Married to a Rogue

by Donna Lea Simpson

  But he didn’t give a damn what his aunt thought of him. He would not explain himself to her. How to make things right with Emily—that was of paramount importance in his mind and heart.

  He pushed open the door and gazed at Emily, who leaned against the window gazing out on the cloudy spring day. Her rounded figure, a little slimmer than she had been a month or so ago when he had first caught sight of her, was clad in a rose-and-white-striped day gown, and she clutched her stomach as though she was in pain. She held a little bisque figurine, stroking it with her fingers, rubbing her thumb over it. She hadn’t heard him yet.

  How many times lately had he thought, If only she hadn’t had that affair with the damned Frenchman . . . He could not forget it, though he didn’t know if his worst feeling was jealousy or hurt pride. But he still loved her. In the week or so he had spent at Brockwith, with every memory around him of places they had talked, walked, made love, it had come to him that he had never stopped loving her, he had just been in turns angry, alienated, unhappy, and sometimes resentful. But never had he actually fallen out of love with her. The time they had wasted! Years spent away from each other when they should have been solving their problems, problems that seemed so petty in retrospect but had loomed so large at the time.

  If only they had turned to each other instead of away from each other. If only . . .

  But all the “if onlys” in the world would not change things now. What could he do? He had said some terrible things to her, had been unbelievably brutal. Why was it that it was only with the woman he loved more than life itself that he could become so angry? Was it because only her love mattered, only what she thought about him, felt for him, that could affect him so deeply?

  She might never forgive him, but perhaps it was time to put all of the complications aside and decide once and for all: Did they love one another enough to get past all of that? Did she love him enough to forgive him for things he had said and done, like abandoning her after making love to her? Did he love her enough to forget about her affair with Etienne? It wouldn’t be easy, but he rather thought that he was killing himself slowly with jealousy when he should be putting what must have been a brief affair into perspective, given his own long history of mistresses since their separation.

  She turned and started. “Baxter! What are you doing here?” She clutched the tiny figurine to her bosom.

  He launched into speech, not sure how long she would allow him before having him thrown out. “We have to settle things between us, Emily. I’ve behaved badly, brutally, and I want to apologize. I said things and did things . . . but it’s just that I’ve never stopped loving you, and when I found out you were having an affair with that damnably young and handsome Frenchman it almost killed me. It hurt so very deeply, I wanted to murder him and wound you in return for the pain I was feeling.”

  There. It was out, all his jealousy and vulnerability, what amounted to an admission of weakness.

  “Affair? You love me? Baxter, what are you talking about?” Her lovely face was puckered into a puzzled frown.

  He moved into the room and stood staring at her, drinking in her brown eyes, shadowed with pain right now, and the lips he loved kissing so much. He badly wanted to touch her, to hold her, to take her to bed, even, but there was much to sort out. The merely physical must wait this time. Lovemaking could ease the pain, but right now he must feel the anguish and deal with it and put it behind them. He glanced down, recognizing finally, as she set it on the table near her, the figurine she had been stroking. It was the tiny Dresden shepherdess he had given her years ago for some forgotten anniversary or birthday.

  “Your affair with Etienne,” he said. He couldn’t even say the name without pain. “I have never considered murder before, but I did when he told me about it. I have been consumed with the most bitter jealousy! A black mist descended and I felt like my insides were being wrenched from my gut while I watched and felt every awful tear. I wanted to kill him, and I would have challenged him—considered it, even—but it would have destroyed your reputation, and even in my anger I loved you too much for that.”

  “He told you we were having an affair?” Emily’s tone was incredulous.

  “He did, the arrogant pup. And I saw you disappear with him to the conservatory, and you looked guilty as hell, madam!” Consciously he relaxed his balled fists and stifled his anger, tamping it down with an enormous effort. He must learn to get past it, no matter how difficult that was, if he was ever to have her back, and he knew now that he wanted that, needed it. And after all, Etienne was dead and could never come between them now. “I did not come here today to accost you about that, though. I still love you, and will try my damnedest to forget the image of you making love with that . . . Oh, God, Em, I haven’t known what to do, I . . .” He drove his long fingers through his immaculately styled hair and strode across the room to her, but in the end he just stood in front of her, not touching her, not holding her as he longed to.

  She faced him and put her hands on his shoulders, gazing up at him with an unexpectedly mischievous glint in eyes the color of brown pansies after spring rain. “Oh, my darling, beloved, maddening husband, that poor young man used the oldest trick in the book to rid himself of the man he must have known was his only competition. He lied to you. Told you an enormous bouncer, probably thinking it would be true before long.”

  “He . . .” Baxter gazed down into her eyes, searching for the truth. “He wasn’t your lover?”

  “No! Oh, he tried, and I thought about it.” His eyes glinted dangerously and she hastily added, “Not seriously! He never did more than kiss me, Baxter, and after you it seemed dreadfully pallid and tame. How could a boy compare to the man I married?”

  It never occurred to him not to believe her. Emily had always been honest to a fault; it was part of her as much as the color of her eyes or shape of her face. He caught her to him then and kissed her until she was breathless. When he released her she was quivering and touched her lips with a trembling hand.

  “See what I mean?” she said, laughing shakily. “How could anyone affect me after you?”

  He pulled her back and lowered his head, touching her lips with his tenderly, reverently, then deeply, savoring her passionate response. When he released her he said, “I was so jealous! I just couldn’t get over the image of you sneaking off to that conservatory with that damned Frenchman. I put all my fury into making love to you at that inn. I wanted to teach you the difference between a man and a boy.”

  “And you did,” she murmured, clinging to him. “Magnificently and repeatedly. If there had ever been any doubt, it would have been erased that night. But there was never any doubt in my mind and in my heart. You are still, Baxter, the only man who has ever touched me. That night in the conservatory, I was trying to find out who Etienne really was. I was afraid he was the one trying to harm you, and I was so worried about—”

  “My love, you do not have to explain anything. Nothing happened.”

  “I can’t believe the trouble he caused just because he wanted to take me to bed!”

  “I can understand his motives,” Baxter said, smiling down at her. His expression became more serious, though, and he said, “What are we going to do, my love? What do you want? I was breaking things off with Belle, you know, before this occurred. I have bought and deeded her the house she is living in as a farewell, but . . .”

  Emily drew away from Baxter and looked up into his eyes.

  He launched into speech again, afraid of what she would say next. “I sent my mother back to Bath, too, with the threat that if she ever interferes in our lives again I will disown her.”

  Emily chuckled, then sobered. She hadn’t known what she would say before this second but she knew now and with her whole heart. She leaned back and looked up into his eyes. “Baxter Eggleton Godfrey, fifth Marquess of Sedgely, I love you. I always have and always will. I don’t think I understood it until this moment, but I could never turn away any child of yours. It ma
y be hard and I can’t say I will always be successful, but if you would like to try and if it is what Belle really wants, I will raise the child with you and love it as if it were my own.”

  Staring down at her, Baxter’s dark eyes cleared and all the pain drained from his lean, saturnine face. “Oh, Emily!” He nestled her back in his arms, close to his heart. “My love, there is no baby.”

  “Did she lose it? Oh, poor girl, I must go to her.”

  “No!” He held her fast against his heart, his love for the woman in his arms a wave of deep devotion that welled and surged like a tide. “No, my love. There never was a baby. It was all a charade. Belle was trying to force us to reconcile and she took the only means she could imagine. She intended to get pregnant, thinking to give me an heir, but I have not been with her since returning to England. Never once have I made love to her. I wanted to end things but I didn’t want to hurt her. She thought she had made love with me one night, though, when she was drunk, so she pretended to be pregnant.”

  Emily sighed and thought how oddly the gallant waif thought. There was honor and love in her bones, but it certainly did come out strangely at times.

  Baxter continued. “Belle wanted me to be happy and she came to understand, after meeting you, that the only way I would ever be truly happy again was if I could have you back. She thought if she could force us to agree to get back together again for the sake of a baby we would . . . we would love each other again. She was crushed by your reaction, poor girl, but she is beginning to understand, I think.”

  A lump choked Emily’s throat. Her world, so wrong a scant few minutes before, had revolved and become right. “That dear, sweet girl! Oh, Baxter, I . . .” She stopped and swallowed, wavering on her feet.

  “Emily? Em, my love, what is wrong?”

  She broke away from her husband and, clutching her stomach, raced to the basin on the washstand. The only other sound from her was a deep moan as she quite thoroughly cast up her accounts.

  Epilogue

  A glorious summer had adorned the English countryside with a rainbow array of flowers and the tender green of leaves, golden sun and a brilliant blue sky. At Brockwith, in Surrey, crops were planted, grew and were harvested, and as the grain ripened and the fruit grew full and plump on the vine, so Emily blossomed with the life she and her husband had started with love and passion.

  And yet Baxter and Emily’s anxious time was not quite over. Her doctor, concerned with her paleness and her inability to keep down anything but the most bland of foods, had ordered her to bed for her own sake and for the life in her womb. And so her world had shrunk to her pretty rose bedchamber, where she lay in bed, wistfully gazing out at the wide world beyond the window, the countryside where she loved to wander but now could not.

  “I wish I could go into the garden,” Emily said, glancing slyly over to her husband, who sat at her side reading from Mansfield Park, a novel by her favorite author.

  Baxter sighed and gave her a stern look. He set the book aside and took her hand in his. “My love, you know that is not possible. The doctor said—”

  “The doctor said, the doctor said! Oh, Baxter, I am so restless!” She lay back and stared at the ceiling. “I have been in bed two weeks and I already think I shall go mad. I want to walk in the garden. I want to go down to the stream where we used to go fishing and make love all afternoon, I want . . .” Her voice choked off and tears oozed from under her sealed lids.

  Moving up to sit on the bed beside her, Baxter gazed down at his wife. The doctor had explained that mood changes, sometimes rather abrupt, were quite normal in a woman who was with child, but it stabbed a pain deep through his heart to see her unhappy. He rested one hand on her swollen belly, still holding her hand in the other. “My sweet, this is just a precaution. You know the doctor said he sees no trouble with you giving birth if you are just cautious for these last months. ’Twill only be a few more months before the babe, or babies, is born.”

  Emily’s eyes flew open. “Oh, Baxter! Do you think we might have twins, as the doctor says?” Her face was wreathed in smiles even as the tears dribbled down her cheeks. “Just the thought of that gives me patience, my dear. I would bring our little ones into the world in lusty health if I can, at my advanced age!”

  He leaned over and planted a kiss on her rosy lips, letting it deepen into as passionate a sign of his devotion as he dared, given that there would be no easing of desire, not with her less than three months from birth and in such delicate health.

  “Ehem, I hope we do not interrupt?”

  Baxter turned on the bed. “Less! As I live and breathe! And you have brought Belle with you. Welcome to you both.” He moved so Emily could see their visitors, standing hesitantly in the doorway.

  Struggling to sit up, Emily motioned them into the room. “Come, how good to see you both! You must tell me all the news from London, and how your new play goes on, and who has taken who as lover, and . . . and everything!”

  “My lady is bored to tears,” Baxter said dryly, taking Less’s hand and shaking, then kissing Belle’s proffered hand. He slipped from the bed. “I shall return in a moment, but I think I will have tea brought in and see that rooms are readied for you both.”

  Emily looked up at her guests and then blushed, glancing ruefully at her swollen belly and the bed. “I would get up and receive you properly but my husband would be most upset. How are you both?” She examined them anxiously. Less, she thought, looked a little sad behind his smile, but Belle was more serene and self-possessed than she had ever seen her. The girl was dressed modishly in a pale gold traveling gown with brown velvet trim; much better taste governed her attire than in the past. It seemed that Less, an infallible arbiter of refinement where women’s apparel was concerned, had been advising her. From his recent letters it was apparent that he was quickly revising his previous low opinion of her. They had become friends as well as employer/actress.

  Less smiled down at Emily and took her hand. “I am well. And Belle is blooming.” He put his free arm around the girl’s shoulders and gave her an affectionate, brotherly hug.

  Emily smiled, remembering when he had disparaged her as a little tart with no conversation.

  “How are you, my lady?” Belle asked, her piquant, narrow face lit with a sweet smile.

  “Emily. Call me Emily, Belle. I will be fine, once I have this child, or children.” She moved restlessly. “You will stay, won’t you? You will visit us for a while? Please?”

  Less and Belle exchanged glances.

  “We’ll stay a while, my dear,” Less said. “For we have much to discuss. A new show, a touring theater group with Belle as the star performer. We are going to the Continent for the winter.”

  “How exciting!”

  “Our new production will not be half as exciting as this one,” Less said, laying a gentle hand on her stomach, covered in a soft rose coverlet. He sighed. “This is the one thing I will miss about never getting married. I will have to visit often and become your brood’s favorite bachelor uncle.”

  “Godfather, Less; you are to be the babies’ godfather!” Her heart broke at the sadness in his eyes, but he was who he was and she could not condemn any person for whom or how they loved. He was the gentlest of souls and she loved him like the brother she had never had. “I am selfish enough to be glad for my babies’ sake that you will concentrate all your love on our children. They will be quite spoiled.”

  “I hope you have girls,” Belle said softly. She glanced around the room. “They will be so lucky to grow up here, and with . . . with you as their mother. I never knew my mother.”

  Emily put out her hand and took hers, pulling her closer to the bed. The girl seemed almost shy today, a little dazzled by Brockwith, perhaps, or by what could be a very awkward situation. Baxter had told her much about Belle since coming back to Brockwith—how he found her, how hard she had worked to better herself given the opportunity—and everything he had said just confirmed that she must be a very stron
g young woman to have survived what she had, and be, at the core of her, so loyal and giving.

  “I don’t think I ever had the opportunity to thank you for what you did for us,” Emily said, gazing into the girl’s cornflower blue eyes. “If it hadn’t been for you we might never have come together again.”

  “But I wouldn’t even have thought about it if you hadn’t come to me out of your concern for Baxter! And I was so awkward, caused you so much pain . . .” She trailed off and looked away.

  She had long since apologized for shocking Emily so with her offer. She had only done what she thought was best, but she admitted that it had been a strange scheme at best.

  “I wish I could repay Baxter for everything he has done for me, mostly for introducing me to Sylvester,” she said, taking Less’s arm in her own.

  Emily smiled up at the two of them. What an odd pair! Bound only by their love of the theater, she had originally thought, but she began to think that they were learning to genuinely like each other. “Enough of that. We have all been exceedingly lucky. Now tell me about this traveling troupe,” she said, indicating the chairs that were nearby. They sat, and Belle became most animated talking about her part as Kate in Shrew, and how she was to reprise that role as they traveled through France and Italy.

  Baxter came back, followed quickly by footmen with tea trays, and they had a merry half hour over tea. But finally Baxter, glancing over at Emily, saw that her eyes were becoming heavy with fatigue.

  He leaped to his feet and said, “We must let our guests have a chance to settle in, my love. I will show them to their rooms while the footmen clear away the tea things.”

  Drowsily, Emily waved good-bye. “I insist on at least a week or two’s visit,” she said. “You have quite lifted me out of my doldrums already.”

  She turned on her side as the door closed quietly behind the last of the servants and gazed out the window at the verdant countryside, starting to tinge ochre and umber with fall. In the distance she could see oxen pulling a cart through a field as workmen loaded sun-ripened grain. She rested her hand on her stomach and thought about the miracle of her life. Why, she had asked the elderly Brockwith doctor, had she suddenly conceived when she and her husband had tried for almost ten years to have children and had not been able to?