Must Have Been The Moonlight

by Melody Thomas

  “There she is,” dowager Lady Anne said, and holding out her hand, beckoned Brianna forward to her needlepoint circle.

  Brianna dipped into a curtsy. “Your Grace.”

  “I daresay, let me have a look at James’s new bride.” The woman on the dowager’s left peered over her spectacles at Brianna. They were all dressed in black. “She’s a pretty thing,” Lady Chalmers reassured the dowager. “Quite frankly, the prettiest gal here. Shy, though.”

  “There’s not a shy bone in my granddaughter’s body,” the dowager replied, sniffing at the thought.

  A cheer went up over the crowd behind Brianna. She turned. The polo match was in full swing. Players, mallets, and panting horses collided noisily.

  “Have you watched a game of polo before, Lady Ravenspur?” Lady Chalmers asked.

  The thunder of horses rolled down the field as another sharp cry went up in the crowd. “I believe the object is to hit the ball with precise blows through the opposite team’s goal,” she said.

  “You are looking piqued, dear,” the dowager observed.

  “I’m a little tired,” she admitted.

  Three lorgnettes rose to pass over her. “Are you perchance with child, my dear?”

  An untimely blush covered her entire person. Brianna was aghast as much by the disconcerting question as she was by the possibility. The three older women looking fondly back at her thought it natural to discuss such things in public, as if the virility of the Duke of Ravenspur had been something of a wager between them. Squirming in her slippers, Brianna resented the unspoken notion that he might have done his manly duty by her. The knowing glances of others felt almost voyeuristic.

  “I am…not with child, your Grace,” Brianna said, prepared to flee the cheeky threesome. She was nursing a splitting headache.

  “Did your husband tell you that we’re all old friends here?” Lady Bedford asked Brianna. She sat in the circle of ladies behind her, and Brianna turned.

  “Some better than others.” Lady Halsford smiled judiciously at Brianna. She wore a wide straw hat tied at the chin with a red bow. “Your husband acquired more than his share of feminine interest. Some”—she took half the woman present into her gaze—“who must now be kicking themselves for letting him get away.”

  “You all have known each other a long time?”

  “We’re a lot older now, with children the same age we were when we used to swim in that pond across the field.

  The same rivalries,” a younger woman said, glaring at Lady Bedford, with her perfectly manicured hands and tightly nipped waist. Bold stripes accentuated her elegance.

  “And thank goodness for Caroline and James, without whom this family would be terribly boring and scandal free,” Lady Bedford simpered behind a colorful fan of Chinese art. “She is still chasing after him.”

  “It’s about time you found your way over here, you young whelp,” the dowager said to someone behind her. “You have been neglecting your bride.”

  “Not so, Grandmother.” Michael wrapped an arm around Brianna’s waist. His chin pressed against her temple. “You’ll have to watch out for her sharp tongue, amîri,” he said to her. “She’s been known to flay a flounder.”

  “I’ve been known to flay bigger fish than that.” The dowager grinned wickedly. “Just let them swim in my way.”

  “Will you sit awhile and talk, James,” the diminutive gray-haired woman next to the dowager requested. “Tell us how someone like you snagged such a comely bride as this. You don’t deserve her, young man.”

  “Why, Lady Chalmers, I see that I have to work to win your affections all over again.”

  Brianna had expected Michael to leave the dowager’s side. Instead, he spent the next half hour with her hand tucked beneath his arm, talking to his grandmother. Others meandered over, and soon people sought him out. Brianna watched him. But not as others did. The notion had dawned on her in slow degrees, that there was little left of the man he’d been in Cairo. Her desert warrior had turned into an aristocrat.

  Standing beside him, Brianna knew only that she was in love.

  When Bedford arrived the conversation changed from the weather to the major arrests in London a few weeks ago.

  “I was so worried when I’d found out that my husband was in charge of that entire investigation.” Lady Bedford threaded her arm around her husband’s. “I was certain he would be killed. I vow, I still have nightmares over the whole incident.”

  “It is all over and done with,” a woman consoled her. “The culprits were caught, and those who survived will hang. We are all quite safe.”

  “Cross has resigned from his post,” Lord Bedford said, drawing her gaze from Michael.

  “Really?” Michael said. “Isn’t that abrupt?”

  “He even turned down the accommodation offered for his services rendered to the crown these past few years. A knighthood. He doesn’t feel it is right that he receive the honor for merely doing his job well.”

  Bedford turned to Brianna. She was unaware that she’d moved within the circle of Michael’s arms. “Cross said that he’d hoped he could visit you during the time he had left in London. Something about collating your work for a book.”

  “Did Cross say where he was going?” Michael asked.

  “He wants to travel,” Brianna said. “He told me in Cairo that he wanted to retire. At the time, I thought he meant he was retiring from the museum not the Foreign Service department. I imagine he thought my response completely unsophisticated.” She looked at Michael. “He was the one who told me that you were leaving Egypt. Now, I understand why he had that information.”

  “It’s rumored that he purchased a wedding trousseau for some young woman,” Bedford said. “I assume that he is returning to Cairo to marry, since she didn’t come back with him.”

  Nearby, the roaming musicians struck up a tune.

  Cross wanted to marry, she thought. It was very logical that he found someone else in Cairo. But that didn’t change her uneasiness.

  “You don’t appear to be enjoying the event,” Michael said against her ear, leaning nearer to put a glass of cider in her hands.

  Brianna looked out over the countryside, where an array of colorfully striped tents dotted the landscape. Pennants flapped in the breeze. The Ravenspur carriage sat across the polo field among others.

  “It’s very beautiful here.”

  Another roar went up over the crowd. Horses thundered past. “A game of maharajas and khans, devised by gentlemen and played by thugs,” Michael said with a smile as he watched the horses collide.

  “Maybe next year you should play,” she suggested prettily.

  And everything caught her then, how Aldbury had become her home.

  Amber joined them. Pulling Michael away, she walked him to the edge of the polo field, where the game had ended and the horses were being led away. Amber had been politicking for a pony these past weeks. Caroline joined them, and together they talked to one of the field attendants.

  “Alas, it’s always the wife who is the last to know,” Lady Bedford lamented behind Brianna. “Just look a little closer,” she said when Brianna turned on her, ready to do battle. “Look at Amber. Have you ever wondered why she looks the image of your husband?”

  Michael arrived home late from Wendover. “Is my wife here?” He handed his cloak to the sleepy-eyed butler.

  “Yes, your Grace. She is upstairs.”

  Michael slowed to light a cheroot, striking a match to bring it to the tip as his gaze went up the stairs. He was restless and moody. Furious. He hadn’t even known that Brianna had left the grounds until he looked up and saw the carriage gone. He took the stairs and started to turn toward his chambers when he caught sight of the lone figure standing at the end of the gallery. A wall sconce bathed her in shadows. But Michael recognized her pale silhouette.

  As if sensing his presence, Brianna turned her head. As they each stood at one end of the gallery, neither moved.

  He drew deep
ly on his cheroot before grinding it out in a dish beside the window, then closed the space between them.

  Without turning toward him, she said, “You would make a poor assassin.”

  When he didn’t answer, she sought him in the shadows behind her. Wearing a pale wrapper, she’d left her hair to hang freely over her shoulders.

  “I’m sorry for embarrassing you, Michael. I shouldn’t have left.”

  “I’m not Amber’s father,” he said quietly, watching her shoulders let go of some of her tension. “A physical impossibility, as Caro and I never engaged in the kind of activity that would produce a child.”

  “I know that. Amber is the image of her father.”

  Michael looked up at the portrait in front of them. A thick wave of hair framed his brother’s face, while his eyes were gray and gleamed with humor, as if he’d found the entire lordly impression painful. It was an image of his brother that he’d forgotten.

  “Nor did I have an affair with Caroline in London,” he quietly said, in an effort to allay the rest of her doubts.

  “I know that, too.” Tears welled in her eyes. “You would never do that.”

  He slipped out of his jacket and laid it over her shoulders. “I refuse to be responsible for your catching a chill.”

  She laughed aloud. “It would serve me right.”

  “I’m sorry that you had a rough time today,” he said.

  She leaned into him. “I didn’t have a rough time.” Her voice was muffled against his shirt. “I like your grandmother.”

  “Brianna…” He finally pulled her back to look into her face, then wiped the tears from it with the heel of her hands. “Then what is the matter?”

  “Oh, Michael.” She buried her face in her hands and wept. “I’m going to have a baby.”

  The words, so contrary to anything he’d expected to hear, took a moment to settle. His eyebrows lifting in mild astonishment, Michael looked down at the dark head of hair pressed so tenderly against his heart. He could only stare at her in disbelief. His beautiful, young, independent wife was going to have a baby—one of those squirming, helpless, pink-skinned, noisy creatures that only a parent could adore.

  Suddenly, he laughed.

  Brianna was simplicity and innocence. She was as complicated as a maze. He wanted to shake her for scaring the life out of him.

  “It’s not funny,” she said. “Don’t you dare be so smug.”

  His hand went possessively to her abdomen. “You mean that I’m going to watch you grow huge and waddle around here like a duck?”

  “Oh!” She slapped away his hand, but he pulled her struggling into his arms and sat in the chair behind him. “You joke.”

  “Because I am happy, Brianna.”

  “I will not be displayed like some mounted animal his grace has brought back from the savage interior of North Africa.”

  He tilted her chin. “I guarantee, no one here will mistake you for a mounted beast. Mounted perhaps. But not a beast.”

  Brianna gasped, and as if for the first time smelled the ale on his breath. “You’re…intoxicated.”

  “I can’t vouch for my state. But I can for my passions.”

  Lowering his mouth, he stilled her head with his hand at her nape, and tenderly kissed the soft yielding lips. “Maybe I haven’t made it clear how I feel. But my heart beats in my chest for you.”

  He loved her.

  He loved her laughter. Her stubbornness. The melodrama of her emotions. Even with all the complicated facets and flaws of her personality, she’d proven herself tactile as his duchess, in more ways superior to his own adjustment here because she was enduring his family and his friends, her greatest strength her singularity. She tamed wild little girls with the same capacity for love that she gave all things, no matter how blighted. She was like a bright blue flame that he cradled in his palm that gave color to his existence.

  And now she was going to have his baby.

  “I’ve been remiss in not fitting you with my ring.” He rubbed his thumb over the delicate bones of her fingers. “One that will match the Ravenspur gem you’ll receive on our first anniversary.” Michael cleared away the screen of dark hair that had fallen over her shoulder. “It’s purple…” he admitted, wishing it was a sapphire. “Amethyst.”

  “I’ve never had a purple wedding ring. Or imagined that there was such a thing.”

  He smiled into her eyes. “Are you insulting my family’s colors?”

  “Your family’s colors are purple?”

  “And black,” he declared. “A very indubitable banner at medieval tournaments where the Ravenspur liege spent many an hour trying not to get knocked onto his arse. Legend claims that the realm feared the purple and black, for its representatives never lost a challenge.”

  “And to think that my ancestors beat yours up with sticks.”

  He laughed aloud, his response unexpected, even to him. His fingers wandered lightly over her waist and he traced his thumb over her navel, meanwhile looking around him at the walls filled with the faces of his ancestors. How many times as a boy had he walked this corridor in awe of those who looked down at him from the centuries? Now, by some twist of fate, his legacy would be Aldbury’s future, and even he had to appreciate the capricious twist of fate handed down to the black sheep of the family. He wanted to be a better man than his father or his brother.

  “I love you, amîri.”

  His lips leisurely caressed hers, contrasting to the harsh tempo in his chest. Brianna caught his face in her hands and kissed him fiercely.

  He missed very few things from his old life.

  But he did miss the moonlight on desert sand, the jasmine-scented sunlight in Brianna’s hair. He only knew that he’d been too long alone in his life, and found that he never wanted to go there again.

  “Aye.” He chuckled. “Worse has happened to us both.”

  Chapter 23

  Brianna found Chamberlain at breakfast the next morning studying his copy of the London Times. He was engaged in an article and didn’t hear her enter. Having deliberately sought him out for many reasons this morning, she drew in a deep breath. “Lord Chamberlain?”

  “Your Grace.” His gaze went over her attire.

  She was wearing a bright apple-green gown trimmed with gold cording. The gown was neither shy nor demure. The color and style was simply who she’d always been. Brushing at the velvet on her skirt, she sat across from him and removed her gloves, her face serious.

  “Would you care for java, your Grace?” the footman asked.

  “Yes, please.” Brianna eagerly accepted a cup, noting with surprise that someone had made her favorite white brew. Astonishment lifted her gaze.

  “I hope we got it right, your Grace,” the uniformed butler standing next to the sideboard replied.

  Brianna dropped her nose to the cup. “I haven’t had a cup of white java since leaving Cairo.” She drank as if it were heaven.

  “You have a letter, your Grace.” A footman interrupted. He bowed over her with a silver tray. “It arrived special courier just now.”

  Noting at once that the seal belonged to Alex, she quickly opened the letter. Heart racing, she read the hastily written petition. “My sister-in-law has gone into her confinement early. She’s sent for me. This is from Lady Alexandra’s physician.”

  Brianna looked outside the glass doors at the rain. Darker clouds sat on the distant horizon.

  “Is everything all right, your Grace?” Lord Chamberlain set down his fork.

  “I don’t know,” she whispered, turning the letter over in her hand. Why didn’t Alex write her? “I need to get a message to my husband at once,” she said after a moment.

  “I believe he returned to Wendover, your Grace,” Chamberlain said. “He’s due back tomorrow. But I’ll send a rider.”

  Michael had left before she’d awakened that morning. They had spent all night in perpetual bliss, making love, alternating moods of teasing and seriousness as they talked. She only kne
w that no matter what lay between them, they would climb the hills and survive the gullies together.

  “Perhaps you can ask that he meet me at Lady Alexandra’s home.”

  “I can do that.” He ordered the carriage brought around.

  Brianna started to stand, but hesitated. The carriage would not be out front for at least an hour. “I’m aware that I’ve been stubbornly resistant toward you,” she said, her eyes brilliant on him. “Tell me that I need something, and I’ll prove that I don’t. Truly, it’s one of my worst traits. That, and my ability to ostracize myself by my own thoughtless actions. It was the reason my family threw me out of England.”

  He buttered his toast. “Ah, yes. Something to do with a book on the plight of—” Clearing his throat, he set down the knife. “I believe you know the piece to which I am referring. The dowager told me,” he explained, to her horrified look. “She has a copy in her library. Naturally, I consider it disgraceful that you young aristocrats manage to find little else to do with your time than turn your noses up at propriety.”

  “I’m hardly an aristocrat, my lord,” she said, very nearly insulted, yet not so much so that she sniffed in disgust. “I certainly wasn’t one when I wrote that book, anyway.”

  “What is it you wanted my help with, your Grace?”

  “I have some mail that I wish to be detained.” Brianna folded her hands around the cup. “Or shall I say handled.”

  “Does this have anything to do with your visits to the village on Thursdays?” He sat forward and observed her with keen eyes. “It seems the roof to the school will be repaired by midsummer. You are a preponderant supporter of education, I see.”

  A flush stole over Brianna. “I do what I can.”

  Chamberlain withdrew an envelope from his pocket. “Lord Ravenspur has not insisted on seeing the mail that comes into this house. But I kept this one aside.” He slid the envelope across the table. “This estate has had a recent influx of cash from a banking investment.”