“You knew what being a bastard was like, and yet you did not offer for her?” Beth pressed.
“Hah! The woman’s a witch. Literally, I sometimes think,” he added softly. “Rochelle Dessaint marry me? She had a marquess panting after her when she found out she was enceinte. I was the villain of the piece, about as welcome as an attack of the pox. Except for my money, which she welcomed readily enough.
“I’m sorry,” Terence added. “I planned to tell you, but what we—you and I—have seemed so fragile, so precious, I couldn’t bring myself to do it just yet. You didn’t want marriage, didn’t want a family, or so you said. I had hopes, of course, but felt I had to give you time . . .
“I didn’t want you that way,” he burst out, beginning to recover from his shock. “I wanted you to marry me for all the right reasons, not because there was another bastard child to be fostered . . . and loved.”
Keeping her back straight, her heart encased in ice, Beth pressed on. “You never wanted to marry her?”
“No . . . but I would have if she’d wanted it. Terence O’Rourke doesn’t turn his back on a child of his blood.”
“Oh, what a tangled web we weave,” Beth quoted softly, her proud head bending under the weight of the inevitable.
He tugged her unresisting body down into his lap, cupped her head against his chest. “Do you think—someday—you might change your mind about marriage?” he asked, lips resting against her forehead.
“I think,” Beth said after several seconds in which Terence’s heartbeat accelerated enough to almost deprive him of breath, “there’s no way in this world you’re going to get Raoul away from me.”
His limbs turned to water. “Rafe,” he said hoarsely, forcing the word past the obstruction in his throat. “He’s a Brit now. Bedamned to his French and Irish ancestors. “His name’s Rafe.”
“And you’ll give him your land in the New World, where he’ll be an American. Or should he have his mother’s land?” Beth amended. “Tobias will give it to him, if I ask.”
“Never. No slavery for Rafe. I bought land around a village on the Mississippi. Forest and farmland. He’s free to make what he can of it. A goodly inheritance for a boy who’s scarce as big as a minute.”
“Wait ’til you see him,” Beth warned. “The minute has grown into an hour, at least. A holy terror is what your Rafe is, my dear. Even at less than a year, he shows promise of having no difficulty whipping a new world into shape.”
“Have I told you that I love you?”
“Every day this past week . . . though at times it’s been hard to believe. Even when you groveled”
He drew a ragged breath. “Believe it, my heart, my love, my life. Believe it.”
His lips met hers, clung in a vow as old as time. His to her. Hers to him. No others would ever come between them again.
“We must go upstairs,” Beth whispered after an eon, perhaps only moments, had passed. “Berthe, the nurse, has also had a hard day. She is expecting us, but I do not wish to keep her up any longer.” Beth slid off his lap, held out her hand. “Come, let us go look at our child.”
Epilogue
Falcon Court, September, 1818
Tobias, with great glee, proposed a double wedding. His long-suffering Tildy, ever aware of the social niceties, soon put him right. “Let the children have their moment,” she told him, even as she breathed a secret sigh of relief over not sharing her own wedding with a slip of a girl thirty years her junior. Tobias, who was not insensitive to his previous mistakes with his daughter’s life, bowed to Miss Spencer’s advice with only a small sputter. He and Tildy would share the great house at Falcon Court with Beth and Terence, the Irish bastard’s bastard, and numerous little O’Rourkes to come. His life had suddenly gone from bleak to an endless vista of familial bliss. Though . . . perhaps before the first grandchild, they might discuss a name change . . .
Sighing, the Merchant Midas shook his head, unable to inflict on a grandchild the curse of enduring life as a Brockman-O’Rourke. He’d have to settle for the name of the treasure he’d picked up, quite literally, late one dark rainy afternoon on a cobbled street in Dublin.
Terence glowered at the generous helping of the wedding feast placed before him. Better that than glower at his radiant bride who had grievously erred in sending a high-handed spate of invitations to his Irish relations. When he’d stood at the front of the chapel at Falcon Court, with Jack at his side, waiting for his bride to join him, he’d been shocked to discover his Uncle Rory and his wife Moira beaming at him from the second row. And, worse yet, in a place of honor on the aisle was his father, now Earl of Kilbride, for the irascible old earl had passed on the year before. Next to his father was a woman of uncertain years who could only be his wife. And, beside her . . . Terence’s heart turned over. Beside his father’s wife was a lovely young woman, a stranger, but the eyes were unmistakably his own. His sister Penelope. And next to her a face he’d come to know well during the years his younger brother Julian had been at Eton. Eyes alight, the brothers exchanged tiny smiles of recognition.
So he wouldn’t, after all, quarrel with his wife at their wedding breakfast, Terence conceded, though he continued to scowl at the uneaten food on his plate. The wedding had been small, kept a secret for family and close friends only. He simply had not expected any blood relations to be present. It was not, he discovered, so bad a thing his wife had done. Time passed, and there was too much ill will in the world to perpetuate rifts where none needed to be.
Both Trowbridge families were present, and Jack’s brother, the war hero Avery Dunstan. Madame Rosamund Rolande sat in the row behind Tobias and his betrothed, Miss Matilda Spencer, beaming as the ceremony progressed, and providing the other guests with food for gossip for months to come. The other wedding guests were old family retainers and faithful Brockman employees, including a somewhat rough-looking group near the back for whom Beth did not forget a very special smile of gratitude as she began her significant journey down the aisle to a moment she had been sure would never come.
Terence downed a healthy swallow of wine, pushed some parslied potatoes around on his plate. If it weren’t for the chance to talk to his sister, renew his acquaintance with Julian, he’d grab Beth and make a run for it. Torture. For the groom, weddings and the traditions surrounding them were nothing but exquisite torture. How had he gotten himself into this?
By pushing a gent out of the way of a speeding coach one rainy afternoon so long ago. By taking on responsibility for a baby placed into his keeping. By putting his mistakes behind him. By vowing to love one woman, and one woman only, for all the remaining days of his life.
He could do this, Terence vowed. He could be son to two fathers, father to two women’s sons. Brother to two. Lover to one. The Irish iron in his soul had been tempered to steel in the crucible of Britain’s largest financial empire. He was Terence O’Rourke, Managing Director of Tobias Brockman & Company.
But, bloody hell, right now he only wanted to be alone with his wife! Would these blasted festivities never end?
They retreated to their very own wing of Falcon Court while the sun still hung low in the sky. Except for a few stolen moments in Beth’s office, they had not been alone since that fateful night on the sloop. As much as the separation pained them, they now agreed it had been worth it. Dismissing their servants, they undressed each other with gentle, trembling hands, finding it easy to pretend this was the first time for each of them. Certainly, there would never be anyone else. When Terence was down to his drawers and Beth clad in nothing but a delicate chemise which left little to the imagination, he paused their seductive mutual discovery. Resting his chin on her head, he said a bit breathlessly, “I almost forgot. I have a present for you.”
“You’re all the present I need,” Beth purred, and reached for the top of his drawers.
He caught her hands, put them aside. “Not yet. You must see this. I promise you, you’ll like it.”
He broke away, delight
in the gift giving him the strength to part from his darling’s enticing allure. From under an embroidered cloth on top of a small table, he retrieved a large book, its leather cover embossed with ornate and obviously foreign designs.
“You didn’t!” Beth breathed.
“I had Jack bid for it at the auction,” Terence grinned. “I knew this day would come. I wanted it as my gift to you. I solemnly promise we’ll try them all,” he added, his grin turning tender, love shining not only from his face but from his heart and soul as well.
Beth struggled to hold back her tears, to find a voice which didn’t wobble so much she could not be understood. “I have a gift for you, too,” she choked out. “Though it may mean we have to postpone experimenting with every one of those pages.”
His mind frozen by overwhelming love augmented by urgent lust, Terence could only stare blankly at his wife, her words a puzzle he could not fathom.
Delighted to discover she had him in the palm of her hand, Beth laid the precious book of erotica on a nearby chair. “You may have noticed some of the positions were–ah–a bit strenuous,” she said, returning to wind her arms around his neck, pressing herself shamelessly against his straining flesh. “They might not be suitable, you see, for a bride who is enceinte.”
His whole body quivered. “You’re increasing?” Terence whispered hoarsely.
“Yes,” Beth murmured. “It would appear love has provided the needed magic.”
They stood, swaying together, as the sun set and the stars came out. Their tears mingled, falling unheeded to the thick carpet beneath their feet. Two bastard children, home at last.
~ *** ~
About the Author:
Believing variety is the spice of life, I also write traditional Regency, Romantic Suspense, Suspense/Thrillers, Mystery, Futuristic, and Steampunk. (Below is a list of books currently available.) Others, including the thriller, Limbo Man, will be coming soon. The Golden Beach books are not a classic series. Some have connected characters; others, only a connected setting, a very real Florida Gulf Coast resort and retirement community whose name has been changed because the residents would like to keep its uniqueness a deep, dark secret.
If you haven’t read The Sometime Bride and Tarleton’s Wife, you might want to go back in time and see how Jack Harding came to Tobias Brockman & Company (Tarleton) and the considerable anguish Beth’s friends, Cat and Amabel, endured during the Peninsular War (Bride).
I am always delighted to hear from my readers. I can be contacted at [email protected]. My website is http://www.blairbancroft.com/. My blog: http://mosaicmoments.blogspot.com/
Twitter: @blairbancroft
Blair’s books currently online:
O’Rourke’s Heiress
Love At Your Own Risk
Mistletoe Moment
The Sometime Bride
The Captive Heiress
The Courtesan’s Letters
The Temporary Earl
The Harem Bride
A Season for Love
A Gamble on Love
Lady Silence
Steeplechase
Tarleton’s Wife
The Golden Beach Suspense
& Mystery Books:
Orange Blossoms & Mayhem
Paradise Burning
Shadowed Paradise
O'Rourke's Heiress Page 34
