Page 74 of A Deal with her Forbidden Duke
“You did not think it part of your inheritance? To be expected to be married?”
“Of course, I knew I would have to do something to continue my line. However, I suppose, rather foolishly, I had hoped to not have to worry about it. At least not for quite some time.”
Madeleine laughed quietly. “You envisioned yourself an old Duke, eyeing up the young debutantes when you realized you did not have an heir, and needed one.”
Alexander looked wounded. “Duchess! Do not speak so lowly of me.”
“I only jest,” she said playfully. “However… I imagine it is still a requirement. You have a wife; you must…” She swallowed. “You must have heirs, too.”
“Is having a child something you imagined for yourself?”
“I have not let myself give it a lot of thought,” she admitted.
Her fingers still ran over the harp, wondering how they forgot about playing and found solace in talking instead.
“Sometimes, as you say, it is a wound too tender to touch.”
“Why?”
“Why can you not speak about your mother?” she countered. “There is pain is discussing the things we think we cannot have.”
“Why do you think you cannot have children?” he pressed.
Madeleine sighed, dropping her hands from the harp. “Lord Kins—Donald was not a husband who wanted me,” she admitted. “Over time, I resigned myself to a lonely, solitary life. No children, no husband to warm my bed at night.”
“Did I not show you enough last night that you are mine, wife?” Alexander asked, a hard bite to his voice. “Did I not warm the chambers for you, or do you need a reminder?”
He stepped closer to her, moving away from the pianoforte to stand over her. She was suddenly aware of how close she was to the fastening of his breeches.
“You did,” she murmured, lifting her gaze. “But before that, I was partially glad other women kept my former husband away from me, so I did not have to endure his cold presence. But… sometimes I told myself, during those lonely nights, that I might have at least borne him a child so we might share a life together, even if the lord of the manor was absent from that life.”
Alexander’s gaze faltered as he brought over the pianoforte stool, sitting before her.
“Kinsfeld did not treat you well,” he said. “He may not have hurt you physically but there is pain of the heart. Pain that burrows deep, and darkens, and festers. You could have hardened from those cold shadows, Madeleine, but you rose from them. You burned your way out of them.”
“With only your help,” she whispered in a moment of vulnerability but Alexander was already shaking his head.
“No,” he insisted. “For I remember the spitfire woman who pestered the patrons of the Golden Hand. I remember the woman who insisted on investigating with me, not takingnofor an answer. I remember your defiance. For that, I do not believe it was only with my help.”
Madeleine’s heart softened as she gazed at her husband.
A swell of emotion rose in her but she did not have the urge to cry. She more felt inclined to slip onto his lap and take him inside herself as she had in the parlor but her body still ached from such strenuous coupling when it was a new thing for her.
“Thank you,” was all she could whisper.
“I am not your armor, nor your weapon,” he reminded her, casting her mind back to what he had told her at the previous ball.
That her jewels and dresses—theywere her armor.
“You may be my shield,” she teased.
“Perhaps. But I think you do not need one as much as you believe.”
Madeleine smiled down at her hands before lifting her head. “Do you wish for heirs?”
“I…” he hesitated. “I think we should play, should we not? I wish to show you somewhere later today, and I do not want to miss sunset.”
“Sunset is hours away.”
