Chapter Twenty-Four
July 22nd, 1812
Exeter, Devonshire
Nell woke knowing that the world was a different place and that she was a different person. The first twenty-three years of her life lay on one side of a great divide and the rest of her life lay on the other side.
She’d been so certain she could never love Mordecai Black—determined not to love him—but Black was no autocrat, and marriage to him wouldn’t be a cage; it would be freedom and companionship and joy.
And love.
Because she loved him. She loved Mordecai Black.
It was a life-altering realization.
Everything had changed—and at the same time, it hadn’t. Mordecai Black hadn’t altered at all. He was exactly the same man he’d been in London a week ago, but she’d been blinded by his reputation, by his assertive nature, by his
