Devil's Bargain
Page 19
Looking at his tousled hair and naked torso, Tia belatedly understood why Marc had been so upset at her that day long ago, and she could not resist asking teasingly, “What were you doing the time Antony and I stumbled upon you in the woods at Ashmore?”
To her amusement, her husband turned the same brick-red he had then.
Seeing the laughter in her eyes, he said in embarrassed accents, “So, my love, you have figured it out.”
“I have figured out something else, too,” she confided. “How to make a baby.”
The brilliance of his smile left no doubt as to his delight at this news. “When?”
“About seven months.”
Marc stroked her belly reverently, trying to imagine what his child growing there would be like. Once he had regarded siring an heir as a duty. Now he looked forward to fatherhood with eager longing.
“Will you be disappointed if it is a girl?”
He considered her question for a moment. “No. Actually, I would prefer a daughter.”
“Why?” she asked, startled.
“Two reasons: I would love a miniature Tia, and I would have an excellent excuse to redouble my efforts to produce a son.” He bent his head to kiss her still-flat belly, then raised his head and smiled at her.
“How lovely you look today. You are wearing your hair differently. I like it.”
“It is all Marie’s doing,” Tia said. “Thank you again for restoring her to me.”
It had been the least Marc could do once he had learned that the maid had been another innocent victim of Pitson’s lust for revenge, unwittingly manipulated by Sir Francis’s confederate.
The past two and a half months since the Castletons had returned to Rosedale from London had been the happiest of Marc’s life. Pitson would never again threaten them, having gone to the gallows.
Marc smiled lovingly at his wife, who had also become his dearest friend and confidante. He treasured this unexpected closeness as only a man who has been isolated from such communion can.
Marc sighed contentedly. None of his expectations of marriage had included the consuming passion and infinite love that he felt for this woman he had married only for an heir.
Tia nestled close to her husband, as contented as he was. During those terrible weeks in London, she had remembered their honeymoon at Rosedale with wistful nostalgia, thinking those wonderful days gone forever.
But they had been only a prelude to even happier times, How different her marriage was from what she had expected when she had reluctantly accepted Marc’s infuriating offer. Then she had thought she had made a devil’s bargain, but it had turned out to be the happiest decision of her life. Nevertheless, she could not resist teasing her husband.
“Now that I am breeding, no doubt you mean to banish me to the country.”
He grinned. “Perhaps it has escaped your attention, my love, but we are in the country”
She pretended to pout. “Then you will desert me for another interest in London.”
“Vixen! You have not the smallest doubt that my one and only interest is you. I have neither the desire nor, God save me, the stamina for any other.”
Nevertheless, she rolled a little apart from him on the blanket.
He frowned. “Why are you moving away?”
“You do not want a wife who hangs on you,” she reminded him.
He sighed. “What a fool I was. There is nothing I want more, so long as the wife is you.”
Her gray eyes glowed mischievously. “But you married me for sons, not romance.”
“If you must recall to me every stupid word I said when I offered for you, I must remind you that I spoke before you began to teach me about love.”
He rolled over and captured her mouth with his own, exploring it as his hands caressed her body provocatively.
When he lifted his head, she smiled happily up at him. “What a quick learner you are proving to be, my most noble duke.”
“Oh, no,” he protested. “I am such a slowtop when it comes to love that it will certainly take you at least the rest of our lives to teach me.” A wicked gleam flashed in his eyes. “And it is time, my darling, to give me another lesson.”