Page 55 of The Seductive Love of a Lady
His eyebrows lifted. ‘It was crass of me to judge you badly for that.’ He caught hold of her fingers and kissed the tips. ‘I knew it then, but I saw his hand on you and it triggered something. It was wrong of me.’
‘In future may we always be honest with one another? I loved you from that first night too. You fascinated me. You were the only man there whenever you entered a room. I wish you had come forward and dealt openly with my father and told him the things you just told me, he would not have kept us apart. He always promised me my husband would be my choice. It is why John added to my dowry so my choice need not be restricted by a lack of money.’
‘Your father would not have wanted a bastard for a son-in-law, especially not one with a rake’s reputation.’
‘My father will not care if you tell him you love me. He only wishes me happy – and you make me happy.’
He kissed her fingertips, then his breath hot on her skin, he said, ‘I will tell him.’
She kissed his cheek. ‘You are kind and he will see it,’ she pressed a kiss on his brow, ‘and good – when you wish to be.’ She smiled. ‘Yet most importantly you are mine and I love you, and I will never be unfaithful to you. Nor will I share you, Andrew.’
‘When I took you away, when your father and your brother came to get you, I hated that you believed them and not me, and I was jealous of your love for them.’
‘I was hurt by what they said because I love you. I did not want to believe what they said, but you did not say a single word to deny it.’
‘My faults are legion. I shall apologise to your father.’
Mary kissed his lips, and said against them, ‘I love you.’
His fingers splayed in her hair and he kissed her for a long while, their tongues dancing.
When they drew apart, she snuggled down, curled against him and rested her head on his shoulder, listening to the bees gathering honey from the clover.
Then she remembered, she had not been wholly honest with him yet. ‘Andrew…’
‘What, Mary?’
She lifted his hand to her stomach. ‘This. You are to be a father. I am carrying your child.’
He sucked in a sharp breath of shock, and his hand lifted as he sat upright, leaving her to fall on her back on the grass, laughing.
‘God in heaven!A child!Mary!’
His eyes shone like amber.
‘Would you have told me if we were apart?’
Mary smiled. ‘Yes. When I worked out how. Though, I would not have spoken with joy. But now we can be happy.’
‘Our child…’ His hand tentatively touched her stomach.
There was no visible change to her body, yet inside her a new life had been created. It was being nurtured.
‘And we will love it,’ she said.
Moisture glittered in his eyes, shifting emotions playing with his expressions, and tears ran onto his cheeks.
‘We will be a family.’ He smiled and wiped the tears away. ‘Is there an earthquake somewhere? I feel as though the ground is rocking.’ He looked into her eyes. ‘I promise you, I will love our child and they will know everything good that I did not.’
She sat up. His words held the strength of vows.
‘I feel as though something has broken inside me,’ he said. ‘It was hard, dark and cold. Now it is warm and light.’
He braced her face between his palms, wiped the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, and kissed her fiercely.
A gong was struck, the sound ringing through the air. It announced that dinner was about to be served.
She pulled away. ‘Oh goodness, do you think they have been waiting for us?’ She stood. ‘Do I look a state? Have I grass in my hair?’
