicon Alley party boy Duke Austen? After the spectacular failures of his first two start-­ups, he's on the verge of a major win—­as long as investors can overlook his reputation for hard-­partying and worries about him paying more attention to the hot supermodels instead of hot new products. Read More . . .

“T
HIS.”
I
SET
down the damned invitation on the bar.

“What is
this
?” Roxanna asked, looking up from her iPhone. We often met here after work for drinks and supper before returning to our microscopic, claustrophobia-­inducing West Village apartment.

“
This
is the invitation to my tenth annual high school reunion. In other words, I have just been invited to a party to showcase what an utter failure I am.”

“What are you talking about, Jane? You have ditched Bumblefuck, Pennsylvania, and your boring ex-­boyfriend for the glamorous life of a single working girl in New York City.”

“I'm working as a library assistant, which is a step down from my previous job as head librarian. I told everyone I was going to write a novel, but I have only a Word document that reads ‘Untitled Romance Novel' and not much else. And I still love my ex-­boyfriend, thank you very much. And he's been dating. I saw it on Facebook. I have
not
been dating.”

“No, you're just having hot and heavy hookups with strangers. Much better if you ask me,” Roxanna said with a grin. I had told her a little bit about what happened at the party last night, leaving out the most embarrassing bits. Which is to say, I left out most of the story.

“
One
hook up. Once. And while I was pawing at some random guy in the library like an adolescent, everyone else has gotten married and had children. Look—­” I said, pulling out my iPhone and bringing up the list of my friends on Facebook, many of them from Milford High School. “Melissa, married. Has a baby. Rachel and Dan, married.
Two
children, when some ­people don't have any! Kate Abbott, who was totally horrible to me throughout high school, is ‘seeing someone special.' And it's only a matter of time before Sam posts, Married! Baby! He keeps posting about dinners at all the romantic places around town.”

“What, all three of them? You have to unsubscribe to his status updates,” Roxanna said dryly.

“I don't know how,” I grumbled. “Technology mystifies me.”

“Here, let me see if I can do this on your phone,” Roxanna said. I handed it over without a second thought. “I'll take care of this while you pine away for the days of card catalogues, horses, and bayonets.”

“We were voted Most Likely to Live Happily Ever After,” I said glumly.

“Aww, should we go home and look through your yearbooks?” Roxanna asked, pushing her red hair over her shoulder.

She was tough as nails and just what I needed. In return, since she was a disaster at things like laundry, cooking, and paying bills, I helped make sure she had clean clothes, Wi-­Fi, and didn't subsist exclusively on bourbon and popcorn.

“No, it will only make me feel worse,” I said with a sigh. I knew because I had already looked through them. It was all the inscriptions that slayed me.
Stay in touch. Don't ever change.

Growing up, I had this idea of what my life would be like, and I did everything I could to make it happen. Good grades, good school, career in the library sciences, which would allow me some flexibility when Sam and I married and had kids.

We planned to get engaged after he finished his dissertation. Then he'd get a job as a professor at Montclair University.

We planned to have a house on Brook Street—­I knew just the one—­with great bookshelves and a yard for the kids. Maybe a couch from Pottery Barn and . . .

Then BOOM—­fired. Then BOOM—­dumped.

Sam had coldly explained that he wanted to see more of the world. Date other ­people. Be with someone more adventurous. Someone who didn't have every detail of their life already preordered.

“Ah, this will make you feel better,” Roxanna said, when the bartender set down our drinks: a glass of chardonnay for me and bourbon on the rocks for her. “Cheers.”

“I just had this idea of what my life would be like by now,' I said as Roxanna messed around with my phone. “And so did everyone else. I had already planned my wedding on Pinterest. Now he's squiring some girl around town to all the romantic spots while I'm working at the low level job I had in college and I'm hopelessly single.”

“Personally, I wouldn't give a fuck what my loser high school classmates thought of me,” Roxanna said, sipping her bourbon and still messing around with my phone.

“I know. I'm seething with jealously.”

Truly, I kind of was.

“But since you clearly do care, why don't you show up with a totally hot, successful date?”

I sighed and smiled. “It would make everyone jealous, wouldn't it? No one would ask me if I missed my old job, why Sam and I broke up, or how my novel writing is going. The problem is your plan requires me knowing a hot, successful guy. The only guy to ask me out since I moved here is José at the bodega.”

“Speaking of hot, successful guys,
why do you have a friend request from Duke Austen?
” Roxanna looked up me, her blue eyes wide and her mouth open in shock.

“Hey, why do you still have my phone?”

“Jane! Is this the guy you hooked up with?” Roxanna held out my phone showing the Facebook profile of That Guy. All dark eyes, tussled hair, unshaven. Like a pirate or a highwayman or some rogue up to no good. Yeah, that was the guy.

“I think so. It was dark. I had a mask on,” I said. I figured he was just some charming but scruffy guy who was probably a struggling actor tending bar at some hipster dive in Williamsburg. Totally undateable.

“OMG,” Roxanna said. Gasped, really. “OMG.”

“What?”

“Jane, this is
Duke Austen,
” she practically shrieked. Then she looked around as if someone might overhear the conversation. As if he were Somebody.

“I can see that. But who is he?”

“He's only the billionaire co-­founder of Project-­TK. See, you do know someone hot and successful. OMG do you ever!”

“He didn't look like a billionaire.”

“Why? Cos he didn't wear a suit and gray tie and wave around fat cigars and a bottle of fifty-­year Macallan? Welcome to the start-­up world, Jane. Where the billionaires look and act like the guys next door.”

OMG, indeed.

“He caught me on my hands and knees,” I whispered, horrified. “And shushing ­people at a party.”

“And then he hooked up with you. I spent all day working on a story about him, in fact,” Roxanna said. “His company is about to IPO but everyone is freaking out because he's a brilliant disaster and they're afraid it will affect the share price. He can code and he can sell anyone on anything. But then he's always getting wasted and missing work or getting embroiled in all sorts of scandals with models. And drugs. He's all kinds of bad news.”

“Why can't I just find a nice guy with a steady job and benefits?”

“Oh, the romance. Oh, be still my beating heart,” Roxanna said dryly. “I have an idea.”

She grinned wickedly and started doing something on my phone. I reached for it, and she lunged away. “Hey, Jane, watch the drinks.”

“Roxanna, what are you doing?”

“This.”

She held out the phone.

Heartbeat: stopped.

Breathing: stopped.

My life: over.

FB STATUS: Jane Sparks is engaged to Duke Austen!

Everyone would see it. My mom, my dad, my sister. Everyone from Milford, my coworkers at the library, everyone I had ever known that had an Internet connection. Sam. He would see it.

And then all those ­people would see that it had been a joke, a prank, or the desperate and wishful thinking of a lonely girl. Haven't I had enough mortification?

I couldn't do it again. I couldn't answer all those ­people saying sweetly (or not so sweetly), “I thought you were with so-­and-­so. What happened?” It hurt too much to always say
I don't know
when things kept going wrong.

Instead, I shrieked and lunged for the phone, knocking over my glass of chardonnay. It shattered, spilling all over the bar and dripping down into my nude patent pumps. My life was in shambles. And there was wine in my shoe.

“What have you done?” I gasped.

“I just got you a hot date for your high school reunion. You are welcome.”

“No, you just got me a fiancé!”

“Even better, right? I hope he gets you a giant diamond ring,” Roxanna said dreamily. “Although, he's only a billionaire on paper. But don't worry, I'm sure he's got a few actual millions tucked away.”

“How do I undo this?” I frantically jabbed at the screen. It was so unsatisfying.

“I have no idea,” she said with a shrug. “Facebook settings are impossible to figure out.”

“Roxanna!”

My phone dinged with an incoming text message from a number I didn't recognize.

917-­123-­4567: Meet me at Soho House in ten minutes for celebratory drinks

Jane Sparks: Who is this?

917-­123-­4567: Your fiancé