The worm turned crimson and spluttered, even as Reed escorted him out by the seat of his pants.
Reed took up the certificate when he returned. “What amused you about this?”
Ash lifted Briana into his arms. “Tell him your real name, Sprite. He will say nothing until you give permission.”
“My name is Ashley Briana Fairhaven.”
Lark knew by the look on Reed’s face that he saw the truth in the matching expressions of father and daughter regarding him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
On the afternoon before Christmas Eve, the children’s excitement reached fever pitch as they dressed for their Christmas performance.
Chastity had the rogues set up chairs for the audience and hang a curtain at the far end of the portrait gallery, beside the huge Christmas cedar hung with plump crimson apples, lavender balls, small gold pears, ribbon rosettes, pinecones, gilded chestnuts, and fine-cut snowflakes.
The audience sighed in appreciation as the curtain opened to reveal a nativity tableau. Matt, hooded, as St. Joseph; a blue-veiled Beatrix as Mary; Brandon Alexander as baby Jesus; Sabrina’s Caleb and Joshua, twin lambs in white wool; Mark, Luke and Micah, wise men all, in capes of silver, copper and gold.
Christmas filled Lark’s heart and tightened her throat.
Chastity read a short version of the nativity, then the heavenly hosts in parchment wings appeared. “Lully, lulla, thou little tiny child,” they sang, accompanied by Rebekah on her flute.
“To end our tableau,” Chastity said, “each of the children who wishes, may step up and tell us, in their own words what love means to them.” Chastity and Lark exchanged glances; and Lark knew that her new friend was attempting to help answer her question.
“Children,” Chastity said, “you may begin by saying, “Love is” then tell us what Love is to you.”
A moment of hesitation ensued before Luke stepped forward. “Love is Mama stealing us from the workhouse.”
Luke’s sister Rebekah followed. “Love is Papa braiding my hair.”
A speaking look passed between Reed and Chastity.
Damon rose next. “Nurse says love is when Mama and Papa nap in the middle of the day.”
Sabrina squeaked, and Gideon leaned close, whispered in her ear, and kissed her cheek.
Lark and Ash sat forward when Briana rose and curtseyed. “Love is being able to admit who you are. My name is Ashley Briana.”
Lark covered her mouth with a hand.
She had her answer. Love was the ability to be oneself…. Love was a kiss, a whisper, intimate moments, speaking looks, shared years, tears, hurts and sorrows, good times and bad, raising children, loving them, a reaching hand … Ash’s own now taking hers, clasping it, speaking without words, his eyes bright—as if he too had just recognized love for the first time.
Lark turned the concept over in her mind. The rogues and their ladies all shared love, but to hear them tell it, love had not come easy. They had traveled rutted roads, fought their destinies, and before they had accepted their fates and acknowledged love, to a one, they had hurt, then forgiven, each other.
Was that the final secret then? Forgiveness?
If so, she would be doomed, for Ash forgave little. He would never forgive a deception that forced marriage. No matter his grandfather’s will, he should have taken to wife a bride freely chosen.
Could a one-sided love inspire forgiveness for a deceit so vile? Did so dishonorable a cheat deserve the hand of forgiveness? Lark feared not.
Nevertheless, as she soothed her child with a stroking hand, she knew that before he or she entered this world, the truth must be spoken, however harsh the results.
‘Twas nearing midnight and all their guests had long since retired to their beds before Ash was able to take Lark, in her wine velvet pelisse, out in the horse-drawn sleigh. He gave the horses their heads, for they knew the moonlit path well after so many turns had been taken that evening.
“I feared Reed would bloody Myles’ nose,” Ash said, “the way you bloodied Hunter’s, when Myles took Peg in the sleigh.”
An owl hooted as they shushed slowly past. “I do not see why,” Lark said. “Pegeen is a woman grown.”
“Because Reed was afraid Myles would employ his roguish charm and Peg would succumb, of course.”
“But Reed is as dangerous as any of you.”
“Yes, so he knew what might happen.”
“What might? Stop the sleigh and direct your roguish charm my way, if you please. Let me see if I have the will to resist you.”
Ash regarded his pregnant bride twice before guiding the horses toward the trees. “Keep your blinders on,” he said to the matched pair as he took his wife into his arms.
‘Twas not long before they played their lavender-field game, hands in each other’s clothes, seeking all manner of sport, despite the nip in the winter air, and the iced white flakes drifting about them.
“I see what you mean about rogues and sleighs,” Lark said, sitting up, breathless, some time later. “I want what you want, but the babe makes it difficult in so closed a space.”
Ash grinned and rode the movement of their child with his palm. “Little Isobel is energetic tonight.”
“Little Zachary, you mean.”
He kissed her icy nose. “What say you to a nice warm bed?”
“Not yet, I like it out here. I want to do all the naughty things the rest of the rogues and their brides did.”
“What naughty things?”
Lark took off her gloves, moved the carriage blanket aside, and took his hornpipe out to play. She chuckled wickedly at his hiss of appreciation. “Now that I have it, what should I do with it?”
“I do not know that it will perform at all well. It has never been so stiff from the cold.”
“Let me warm it then.” Lark bent to do so, with her mouth, of all things.
Ash gave a shout of shock and pleasure. “Good God, woman? How did you know to do that?”
“The wives have been talking.”
“All the wives?”
Lark shrugged. “Some have more to teach and others more to learn.”
Ash thought he should protest the intimate exchange of information, but Lark did it again, closing her lips over him this time, taking him full in her mouth, and his every thought fled. He knew nothing but her lips on his sex, milking him, suckling him, as if she would devour him, and when he thought he’d expire from holding back, she took him into her hand again, as if to make him spill.
“You have to stop.” He covered her hand with his. “Lark stop, or I will ruin the blankets.”
To his surprise and delight, she loosed her bodice and removed her lace scarf to glove him. While he suckled her cool breast, she worked him with skill, and he found her center, and brought her pleasure with his own.
When they got back to her room, Ash found a sprig of holly on her dresser and picked it up. “What is this?”
“You were to show me what rogues did with their buttonhole sprigs, remember?”
Ash grimaced. “While once that might have seemed a fine notion, I do not think, under the circumstances—”
“What? Can we no longer speak of such things? What has changed between us except that we are more intimate? Is your reticence based upon the fact that your roguish ways involved your many conquests?”
Ash sighed. “They were naught but naked women wrapped in red ribbon,” he said, “a sordid past I would as soon forget.”
“So … tell me what you did then with the holly sprig?”
“I tucked them into the ribbon’s bow.”
“How disappointing. I thought surely you tucked them elsewhere.”
“Ouch.” Ash grimaced. “Have you not noticed, my love, how spiny holly leaves can be? Though now that I think on it, I might gently place that sprig between these lovely milky breasts.”
Lark stepped away and gave him a seductive pose in profile. “Can you not see me clad in naught but a red ribbon with a m
agnificent bow?”
Ash took her in his arms. “Do not mock what I hold dear.” He placed the sprig in her honey hair. “Perfect,” he said. “Though I have long since thought you beautiful, you are to my eyes, at this moment, only to be revered.”
“Oh no, never say so. Maternal perhaps, saucy yes, but never to be revered. I am your still your guttersnipe bride, make no mistake. Shall I be forced to beat you to remind you?”
“I had rather you took me to bed.”
“Yes,” she said. “Yes.”
They undressed each other there, beside her bed, but when they met in the center, and teased and kissed, as they were wont to do, their need escalated to a degree that could not be satisfied.
“We are a fine pair, are we not,” Ash said falling back against the sheets. “Me, hard as a pikestaff, you slick and pulsing. But you are too full and round with the babe to make it possible.” He kissed her hard naked belly. “Not that I am complaining, mind. I am awed and grateful.”
Lark closed a hand around him, though ‘twas not what either of them sought. Still, he spoke her name in the rush of frustrated pleasure at her touch.
“I want you inside me,” she said, “deep and deeper still. Nothing but you thrusting into me will do. Hard. I want you hard, and fast, Ashford.”
Ash regarded his raging manhood, aching to be gloved, as much as she ached to pull him in, and he shook his head. “I aim to please, Madam, but I dare not.”
“Let us try against the wall again?” she suggested. “Have we a sturdier footstool?”
“And take a chance on hurting you or the babe? I think not.” But Ash remembered what Buckston had said about meeting her half way and it gave him an idea.
“Lark,” he said, tossing aside the blankets and moving to the head of the bed. “I have an absurd notion that just might work. Do as I say and do not argue.” He knelt, and urged her to kneel facing him, closer, then closer still, her legs parted, her knees on either sides of his.
He placed pillows beneath her bottom to prop her up and position her, held her almost astride him, but not, her leaning toward, yet away, so as not to crush their child, but at exactly the right angle to receive him.
With a shout of joy, Ash gloved himself in his wife’s willing warmth, and while she arched and leaned back against his bracing arms, Ash moved in her.
“Do nothing,” he said. “I will do all the work and bear your weight. Just open for me, love. Welcome me.”
“I do, Ash. More than you know.”
Their passion turned wild and unruly. Her intense frenzy shivered his spine, as if she were driven, as if there might never be such another coupling, or another chance to express what they’d never dared.
For his part, Ash wanted more, many and more couplings, and he knew Lark did too.
Neither spoke the thought, not in words, but in the merging of their flesh they avowed it with eloquence, two as one, victorious, and secretly, shockingly, in love, for his part at least.
Ash barely acknowledged the insight when Lark cupped his ballocks and brought them against her, and he rejoiced in the sensation, and called her name with heightened rapture.
“I am flying, Ash, flying away from you, from myself.” She opened her eyes and looked full at him. “This is wonder. I cannot bear it—”
“Bear it, Love, a Christmas union always to remember, like naught in my experience. My wife, belly ripe with child, taking me so deep, I ride bliss to the stars. I never knew such wonder.”
“Make it last,” Lark said.
“You will kill us both,” Ash said on a gasp. Nevertheless, he slowed his pace, ground his teeth, and placed his hands between them to make her to rise again.
And after she reached her pinnacle, three, maybe more, times, Ash embraced oblivion, fearing nearly for their safety. But when he questioned her, some minutes later, she laughed, with the little breath she could muster, purred, and curled against him to sleep.
Unlike his ill-used and fatigued self, she woke looking radiant, as if she would take on the world, and her first Christmas Eve besides.
After nuncheon, while her guests either finished their personal Christmas preparations or spent time with their children in the nursery, Ash surprised Lark by urging her up the stairs toward her small sitting room.
Ashley Briana—for so everyone had taken to calling her since her announcement—arrived shortly thereafter wearing a claret velvet dress to match Lark’s own, Christmas gifts for both of them from Ash. Surprised and pleased as Lark to see it, Ashley Briana went to Ash, curtseyed, accepted his compliments and stepped into his embrace.
“Thank you,” she said simply, her least number of words at once since her first. Then she came to stand before Lark and fan her skirts. “Look Mama, I am almost as pretty as you.”
Christmas when you least expected it, Lark thought, but Micah rose and shouted, “No!” and Ash hauled the boy on his lap.
Ashley Briana placed her arm about Lark’s shoulder and raised her chin in challenge.
Micah ignored his sister’s gauntlet to regard Ash, as if he might like to make a similar statement.
Ash looked to each of the children in turn and reached for Lark’s hand. “Micah, Ashley Briana, only you can grant our most fervent Christmas wish, which is that you consider yourselves ours, equal in our love, with equal right to call us Mama and Papa.”
Micah threw his arms around Ash, Ashley Briana grinned, as if she expected as much, and Lark accepted her husband’s handkerchief.
Children’s excited voices drew them to the main staircase where the party congregated, including every one of the nineteen children. Alex and Chastity waited, each at the base of a stair rail, and those children old enough stood in two rows at the top.
“What the dev—ah, what Christmas tradition is this?” Ash asked, as he took his wife’s arm and they made their way down the stairs to the foyer.
“It is a new tradition, a banister race,” Alex said. “For children ten years and older. Hawk and Reed are to be the judges. Was there ever such a banister to be seen? Such a long low stair, the rail arched like a chair, a base that kisses the floor, as if the carver had such a sport in mind when he designed it. I tried it myself last night to be certain it was safe.”
“She did. After everyone retired,” Hawk said, “and more than once, I might add.”
“I say the winner gets to stay up and wait for Father Christmas,” said Rafe.
“There is no Father Christmas,” Harry said, repeating his litany.
“Is too,” Damon argued, and I am waiting up for him to prove it, whether I win the race or not.”
“So he thinks,” Alex said.
“Where is Bree?” Lark asked.
“She is … indisposed,” Gideon said, looking pale, culpable and shock-struck.
Alex raised a speaking brow. “I believe next year’s Baby Jesus has been chosen.”
Gideon lifted his two-year-old twins in his arms with the ease of practice and kissed each brow. “Poor Mama.”
Lark saw that Gideon loved his children, welcomed the notion of more, but felt frustration at his wife’s suffering. “Who has had the fastest slide so far?” she asked, changing the subject for Gideon’s sake.
“Micah,” Damon said, “but that is not fair because he has had weeks to practice.”
“Mama can slide down faster than me,” Micah said.
“You, Lark?” Chastity asked. “You have tested the banister as well? In your condition?”
“She slides all the time,” Ashley Briana said with pride. “Come, Mama, show us.”
“No,” Ash said, “Mama is not up to a slide today,” but Lark started up the stars.
“Larkin Rose Blackburne, I forbid you to slide down that banister. Think of the ba—” Ash regarded the eager listening children. “Larkin, heed me for once.”
Lark faltered in the stairs when a spasm tore through her, but she hated giving in to her husband’s orders. Not that she would slide, or do anything t
o endanger the babe, but she would climb the stairs if he ordered her not to. “Allow me to be the judge, if you please,” she said, turning to regard Ash as she shook off her discomfort, but when she made to take another step, a new pain cut her, doubling her in half, so she gasped, one hand to her splitting middle, one to her aching back.
“Ash, get her,” she heard Alex say from a distance, but Alex needn’t have bothered, because Ash was there, and Lark felt herself slide into the darkening security of his waiting arms.
“Continue the races,” Ash called back, but Alexandra followed him as he carried Lark up to her bed. When Ash put Lark down, Alex elbowed him from his wife’s side. “Get her some water. Is it her stays, do you think?” She freed Lark’s buttons as she spoke. “They may be too tight.”
Ash returned from the dressing room with a cup of water, feeling his chest clench with fear. “She never wore stays in her life. Is she all right? The babe?”
Alex pulled Lark’s dress free and passed a tiny amethyst vinaigrette bottle beneath Lark’s nose.
Lark roused, coughed, and turned away.
Alex took the cup of water from his frozen hand, held it to his wife’s lips and Lark drank. Ash had never been so grateful for anything.
He and Alex worked together to finish undressing Lark as she moved in and out of consciousness.
When Ash turned with her night-rail in his hand, he saw Alex staring at Lark’s petticoats. “What?” he asked.
Chastity slipped into the room. “The men have the races in hand. What can I do?” She saw the petticoat, looked at Alex. “Her labor has started.”
“Too soon,” Lark said, rousing and drifting away again.
Ash felt his heartbeat treble. “Two months early?”
Alex looked at him, but he needed no word of confirmation.
“No,” he shouted, not certain what he denied. He shook himself, regarded the women. “Tell me that whatever happens, Lark will be safe,” but neither Alex nor Chastity seemed inclined to make him that promise.
Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) Page 23
