by Unknown
"Danielle," he called to her, softly, not wishing to startle her.
Her head came up with a jerk at the sound of his voice. She stared at him, simply stared, her face expressionless, for so long that he thought his worst fears had been realized. "My lord?" she finally said, questioningly, in little more than a whisper. In the next moment, her face lit with welcome, and she flew across the narrow room, launching herself at his chest, laughing and crying at the same time.
He caught her to him with a surge of profound relief, holding her tightly, possessively, reveling as she flooded his senses with her presence.
"You came to see me!" she said happily, the words muffled against his chest. "I thought I would never see you again."
He thrust his fingers through her coppery curls, tilting her face up and dropping his head to possess her mouth, allowing his need full rein, telling her without words what he'd come for her. He felt her surprise, her momentary resistance, and knew a moment of fear that verged on panic. And then she was kissing him back with the same generosity of spirit she'd always given him, giving him her passion, her love. He sent a silent prayer of thanksgiving heavenward.
He lifted his head finally, answered her in a voice tinged with wry amusement. "You could not have truly believed you would be so easily rid of me, infant. We are bound, you and I, for this lifetime, and, God willing and the devil reject me, throughout eternity, as well. I came to take you home with me, where you belong."
She stiffened at that and tried to pull away. He couldn't deprive himself of her nearness so soon, not when he'd ached for this moment so long. He allowed her to pull away only a little so that she could look up at him worriedly, her hands pressed to his chest above his pounding heart.
"I can't, my lord!" she said almost on a wail. She averted her eyes, studying the opening at the neck of his shirt. He'd come to her without the trappings of the gentleman, dressed simply in shirt, trousers, and fine leather boots. It had made him seem more approachable, less the fine gentleman. But the impossibility of it all flooded back with a vengeance. "I'm breedin'," she added in a suffocated voice. "I'm sorry, my lord. I guess, I guess I wasn't careful."
Adrian studied her averted face, fighting the doubts that surfaced at her words. "You are sorry for it?" he asked quietly.
She looked up at that, flushing. "I'm sorry for the lie. I'm sorry if I've caused you embarrassment." She took a deep breath and looked away. "I'm not sorry for the child. It won't be so bad to be a bastard. The people love children--all children. They will treat it well. It's why I came here." She lifted her chin with a touch of defiance. "I hope you don't mind, but if I have your son, I mean to give him his father's name."
Adrian swallowed with some difficulty, ashamed of his doubts. "And if I have given you my daughter instead?"
She looked away. "You will think it foolish, for really it can not matter, but I hope for a son. It will be nice if I have a son like you, to help me remember you."
Adrian smiled faintly, tucking his fingers beneath her chin to lift her face. "You will not have trouble remembering me, surely? We might be parted from time to time, though I'm not sure I'll agree to that, but not for any period that would allow you to forget me."
She stared at him, feeling a tentative hope rise. Still, she refused to acknowledge it. "You want me anyway?" she asked in surprise. "You want me for your mistress?" But then she frowned as shame overcame her selfishness. "I'm fully conscious of the honor you do me, my lord, but I couldn't do that to Sophia. It wouldn't be right."
"Little fool!" Adrian ground out angrily. "Is that what you think this is about? That I came all this way only to offer you the dishonor of setting you up as my mistress? A fine opinion you have of me! Damn it, Danielle! It was all lies, wasn't it! You never loved me. You could not have loved the scoundrel you seem to think me!"
Danielle felt a surge of acute embarrassment that she'd so badly misunderstood him. It was mortifying to realize her mistake. She wanted to weep. She summoned anger instead. "Bloody hell! You’re pissed because I ain't fool enough to blame you for what you can't help or change! I know who you are! I know how things have got to be! What I can't figure is what the bloody hell you're mad with me about! You want me to love you, but you don't want me for your mistress! Fine! And I don't know how I ever came to love a nodcock like you, but I do! How am I supposed to prove it! I told you! I showed you every way I could think! Should I blow my brains out?"
Adrian's color rose, but his anger receded. "I don't think anything that violent is necessary. In fact, I forbid it."
Danielle glared at him. "Well, I'm that relieved, I am, that you don't think it's necessary. And I tell you what, I’m not going to prove it, either, because you don't believe in me and never did! You always figured me for a liar and a whore, and I’ve never done either before except for you, because I loved you and wanted to please you. So you may consider yourself well rid of me!"
"No," Adrian said grimly, but with determination.
Danielle glared at him. "No, what?"
"I am not rid of you nor do I have any desire to be."
Danielle gritted her teeth and looked away. "What do you want?"
Adrian smiled faintly, though he began to look immensely uncomfortable. "I want you to prove to me that you love me."
Her head snapped around. "Well! How the bloody hell am I supposed to do that?"
"You can bloody well marry me, you irritating little shrew!"
Danielle's jaw dropped. "Marry you?" she echoed. "Are you out of your mind? You'll be ostracized! Disowned!"
"Yes!" Adrian snapped. "I am out of my mind! I love you, little fool! And, if you love me, I mean to marry you and the hell with the rest of the world!"
Danielle stared at him. "You really mean that," she said in stunned amazement.
Adrian began to laugh helplessly. He pulled her tightly against him. "You see? You have made me insane, sweetheart. I meant to come to you as an honest and humble supplicant, and I have bellowed it at you instead. Say you'll marry me, precious, and spend the rest of your life driving me insane. I could go happily mad, if only you are there to do the trick. It's far too miserable a process when you aren't with me."
"You would regret it," Danielle said in a muffled voice from the folds of his shirt. "You would come to hate me when your family refused to have anything else to do with you."
Adrian kissed her on the top of her head then ducked his head to nuzzle her ear. "I walk into this with my eyes wide open, infant. I know what I do. You are my family, all I care for, all I need. You can not know how much I need you, want you, love you. Let me show you."
"What of Sophia?"
"Mmm?" Adrian asked vaguely, having begun to reacquaint himself with the soft, sensitive skin beneath her ear and along her throat. "I left her happily making plans to marry Thomas Clanton. We're invited to the wedding. My cousins were a little annoyed with us, but they've elected to forgive us.”
“Danielle," he added after a moment, "you have not said it. End my suspense, for the love of God! You have not stopped loving me? You will marry me?" He lifted his head, studying her seriously now.
She gazed back at him wistfully. "I love you Adrian, too much to do what's wrong for you. Only make love to me this once and let it go. It will be better. You'll be glad for it."
"No and no," he said angrily, but a bleakness came to his eyes. "I've said it all wrong. I had the words. I could've convinced you, but I seem to have forgotten them. Don't do this to me, infant! Damn it! Don't be noble! I couldn't bear it. I thought when I found that you had left me that I had died and gone to hell. It could not be a worse place than that! I need you to make my life worth living, for it isn't worth it without you."
She reached up to touch his cheek. "Can you not see or won't you see that a bastard--good lines or no--and the son of a duke were not meant to be?"
"We were meant to be, you and I. Never have two been more surely meant to be. I think I kn
ew it the moment I laid eyes on you. If you let such things weigh with you, then you're more a snob than I ever dared to be. Can you not see that I don't want what you believe I want? How can I miss what I never truly had? I did not know what it felt like to belong, to love and be loved until I met you. I would give my right arm and all hope of heaven to be with you."
She smiled a little tremulously. "If I give in to this madness, if I tell you that nothing in this world would make me happier than to be your wife, will you make love to me then?"
He stared at her a long moment before relief flooded him. He smiled a little crookedly. "This is yes?"
She grinned then. "Yes!"
His own smile broadened to a grin. "Then no."
"No?" she said blankly.
"When next I make love to you I mean for it to be legal. I'll wait till we're properly wed."
Danielle frowned. "Well, it can't matter now! I'm already pregnant!"
Adrian's lips twitched. "Such a want of delicacy! You must say enceinte, infant. It sounds better when you say pregnant in French, don't you agree?"
She gave him a sour look. "I don't see that it makes much difference what you call it."
He reached down to run his hand experimentally over the mound under question and was a little startled. He pulled away to look at it. His eyebrows flew up. "Good God! Danielle! Have you a melon hid there?"
She popped him. "That's no way to talk about your son!"
His shoulders began to shake with silent laughter. "Here's a pretty scandal! We won't be able to convince the village idiot that the babe's early. Never fear! I'll think of something to give us a touch of respectability. We will want a touch of it, I think. What if this little mound is a little Danielle?"
"I despise the name Danielle," Danielle told him with loathing.
"Then we'll name her Georgia, since she was conceived in that lovely place," he said agreeably.
"He was conceived off the coast of Florida," Danielle disputed.
"Damn!" Adrian exclaimed in a self-congratulatory way. "Was there ever a more virile male! First try!"
Danielle gave him a sour look. "Jiminey! I didn't know you was tryin'!"
"Well, I only meant it to be a practice run, but there you are!"
"Yes! Here I am!"
The teasing amusement left his eyes. "You aren't wroth with me, sweetheart? You want my child?"
She relented, smiling. "Of course I want it, nodcock! I was hoping for it, actually." She put her hand to her stomach in a way that was both loving and possessive. "It was a part of you I could have to myself. But you were so angry when you thought I might be that I thought . . . ." She shrugged. "Well, I thought you did not like for me to have your child."
He pulled her close, drawing in a painful breath. "It didn't occur to you that I might consider you too precious to me to risk? You are such a babe yourself. I can not describe the panic, the sheer terror of that moment when I thought what I might have done to you, that I might lose you. But it will be all right. Sophia assured me that her woman, Junta, could see to it that it comes out right for you and the child."
Danielle admitted to immense relief. She was a little fearful herself over impending motherhood. Having set that anxiety aside however, she returned to her original dispute. "What if I don't want to wait? Till it's legal, I mean? I know I look a figure of fun just now, with my swollen belly. But you don't think I'm repulsive?"
"I think you're beautiful and desirable," Adrian said emphatically and brought her up tightly against him. "Or don't you know what that swollen mound is?"
Danielle walked curious fingers that way to assure herself. Satisfied with her findings, she looked up at him once more. "Then make love to me. You haven't done that before, I want to know what its like."
He looked down at her in bemusement, trying to gather his scattered thoughts. "I beg your pardon? I didn't dream it, surely?"
She reached up, angling her head so that she could nip at his throat. "You didn't love me then. See?"
"Did I not?" he asked, pulling away to study her tenderly as he reached up to caress her cheek. "You mistake me if you think it was anything else."
She frowned faintly. "You loved me then?"
He bent his head and touched his lips to hers. "I can not give you the very minute and hour when I knew it, infant, but I think I knew I was lost from the time I dropped you in that tub and you came up screaming and clawing like a half drowned kitten."
She drew back. "You said I didn't appeal to you."
He grinned a little sheepishly. "What did you expect me to do? Admit my lust when I could see you were terrified of me? Besides, I was certain you were no more than a child. I was trying to fight my baser instincts. You see what came of it."
She didn't really believe him, but she was pleased with the notion all the same. Still, she sighed, more than a little disappointed. "All right. We'll wait."
Adrian reached for the buttons on her dress. "Over my dead body!"