seat at the foot of his bed.
“Darius sings to me sometimes, when I’ve had a nightmare,” John said, eyes drifting closed. “I like the one about the lady with the green dress.”
Vivian took a moment to translate, but then she started in on a quiet version of the folk song “Greensleeves,” switching to a soft hum as John fell back to sleep. When she looked up, Darius was standing in the shadows by the door, arms crossed, regarding her from across the room. She rose, and he held out a hand. “Nightmare?”
Vivian tucked herself under his arm. “Gracie came to get you, but I heard her knocking, so I let you sleep. Does he get them often?”
“Yes.” Darius ran a free hand through his hair. “I think he dreams of his mother, of the few months of his life when she was extant, and then wakes up, and she’s not here, not anywhere.”
“But you’re here.” Vivian leaned up and kissed his cheek. “And he goes right back to sleep, the same as any child.”
“You think so?”
“I have two nephews and a niece. The boys are eight and five, and I can assure you they have had their share of nightmares, and their mother has never been farther away than the next hallway.”
He looked relieved, which made her realize how deeply he fretted for the boy.
“You’re doing a good job, Darius. John is a delight, and he loves you.”
Something shadowed crossed his features, but they’d reached Darius’s bedroom, and Vivian let him tug off her nightgown and bathrobe, then wrap himself around her in the middle of the bed.
“You love that child,” she said softly.
“I do.” Vivian couldn’t see his face in the dark, but she knew the admission cost him. “He wouldn’t love me, did he know all the circumstances of his situation here.”
“Yes, he would.” She laced her fingers through his where they splayed over her midriff. “Children can be very forgiving, and you’re doing the best you can for him.”
He gathered her closer and began to make excruciatingly tender love to her without saying a word.
That night marked the turning point in their dealings, with the date of Vivian’s scheduled departure drawing inexorably closer. They teased less, spoke less, and loved with a quiet desperation neither acknowledged. On the final night, Darius left her in peace to take her bath and tuck herself up in bed.
Near midnight, after much useless gazing into the fire in his study, he found her asleep in his bed for the last time and decided not to wake her. She’d become subdued these past few days, but so had he. When he’d found her tucking John in after a nightmare, something inside him had broken. Of all the burdens he carried, the burden of raising that child alone was the heaviest and the lightest. John was goodness, innocence, and all the hope and potential in the world.
John deserved to be loved and protected, and Darius died a thousand deaths every time Blanche tooled out in her coach and the servants hustled John up to the third floor, there to remain until Lady Cowell took herself off hours later, lighter in the pocket and none the wiser about the composition of Darius’s household.
He hated—
“Darius?”
“Here.” He curled around Vivian’s back, fitting his groin to her derriere and snugging his arm around her waist. “Go back to sleep, love.”
“Where were you?”
“Making sure you’re packed.” He kissed her nape. In truth, he’d been sitting among her things, touching them, lifting them to his nose and wishing. Pathetic, but after tomorrow, the opportunity to be pathetic wouldn’t be within reach, so he allowed it.
“Gracie helped me.” Vivian brought his hand up to her lips and kissed his knuckles. “Have you any advice?”
“Name the baby William,” Darius said on a sigh.
“My menses should have started by now. I’m not myself of late, so perhaps they’re just delayed.”
“You’ll be sure William tells me if there’s a child?”
“Yes.” She tucked his hand over her naked breast. “I won’t have to make him. William keeps his word.”
“Do you know what to look for?”
“Regarding?”
She wouldn’t just ask him. “Conception. You’ll be tender here.” He gently closed his hand over her breast. “You might be sleepy, queasy, or faint. Your sister can tell you more.”
“How do you know these things?”
“John’s mother was under my roof for much of her pregnancy. I became familiar with her various complaints.”
“I envy you that.” Vivian shifted to her back and hiked a leg over Darius’s hips. “You know more what to expect than I do. Will you write to me?”
“Of course not.”
“And I’m not to write to you?”
His finger traced down the side of her face. “You know we cannot, and it wouldn’t be kind, either. Neither to you, nor to me, nor to William. Mostly, it wouldn’t be smart.”
“Because this means nothing, you mean nothing, I mean nothing.”
“You’re learning.” Darius leaned over and kissed her mouth, but it wasn’t to shut her up; it was gratitude for not belaboring the miserable point.
“Darius, I really, really want you to stop dealing with those women.” She scooted so she was right up against his length, on her back and able to regard him by the firelight.
“You don’t get a say, love.” He kept his tone light. “It won’t be of any moment to you after tomorrow, because we’ll rarely see each other.”
“Rarely?”
“I’m to attend the christening if there’s a child, and I’ll be squiring my sister around this year’s Season, which means our paths might cross.”
“You don’t want me to say this, but I’ll look forward to that.”
“Vivvie.” He rose up over her and braced himself on his arms. “You can’t. You
“If you didn’t want me getting sentimental, then why create a perfume for me? Why let me meet John, why insist on sending Bernice along home with me? Why, Darius Lindsey?”
“Because you are a lady,” he said, lowering himself to his forearms and gathering her in his embrace. “You were supposed to be a damned new roof, and you turned out to be a lady. One doesn’t treat ladies with less than consideration.”
“And you are a gentleman.” Vivian stroked his hair. “And yet you let those infernal women beat you and humiliate you, and I cannot abide it, Darius.”
“It isn’t yours to abide or not,” he said softly, kissing the side of her neck. “I don’t want to argue with you, Vivvie.”
“Yes, you do. You want to insist coin alone is adequate justification for letting them abuse you. I could just shake you.”
“If you meet me at some Venetian breakfast, Vivvie, you’re to look down your lovely nose at me, as if I’m a bug on the walkway, and ignore me thereafter.”
“Ignore the father of my child?”
“Ignore the conniving bastard who took coin for swiving you,” he whispered, letting her feel his growing arousal. “The man who got a child on you and walked away without a backward glance. The idiot who…”
But he stopped himself by sealing his mouth over hers, and for the last time, sliding himself home into her body. He wanted to rush, wanted to pound into her so she’d recall him for the rest of her life, so she’d never make love again without remembering what it had felt like with him.
For her, he held himself back. For her, he went slowly and tenderly until she was begging and writhing and
