Midnight Eyes
Page 31
Color. It was his wife’s newfound addiction and consequently his life had become filled with it.
Imogen seemed determined to make up for all those years of darkness by filling every corner of her life with the brilliance of color. Sometimes the results were a little startling, it had to be admitted, but Robert didn’t mind. To him it was simply a sign of health and happiness, and looking at her moving gracefully amongst her gardens he could feel both radiating from her.
The sudden sound of a sleepy gurgle drew Robert’s attention from the beauty of his wife. Imogen had brought Kathryn out with her, he realized with a smile. Her little basket nestled in the shade of the rosebushes and she yawned as he watched, sticking her fist in her mouth before finally giving in to sleep, obviously impervious to the nearly fully grown sheep that contentedly ate grass nearby.
Robert’s face softened as he looked at the tiny human. It still seemed amazing to him that he had a daughter, that his love had produced another life. And it was all a gift from the woman who loved him. He didn’t know how he was ever going to repay her.
Somehow, Imogen had managed to give him everything he had never dared ask for.
His heart swelled to bursting as his eyes found Imogen again and lovingly followed the contours of her slender body. He couldn’t help but admire the way she now moved with both grace and confidence, though sometimes that very confidence terrified him.
She seemed to have no understanding that there may be limits to her new strength and refused to let him lock her away so that he could keep her safe. Not that he hadn’t tried.
After she had regained consciousness, he had been prepared to tie her to the bed if that was what it took to keep her unharmed; but, of course, eventually Imogen had balked at the idea. Even when he had, rather graciously he felt, conceded that he might let her sit in a chair for an hour each day after the baby was born. She had only smiled at him very sweetly, told him that he was a dear man and that she loved him, but he was insane if he thought she was going to play an invalid all her life just to stop him from worrying.
It seemed to Robert that in no time she was out of her bed and throwing herself into life with a will. There had been no stopping her. All he had been able to do was to follow helplessly in her wake, trying to protect her from anything that might cause her harm. He had resigned himself to the fact that the only way to keep her safe was to be with her constantly—and that hadn’t been without its consolations, he remembered with a grin—but she had tolerated it only for a little while.
She had turned on him one evening and told him in no uncertain terms that it was time for him to go about his own business so that she could get on with hers. She had insisted she could no longer abide him as an overbearing nursemaid.
He had tried to tell her, calmly, that he was only being sensible, that while she seemed to be healthy, she shouldn’t forget that it wasn’t so long ago she had had a near-fatal fall and that she was pregnant. She needed to be looked after and he wanted to do it.
She had laughed, waved aside his concern, tweaked his nose and gone on her merry way, leaving him no choice but to do likewise.
Despite her condition and his fears, she had set a relentless pace, much to Robert’s horror. It was a sign of just how bad things had become that he had actually been relieved when he was called in from the fields with the news that Imogen had gone into labor. His frazzled mind had foolishly thought that at least it would slow her down a bit and give him some peace from his near-permanent state of worry.
That relief had quickly evaporated as a night and another day passed with Imogen struggling to bring their child into the world. It had been as bad as waiting for her to awake from her ordeal at Roger’s hands and, to make it worse, he had once more been banished from her side while she fought for her life, the healer already very wary of him after their previous encounter.
As time had ticked by without end, he had suffered all the shades of fear and guilt it was possible to suffer. Every time her screams reached him, he had listened with the grim knowledge that she suffered only because he had followed his animal lust and got her pregnant.
When the sound of a baby’s lusty cry broke into an unnatural silence, Robert hadn’t felt any ease in his dark guilt. It had almost brought him to his knees. The healer was wiping her bloody hands on her dress when she came and told him that all was well. He had run from the room before she had finished speaking, only reassured that Imogen was safe when he was able to brush her sweat-soaked hair from her forehead with a shaky hand and rain kisses over her exhausted but jubilant face.
“I’ll never touch you again,” he had vowed fervently between kisses. “I will live like a monk before I ever put you in jeopardy again. I promise.”
She had smiled serenely and raised a hand to his cheek. “And here was me already trying to decide what we could call Kathryn’s brother or sister.” She had let out a tired, husky laugh at the horrified look on his face.
“Not just yet, perhaps,” she murmured soothingly. “Not till I have a little rest at least.”
“Not ever!” he had roared at her, and considered that the end of the matter, contenting himself with watching over her and Kathryn through the long nights.
The days that followed had been hell for Robert as he watched Imogen struggle to do everything at once. Although she denied it, the birth had drained her already stretched resources, but she still refused a wet nurse and ignored the nursery maid he had appointed, stubbornly determined to look after Kathryn herself. Robert had been bewildered as to what he should do. He couldn’t just stand by and watch helplessly as Imogen struggled to balance the child’s needs with her own body’s need to rest and heal, and had soon found himself having to try and deal with Kathryn as he was the only one Imogen would let care for her baby.
He would have done anything if it meant Imogen could get the rest she so clearly needed, but he was a most reluctant nursery maid. The tiny, helpless scrap of humanity terrified him. He had never been around babies before, and scarcely knew where to start with his own. His hands seemed too large and clumsy to deal with such tiny limbs, but he had set his jaw and learned the mysteries of child soothing and napkin changing. In the process he found himself falling totally under Kathryn’s innocent spell.
He seemed to drown in those wide, innocent eyes that were so much like his, and was totally captivated by the smile that reminded him so much of the woman he loved. Kathryn every gurgle of pleasure became for him a prize of infinite worth, her every tear an enemy to be fought off with a will.
The newly discovered joys of fatherhood had almost been enough to make up for the self-imposed chastity. In that month before Henry’s summons he had found something approaching contentment, but that hadn’t stopped him from burning to be with Imogen.
Kathryn was now two months old, and things certainly hadn’t become any easier for him. Even now as he watched Imogen, he found himself gritting his teeth as his blood pooled in his groin. He had been able to deal with his lust before because Imogen had needed to heal, but now that she was radiating health and well-being he didn’t know how he was going to survive.
“Are you going to spend the whole day skulking?” Imogen asked calmly, without looking up. Her ability to do that always made him smile.
“I think I might skulk for a bit. After a month away, I find I’m enjoying the view.”
Imogen let out a less-than-elegant snort. “He abandons us for what feels like forever, Kathryn, and then all he wants to do when he finally finds his way back, is to look.” She shook her head sadly. “I hate to say it, but I think your father is a madman.”
She let out a delighted squeal as Robert lunged and swept her up into his arms.
“Now, don’t you go bad-mouthing me to Kathryn,” he said with mock ferocity. “How will she ever grow up respecting her father if her mother casually casts doubt on his sanity?”
Imogen smiled and wound her arms around his neck. “My girl will grow up to be a clever woman
and she will make up her own mind as to the state of her father’s questionable sanity.”
Her laughter was cut short by his lips descending to cover hers. He inhaled her laughter, feeling like a starving man let into a feast. Time stopped entirely when Imogen knowingly parted her lips, and invited his questing tongue to explore the familiar territory once more. Robert didn’t have the willpower to stop, and found himself drinking deeply the taste of Imogen’s passion.
The small, catlike mew of pleasure that escaped Imogen drew him back to sanity and he groaned as he tore his mouth free. “I promised I wouldn’t do this,” he said raggedly.
“Making all the decisions again?” she asked with a husky chuckle. Deprived of the heat of his lips on hers Imogen ran intoxicated kisses down his neck to satisfy her own need for him. “Not to do this—now that would be insane.”
She lifted her gently amused eyes up to meet his. “I won’t let you put me in a dark box for my own protection, Robert. I’ve tried that, and I can’t say that I much cared for it. I’m much stronger than you seem to think.” She smiled mistily and ran a finger over his full bottom lip, sending a shiver of passion through his body. “With you in my heart, mind and soul, there is nothing I can’t do. Nothing we can’t do together.”
He kissed the tip of her finger, then moved it aside to capture her lips once more, but this time the kiss was as much about love as it was about lust. “This is still madness. We’re in the rose garden, for God’s sake. Anyone might see us.”
“Then let’s be mad together.”
And they were, surrounded by light and color, with their baby sleeping peacefully nearby, undisturbed by her parents’ love.
It truly was madness, but, oh, what a divine madness!
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Copyright © 2007 by Prue Brophy
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