The Secret Mistress

“I was never better in my life.” She smiled at him and then looked down into their daughter’s face as he looked down into their son’s.

He set his bundle down in the crook of her free arm and took the other into his own arms. He rearranged it so that the baby’s face was close to his own and he gazed for several silent moments.

“Welcome, my son,” he said softly at last, and he smiled with such tenderness that Angeline’s heart turned over.

He looked back at Angeline.

“If someone had told me an hour ago,” he said, “that it was possible to love two children equally and to overflowing, I would have said it was impossible. But it is not, is it?”

“No.” She shook her head. “Love is infinite. You have your heir, Edward.”

“Yes.” He looked from one to the other of the babies again. “More important, we have our son. And our daughter. Not necessarily in that order. I have a strong suspicion that little Madeline is not ever going to let Matthew forget that she is the elder.”

“We are able to use both names,” she said.

Lady Madeline Mary Elizabeth and Matthew James Alexander, Viscount Leeson. Large names for two little bundles of new humanity.

“Angeline,” he said, leaning slightly toward her, “thank you.”

She smiled though even the effort to do that was exhausting.

“I love you so very much,” she said.

He cupped the side of her face with his free hand and leaned over her to kiss her softly on the lips. He did not need to say anything. That was what seven years of marriage did for one.

There were those who said that the luster went from a marriage before one year was over and that all but the legal and ecclesiastical bonds was dead within seven years.

She did not suppose it was possible that she was more in love with Edward now than she had been seven years ago, or he with her. That would be to insult what they had felt for each other when they married. But it was certainly true that she was as much in love. It was also true that the quality of her love had deepened. She knew him now in almost every way one human being could know another. Almost every way. No one could ever know absolutely everything there was to know about another, of course, and if it were possible it would not be desirable, because there should always be more to discover, always something new to surprise and delight.

Even she could not have guessed that Edward would have tears in his eyes as he looked from their son to their daughter and back again—and back yet again.

And of course no one else knew him as she knew him. To the world he was a dutiful, quiet, rather dull man. To his family he was a warm and loving and dutiful man. Only she knew the depths of passion that he poured out in his private and sexual relationship with his wife.

With his secret mistress.

She had never stopped being that. A wife could be a dull creature, as could a husband.

A lover and his mistress were endlessly exciting.

Except that excitement was just too wearying to be contemplated now. Perhaps later …

The little bundle that was Madeline was being lifted from her arm. Edward was holding her, she saw when she opened her eyes. The nurse beside him was holding Matthew.

“Sleep,” Edward said. “And that is an order.”

She exerted herself sufficiently to smile once more.

“Yes, my lord,” she said and was asleep almost before the words were out.