Astrid’s husband squeezed her hand before turning his gaze on Douglas. In the two years Herbert had been married to Astrid, Douglas hadn’t seen his brother so much as touch the lady’s hand once.
“You, Douglas, are head of the Allen family,” Greymoor said. “What would your decision be regarding the child?” The use of the conditional was not lost on Douglas, who heard the question as: What would your decision be, had you the authority to make it?
For there was no Allen family worth the name. Perhaps there never had been.
Douglas opted for honesty—no point in abandoning that course at this late stage.
“I want no responsibility for any child, ever.” A man who could not sense a murderer in his own family dared not assume such responsibility. “If this child is a boy, and Greymoor had the raising of him, it would relieve me of having to deal with the succession, and that would be the answer to a prayer.”
Fairly’s expression went carefully neutral, but Greymoor and Heathgate exchanged a relieved glance. Astrid’s head was bowed, but Douglas could see she, too, had been prepared for him to fight on this.
Fight them, with what? Funds, truth, and honor resided on their side of the ledger.
“I guess that’s settled then,” Greymoor said.
“Douglas should at least be the child’s godfather,” Fairly interjected musingly. “Appearances, you know.”
Douglas stiffened, resisting the notion he should have anything to do with a child others were better suited to nurturing, but he found Fairly staring at him with particular intensity.
This idea of Lord Fairly’s was a challenge, and a chance to make some small reparation for the harm Douglas’s family—and Douglas—had done to the child’s mother. Moreover, the light in Fairly’s eyes guaranteed Douglas would be given no opportunity to harm the child.
“Very well,” Douglas conceded. “I shall be a devoted, though lamentably distant, godfather.”
“My wife will stand as godmother,” Heathgate added thoughtfully. “That should serve well enough. And if it comes down to it, Amery, even if the child is a girl, you might petition Privileges to have her offspring inherit the title. Your family has had a run of… bad luck, with respect to its male line. In our case, a similar lack of surviving adult males resulted in tremendous leniency when it came to imposing the barony and earldom on Andrew.”
“That,” said Douglas slowly, “is an encouraging thought.” Though leniency tended to show up where coin had been bestowed, and Douglas had nowhere near Heathgate’s resources.
“Are we finished then?” Greymoor asked. “Anything further from anyone?”
“Yes,” Astrid said firmly. “Something needs to be said, and I will be the one to say it.”
Douglas braced himself for the tirade she was due to unleash, the invective he and his brothers had earned, the scathing denouncement she would ring over his head. To feel the lash of her scorn and rage would be a relief, provided any feeling at all penetrated the numbness enshrouding him.
“Douglas,” Astrid said, tears filling her eyes, “we are all so sorry for your loss. For your losses…” She went to him and put her arms around him in a swift, fierce hug.
He was so stunned, so unable to comprehend the gesture, he simply sat for a moment, blinking rapidly. He might have eventually mumbled his thanks, but he was saved from worse mortification by a servant announcing the arrival of the magistrate. The gathering broke up, but Douglas only knew Fairly shoved a drink in his hand and got him back to his room before he embarrassed himself.
Twenty-one
Andrew stared at his wife, incredulous. “You are leaving me?”
She shot him a pitying look and continued tossing clothes into the valise sitting open on the chest at the foot of her bed.
“For God’s sake, why?” Andrew yelled. “You said—”
“Yes?” Astrid gave him that same look, laced with mild curiosity. With only mild curiosity.
“I said,” Andrew began again, lowering his voice, “I said I loved you. You seemed to take that sentiment to heart.”
Her eyes narrowed, but she merely tossed another pair of shoes into a trunk made of dark wood, like an old coffin.
“And you said I was a decent enough sort of fellow…”
Apparently, those were not the right words, if right words even existed. She slammed the lid on the valise and folded her arms, her mulish expression speaking volumes.
“You said…” Andrew turned his face toward the ceiling and closed his eyes, the pain of this parting lancing through him and lodging in his chest. “You said I was… honorable, and good, and… loving.”
“I did say that, but I don’t think you heard me, Andrew Penwarren Alexander.”
Oh, she was mad, all right. Use of his middle name meant matters were serious with Astrid.
“I heard you.” He shifted to stand before her, but using the advantage of his height was not appropriate somehow, so he sat on the bed and put himself below her eye level.
“I heard you,” he repeated more softly.
Astrid latched the trunk, the little snick of the locks sounding like manacles closing around Andrew’s heart. “Well, Andrew, what are you going to do about these words you heard from me?”
“What am I going to do?” Begging came to mind, but some stray male intuition suggested this was not what she sought from him.
She pushed past him to go to the wardrobe, and began pulling dresses off their hooks. “You are hopeless, Andrew, and I wash my hands of you.”
“You can’t,” he said, panic clawing at him. “I won’t allow it.” Inspiration struck. “You love me.” He seized her gently but firmly around the middle—she’d long since lost her waist—when she attempted to reopen the valise, and caused her to drop her load of dresses.
“Damn you. Take your hands off me,” she spat, plucking at his fingers.
“You love me,” Andrew growled now, his hold more firm. “You can’t just say those things, Astrid, not to me. A woman who loves her husband doesn’t leave him.”
“And a husband who loves his wife,” Astrid said in low, vicious tones, “doesn’t leave her.”
“I’m here, for God’s sake,” Andrew said, holding her more firmly still. “I’m not going anywhere without you.”
“You went to bed without me.”
He went still, insight rendering him mute and paralyzed. He’d made the Dreaded Worst Mistake; he’d committed that single unforgivable blunder every male with sense worries about. Not in his words, apparently, but in his deeds, or in what he’d failed to do.
“I see,” he said, turning Astrid loose and locking the door. As he crossed the room back to Astrid, he picked up the pile of gowns on the floor and tossed them over a chair. Then he stood before his wife, directly before her.
“I was trying,” he said in clipped, frustrated tones, “to be considerate of my exhausted, sleeping wife. The same wife upon whom murder had been attempted, if I recall. The wife who had borne the burden of a series of uncomfortable revelations from me just before weeping her heart out on my shoulder.”
Astrid’s gaze remained fixed on that shoulder.
“I awoke alone,” she said in a small, broken voice. “Again, Andrew. I fell asleep in your arms, and I awoke alone, alone. I can’t be married to you like this, I cannot.”
“And I,” Andrew said softly, “don’t want to be married to you like this either.”
She raised tortured eyes to his, and he feared—feared—what might come out of her mouth.
“For God’s sake.” Andrew’s right hand moved as if he would touch her, but then dropped back to his side. “Astrid, don’t go, please. I love you, and I want to make love with you. Always. I don’t want you to wake up without me—I don’t want to wake up without you. I don’t ever want to wake up without you again.”
He le
t her see into his soul. He let her see the vulnerability, the hope, and most of all, the love she’d found in him. He loved her, and a man who loved and who was loved was not at liberty to wander his existence away on foreign shores.
It was the hardest truth he’d faced, but he bore her scrutiny without flinching.
“Say it again, Andrew,” she said softly. “If you mean these words, prepare to say them often for the rest of your life.”
For the rest of his life…
Relief coursed through him, and joy—and lust—and love.
Most especially, love.
“You, Astrid Alexander, are the home my heart has longed for, and I would be the home your heart has craved as well. I will be the father of your children and your partner in all that life holds in the years to come.”
More poetry welled up, but he fell silent as Astrid studied him at interminable length.
“You want more children, then? Children of your own?”
“Every child you bear will be a child of mine,” Andrew said, because it was a simple truth, easily given. “If God wills, we’ll have a large, happy family.” Though based on the way Astrid’s lips turned up at the corners, her will would have something to do with the size of their family too.
Her smile died aborning, and Andrew felt as if his heartbeat suspended with it.
“You must not make love to me as another farewell, Andrew. Not ever. I cannot bear it.”
He sat on the bed and steered her by the hips to stand between his legs. She’d put her finger on a truth. All of his lovemaking with her had borne an element of parting, of loss, and acceptance that she would soon be telling him good-bye, because good-byes were all he’d thought he deserved.
“I could learn from you how to make love as something other than a farewell, Wife, but you must be patient with me, for I can be slow to learn the most important things.”
She wrapped her arms around him, bringing him the flowery fragrance of her person and the sweeter scent of welcome. “We will learn together, Husband, and be patient with each other too. We will be patient with each other quite often.”
***
Three months later
“Andrew?”
Three pairs of male eyes riveted on Felicity’s smiling face.
“You can go up now, and congratulations on the birth of a fine, healthy daughter.”
Andrew was out the door like a shot, leaving Heathgate and Fairly to call for the champagne, while he bounded up the steps two at a time.
“What are you doing out of bed?” Andrew asked, closing the bedroom door quietly behind him.
“I have spent the past six hours getting in and out of the bed, Andrew,” Astrid replied. “Unless you are prepared to share the bed with me, I have no intention of wasting any more time there.”
“That’s all right then,” Andrew said, slipping the sleeve button from his right cuff.
“Andrew, what are you doing?”
“If I have to spend the next week in bed with you so you’ll take care of yourself properly, then into bed I go,” he said, freeing the second sleeve button.
“Stop that, Husband. I was being ridiculous.”
Astrid was whole, she was scolding him, and he could breathe for the first time in weeks. She could be as ridiculous as she pleased. Andrew crossed to the window seat where Astrid was perched and sat down beside her.
“Are you all right?” She looked tired, but exultant too, with a luminous quality that was more than the late-afternoon spring sun on her hair.
“Andrew, I am…” She leaned on him, and Andrew felt his heart turn over with joy. “I am in awe…”
“May I see her?”
“No,” Astrid teased. “You have to wait until she’s eighteen, at least. Of course you may see her.” She carefully unwrapped the tiny bundle she held cradled in her arms, and a small, sleepy face emerged. The baby sported a golden-blond peach fuzz of hair and a tiny rosebud mouth.
“She’s perfect,” Andrew said, stroking a finger down the baby-fine cheek.
“Here.” Astrid tucked the blanket back around her daughter—their daughter—and handed the child to Andrew.
Andrew accepted the baby, accepted the implicit trust with which Astrid had handed her over—to him. “I am overwhelmed by her… by you.”
Overwhelmed was accurate, Astrid thought, smiling at her husband and daughter. In the past few months, Andrew had struggled to become a more communicative, trusting husband. For him, it was hard work. He tried Astrid’s patience, and she tried his, bludgeoning him with sentiment and argument and a relentless pursuit of his honest involvement in their marriage. Sometimes they got it wrong, and each had to retreat and reconsider, until the other could be approached again more thoughtfully, or more overtly.
But more and more, they got it right. And as the weeks had gone on and the winter had turned to spring, their love had blossomed like the verdant, well-tended land they lived on.
Andrew wrapped one arm around his wife and kept the baby cradled in the other. “I feel an instant willingness to slay dragons and smite griffons and otherwise take on any challenge for our daughter. This is amazing…”
“Were you concerned?” This was, after all, not his biological child—whom he could not take his eyes off of.
“A bit.”
Which meant he’d been terrified.
“Me too,” Astrid said, resting against him again. “I love my nephews and my nieces, but I wasn’t at all sure I would immediately take to someone who did her level best to split me in two on her way into the world.”
Andrew kissed the baby’s cheek, the tenderness of the gesture threatening to tear Astrid’s heart asunder. “You were concerned I might not be smitten with her at sight?”
“Of course not. She’s a pretty girl, Andrew. You didn’t stand a chance.”
“I suppose not,” he agreed, a smile spreading to his every feature. “What shall we call her?”
“Well, we are not calling her Herbertia, or anything ridiculous like that. No H names at all, if you please. I’m surprised we didn’t consider this before—babies do need names.”
“What about Lucy?” Andrew suggested, snuggling his wife and daughter to him more closely.
“For the light she brings? I like it—today is the equinox, isn’t it?”
“It is. Maybe Lucy Elizabeth?”
“I can live with that. I am not sure, however, I can live with waiting three months before starting on the conception of her first sibling.”
“But wait we shall,” Andrew said, smiling ruefully. “And what did you mean her first sibling?”
Astrid kissed him on the cheek. “I meant exactly what I said. Exactly.”
They lasted nine weeks.
Acknowledgments
First, I would like to acknowledge my dear mama, whose initial experience with childbearing involved the procedure now referred to as a manual version. As if that challenge weren’t enough, her obstetrician had not wanted to upset his patient, so he kept his suspicions about twins to himself. Mom did not learn she was carrying twins until the nurse told her, “Keep pushing, Mrs. Burrowes. You’re still in labor.” My brother Dick showed up three minutes after John’s arrival in the world, though both have ever known how to make a noteworthy entrance.
Second, thanks are due in another direction. When I wrote this book, life was handing me a few lemons. Beloved Offspring’s efforts to leave the nest were not going well, my law practice was reeling from the effects of some nasty, awful cases, and the economy seemed to be doing much of its contracting right in the neighborhood of my checking account. I still had the means to regularly ride my horse, Delray the Wonder Pony, a 17.1 hand Oldenburg gelding who was and ever shall be one of the Good Big Things to happen in my life.
I’d show up for my riding lessons feeling like crap, eighteen chi
ld abuse cases in my head, my dear daughter in distress I could not help her with, and no relief in sight. My instructor, Todd Bryan, would not ask me about that stuff. Todd’s a smart guy (and a helluva horseman); he could probably see the alligators riding right behind me on Delray’s croup. Instead, he would ask me “How’s the writing going?” and between playing with flying changes in our warm up, and eventually getting down to business at the trot, all the bad things would go away, and the stories and the ride would take their place.
In every riding lesson, I was reminded of two things. First, in Todd, his wife Becky, and the other folks at the barn, I had friends who knew what I was dealing with—riding buddies who honestly did not care if I ever learned to sit the trot (and I still haven’t, not properly), provided I kept showing up for the ride. Second, the writing was going well.
When I write, I’m happy. I needed my friends, my horse, and my riding to remind me of that, and they did. And when the writing goes well, much else in life takes care of itself.
May you have riding buddies, and may your writing always go well.
Read on for an excerpt from
Douglas, Lord of Heartache
Coming January 2014 from Grace Burrowes
and Sourcebooks Casablanca
The child was small, helpless, and in harm’s way.
As Douglas Allen drew his horse to a halt, he absorbed more, equally disturbing facts:
The grooms clustered in the barn doorway would do nothing but mill about, moving their lips in silent prayer and looking sick with dread.
A woman—the child’s mother?—unnaturally pale at the foot of the huge oak in the stable yard, was also likely paralyzed with fear. The child, standing on a sturdy limb of the old tree, thirty feet above the ground, was as white-faced as her mother.
“Rose,” the woman said in a tight, stern voice, “you will come down this instant, do you hear me?”
“I don’t want to come down!” came a retort from the heights of the oak.
Douglas was no expert on children, but the girl looked to be about five years old. Though she stood on one limb, she also anchored herself to the tree with a fierce hold on the branch above her. When she made her rude reply, she stomped her foot, which caused the branch she grasped to shake as well.
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