“The cook from my father’s house in Savannah.”
“Oh, yes. The man who boils nothing. You of course realize you are starting a war with my cook.”
“Maybe Mrs. Pike will take to him, and they’ll fall in love.”
“Oh, perish the thought. Have you seen her, Victoria? Mrs. Pike was old when your Oglethorpe was a boy.”
“That’s true. Then maybe Mrs. Kevins will fall in love with him.”
“Who the devil is Mrs. Kevins?”
“You are hopeless. The housekeeper I hired for Wetherington’s Point before I left.”
“Oh, that’s right. I believe Fredericks mentioned her. But what makes you think this Sven fellow will fall for her?”
“Have you seen Mrs. Kevins, Spencer? She’s an attractive widow. Not that you are allowed to look at her.”
Spencer’s laugh rumbled pleasantly through his chest and vibrated against Victoria’s ear and cheek. She hugged him closer to her. Sometimes she felt she could not be close enough to him even if she were to snuggle down inside his skin. “I am ready to go home, Spencer, and have you to myself. I’m ready to start our life together. Our new life.”
“Yes, ours. Including our third little party.”
“I’m so very excited about the baby, Spencer.” She paused, hesitant to speak but deciding she should. “Do you … do you believe Miss Cicely, Spencer? I mean … what she said about the baby.”
Spencer’s hesitation had Victoria holding her breath. Finally, and with a lot less conviction than she would have liked, he said: “Yes, I believe her.”
Victoria knew better. Her mouth suddenly felt dry and her heartbeat seemed too slow and ponderous. “There is no birthmark, is there?”
Spencer inhaled deeply and then exhaled slowly. “No.”
Victoria lay still a moment, absorbing this. She realized she wasn’t surprised by his answer. Without lifting her head, she angled her face up until she could look into Spencer’s. “We can’t tell Miss Cicely.”
“Absolutely not.”
“But the baby then, Spencer, we don’t know—”
“We do, and it’s mine. If you persist in arguing this point with me, I shall jump out the window over there and end my torment.”
“Yes, Your Grace.” Victoria smiled. “You know, I ought to pinch you hard over this. I ought to be very angry and throw things at you for tricking me and her like that.”
“As you wish. Only, please don’t aim for my head. I am already quite addled as it is. But, Victoria, did you tell her about the birthmark in one of your trips out there?”
“No, I didn’t. I was as surprised as you were when she mentioned it.”
“Hmm. Then I wonder how she knew to even mention it. Very strange.”
“Why did you make up the story of the birthmark, Spencer? I suppose I can understand … but it seems so mean to me. Although you really had every right—”
“Victoria, allow me, darling. I don’t know where it came from, the birthmark. It just came out of my mouth in anger. I suppose I wanted to see if in the face of such a definite way of knowing for certain who the father was or was not, you would recant your story and confess that you knew the baby was Loyal Atherton’s. But you didn’t. You didn’t hesitate for a moment to say you still believed it might be mine. After that day, we didn’t see each other again until I arrived here. And then, with Miss Cicely saying the baby was mine, I … came to believe. I don’t know how else to state it. Except to say I believe it.”
Though she was very moved by his loving testimony, Victoria wasn’t quite finished with him. “Hmph, well, I began to suspect, you should know, when Edward didn’t know about a Whitfield birthmark. As close as he is to you, he would have known.”
“Yes, Edward. A veritable thorn in my side, as always. But, Victoria, can you forgive me for putting you through all that?”
She smoothed her hand across his chest, loving the feel of him. “I already have. We were different people then, Spencer. Only a matter of weeks, I know, but such … awful and wonderful weeks.”
“They were. But they showed us how to make a marriage, didn’t they? And all that is important to me now, Victoria, is I love you and the child you carry. He is mine as much as he is yours. Now, that said, we will not have this discussion again.”
So very imperious he was—and absolutely astounding in his grace and nobility, two mantles he wore so easily. “Yes, Your Grace,” Victoria said dutifully, her heart overflowing with love for this magnificent man. “And speaking of Edward and marriage, can you believe him with Lucinda Barrett?”
“Good Lord, could the man be more tedious? He sits and stares at the girl, a vacant expression on his face, and rubs her hand and even forgets to eat, unless made to do so.”
“He’s in love.”
Spencer shook his head. “I never thought he would be. I suppose it’s just as well he’s going to bring the girl along and present her to his mother. At least Miss Barrett’s family is not accompanying us home. Still, I shudder to think what Edward will be like as a husband.”
“He’ll be wonderful. Lucinda will see to it.”
“Having found myself in the clutches of a Savannah woman, a woman as beautiful as a magnolia blossom and as true as any oak that ever grew, I can attest to the fact that he will, indeed, be whipped into shape in short order.”
Smiling wickedly, feeling the languid stirrings of desire deep inside her, Victoria slid her hand down her husband’s chest, down his belly … lower … “Ah, you poor man. Has it been as bad as all that for you?”
A gasp and a husky chuckle accompanied Spencer’s capturing her hand, which he raised to his lips and kissed. “I find your forwardness shocking, my dear duchess.”
Victoria grinned seductively. “Do you, Your Grace?”
“Yes. Pleasantly so.” With one swift, muscled movement, Spencer pulled Victoria’s naked and willing body on top of him.
Feeling his growing, hardening response to her, trapped as it was between him and her, Victoria looked deep into Spencer’s black and glittering eyes and responded instantly, heatedly. Holding herself up with her palms braced against his chest, she nipped his neck and jaw and chin with tiny biting kisses. “With that look on your face, Your Grace, you look just like a pirate, do you know that?”
“I should,” he murmured, all the while rubbing and kneading her buttocks, lending to the act a deep hunger that spoke of pleasures to come. “My ancestors were reputed to be pirates.”
Victoria pulled back, flinging her long hair over her shoulders with one graceful motion of her head. “Really? Pirates in your bloodlines? I am shocked. And quite … excited by that. Kiss me.”
A wicked grin captured his mouth. “I am happy to oblige, madam.”
Holding her to him, Spencer performed a neat flip and, in an instant, had her under him on the mattress, her long hair tangled in his arms and around her face. Chuckling, Spencer helped her move it to one side. Victoria adored the delicious weight of him atop her, and how his body fit so perfectly with hers, and how he always took such great care to be tender with her. Even now, he braced himself with his elbows on the bed and stared down into her face, his own suffused with an expression of deepening desire for her. “I love you, Victoria. Something … magical happened inside me when you came into your parents’ parlor the day I arrived from England.”
She gasped. “You felt that, too? Oh, Spencer, I was so afraid I was the only one. I saw you, and I knew. I just knew I was supposed to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you, John Spencer Whitfield.”
Spencer lowered his head and claimed her mouth. The instant his mouth touched hers, a surge of stinging desire shot through Victoria, centering itself low in her belly, where it pulsed and throbbed. As Spencer’s kiss deepened, as his tongue dueled with hers, Victoria squirmed against him, eager for him to claim her wholly. But Spencer held off entering her. He broke their kiss and slid down her willing body, kissing and suckling her skin as he went. Her swo
llen breasts, no longer sore and tender, ached for his attention, and he obliged, taking first one budded nipple into his mouth and then the other. His swirling kisses made her ache for him to kiss her elsewhere.
As always, he knew her thoughts, her secret desires … and lowered himself farther down her body until he was positioned between her legs. Victoria opened herself to him in a great act of trust … and invited him in. Almost reverently, Spencer bent his head to take her woman’s place in his mouth, kissing her there with swirling lashes of his tongue until she cried out his name and felt so very hot all over, on fire inside with the rippling undulations of her satiation, unable to move … and then he pulled himself up and over her, finally, finally sliding himself inside her until he was completely sheathed in her love-slicked tightness.
“Oh, Spencer,” she murmured, tossing her head from side to side. “Oh, please…”
“Whatever you want, my love.” His whisper was guttural, possessive. “For all your life, Victoria … whatever you want.”
She wrapped her arms and legs around him, arching her hips against him. She looked deep into his eyes. “Take me, Spencer. Make me yours.”
“You have been mine since the first moment I laid eyes on you, Victoria. And I have been yours.” And then, he began to move against her …
As her husband’s passion seized her and lifted her to levels of joy she had never known existed, as his lovemaking removed from her heart and soul any awareness except of him, Victoria’s last coherent thought, as the heat within her began again to build and build, was: Should she tell Spencer that Miss Cicely had also told her, privately, that Victoria carried not one baby … but two? And that this other baby was a girl child … one Victoria had promised her and Jenny and Jefferson she would name Sofie?
ST. MARTIN’S PAPERBACKS TITLES
BY CHERYL ANNE PORTER
Popping the Question
Mad About Maddie
The Marriage Masquerade
Wild Flower
Captive Angel
Seasons of Glory
Jacey’s Reckless Heart
Hannah’s Promise
Prairie Song
PRAISE FOR CHERYL ANNE PORTER
POPPING THE QUESTION
“A delight to read—don’t miss it!”
—Heather Graham
“A frothy romantic confection … energetic prose and snappy dialogue.”
—Publishers Weekly
MAD ABOUT MADDIE
“A cute, funny story … Cheryl Anne Porter makes a great splash with her first single title, contemporary release.”
—Interludes
“Filled with humor and sexual tension … Mad About Maddie is a quirky love story that will make readers smile.”
—Writers Club Romance
“Porter is better known for her historical romance, but readers will be delighted with her humorous take on modern-day romance … Guaranteed to have the reader laughing.”
—Romancereviewstoday.com
“Readers will be mad about Cheryl Anne Porter’s delectably humorous contemporary romance.”
—Reviewers Book Watch
CAPTIVE ANGEL
“Porter keeps readers on the edge of their seats.”
—Publishers Weekly
“What a tour de force. Captive Angel grips you from the get-go (first page) and never lets go. Cheryl Anne Porter at the top of her form. This is a top-notch romance; not to be missed.”
—Romantic Times
SEASONS OF GLORY
“A must-read for Western lovers. It made me want to buy the first two.”
—Affaire de Coeur
JACEY’S RECKLESS HEART
“This book is dynamite. Porter is a powerhouse of a writer.”
—The Belles & Beaux of Romance
HANNAH’S PROMISE
“Plenty of action and suspense, great humor, wild passion. This one is definitely a keeper.”
—The Belles & Beaux of Romance
TO MAKE A MARRIAGE
Copyright © 2004 by Cheryl Anne Porter.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eBooks may be purchased for business or promotional use. For information on bulk purchases, please contact Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department by writing to [email protected].
ISBN: 0-312-98281-X
St. Martin’s Paperbacks edition / January 2004
St. Martin’s Paperbacks are published by St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.
eISBN 9781466872585
First eBook edition: April 2014
To Make a Marriage Page 37
