Page 104 of Duchess Material

“I know.” Winston pulled away. “I want you to be happy. That’s all, Lulu. I just want to see you happy and assured.”

Lucy beamed, fighting tears, “You make me delightfully happy. We’ll have a beautiful life together, Winston.”

“We already do, Luce.”

It was true.

“You’re right.”

“We should head back,” Winston said.

They packed up and Lucy smiled all the way back to town. Their naughty little sidebar had been fun, but it was their wonderful secret that won out. Nothing about them had ever been normal or predictable. Their story was perfect in its imperfection. Things might go tits up, but Lucy knew she and Winston would work out.

They reached home. Lucy called her parents, flashing happy smiles as she displayed the engagement ring proudly. Her mother nearly fainted. Her father was tight-lipped. As predicted, Dwight couldn’t even choke out a reasonable congratulations. They phoned her sister, catching Francie on the way home from the gym, screaming excitedly at the news. It was a sweet moment. Lucy had a pang of guilt when she hung up.

“We need to plan a party for later. Maybe late in the summer after your brother’s wedding gets its due? We need a plan before we tell everyone, ‘Surprise, we got married!’.”

“Fancy planning a post-wedding celebration in the next month?” Winston joked.

“We can at least pick a date and a location, right? We can manage.”

Lucy was assured now. It would happen with a predictable detour in perfect Lucy-and-Winston fashion. She loved it. It was not what she had seen herself doing a year ago. In her mind, she’d be preparing for a royal wedding with dressmakers all at the ready. She’d be toting a tiara down Westminster Abbey’s central aisle. Now, Lucy was happy to avoid it all. She didn’t care.

19

PRINCE PETTY

“I just want to say it is a surprise,” George said. “That’s all. I wish them the best.”

“Yes, okay, that’s why you are being so petty?” Natalie asked.

Natalie and George prepped dinner like a well-oiled machine at George and Patrick’s expansive flat. It was nothing but million-dollar views of beautiful Lake Michigan. In the living room, Ed and his friends entertained Patrick. Darling Charlotte was asleep in her bedroom. Natalie had gleefully read her a book and tucked her in. Being an aunt was the best. She was in love with that sweet little girl. Natalie’s heart was so full.

“It was just a surprise.”

“I think your declaration of an engagement over Christmas dinner as well as calling Lucy out on her having good sex with Winston was more of a surprise, yer?”

George waved a knife and pointed. “I hate when you try to guilt me, sister.”

“You know, if you threaten me, George, a team will rush in here and take you down.”

“Okay, so when you punched me in the gut twenty years ago for telling you that you couldn’t shoot a rifle because you were a girl, did you get taken down?”

“We were children. And I stand by that. I do recall Dad wanting to kill me.”

“He did. He called you ‘just like Duncan’.”

“I thought it was a compliment. Still do.”

They both laughed.

“She’s happy, Georgie. You’re happy. Let it go. You’ll only insult Patrick. He won’t understand why you care. Quite frankly, I don’t understand why you care?”

“I spent five years with her, and she’s already run off with Winston? Why Winston?”

“Winston is darling to her. He hangs on her every word. They are oddly perfect, George. Need I remind, in five years, you never decided to bloody well propose. Your loss. If you liked it, then you should have put a ring on it.”

“Thank you, Queen Bey.”

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