Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby)

by Annette Blair

  “The same happened to me,” Lark said. “Except that I had fallen asleep and thought I must be dreaming.”

  Ash sat on her bed. “You’ve been sleeping so much because you’re carrying our child.”

  Lark smiled tremulously, uncertain of his reaction, and her eyes filled. Angry or not, she was foolishly pleased to be sharing this moment with her husband, not that there seemed any joy in him.

  Rat’s whiskers, she wanted this to mean more to him than the securing of an inheritance. “Fancy that,” she said. “It seems I have fulfilled my end of our bargain.”

  “How long have you known?”

  Presented with the question she dreaded, Lark raised her chin. “Do not fret; a delay in your knowledge makes no matter to your place in your grandfather’s will.”

  “Why did you not tell me?” he asked, so in control, she might have imagined his fleeting grimace of pain at her words.

  “I was waiting for the right time.”

  “Last night, as I made love to you and spoke of having a babe of our own did not seem like the proper time?”

  If they had been making love, Lark thought, ‘twould have been the perfect time. She turned on her side, facing away from him, because she did not want him to see her tears.

  He slipped into bed behind her and wrapped his arms around her. “Do not, Larkin. I know increasing women tend to weep, but do not be sad. Be happy. You have made me so.”

  She rolled to face him. “Of course you are happy. You are now your grandfather’s heir.”

  Ash raised a chiding brow and wiped her tears with his fingertips. “I am happy because none of you were hurt, not Briana, nor you, nor our babe. You were foolish, Lark, and gave me a fright.”

  “Briana needed me.”

  “The termagant, she should have sat in that tree until I arrived. ‘Twould have done her good to cool her heels a bit.”

  Lark did not suggest that he take a good look at the height of that particular horse chestnut at any time soon for he might become as pale as when he heard her news.

  She thought he might kiss her then, but someone knocked at her door, so he rose to answer it.

  Briana and Micah stood framed by the door, contrition clear on their fresh-scrubbed faces. Ash let them in, and they stepped to her bed as one, like salt and pepper twins, one raven-haired, one flaxen. “We’re sorry,” Briana said. “For leaving the blanket while you slept and for climbing the tree.”

  “So you both climbed it, did you?” Lark stroked the lazy curl from Briana’s temple while she raised a chiding brow her nephew’s way. “I am happy you were, neither of you, hurt. Your ankle is not hurt, Briana?”

  “Not like yours, but I am missing a shoe.” She raised a stockinged foot, wiggling her toes.

  Micah sniggered.

  Lark caught his collar and tugged him closer. “And you,” she said. “Why did you wait so long to speak to us?”

  Micah kept her from combing back his hair by claiming her hand. “I did not mean to make you sad,” he said. “Where I grew up, they strapped me when I “blathered.” He shrugged. “I stopped. When I got here, I waited, and when I saw I might talk safe, I did not know how to start.”

  “I am sorry I put you with that family,” Lark said. “I did not know they were unkind. Did they treat you very badly?”

  Micah shrugged.

  Lark brought him down for an embrace, swallowing against his untold pain.

  “I remember you,” he whispered against her hair, and she wept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Four weeks after Lark fell from the chestnut tree, she ran out of patience. Since the event, Ash had kept to his own bed by night, while acting as if she should be wrapped in cotton by day. Though Doctor Buckston visited a week after her fall, and pronounced her fit and healthy, Ash continued to avoid her bed.

  Was he honoring her foolish stipulation that once she got with babe he should stop coming to her? As a man of honor, he must be, and yet, ‘twas not his choice, for his body seemed to rise to the ready whenever she stepped near.

  As a matter of pride, she tested the assumption and discovered he rose at the least provocation—the brush of a breast, a whisper at his ear, an intimate reference. She had even tripped and ended in his lap the other night, almost by accident, and took heart in the hard throbbing way she affected him.

  She had given him every chance to make his needs known to her in some way, but he kept his peace, so now she must take matters into her own hands.

  Lark placed the milky-green jar of seduction oil on her bed-stand and remembered everything Alexandra taught her about seduction. She learned her lessons well: she had an ache at the base of her spine. Women in her condition often did. She needed her husband to knead the ache while employing the soothing liniment from the jar. She could not reach the spot, not without intensifying her pain.

  First, of course, she would need a soak in a hot bath.

  Lark chose this evening because she saw enough water boiling in the kitchen to fill the huge copper slipper bath.

  In preparation, she donned a confection of a dressing gown, a diaphanous pale rose silk, trimmed in a deeper rose velvet at the plunging neck, but silly her, she forgot to don its matching night-rail beneath.

  When she heard Ash dithering in the dressing room—he often dithered, especially at baby-making, which she found satisfactory—Lark listened for the splash that meant he was stepping into his bath, before making her entrance.

  As she waited, she pulsed in anticipation just knowing the moment was near. Lord, she had missed his attentions this past month, though God knew, she had made good use of her time. Had anyone ever slept this many hours?

  Ash’s eyes grew large when Lark wandered into the dressing room, her hand at the base of her aching spine, as if she sought surcease from pain.

  When she noticed him, she started, which took no skill, for his roguish handsomeness astonished her anew. His hairy, water-slick chest, near enough to touch, made her fist her hands so she would not … yet.

  She must appear truly startled by the sight of him, while he regarded her as if he had never seen her before.

  Lark knew her dressing gown clung to her rounded belly and revealed the larger crests of her milk-full breasts, for she had begun truly to increase in recent weeks, and Ash had not seen her naked in some time.

  “Motherhood becomes you, Larkin,” he said, as she stood over him. “You fairly glow with good health.”

  Lark caressed the scope of their child, soothing the babe as well as herself. “If not for my back, I would feel rather brazenly fit.”

  He sat up. “Are you unwell? What is wrong with your back?”

  “‘Tis nothing. It simply aches, which Alexandra and the doctor say is normal for a woman in my condition. I thought a soak would do me good when I heard the tub being filled and foolishly hoped ‘twas for me.”

  Lark suspected from the sound deep in her husband’s throat that he fought some inner battle. He looked set to invite her in, and knowing him, he must be in full physical arousal. But as a gentleman, he might, under the circumstances, suggest that he leave first.

  Poppycock, she was taking no chances. Lark unfastened her sash and allowed her dressing gown to fall the slightest bit open. “May I join you?”

  Ash groaned inwardly when his neglected manhood leapt to vital and unfortunate life as his saucy bride dropped her wrap to the floor and bared her beautifully-rounded body for his awestruck admiration.

  Lord, but she was breathtaking in her maternity.

  As if that heady tease were not enough, she stepped into the tub, splashing water mercilessly over the sides and onto the floor, and sat right down to join him in his bath. She smiled as if ‘twere an everyday occurrence, tangling her legs with his, silk to sinew, soft to hard … maternal contentment oblivious to raging need.

  Ash spared a lamentable thought for his deliriously happy manhood—all dressed up with no place to go.

  Or could he be blissfully
mistaken? “Did a seductress regard him across the breadth of his bath? Did motivation drive her innocent pose? Loose hair of sunlit gold cascaded to his bride’s alabaster shoulders. Heavy breasts rode the waves that lapped at them—making his mouth water, his tongue jealous—finding its level upon her swollen rosy-ripe nipples.

  Did the siren who held his gaze call to him in the silent way he imagined? “Is this not a bit … unorthodox?” he asked with a last grasp at self-preservation.

  “You mean soaking in a hot tub in my condition? Not according to Alexandra.”

  “And she is the expert, is she, after one child?”

  “She is the only expert I know, though she garnered her advice from Sabrina who has borne five, you understand.”

  “Of course. Forgive me. It is just….”

  Lark fished about beneath the water, skimmed his calf, his thigh. “What?” she asked.

  Ash about died of anticipation. “You are my wife.”

  “I know.” She raised the soap like a trophy and grinned. “I have a babe in my belly to prove it.”

  The crux of the matter, Ash thought, shifting to accommodate his thickening manhood.

  What would she do if he claimed her, which he was daft enough to hope she wanted? What would she do if he pulled her toward him and impaled her now, this minute, here in their steaming bath?

  After a month of celibacy, Ash near spilled at the thought.

  “My back feels better for the heat,” Lark said, purring like a lazy cat, head against the tub, a smile about her heart-shaped lips, her cheekbones high, his hornpipe higher. “Will you rub it for me, down low?”

  Ash started. “Excuse me?”

  “My back. I think it would feel better if you rubbed it while the hot water soothed it. Will you?”

  Ash released a shuddering breath. “Turn about, then.”

  Just like that, Lark scooted his way and turned her back on him, too quick and willing by half. Did she have seduction in mind, this bride who’d shot him in the arse the first time he made to go near her? Was she attempting to lure him back to her bed, despite the stipulation she might also regret, please God?

  Ash spread his legs to accommodate her, her back against his front, and he began to make soothing circles at the base of her spine with his fingertips. As he did, Lark moaned, and squirmed, and rubbed against him, until he thought he might burst, but who cared? This was the closest he’d gotten to Lark, to ecstasy, in weeks, and he wanted more. He wanted everything of her that he could get.

  Her complacent sighs became a trial of sensual pleasure. Memories flooded Ash, her riding him, him riding her, learning him in the lavender field, measuring his rod against a parsnip, the parsnip coming up short.

  Ash grinned as he kissed a bare shoulder. She tilted her head so he could better reach her neck.

  With his free hand, he began to stroke her midriff while he continued soothing her back. She relaxed against him, aware surely of his hard reaction.

  He cupped a breast and she raised it, as if for his delectation. Taking that as a sign, he fingered her nipple, and she failed to stifle a throaty moan of rapture, stiffening him the more. Ash went for broke—he’d always been a gambling man—and removed his hand from her back to play her at her center.

  When he breached her, and knew, as well as she, that she wept there to receive him, she turned her head to regard him, her gaze open, knowing. “Your hornpipe wants playing.”

  Ash opened his mouth over hers, swallowed her grateful sob, and tasted the salt from her tears in the kiss. He had not been wrong. His wife wanted him as much as he wanted her.

  He played her as he kissed her, until she reached a climax of incredible duration and proportion, judging by her keening song of joy.

  “Hush,” he said. “Grim will come looking to see what I need.”

  “Then I will send him away, for I know what you need.” She rose like a mermaid from the sea, wet and glistening, and turned to stand before him, proud in her expectancy, offering the gift of herself.

  Ash stroked her belly, kissed her, every inch, laving and adoring her with his lips and tongue, awed anew that his child grew, there, beneath her tight white skin and fast-beating heart. Then he placed his mouth at her woman’s center and made his pearl-bright fairy sing again.

  Before he sensed her wicked intent, she swooped and impaled herself in a rush, swallowing, and capturing his manhood within her tight silken glove.

  “Have mercy,” he said and became her willing slave. He devoured her mouth, skimmed her every crest and hollow, in the same way she stroked and stoked him.

  When she closed a talented hand around his ballocks, he thought she would bring him to climax, for he had never been so rushed to frenzy, yet he knew he should not be surprised at any sensation his Larkin Rose evoked.

  He begged her not to move, thanked the gods for her seduction, and kissed her until he could not keep from moving. And when he did begin, he could do no more than help her milk him—there was no other way to describe the earth-shattering coupling.

  Which of them led the charge was arguable, but his money was on Lark. Ash cared not, he knew only that he had found the portion missing from his soul for a long month’s time and that he would not be severed from her again.

  She reached her peak three times more before she let him spill his seed, leaving him laughably grateful and damned-near dead.

  A full five minutes passed before either of them realized the water had chilled.

  Ash stepped from the bath first and helped her out, wrapped her in towels and carried her to his bed.

  “Why not my bed?” she asked when he joined her.

  “Because I have lain here too many nights alone to bear. I craved the feel and scent of you here. We will change beds on a whim, shall we, for we are bedmates, you and I, come what may, from this day forward?”

  “You admit that you missed having me in your bed?”

  “Not as eloquently as you admitted as much.”

  Lark tugged on his forelock. “I wish you would make a try at eloquence.”

  Ash chuckled, leaned on an elbow, and toyed with her rosy nipples. He even toyed with the notion of telling her he loved her, but feared the possible rejection, or breach, that a lone revelation might engender. “Let me admit that when you stepped into my bath, I prayed, like I have never prayed before, to the angels and saints on high, that you came to me with the express purpose of seducing me.”

  Lark bit his ear. “I admit … nothing.”

  Ash chuckled and relaxed in a way he had not for weeks. “Do you know how many nights I sat beside your bed and watched you sleep? I knew such joy that you carried my child, but such loneliness at our resultant separation.”

  Lark bit her lip and Ash knew that as a woman of her word, she would not, after all, admit to anything, not even to missing him. “What about your stipulation that I stop coming to your bed now that you are with child?” he asked, unable to leave it unspoken.

  “You have just declared my stipulation null and void,” she said. “I make no quarrel with your pronouncement.”

  “I honor my contracts, Madam. If you wish such a separation, you will have it, but you must tell me so.”

  “And will you take my every future request at naught, if I rescind this, my first?”

  “Your first was made at pistol-point, you must remember, though I’d as soon not, at which juncture you carried through with your threat. Bearing that in mind, and elsewhere, which remains scarred and tender, I shall never make the mistake of taking any of your requests at naught.”

  Lark seemed to ponder some high mathematical equation then she nodded, as if satisfied with her account. “I did not tell you about the babe, for I disliked the notion of you leaving my bed. There. Make sport of me, if you will.”

  Ash crushed her to him, pleased he’d brought her that far. “I am sorry you could not bring yourself to share your concerns, Lark, though I understand, for trust has always come hard to me as well.” He hope
d the confession would set them on a path to trust, but as he awaited her reaction, he saw that his sated bride had fallen asleep and likely heard not a word.

  Six weeks before Christmas, ten triple truckle beds arrived, which Lark ordered placed in the nursery, and adjoining bedchambers, for the rogues’ children and their assorted nursery maids.

  Ash watched astonished as the beds were carried inside. “Good God,” he said. “How much did all this cost?”

  “We will pay a quarter the cost. Each of the rogues with children will. Those are community truckles. We are like to take turns at house parties, Alex said, and ‘twould be foolish for us all to make the investment, so the truckles will be sent to whichever house hosts the next gathering.”

  “Alex is a quick one, but you’re catching up, by God.”

  “She had to be quick, did she not, carrying the burden of her entire family while Hawk was off fighting Boney?”

  “Yes,” Ash said, kissing his wife’s brow and stroking his growing child with a possessive rush. “You are kindred spirits, I don’t doubt, which is why you like her so.”

  “She is my first and best friend.”

  “Take care that you and your friend do not plan us out of house and home. Do not mistake me, for I am looking forward to Christmas, but as it stands, I must slaughter enough livestock for beef and pork to feed them all, and likely sell one of our few remaining paintings as well.”

  “Save the painting, for I have a notion about feeding them. Early each morning, you must make up a hunting party. We will eat whatever you shoot. Just take care to bag a variety—goose, swan, hare, pheasant, partridge … whatever you will. You should fish the lake as well.”

  “Will you require boar and venison too?”

  “For boar’s head?” She grimaced. “I pray you will not. As for venison, that would be lovely.”

  “And supposing we have ill luck in our sport?”

  “If we eat bread and butter or toasted cheese, if our pudding have more flour and suet than meat, then so be it, for we will all be together for Christmas.”