James stirred again, turning his face to the side, his nose brushing the ruffles of John’s shirtfront. He grasped a handful of the ruffles, still asleep.
John looked down, staring at the tiny, perfect fingernails of his son, and something hot and fierce unfolded inside him. A powerful feeling of wonder and awe and love that filled the last crevices of the hole in his soul.
“I’ll take care of you,” he said in a savage whisper. “Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll see that you have an income of your own, so you won’t ever feel desperate or scared. And I’ll be right there to see that you don’t squander it on stupid things. No getting into debt. No deep stakes gambling. And about the women…”
He considered that for a moment, then sighed, giving in to the inevitable. “I know I’m going to lose if I even try to reason with you on that one.” Leaning closer, he pressed a kiss to his son’s brow and murmured, “We won’t tell Viola. She might get upset about that.”
If she comes home.
The thought whispered in his mind like a shiver in a cold room. If Viola didn’t come home, what would he do?
That hideous feeling of helplessness returned, the same thing he’d felt looking at her in the Wild Boar. He could tell she hadn’t been all that impressed by his little speech. He couldn’t even remember what he said, but it hadn’t been witty, and it hadn’t been clever, and it sure as hell hadn’t been poetic. And there she’d sat, staring at him in complete astonishment, as if he was off his chump for even daring to follow her and talk about love after what had happened.
John knew there was nothing he could do to make her come home. Nothing he could say to undo the past or right his wrongs. Nothing. She wouldn’t come back to him. After all, he was the one who had always done the walking away. No surprise if she turned the tables. He deserved it.
But desperate men did desperate things. He knew that better than anybody. Being a desperate man, he prayed. “Come home, Viola,” he said, holding his son and praying hard. “Just come home.”
Viola pressed her fist to her mouth, listening. Oh, how she loved this man. Always had. Always would.
She moved into the doorway and saw him sitting by the cradle. When she looked at him with the baby in his arms, her heart began to ache with a joy so sweet, she could hardly breathe. All her life she had dreamed romantic dreams of having the honest love of one good man. It wasn’t a dream anymore. It was life. And it wasn’t the life she’d imagined at all. It wasn’t easy, and it wasn’t bliss, and it may have been paid for with tears and pain, and everyday was a lesson in learning to just get along. But it was real and it was precious and it was hers. From now on she was hanging onto that life and this man with everything she had.
She made a sound from the doorway, soft enough not to wake the baby, and he looked up. When he saw her, he didn’t smile. He didn’t move. He was as still as an image in a painting by Reynolds, with the sun washing over him and the child in his arms. She walked into the room. “I came to make up,” she said.
“You did?”
She nodded. “It was that speech,” she said, deciding not to tell him she’d never intended to leave. She’d tell him someday. Maybe. Or maybe not. “It was the most incoherent, rambling, beautiful thing I’ve ever heard.” She knelt by the chair. She put her hand on his knee. “I love you, too, by the way.”
He gave a short, disbelieving laugh. “I can’t think why.”
Viola looked at her husband. Reaching up, she brushed back the unruly hair at his temple and smiled. “Because you keep tricking me.” She began to laugh. “You silver-tongued devil.”
Epilogue
“I want to go up.” John turned at the end of the long gallery at Hammond Park, chewing on his thumbnail as he came back toward the stairs. “Deuce take it, why can’t I go up?”
Anthony poured a glass of port and brought it to him. “Husbands are not allowed,” he said for perhaps the twentieth time.
“Stupid,” John muttered, “since we’re the cause of it all.” He raked a hand through his hair. He hated this waiting, this helplessness. He was so scared, he thought he was going to throw up.
His brother-in-law held out the glass. “Have another drink.”
“I don’t want another drink. How can you be so damned calm about this?”
Anthony sighed and set the port on the table beneath a painting of the tenth Viscount Hammond, John’s grandfather. “I know what you’re feeling, believe me. And I’m not calm. I’m just doing better at hiding it than you are.”
A cry floated to them from the nearby stairs, a cry of intense pain, smothered almost at once by the slam of a door. That cry tore his guts apart. “That’s it,” he said, and started for the stairs. “I’m going up.”
Anthony hauled him back. “You can’t.”
“Christ,” John muttered, and started pacing again. “It’s been half the night already. How long does this take?”
“Forever.”
Footsteps sounded over their heads, but another hour went by, and no one came. John’s fear deepened with each turn he took down the gallery, and he nearly came apart when he heard another cry of pain from his wife echoing down the stairs.
“I’m going up. She needs me.” Anthony made a grab for him, but he evaded it and started up the stairs. On the landing, he encountered Daphne coming down.
Nothing in John’s life had ever felt like this moment. He stopped. “Viola?”
“She is well,” Daphne assured him. “I came down to tell you that because I thought you might be worried.”
“Worried?” That was so patently tame a description of how he felt that he almost laughed at her.
She put a hand on his arm. “Come,” she said, and started to guide him back down, but he resisted. “John,” she said with quiet firmness, “you cannot help. You will only get in the way. Come.”
He reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled back down the stairs.
“This sort of thing takes a long time,” Daphne told him. “I was in labor for two days.”
“God!” Two days of this and he’d go mad.
Daphne patted his back in a soothing motion. “She’s doing well, truly.”
They returned to the gallery. “Everything is all right,” Daphne told Anthony, and went back upstairs.
It was another hour, another eternity, before Daphne came back down again. He was at the far end of the gallery when she called his name. “John?”
He came at a run and was halfway to her before she spoke again. “Now you can go up.”
“Is she all right?” he cried, racing past his sister-in-law.
“Yes,” she answered, following him as he started up the stairs.
He had to see that for himself. He took the stairs two at a time and entered the bedchamber, racing right past Dr. Morrison. John took one look at his wife, at her pale face and disheveled hair, and he skidded to a halt just inside the door, his heart in his throat.
She looked so tired.
“Viola.” He walked over to the side of the bed, and as he did so, he saw the baby in her arms, a red-faced, wailing bit of a thing with an absurdly tiny nose.
“Viola,” he said again, because he couldn’t think of anything to say but her name. He sank to his knees next to the bed.
Her hand reached out, touched his hair. “What happened to that silver-tongued devil I married?” she murmured with a tired, throaty chuckle.
He shook his head violently, seized her hand in both of his and kissed it. What the hell was a man supposed to say at a time like this? There weren’t any words.
“John,” she said as he half rose and kissed her cheek, her hair. “I’m all right. The baby’s all right.”
“Sure?”
She nodded and bit her lip, looking at him. Then she spoke. “We have a girl.”
“Agirl?” Stunned, he sank back to his knees and looked at the baby again. He stared, watching her as her fierce, angry wails died away into hiccoughs and she nestled into the vee of Viola’s o
pen nightgown, seeking her breast. She’s hungry, he thought.
A girl.
He leaned closer, studying the baby in the dim lamplight, and it was then that he saw the tiny mole at the corner of her mouth. Joy welled up in his chest like a wave. He began to laugh. A girl.
“She’s gorgeous!” he cried. “By God, she is. She looks just like her mother!”
“Oh, stop,” Viola said, almost laughing.
“She does.” He turned to Daphne, who was standing by the door with the doctor. “Doesn’t she?”
Daphne smiled. “I believe you are right.”
“Of course I am.” He turned back to his wife. “Look,” he said, touching the baby’s head, smoothing the damp, fine, barely visible blond fuzz that passed for hair. “She’s got your hair. And that little mole and, by heaven, she’s got that pretty, pretty mouth.” He laughed again. “Her eyes are the color of pond mud, I’ll wager a thousand pounds on it.”
This time Viola did laugh. “We won’t know for a while. All babies are born with blue eyes. We’ll have to wait and see.”
John didn’t need to wait. He looked at his beautiful baby girl and he looked at his beautiful wife. Yes, he thought, eyes like pond mud, hair like golden sunlight, and a heart big enough to love even him. And he had a strong, healthy son sleeping upstairs in the nursery. Damn, how did an irresponsible, reckless scapegrace like him ever get so lucky?
Copyright
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE MARRIAGE BED. Copyright © by 2005 by Laura Lee Guhrke. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition February 2007 ISBN 9780061737077
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Dedication
For Judy Guhrke.
You went the extra mile for me
in so many ways during
the writing of this book.
I love you, Mom.
Contents
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Prologue
Lucia had always been a good liar. Whether this was a good thing or a bad thing depended on one’s point of view. Lucia thought it a very good thing indeed when she was facing a palace guard at midnight, with tobacco and money in her pocket and plans of temporary escape in her head.
“I couldn’t sleep, so I wanted something to read,” she said, and gestured to the book in her hand. A book, Lucia had learned long ago in her days at French finishing schools, was always a convenient explanation for nightly wanderings. And her father, Prince Cesare of Bolgheri, had one of the most extensive libraries in all of Europe. “I was on my way back to my rooms.”
“Your rooms are that way,” the guard explained, pointing in the opposite direction from where she’d been headed.
She glanced back over her shoulder, then returned her gaze to him. “They are?” she asked in pretended bewilderment. “I could have sworn they were the other way.” She gestured to the long corridor in which they stood, a corridor of Siena marble, gold leaf, glittering mirrors, and dozens of doorways. “It’s so confusing here, I always get lost. So many corridors…” Lucia let her voice trail off in a helpless fashion, then she smiled. Lucia had a smile that could melt a man of stone; she knew it, and she used it whenever necessary.
This guard was not made of stone. He softened at once. “Very understandable,” he said, smiling back at her. “But you know we have orders from His Highness, Prince Cesare, that you are not allowed to wander about the palace at night.”
Her father was a stranger to her and the Piazza di Bolgheri was a prison, but she had no intention of being locked up in some remote corner and forgotten. She was a woman grown, with every intention of doing as she pleased. She did not express these sentiments aloud, however. “I didn’t mean to wander,” she said, all meekness and contrition. “As I said, I couldn’t sleep.”
“I will be happy to escort you back to your rooms.”
Not made of stone, but not stupid either. With a silent sigh of resignation, Lucia allowed herself to be led back to her suite, knowing this was only a temporary postponement of her plans. Tonight was the last night of Carnival in Bolgheri, and guards or no guards, she was not going to miss the festivities.
Back in her suite of rooms, she found that her maid was still gone. The magic of Carnival beckoned to everyone, and she had dismissed Margherita so that the girl might enjoy it. Lucia passed through the darkened rooms to the doors that led onto the terrace. She waited until the guard on patrol had passed her and turned the corner, then she slipped outside and took a different route to her intended destination.
Moonlight and fireworks lit the sky. The sounds of music and revelry beckoned to her, celebrations that would last only a few more hours.
Though she had been living in her father’s palace a few months, Lucia had learned her way around in less than a week. She had already determined which places were the easiest points from which to escape, and she headed straight for one of them.
The bawdy noise of Carnival grew louder as she approached the edge of the palace grounds, but she had barely pulled the gardener’s ladder from the shrubs where she’d hidden it earlier in the day and set it against the stone wall of Cesare’s fruit garden before her night of adventure was interrupted once again.
The hand on her arm made her jump, but when she turned around expecting to face another palace guard, she instead found the last person she would have expected.
“Elena?” She stared at her half sister, amazed. “What are you doing out here?”
“I was looking out my window,” Elena answered, out of breath. “I saw you crossing the lawn in the moonlight, and I ran down to follow you.” The younger girl wrapped her night robe tighter around herself and glanced at the ladder, then looked back at her. “Are you running away?”
“Go back to bed.”
“Don’t run away!” the seventeen-year-old implored, her hand tightening on Lucia’s arm. “Things have been so much fun since you came. Oh, Lucia, I couldn’t bear it if you left.”
“Don’t be silly,” she said as she pulled her arm free of her half sister’s grasp. “I’m not running away. Although I will, the moment I can get enough money to do it. Tonight, I am just going out for Carnival.”
“All by yourself?”
Lucia chuckled and opened her arms in a sweeping gesture. “Do you see anyone with me?”
“Papa would be furious if he found out.”
Lucia gave Elena a stern look. “He isn’t going to find out unless you tell him.”
“I won’t tell, I promise.” Elena glanced again at the ladder, then back at her. “You do this all the time, don’t you?”
The concept of sneaking out was one Elena was clearly not familiar with, but Lucia had known that long before she’d ever met her half
sister. Elena was the good girl, the legitimate daughter, the true princess. Lucia was the wild one, Prince Cesare’s bastard child and shameful secret. She was no princess, and nobody really expected her to be good. She wouldn’t have traded places with Elena for anything.
“Go back to bed,” she ordered, and turned toward the wall. “For heaven’s sake, you’re standing out here in your night robe.”
“So are you.”
“I have clothes on underneath.”
“Are you wearing a costume?” Before Lucia could answer, Elena’s hand closed around her arm again. “Take me with you.”
“What?” Lucia stopped and shook her head. “Oh, no. Cesare would kill me. For me to sneak out and get into trouble is nothing. I’ve done it before, and they expect no better of me. It’s different for you. You can’t come.”
“Oh, please. Antonio gets to go out and do whatever he pleases, but I only get to watch Carnival from the balcony. I want to wear a costume and go into the streets like everybody else does.”
“No, you don’t. It would shock you. It’s crude, it’s noisy. You’d hate it. You’d be horrified.”
“I wouldn’t. Please take me with you.” Elena stared at her in the moonlight, looking for all the world like an adorable puppy who had been cruelly denied a walk. “They never let me go anywhere,” she whispered, sounding so forlorn that Lucia’s heart constricted with affection and pity.
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