Even after he’d emptied himself within her, he stayed where he was, buried deep inside. She didn’t protest. In fact, he wasn’t sure she could if she wanted to. She seemed completely spent, as well, her limbs tangled in the heavy folds of his dressing gown, which he had neglected to remove. He could feel her heart beating beneath his, however—proof she was still amongst the living—sporadically at first, getting gradually slower, and more even.
After a while, he lifted his head, and looked down at her.
Her face was flushed, her lips and cheeks a deep pink. There was an unnatural brightness to her eyes, which looked at him with shrewd knowingness.
“Burke,” she said. He could feel her voice, sweetly hoarse, reverberate through both of their bodies. “There’s something I’ve been wanting to ask you.”
“Indeed?” He brushed those rosy lips lightly with his mouth. “And what is that?”
“Will you marry me?”
“Hmmm,” he said. “I think, if we don’t, people will talk. Don’t you agree?”
She showed him that she did, in no uncertain terms.
Chapter Thirty-four
“Burke,” Kate said with a laugh, as she walked alongside him, one hand on the grip of a perambulator, and the other in the crook of his arm. “It’s nothing but an old wives’ tale.”
“Nevertheless,” Burke said somberly. “We shouldn’t take any chances. We’re talking about my heir, you know.”
“But it’s perfectly ridiculous.” Kate looked up at him from the beneath the brim of her new spring bonnet, which had been delivered, all the way from London, only the day before. “Have you actually seen Lady Babbie anywhere near the baby’s cradle?”
“Every morning,” he asserted. “When I go in. There she is, sitting by it.”
“Well, certainly. Because she adores him. But you’ll note you said sitting by the cradle. Not in it.”
“Nevertheless—”
“Nevertheless, it simply isn’t true. Ask Nanny. Cats do not sit on babies’ chests and smother them while they sleep, Burke. I can’t believe you’ve been listening to servants’ gossip.” She nodded her head toward Isabel, who was strolling several yards ahead of them, her fingers through the arm of a tall, fair-haired young man. “You’re worse than Isabel.”
At the mention of his daughter’s name, Burke glanced in her direction. “And that’s another thing,” he said. “How long are we going to let this go on?”
“Let what go on, Burke?”
“This.” He lifted a hand and gestured toward Isabel, who was twirling a lace parasol above her head and laughing rather coquettishly at something her companion had said. “This ... flirtation, I suppose you’d have to call it, between Isabel and Freddy Bishop.”
Kate, pausing to reach inside the perambulator and adjust the baby’s cap, said, without looking up, “Really, Burke. It’s a very good match. You ought to be overjoyed. I was perfectly convinced, when the truth came about Daniel, that she’d never look at another man. You remember how she cried for days? But now she’s like a different person. And she could do much worse.”
“Worse?” Burke rolled his eyes. “What could possibly be worse than having one of your old beaux as my son-in-law?”
“Geoffrey Saunders,” Kate said, straightening up again, and slipping her fingers back through his arm. This time, Burke took hold of the baby carriage’s handle, and pushed it as they strolled along the grounds of Wingate Abbey.
“At least Geoffrey Saunders,” Burke said, “was sufficiently young enough for her. Bishop’s old enough to be her father.”
“Nonsense. He’s only ten years older than she is, Burke. You’re thirteen years older than I am. And acting it, I must say.”
He glared down at her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Kate smiled teasingly. “Only that I think you need to prepare yourself for the inevitability of Duncan beginning to lay out flannel waistcoats for you. I wouldn’t be surprised to see you turning rheumatic, what with the fact that you’re starting to believe old wives’ tales, and are so thoroughly jealous of your daughter’s suitors. What’s next, Burke? Warm milk before bed?”
He said, with wounded dignity, “I will have you know, Lady Wingate, that I have never needed a flannel waistcoat in my life, and that I am about as close to being a rheumatic as you are to needing a cane. And furthermore, it’s not my daughter’s suitors I’m jealous of. It’s the fact that this particular one used to be an admirer of yours.”
“Oh,” Kate said, with a dismissive wave of her hand. “That’s all water under the bridge. I’m a distant memory, as far as Freddy is concerned, same as that soprano of his. He’s vowed to me that Isabel is the only true interest in his life, for now and forever after.”
Burke made a sound that very closely resembled a harrumph. Kate restrained herself from pointing out that this was a hopelessly middle-aged thing to say. Burke was, after all, still hearty at thirty-seven. Hadn’t he proved it just that morning, by making good on his long-ago threat—or perhaps it had been a promise—of waking every day with her beneath him?
“Besides,” Kate said, with a laugh. “If you think you don’t like the idea of Isabel and Freddy, think how Lady Palmer must feel, having me as her son’s future mother-in-law. Well, stepmother-in-law, anyway. Even now that the truth’s come out about Papa, I think she still blames him for sending her husband to an early grave. Now she’s going to have to put up with the ignominy of being related to me, at least through marriage. And I’m not even going to mention what you did to her drawing room.”
“Morning room,” Burke corrected her. “And it served her right for blaming you, even indirectly, for anything. Well,” he added, with a sigh, “I suppose you’re right. Bishop’s not as bad as all that. He did, after all, finally tell me how to find you.” Burke grinned at her, then rocked the perambulator, and smiled as his son eyed him sleepily. “Chaperones,” he said to the baby. “Troublesome things. At least I won’t ever have to worry about finding one for you, now, will I?”
“Not for him,” Kate agreed dryly. “But he might have a sister or two coming along someday.”
Burke stopped rocking the perambulator. “Oh, God,” he said. He raised his gaze toward Isabel, who’d reached out to give the Earl of Palmer a playful slap. “No,” he said with horror.
Kate only laughed, and hugged his arm. “Oh, God, yes,” she said.
A little scandal Page 35