something else, though, over and above both. You, my sweetheart, are plain gorgeous. I think I may forever afterward find all the pretty girls somewhat insipid.'
'How foolish!' She laughed. 'Any more of such blatant flattery and I may toss you over the battlements in dead earnest.'
'I am in fear and trembling,' he said, and bent down to scoop her up into his arms.
'Put me down,' she demanded indignantly.
But he stepped against the battlements with her and lifted her higher. She shrieked, wrapped her arms tightly about his neck, and then found herself laughing helplessly.
'Don't struggle,' he said, laughing too, 'or I may d-d-drop you, Free. Oops!'
She shrieked again as he pretended to do just that.
He set her down at last and she stood close to him, her face against his cravat, recovering from leftover laughter.
'You wretch,' she said. 'I will get my revenge. See if I don't.'
'Free,' he said softly, his chin against the top of her head, 'this needs to be said. If we have made a child, I was as much a part of the making as you. We will marry, and we will make the best of the marriage both for the child's sake and for our own. We will not waste energy resenting each other and blaming ourselves and making ourselves unhappy by imagining that the other must be unhappy. We will do our best to rub along together. Agreed?'
She was considerably shaken. She felt warm and safe standing against him, and uncharacteristically she welcomed the solid safety of his body. His words had changed nothing-and everything.
. . . if we have made a child . . .
'Agreed,' she said.
They stood against each other, neither seeming to know how to proceed.
'We had better go back to the house,' she said briskly, stepping back. I am hungry.'
'I'll go down those stairs ahead of you,' he said. 'They are remarkably steep. You may take my hand if you wish.'
Freyja lifted her chin to a sharp angle and glared at him along the length of her nose.
'Uh-oh!' he said, raising his hands theatrically as if to defend himself from attack. 'Now what the devil have I said?'
'Don't you dare try to protect me!' she told him, her voice cold and haughty. 'I came up the stairs without the helping hand of any insufferably hovering male. I will go down the stairs the same way.'
'Deuce take it,' he said, shaking his head and returning his arms to his sides, 'one cannot even be a gentleman with you, Free, without arousing your ire. Go ahead. Break your neck on the way down and I'll stand behind you, thankful you are not taking me down with you. Better yet, you can break my fall when I trip all over my boots.'
Freyja smiled to herself as she started down the steep spiral stairs.
Joshua liked the Bedwyns and regretted the deception that was being perpetrated against them-though of course it might not prove to be a deception if he and Freyja were forced to marry after all.
Rannulf and Judith were to return to Leicestershire the next day. They lived at Grandmaison Park with Lady Beamish, the Bedwyns' maternal grandmother, but she was in poor health and they did not want to be absent any longer.
'We will see you again soon, Joshua,' Judith said when she was taking her leave of everyone, 'so this is not good-bye. I just hope you do not set your wedding date for a time when I am unable to travel. But that is extremely selfish of me. I will be very happy for you and Freyja wherever I am on that day.'
'You must be made of stern stuff to have taken on Free,' Rannulf said, winking at him as they shook hands. 'It will doubtless not be a tranquil marriage. She is not easily controlled. But my guess is that she has met her match. It is sure to be an interesting marriage.'
'I do not believe,' Joshua said, 'she can be controlled, easily or otherwise. It is perhaps a blessing that I like her as she is.'
Rannulf laughed appreciatively and punched him in the shoulder.
Aidan seemed dour and humorless until one got to know him. He was certainly reticent and slow to laugh, or even to smile, but it was soon evident that he adored Eve and was devoted to their children. He spent much of the day before the christening and the days after with the children-playing with them, taking them walking and riding, demanding courtesy and obedience of them, but otherwise keeping them on a very loose rein.
'They experienced all the terrors of rejection and insecurity after their parents died,' he explained after Joshua had supervised the boy on his pony while Aidan gave the little girl a riding lesson one morning. 'Even when they had been with Eve for a while and after I married her, someone tried to snatch them away as revenge against Eve for marrying me. It took a court case and the ruling of a magistrate to establish the fact that we are their legal guardians. If I have to spend the next twenty years of my life helping them believe that they belong somewhere, that they are loved unconditionally, that their world is a predominantly benign place, that they can dare to be happy, productive adults when they grow up, then I will consider those years well spent.'
'They are fortunate children,' Joshua said, remembering the bleakness of his own childhood.
'They have every right to be,' Aidan told him. 'Of course, we face the possibility of their insecurities surfacing again when Eve bears a child of our own, but that time is not yet, and we will deal with it when it does happen.'
Alleyne reminded Joshua of himself. Cheerful and always active, he nevertheless exuded a certain air of restlessness and aimlessness.
'I envy you,' he said when the two of them were alone together at breakfast after seeing Rannulf and Judith on
