Rogue for a Night

by Jenn Petersen

  Lucinda smiled at her daughter. “Come in, darling. Meet your brother.”

  Margaret came into the chamber, her younger sister at her side. While Margaret looked like Lucinda, Rage could see so much of Nicholas, and thus Anthony, in the younger girl. Once Stone had asked him if the resemblance troubled him, but that was something he had never even considered. He actually liked that Georgie favored her father. It kept him alive in the girls’ lives, as did the stories Nicholas and Lucinda told. He would never steal that from the children.

  Margaret hesitated at the end of the bed and Rage tilted the baby down so the girls could see him. Immediately, Margaret’s worry seemed to fade. “Oh, he’s so small. Like my dolly.”

  “Oh dear,” Lucinda laughed from behind him. “I see a round of dress up in my poor son’s future.”

  Margaret and Georgie both laughed before Georgie reached up and touched the baby’s hand gently. “I like him,” she declared.

  “Good,” Rage said, and though he laughed he felt true relief. He had never expected the girls to be anything but accepting, but he was so glad that his son would be accepted by his family, welcomed as he had never been as a child. That was a gift. “Then we’ll keep him.”

  “Give me a kiss now,” Lucinda said. “And then see if Auntie Jane needs any help before you two go to bed.”

  The girls did as they had been asked, first kissing Lucinda and then Rage. Margaret led her sister to the door, but there she stopped. She turned back and looked at him with contemplation in her little girl eyes.

  “I love you,” she said, frank and matter of fact. “I’m glad we are a family.”

  With that, she and Georgie skipped from the room, their giggling voices echoing in the outer chamber as they found Aunt Jane.

  When Rage turned back to his wife, he found renewed tears on her cheeks. And to be honest, he felt them in his own eyes.

  “I think Margaret said best what I feel in my heart,” Lucinda whispered. “I love you. And I’m so glad we are a family.”

  “Yes,” Rage said as he leaned forward to kiss his wife gently. “As am I.”