“You think so?”
“I have two nephews and a niece. The boys are eight and five, and I can assure you they have had their share of nightmares, and their mother has never been farther away than the next hallway.”
He looked relieved, which made her realize how deeply he fretted for the boy.
“You’re doing a good job, Darius. John is a delight, and he loves you.”
Something shadowed crossed his features, but they’d reached Darius’s bedroom, and Vivian let him tug off her nightgown and bathrobe, then wrap himself around her in the middle of the bed.
“You love that child,” she said softly.
“I do.” Vivian couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she knew the admission cost him. “He wouldn’t love me, did he know all the circumstances of his situation here.”
“Yes, he would.” She laced her fingers through his where they splayed over her midriff. “Children can be very forgiving, and you’re doing the best you can for him.”
He gathered her closer and began to make excruciatingly tender love to her without saying a word.
That night marked the turning point in their dealings, with the date of Vivian’s scheduled departure drawing inexorably closer. They teased less, spoke less, and loved with a quiet desperation neither acknowledged. On the final night, Darius left her in peace to take her bath and tuck herself up in bed.
Near midnight, after much useless gazing into the fire in his study, he found her asleep in his bed for the last time and decided not to wake her. She’d become subdued these past few days, but so had he. When he’d found her tucking John in after a nightmare, something inside him had broken. Of all the burdens he carried, the burden of raising that child alone was the heaviest and the lightest. John was goodness, innocence, and all the hope and potential in the world.
John deserved to be loved and protected, and Darius died a thousand deaths every time Blanche tooled out in her coach and the servants hustled John up to the third floor, there to remain until Lady Cowell took herself off hours later, lighter in the pocket and none the wiser about the composition of Darius’s household.
He hated—hated—entertaining her under his roof and insisted on using a guest room at the back of the house to see her. Lucy, thank God, wasn’t inclined to stir so far from Town in search of her pleasures, but rather, delighted in demanding that Darius go always to her at the hour of her choosing.
“Darius?”
“Here.” He curled around Vivian’s back, fitting his groin to her derriere and snugging his arm around her waist. “Go back to sleep, love.”
“Where were you?”
“Making sure you’re packed.” He kissed her nape. In truth, he’d been sitting among her things, touching them, lifting them to his nose and wishing. Pathetic, but after tomorrow, the opportunity to be pathetic wouldn’t be within reach, so he allowed it.
“Gracie helped me.” Vivian brought his hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “Have you any advice?”
“Name the baby William,” Darius said on a sigh.
“My menses should have started by now. I’m not myself of late, so perhaps they’re just delayed.”
“You’ll be sure William tells me if there’s a child?”
“Yes.” She tucked his hand over her naked breast. “I won’t have to make him. William keeps his word.”
“Do you know what to look for?”
“Regarding?”
She wouldn’t just ask him. “Conception. You’ll be tender here.” He gently closed his hand over her breast. “You might be sleepy, queasy, or faint. Your sister can tell you more.”
“How do you know these things?”
“John’s mother was under my roof for much of her pregnancy. I became familiar with her various complaints.”
“I envy you that.” Vivian shifted to her back and hiked a leg over Darius’s hips. “You know more what to expect than I do. Will you write to me?”
“Of course not.”
“And I’m not to write to you?”
His finger traced down the side of her face. “You know we cannot, and it wouldn’t be kind, either. Neither to you, nor to me, nor to William. Mostly, it wouldn’t be smart.”
“Because this means nothing, you mean nothing, I mean nothing.”
“You’re learning.” Darius leaned over and kissed her mouth, but it wasn’t to shut her up; it was gratitude for not belaboring the miserable point.
“Darius, I really, really want you to stop dealing with those women.” She scooted so she was right up against his length, on her back and able to regard him by the firelight.
“You don’t get a say, love.” He kept his tone light. “It won’t be of any moment to you after tomorrow, because we’ll rarely see each other.”
“Rarely?”
“I’m to attend the christening if there’s a child, and I’ll be squiring my sister around this year’s Season, which means our paths might cross.”
“You don’t want me to say this, but I’ll look forward to that.”
“Vivvie.” He rose up over her and braced himself on his arms. “You can’t. You cannot. You should be relieved to be getting back to the safety of William’s arms. Relieved to be done with such a one as I. You can’t go… getting sentimental on me.”
“If you didn’t want me getting sentimental, then why create a perfume for me? Why let me meet John, why insist on sending Bernice along home with me? Why, Darius Lindsey?”
“Because you are a lady,” he said, lowering himself to his forearms and gathering her in his embrace. “You were supposed to be a damned new roof, and you turned out to be a lady. One doesn’t treat ladies with less than consideration.”
“And you are a gentleman.” Vivian stroked his hair. “And yet you let those infernal women beat you and humiliate you, and I cannot abide it, Darius.”
“It isn’t yours to abide or not,” he said softly, kissing the side of her neck. “I don’t want to argue with you, Vivvie.”
“Yes, you do. You want to insist coin alone is adequate justification for letting them abuse you. I could just shake you.”
“If you meet me at some Venetian breakfast, Vivvie, you’re to look down your lovely nose at me, as if I’m a bug on the walkway, and ignore me thereafter.”
“Ignore the father of my child?”
“Ignore the conniving bastard who took coin for swiving you,” he whispered, letting her feel his growing arousal. “The man who got a child on you and walked away without a backward glance. The idiot who…”
But he stopped himself by sealing his mouth over hers, and for the last time, sliding himself home into her body. He wanted to rush, wanted to pound into her so she’d recall him for the rest of her life, so she’d never make love again without remembering what it had felt like with him.
For her, he held himself back. For her, he went slowly and tenderly until she was begging and writhing and her nails digging into his back with a sharp, sweet little pain. When she was near tears, he let her come, joining her one last time in the sexual pleasure that he, love-struck idiot, had tried to insist was of no more moment than a cold ice on a hot day.
And when the tears came, he kissed them away and started all over again, but in the morning, he would send her away just the same.
Nine
“So you’re just going to put the poor thing in the coach and wave her on her way?”
Darius scowled at Gracie, who had brought the usual morning tray while Vivian slept on beside him. “I’ll have the bricks heated first.”
“You were never cold before, Master Dare.” Gracie busied herself at the hearth. “I’m not proud of you, you know.”
Before this month with Vivian, he’d been cold all the time. Darius kept his voice to a whisper, lest Vivian wake up any sooner than necessary. “If you must know the truth, I’ll be relieved
to get shut of her. It’s past time she was back in her William’s loving arms, and I can get back to my usual routine.”
If a man told a lie often enough, he might begin to believe it.
“Some routine.” Gracie snorted. “As if it was making you happy, to lark about in low places, consorting with those creatures.”
“Happy matters little compared to solvent.” Darius glared at her, and she had the grace to withdraw without further comment. He sipped his first cup of tea in silence, wishing he could put off the chore of waking Vivian and spare her their parting. She seemed to understand his warnings but not to take them to heart, and he mused in silence for some minutes on how, in truth, he was going to bear putting her into his traveling coach.
Vivian stirred sleepily beside him. “Tea?”
“Here you go.” He passed her his cup. “Slowly, as it’s hot.”
“Gracie’s been here.”
“Making trouble, as usual.” Darius offered her a smile. “Shall I pleasure you once again before you leave this bed?”
“Shut up, Darius.” Vivian sipped her tea.
“Cranky again, I see.” Darius’s smile faded. “My apologies.”
“You can stow that too.” Vivian set her cup aside. “I already hate this day, and you don’t need to be irritating to get me through it.” She flopped down onto her side. “It isn’t even snowing.”
“Why should it be snowing?”
“So I don’t have to leave you, you idiot.” Vivian settled her head against his thigh on a grumpy sigh.
His hand moved slowly on her hair, treasuring the silky feel of it. “Here’s how that works, Vivvie. You think this will be dreadful, this parting, which is very flattering but entirely unnecessary. You wish we could spend an indefinite amount of time romping like bunnies and oblivious to the rest of our obligations, but this is better.”
“Better?” She bit his hairy, muscular, male thigh, but not hard. “How can it be better to spend hours in a freezing cold coach, to be greeted by my elderly and dignified spouse, while I await the delivery of your child and you treat me as a perfect, and perfectly forgettable, stranger?” She turned her cheek against his leg and closed her eyes. “It’s going to be dreadful.”
“No, it is not.” Darius focused on the feel of her cheek against his thigh. “This day will be a nuisance, getting under way, and then putting up with the roads, but you’ll be in your own bed in Town tonight, and then on your way to Longchamps tomorrow. You think you’ll miss me, but you’ll be relieved to have this child conceived, Vivvie. William will be overjoyed, and the longer you’re parted from me and back to your own life, the less you’ll even think about me.”
“You’re sure about this?”
“Utterly.”
“Ass.” She nuzzled his cock. “I will miss you until my dying day.”
“No, you shall not.”
“Will too, and you know you want to send those women packing. You do. They have no business in your life, much less under the same roof as that dear child. You know this.” She swiped at him with her tongue, and he didn’t stop her.
***
Vivian stood in the freezing January air, while outside the stables, Darius’s traveling coach, complete with heated bricks, toddies, and a full hamper, waited for her.
“My lady.” Darius offered her his arm, but to her surprise, he walked her back into the barn and not up to the coach. She was wearing one of the new cloaks he’d had made for her, velvet, fur-lined, warm and lovely. Under that, her dress was one he’d designed, more velvet, a rich brown trimmed with green that felt as comfortable as it was elegant. Around her neck, though, he’d wrapped his cozy wool scarf, because she’d brought none of her own.
“I don’t want to go,” Vivian said, holding his gaze and swallowing against the pain in her chest. “You can’t make me want to go, Darius. That much, at least, I insist on.”
“I can’t, but I can warn you again, Vivvie. We’re strangers after this. Nothing but strangers. If you see me in the park, we’ll need to be introduced before you can acknowledge me, and I will all but cut you, for the sake of the child.”
“Oh, of course.” She knew he was trying to be decent, misguided lout that he was. “Unlike a few dozen other young men, you can’t be bothered with a little old bluestocking parliamentary wife like me for a passing acquaintance. I’ll recall that.”
“See that you do,” he warned, his voice stern. “Recall this as well, Vivvie. If you need anything—anything at all—you will discreetly apply to me.”
“I have a husband,” she said a little stiffly.
“For now, but during this child’s lifetime, you at some point likely won’t, and then you’ve only to ask, Vivvie, and whatever you need, if it’s within my power, I’ll see to it for you.”
“While you treat me like a stranger?”
He nodded, looking again like the grave man who’d joined her for dinner a lifetime ago in London.
“I want your promise, Vivvie. This is likely the only child I’ll have, and you have to let me do what I can, should the need arise.”
“This should not be your only child, Darius.” Of that she was certain, though she assuredly did not want him procreating with anybody else. “If I’m even pregnant.”
“You’re carrying.”
“How can you know that?”
“I just do.” His smile was smug and sad. “You are, and that means more coin for me, so well done, Vivvie Longstreet.”
“We’ll see,” she said, wanting to screech at him for bringing up their mercenary bargain yet again. “Was there anything else?”
She glanced at the coach, feeling as if it were some sort of hearse, only to find herself pulled into his arms and kissed, gently, fiercely, and thoroughly.
“Damn you.” She wiped a tear from her eyes with her new gloves, and went up on her toes to kiss his cheek. “Damn you, Darius Lindsey, for that kiss and the lectures and all of it.”
He winked at her as he escorted her out to the coach. “May I roast in hell, and so on. That’s the spirit.” She smiled, and he looked relieved and desperate and dear as he handed her in.
“Godspeed, Vivvie, and from the bottom of my jaded and worthless heart, thank you.” He banged on the door, and the coach pulled out before Vivian could stop crying long enough to wonder what on earth he was thanking her for.
***
Darius’s traveling coach was comfortably conducive to crying, which was fortunate, because Vivian was disposed to indulge. She knew Darius had purchased the vehicle for a song, and probably kept it for himself because it was as luxuriously appointed on the inside as it was carefully unremarkable on the outside. She wasn’t a weeper by nature, but gracious, almighty, merciful, everlasting God…
She buried her nose in his scarf and missed him and hated him for his effortless savoir faire, and loved him for the excruciating tenderness with which he’d made love to her just two hours earlier. He hadn’t said a word; he’d just started in with the kissing and touching and loving, and she’d been… lost.
What was wrong with him, that he’d insist they part on such cool and rational terms, and what was wrong with her, that she couldn’t see the wisdom of his logic?
The trip into Town took longer than she’d liked, in part because she’d needed time to use the facilities at various inns along the way, but also because snow had started to fall—too late to do her any good, of course. When the coach gained the Longstreet townhouse, midday had come and gone and Vivian decided to allow herself a short nap while her trunks were being unloaded.
The idea of going back into William’s house, the one he’d shared with Muriel for several decades, was daunting. In just a few weeks, Vivian had become terribly attached to a man she’d met only once previously. How much closer must William and Muriel have become, making love, raising children, sharing his career
…
Things she would never have. Not with Darius, not with anybody. A fresh wave of grief rose up to clog her throat, and Vivian went inside and accepted Dilquin’s solicitous greetings. She kept her new velvet cloak though, claiming the house was chilly, which it was. An hour later, her personal maid found her asleep in her own bed—without a stitch on, God have mercy—and with the velvet cloak spread over the counterpane for extra warmth, and a brown scarf jammed halfway under her pillow.
As Vivian slept away her afternoon, the unloading of Darius’s coach proceeded without incident, except that it was observed by one of the coach’s former owners. Thurgood Ainsworthy had had the thing built to order in one of his wealthier marriages, and it was a traveling coach fit for a man whose social life required a good deal of both discretion and mobility.
Thurgood had loved that coach and loved owning it. He’d seduced more than one lady in its cushy confines, and had only bet the thing because he’d been in his cups and unfamiliar with his gambling opponent. It had been years ago when he’d made the mistake of thinking some cocky younger son was acting as if his hand were poor, when in fact the bastard had been holding a full house, queens over knaves.
Rotten luck.
Apparently the younger son had come upon rotten luck now too, because Longstreet must have purchased the thing for his darling Vivian.
But as Ainsworthy watched, the coachy wheeled the empty vehicle not around to the alley that lead to the Longstreet carriage house, but rather back out into the street and off toward the nearest coaching inn.
***
Darius heard his traveling coach clatter back up the lane and realized he’d failed to drink himself into oblivion. Well, it was only just past dark. There was time for that.
“I miss her.” He passed that admission along to his great and good friend, the brandy decanter, which sat loyally guarding his right elbow where he sprawled before the fire in his study.
“I miss her in bed,” he began, finding his usual tolerance for pain serving him well. “I miss her over the dinner plates. I miss her out riding. I miss her arguing with me over stupid political questions nobody cares about except the bloody Lords. I miss her teasing John—I miss that a pissing damned lot. John misses her, God help us.”
Darius Page 14