The Bridgertons Happily Ever After Read Free

with it. “Please ask Belinda to pen a letter on my behalf, insisting that they come to Hastings House.”
    Maria gave a nod and departed.
    Daphne moaned and went to sleep.
     
    By the time Colin and Penelope arrived, with their four darling children in tow, Daphne was throwing up several times a day. Simon still didn’t know about her condition; he’d been delayed in the country—something about a flooded field—and now he wasn’t due back until the end of the week.
    But Daphne wasn’t going to let a queasy belly get in the way of greeting her favorite brother. “Colin!” she exclaimed, her smile growing positively giddy at the familiar sight of his sparkling green eyes. “It has been much too long.”
    “I fully agree,” he said, giving her a quick hug while Penelope attempted to shoo their children into the house.
    “No, you may not chase that pigeon!” she said sternly. “So sorry, Daphne, but—” She dashed back out onto the front steps, neatly nabbing seven-year-old Thomas by the collar.
    “Be grateful your urchins are grown,” Colin said with a chuckle as he took a step back. “We can’t keep— Good God, Daff, what’s wrong with you?”
    Trust a brother to dispense with tact.
    “You look awful,” he said, as if he hadn’t made that clear with his first statement.
    “Just a bit under the weather,” she mumbled. “I think it was the fish.”
    “Uncle Colin!”
    Colin’s attention was thankfully distracted by Belinda and Caroline, who were racing down the stairs with a decided lack of ladylike grace.
    “You!” he said with a grin, pulling one into a hug. “And you!” He looked up. “Where’s the other you?”
    “Amelia’s off shopping,” Belinda said, before turning her attention to her little cousins. Agatha had just turned nine, Thomas was seven, and Jane was six. Little Georgie would be three the following month.
    “You’re getting so big!” Belinda said to Jane, beaming down at her.
    “I grew two inches in the last month!” she announced.
    “In the last year,” Penelope corrected gently. She couldn’t quite reach Daphne for a hug, so she leaned over and squeezed her hand. “I know your girls were quite grown up last time I saw them, but I swear, I am still surprised by it every time.”
    “So am I,” Daphne admitted. She still woke some mornings half expecting her girls to be in pinafores. The fact that they were ladies, fully grown . . .
    It was baffling.
    “Well, you know what they say about motherhood,” Penelope said.
    “ ‘They’?” Daphne murmured.
    Penelope paused just long enough to shoot her a wry grin. “The years fly by, and the days are endless.”
    “That’s impossible,” Thomas announced.
    Agatha let out an aggrieved sigh. “He’s so literal.”
    Daphne reached out to ruffle Agatha’s light brown hair. “Are you really only nine?” She adored Agatha, always had. There was something about that little girl, so serious and determined, that had always touched her heart.
    Agatha, being Agatha, immediately recognized the question as rhetorical and popped up to her tiptoes to give her aunt a kiss.
    Daphne returned the gesture with a peck on the cheek, then turned to the young family’s nurse, standing near the doorway holding little Georgie. “And how are you, you darling thing?” she cooed, reaching out to take the boy into her arms. He was plump and blond with pink cheeks and a heavenly baby smell despite the fact that he wasn’t really a baby any longer. “You look scrumptious,” she said, pretending to take a nibble of his neck. She tested the weight of him, rocking slightly back and forth in that instinctive motherly way.
    “You don’t need to be rocked anymore, do you?” she murmured, kissing him again. His skin was so soft, and it took her back to her days as a young mother. She’d had nurses and nannies, of course, but she couldn’t even count the number of times she’d crept into the children’s rooms to sneak a kiss on