But he was beyond the point of being satisfied just to have her in his bed. He needed far more of her than that, far more than he could ask of her, given his circumstances.
The knowledge that he wanted more than a brief affair clawed his insides raw.
“I’m an accused murderer with no prospects for the future, Leila. All I can offer you is a fine romp in bed and a bastard in your belly. I’ll be leaving for London shortly. I suggest you think hard about what you’re asking of both of us.”
“I have thought hard.” She leaned against the table and hugged her elbows as if she held herself back. “I suggest you rethink if you believe you can leave for London without me.”
The idea of tarnishing her reputation with his appalled him. He couldn’t take her to London with him.
But succumbing to the desire to possess her one more time, Dunstan bent to kiss her defiant lips. The taste of Leila’s eager tongue soothed his battered patience, stripped away his cold restraint, and nearly undid him.
Before he could capitulate to his baser nature right here in her laboratory, with all her guests outside, Dunstan reluctantly stepped away, leaving her gripping the table behind her and looking stunned.
“We have no future,” he reminded her, “and you can’t go to London with me.”
She merely stared, waiting, her kiss-stung lips moist and beckoning, her breasts rising and falling with the passion he’d provoked.
He could no more resist her temptation than turnips could resist rising to the sun. “Tonight, in the grotto,” he agreed, then swung on his heel to go in search of a stiff drink.
Leaving Leila contemplating the empty place where he’d stood, her heart pounding, her head spinning.
She was on the brink of discovery. A precious, valuable gift was hers to explore.
A child could be growing inside her, a child that both terrified and thrilled her.
She had everything she’d ever wanted at her fingertips. Why, then, was it not enough? Why must she seek out an Ives who made it evident he merely desired her body and no more?
She wanted to discuss her discoveries with the man who had valued the talent she’d ignored because it came too easily. She wanted days and weeks to design a garden she could share with the man who could best appreciate it.
All her gifts were meaningless without that someone to share them.
Looking at the empty beaker she held, Leila abruptly set it aside and hastened back to the gathering in her parlor to see if Dunstan had left.
The parlor was full of people yet empty of Ives.
And she realized that loneliness was far worse when she was denied the presence of the one person in the entire world who could understand the secrets of her heart.
Having left Ewen taking apart Leila’s distillery and Griffith perusing her library, Dunstan sat on an overturned wooden pail in the midst of the leathery green leaves of his turnip bed to clear his muddled mind from an overdose of socializing. With his evening vest and coat unfastened, his fancy dress shoes caked in mud, he lifted a mug of malt to his mouth and drank deeply.
Lily waited for him in a magical grotto where she would ease his aching desire.
Leila wanted him to take her to London.
He couldn’t bear harming another woman. He couldn’t let a woman come between him and his son again. Need warred with responsibility.
Dunstan wiped his mouth on his coat sleeve and glanced around at his green companions. “You’ll make some young sheep a good fodder,” he told them. “Better fodder than I am,” he continued stoically. “Sam Johnson must have been talking about me when he said, If a man don’t cry when his father dies, ’tis proof he’d rather have a turnip than his father.”
He raised his mug to the splinter of new moon. “I don’t want my son to prefer turnips to me,” he told it. He wasn’t drunk, he knew, but who cared if he made an ass of himself out here? His little green friends didn’t. A man could think straighter with a mug of whiskey and silence, and for once in his misbegotten life, he intended to think before he stepped off the deep end.
“Of all the men she knows, why would she want me?” The one man she couldn’t have, he knew. “Woman’s at best a contradiction still,” he quoted, but the turnips didn’t respond to his erudition. He sprawled his long legs out in front of him and contemplated the real reason he sat in this field when a beautiful woman awaited him.
“I don’t need witchy Malcolms telling me things I don’t want to know.” He sipped more carefully, waiting for his green friends to argue that one. They didn’t.
“She’ll make me as daft as she is,” he agreed with the night breeze. “Manure! She smelled manure and heard ghosts laughing.” He scowled and drained the mug. She’d heard Celia laughing. Could he live with that? What else might she see or hear?
“Problem is . . .” He let the statement dangle. “Problem is, I don’t think I can leave without her.”
The moon didn’t howl in disbelief. His green friends didn’t turn their backs on him, although he thought they shuddered a little. He shuddered with them. Or maybe his head spun. Leila had that effect on him. He could control turnips and steer his own path, but he couldn’t control Leila any more than he could steer the stars.
“She only wants me to share her bed,” he told the breeze in confidence. He wanted the breeze to tell him to go ahead and seduce her. Instead, it spoke with Drogo’s voice, reminding him of what he could not forget. “She can’t have babes, she says. Anyway, it’s not as if I’d have to support one,” he argued. “She could afford to wrap it in silk batting and hire it the best teachers. But she’s barren.”
His green friends laughed at him. Malcolms were never barren.
Rising to stand legs akimbo in the middle of the field he’d thought would be his future, Dunstan propped his hands on his hips and shouted at the moon, “Am I supposed to stew in my own damned juices?”
The moon didn’t reply.
London and the search for Celia’s killer loomed before him. He had to clear his name, if only for his son’s sake.
And to protect Leila.
Leila. She waited for him, a beautiful woman offering answers he wasn’t prepared to accept.
He could no more leave her waiting than the moon could stop from setting. He didn’t think he could prevent Leila from going to London with him either, not when it was what they both wanted, even if it wasn’t wise.
Perhaps he could publish his own quote: Wisdom goes out the door when women walk through it.
Twenty-one
Floating naked on the quietly bubbling water of the grotto’s pool, watching the waning moon through the opening above, Leila was thankful for the peace of this private place.
Her hair drifted like seaweed on the clear water. The night breeze carried the country fragrances of hay and someone’s chimney smoke. The smoke reminded her of a cozy winter’s night. Relaxing, giving in to her senses, Leila let the vision of a crackling kitchen fire rise behind her closed eyes. Instantly, she smelled roasting chestnuts and heard her mother laughing merrily with Cook while discussing the newest babe’s first mashed potatoes. Filled with comforting sights and sounds, her vision enticed her to embrace the changes ahead—a baby of her own to love and hold. Contentment erased some of the turmoil the evening had stirred.
The vision popped as another scent intruded, and her heart beat faster. She wasn’t surprised when a shadow appeared on the mossy bank above her.
“Join me,” she invited, not caring how Dunstan took the invitation. She needed his strength tonight.
He didn’t hesitate for long. She watched him drop his coat and vest upon the rocks, then sit to remove his boots. Dunstan Ives was probably the most challenging man she’d ever met. She respected his intelligence far too much to manipulate him now, but given his earlier words and action, she had a strong notion he would react negatively to her news.
A little voice said she had no reason to tell him. She didn’t know anything of a certainty. Ninian c
ould be wrong.
She knew what would happen if she didn’t speak. The desire between them was like a palpable flame drawing them together as Dunstan slipped into the water. Her nipples already stood at attention, and her womanly parts tightened in expectation.
The same womanly parts that could be harboring a tiny Ives seed, growing with every passing minute.
For all her experience and sophistication, she was as frightened as any young maiden at the changes that might be happening within her.
She heard his splashing as he approached, curled her arms around his brawny neck when he caught her waist. Weightless, she lifted her head for his kiss, and he obliged.
She could feel Dunstan inside her with no more touching than his tongue to hers. His arms tightened, his big hands caressed her wet skin, their lips melded, and their tongues twined. The faeries that dwelt here sang in harmony.
A shadow passed between them, and somewhere deep within her womb an old soul found safe harbor and a new life quickened.
She carried Dunstan’s child. Leila knew it with the instincts of her ancestors.
Dunstan gently carried her from the warm water to the mossy bank. Steam rose around them, yet she shivered as his broad frame covered her. Naked and inches apart, they could no more stop what would happen next than a nightingale could change its song.
“You’re bewitching me again, aren’t you?” he murmured, pressing kisses down her cheek.
“Am I? I didn’t mean to—” Fascinated by such a notion, Leila decided that if bewitching Dunstan was her one and only gift, it might actually be enough.
“I didn’t mean to do this again, not until my name is clear.” His mouth located the sensitive place behind her ear.
She sighed at the luxury of this ache he created. The moss beneath her was softer than feathers. She smoothed her fingers over his muscled chest and slid them downward. She didn’t want to stop now. What she had to tell him could wait. “I’ve thought about it, Dunstan, just as you asked. If there’s no future for us, let us have the present.”
To her joy, he didn’t argue. He touched his forehead to hers in a gesture of surrender. “I’m trusting you to know your own mind. You have no idea what a leap of faith that is for me.”
Leila dug her fingers into his silken hair, absorbing the strength of his heartbeat where he leaned against her. “We’re neither of us children any longer. There’s no harm in what we do here.”
“There can be if we bring a child into the world,” he said in reply, slipping downward to address her breasts.
Leila gasped as Dunstan tugged delicately with his mouth, and a river of desire ran into her womb. She tried to part her legs, but his knees held them firmly together. Terrified that he would deny her again, she responded without thinking. “It doesn’t matter.” She clutched the solid flesh of his upper arms, her fingers not quite circling them while she tried to think and talk and melt all at the same time.
He took one last tug and reluctantly halted, gazing down at her with wary eyes. “It doesn’t matter?”
He knew. He was too much a part of the earth not to know. Knowing wasn’t the hardest part, though. Leila tugged at his arms, trying to force his mouth upward, to hers. “Talk later,” she protested. “I need you inside me right now.”
Accepting the inevitable with masculine fortitude, he didn’t argue. With lingering kisses and slow caresses, he opened her, explored what was his to claim, and entered her with all the care she needed right now, with a care that had her weeping helplessly even as she cried out in rapture.
With the fatalism of the doomed, Dunstan closed his eyes and poured his life’s fluids deep inside the woman he’d made his in some primal manner he had yet to understand. Briefly, the pleasure of his release overrode all else. Emptying his mind with his seed, he collapsed against Leila’s generous curves, kissed her throat, and rolling onto the mossy bed, pulled her on top so he needn’t suffer the torment of separation just yet.
Letting pleasure wash through him, he absorbed the sensation of molding his hands to Leila’s soft buttocks. He nipped her shoulders with kisses, trying to cling to mindlessness. The press of her fertile belly against his abdomen tortured him into awareness.
The possibility of having a woman like Leila in his bed every night exceeded any dream he’d ever allowed himself, trespassing on the realm of the impossible. He was a practical man not inclined to fantasy. He tried not to think about what she hadn’t said, but the little green worms gnawed deeper. He had to know.
“Tell me now,” he demanded.
“Ninian says it’s a girl,” she whispered. “You needn’t worry about raising a son. Malcolms can take care of girls.”
Dunstan wanted to laugh out loud at the outrageousness of her declaration. He wasn’t a simpleton. He knew it was bloody well too soon to know if she carried a child for certain. He knew children were easily lost in these first months. To actually declare the sex of the child while it was no more than a sprouting seed bordered on the insane, not to mention the illogical.
But because it was Leila, he didn’t laugh. He didn’t try to imagine a faerie girl-child in a household of brutish male Ives either. One giant leap at a time.
Eyes closed, he let the silken glide of her skin flow over him. “I don’t suppose Ninian knows if our daughter will be as beautiful as you?”
He’d startled her, he could tell. Opening one eyelid and peering out, Dunstan caught the laughter welling up and curving Leila’s lovely lips. A rare treasure, indeed, was this black-haired Malcolm. Now, if he only knew what to do with her.
She sprawled across his chest, dug her fingers into his hair, and covered his stubbled jaw with kisses. “You’re a lunatic. I have found the only Ives in existence who is insane enough to understand a Malcolm. How did this happen?”
Dunstan leaned his head back and opened his eyes fully to stare at the sliver of moon above her coal-black curls. A trick of the light sparkled starlight in her hair, and for the moment he believed in faeries.
She felt so real against him, so soft and hot and perfectly formed to ease his needs. If they never left the cave, he would be content.
“Fact of life?” he guessed. “Fluke of nature?” He tried telling himself that Ives men didn’t have daughters, but that didn’t work any better. The woman in his arms might misunderstand or confuse things, but she wouldn’t lie.
The woman in question nibbled his beak of a nose. “You’re avoiding thinking about the child, aren’t you? You’re very good at shutting out what you don’t want to know.”
“I figure you and Ninian and the rest of your witchy family will think about it for me. A man has few choices once the seed is planted.” He realized he’d spent a great deal of time feeling helpless and out of control since Leila had entered his life. One more event over which he had no say seemed a natural state of existence. In a way, lack of control had a liberating effect.
She bit a little harder, and Dunstan avoided her sharp teeth by sitting up and positioning her on his lap, although he wasn’t completely ready to take her yet. The thought of an Ives girl child had shaken him. He couldn’t remember an Ives ever having a girl.
She watched him through worried eyes. “Are you taking this seriously, or just humoring me?”
Dunstan narrowed his eyes so he could see only the shadows of the cave and not the full globes of the breasts pressed into him. That didn’t help his concentration any. “Which would you prefer?” he asked, playing for time.
“You believe me, don’t you?”
“I believe it’s too soon to know, that it’s impossible to tell, and that Ninian is an addlepated lackwit who ought to mind her own business.”
She pinched him beneath the arm, and Dunstan swatted her hand away.
He opened his eyes fully and drank in the beautiful wanton pleasuring his lap, and terror took root alongside joy in his heart. “I have nothing but a bog and my name to offer you,” he said simply. “How can I rob you of everything for which you�
��ve worked so hard? As Adonis would say, it’s a wee bit difficult to do the right thing when you cannot ken what it is.”
She wrapped her arms around his neck and leaned her head against his shoulder. Dunstan held her there, reveling in her slender curves, wishing she were his to wake up next to every morn.
With Celia’s ghost haunting him, how could he ever trust himself with another woman? What if he lost his temper and hurt Leila or the babe? And how could he ask her to give up her garden for him?
They were so wrong for each other that even the gods in heaven must be shaking their heads in dismay. He had nothing to offer but guilt and disgrace, and she would sacrifice everything if she took his name.
He’d known terror a time or two in his life, but nothing to compare with what faced him now. He knew what duty and responsibility as defined by society called him to do. And he knew that way lay disaster.
No matter what he did, he would hurt her or their child.
“We can wait,” she whispered. “It’s too soon, as you say. Ninian could be wrong.”
He grunted in disbelief. “Aside from the fact that the blasted she-devil is never wrong, and that we knew full well we planted the seed beneath a full moon, how do you see it?”
“I’ve never had a child,” she murmured into his shoulder. “I’ve rocked my little sisters and cousins, felt their milky breath against my cheek, listened to their baby cries and laughter, and never even thought to have a child. I planned on being the elderly aunt to my sisters’ children, admiring and admonishing from afar. I’m rather taken with that role.”
A new fear yawned deep in his gut, and Dunstan clenched her tighter. He didn’t doubt that Malcolms had the power to make an unborn child go away if they wished. He wouldn’t believe it of them, but he knew they could. He quit breathing, afraid to answer her.
“I’m terrified,” she whispered. “Women die in childbirth, and I’m not ready to die. I don’t want to grow huge as a mountain so I can’t bend over my laboratory table.”
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