She pretended to examine her glove. “You needn’t expend the energy. She’s obviously very good at what she does.”

“Well, she won’t know about Violet,” Benedict vowed. “At least not until it’s obvious to the world.”

“Violet?” Sophie asked softly.

“It’s time my mother had a grandchild named after her, don’t you think?”

Sophie leaned against him, letting her cheek rest against the crisp linen of his shirt. “I think Violet is a lovely name,” she murmured, nestling deeper into the shelter of his arms. “I just hope it’s a girl. Because if it’s a boy, he’s never going to forgive  us ...”

*  *  *

Later that night, in a town house in the very best part of London, a woman picked up her quill and wrote:

Lady Whistledown’s Society Papers 3 May 1824

Ah, Gentle Reader, This Author has learned that the Bridgerton  grandchildren will soon number eleven ...

But when she tried to write more, all she could do was close her eyes and sigh. She’d been doing this for so very long now. Could it have possibly been eleven years already?

Maybe it was time to move on. She was tired of writing about everyone else. It was time to live her own life.

And so Lady Whistledown set down her quill and walked to her window, pushing aside her sage green curtains and looking  out into the inky night.

“Time for something new,” she whispered. “Time to finally be me.”

The End