LITMIR.BIZ

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      ‘Yes.’ No hesitation in her assent. He heard the rustle of her nightwear as he followed her inside. Satin, probably. He wished he might have been able to run his hands across the garment and know. But he stood still instead.

      ‘We need to talk, Beatrice-Maude.’

      ‘Because you would like me gone?’ Fear threaded her reply.

      ‘Gone? Lord, Bea.’ He reached out, palm up, and was pleased when he felt her fingers steal into his. A contact. Drawing her closer, he could feel the satin was cool and her hair tickled against the bare skin on his hand. Long and heavy, she had let it down for slumber. The thought made him take in a sharp breath and he scarcely knew how to start.

      ‘When we made love at Maldon, Beatrice, I did not protect you against the possibility of a baby.’

      ‘With my history it does not matter.’

      He smiled into her hair and wished that he could look into her eyes. Really look.

      ‘I think that it might have mattered…’

      She pulled back, but he did not let her go.

      ‘Marry me.’

      ‘No.’

      ‘No?’

      ‘I cannot marry you.’ Her voice was shaky. ‘Last time I married a man who did not love me I learnt the mistake of that.’

      The air around them was charged with question.

      ‘Love?’

      The way he said it was like a dagger to Bea’s heart. Love was not something to be considered or questioned. Love was simply a knowledge, unconscious and untempered.

      She felt the nails of her fingers dig into the skin on her forearm.

       Love me. Love me. Love me.

      But as the silence lengthened she knew that he would not say it, could not say it.

      ‘I have enough money to disappear, to make a new life. You need not feel hemmed in by a simple mistake.’

      ‘Mistake?’ he countered. ‘You think this child is a mistake?’

      ‘This child?’

      ‘Our child.’ His hand fell to her stomach. ‘You must have known.’

      Bea shook her head.

      ‘Your sickness in the morning…’

      She shook it again. ‘No, that can’t be. I am barren.’

      ‘With your husband that might have been the case, but with me…’

      ‘Pregnant?’ She could not go on. The word quivering between them like a barely believable truth!

      ‘Ahh, sweetheart.’ He stood, not touching, but only a breath away. ‘You did not know?’ Gentle sorrow tempered his question. ‘I thought that you must have known.’

      ‘I thought I was ill.’ Tears blurred her eyes, but she willed them back. ‘I would not hold you to any promises.’

      ‘It is too late for that, I think, with a new life growing.’

      His finger ran up her arm and then across her cheek and settled on the soft skin of her forehead. ‘Where in all of this lies the place for compromise? Is it here?’ His hand fell lower. ‘Or here?’ he questioned, as the beat of her heart began to thud. ‘Anything could be possible…’

      She should have said nay. Should have loosed his hold and stepped back. Should have said that the joining of their flesh was only a fleeting thing, ephemeral and unimportant. But she could not say that and mean it, as his warmth spread across her, increasing her desire, and the man who was the Lord of Darkness lifted her in his arms and took her to bed.

      He was not there when she woke, the warmth in the sheets long gone. So she lay with her hands across her stomach, trying in the silence to listen, to understand and believe that another soul lay within her, waiting for its own chance at life.

      A child. A Wellingham child. A child conceived on a snowy night when the old fetters of restraint had been washed away and freedom left in its place. She smiled and wondered if tears were the preserve of impending motherhood as a warm wetness ran down her cheeks.

      Victory.

      Finally.

      And so unexpected.

      Joy juxtaposed with worry. Would Taris now feel bound to her in a way he might not have otherwise?

      She shook away the idea as nonsense. A family. Home. Unity. Love. She could not turn away from this astonishing second chance.

      When she came downstairs after eleven o’clock she learnt that Taris had taken the carriage for Ipswich and would not be back again until the morrow.

      Emerald had given her the news as she sat at her own breakfast.

      ‘Perhaps he had some business that could not wait to be attended to?’

      ‘Perhaps.’ The poached eggs on toast that she had selected were suddenly very hard to swallow.

      ‘May I offer you a piece of advice, Beatrice?’ Emerald’s look was measured. She waited until Bea nodded.

      ‘The Wellingham men are hard to catch, but very easy to keep. Once they love, they love well.’

      ‘Taris does not love me. He has never said it.’

      She blurted the truth out like a green girl, though Emerald’s smile unnerved her.

      ‘Taris was an intelligence officer under Wellington. For years he scouted across Northern France and Spain under the guise of one from those climes and never once was he unmasked. Did you know that he speaks fluent Spanish and French and was one of the finest marksmen the army had ever seen?’ Stopping, she took a sip of strong black tea. ‘When he came to the Caribbean to rescue my husband from the clutches of a pirate colony…’ Emerald noted Bea’s surprise at this revelation ‘…he was the only man to have ever discovered their lair and the only man to leave it on his terms. The bullet hit him as he dragged Asher out into the sea and to safety.’

      ‘A bullet?’

      ‘His sight was damaged when he saved my husband and because of that I owe him everything!’ She leaned forwards. ‘Give him a chance to know what it is he thinks. Give him the same knowledge that I had to give to Ashe.’

      ‘The knowledge?’

      That he cannot live without you.’

      Bea pulled back. ‘I do not think…’

      Emerald’s fingers covered her own.

      ‘Taris has a need to understand that the man he is now is the one you want, not the one he once was. He needs to redefine himself and only you can help him do that.’

      ‘By loving him?’ Finally Beatrice saw where she was going with her argument.

      ‘Exactly.’

       Chapter Fourteen

      The talk with Emerald turned her sadness into something different altogether.

      Challenge now fired her imagination and the new ruthless single-mindedness was as freeing as it was unexpected. By the next evening she was watching for Taris to return to Falder, the plan in her mind fully formed.

      She had borrowed from Emerald a nightgown of lace and silk and the violet attar she wore had been sprinkled liberally over it. Around her bed candles fluttered, the scent of flowers vivid in the wax.

      Now she had a need of only the man himself, though as the hours raced on into night she began to think that he might not come at all.

      Bates had assured him that the light was

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