‘I doubt you were the shallow fool you painted yourself even before Juno ran away,’ she protested with the glow of all that love in his words and the light in his dear eyes she could still see in the twilight and never mind colours or daylight. She wanted to stare back and give in and accept everything they could be to one another, if only she dared believe she could be this lucky twice in one lifetime and he really would not long for a son. ‘And I do wish you would stop chastising yourself for past sins only you seem to worry about now,’ she added, simply to stop herself eagerly saying yes to him and all that lovely promise for the future.
‘Finished?’ he asked and even in the gloom she could see he had raised his eyebrows at her, as if he had worked that out for himself.
‘No, it is a ridiculous idea and we should both forget you ever mentioned it.’
‘I certainly will not.’
‘Then you should. I can forget you said it so we can be easy again together over tonight and you will thank me for it when you come to your senses.’
‘I am not a boy, Marianne,’ he told her with a fearsome frown and he clasped his hands together as if he was afraid he might have to shake her for pretending he was anything less than a set and determined adult if he did not. He certainly looked set and determined on getting his own way.
‘I can tell,’ she admitted with a half-smile for his gruffness and the strength of the warmth and affection that bound them together as well as this constant sizzle of attraction she had cursed from the very beginning of their acquaintance. Even as she longed to be in his arms again and agreeing to anything he wanted them to be if only he would make love to her, she made herself curse it some more and told herself she could walk away from him even now.
‘Stop treating me as if I am an immature fool who does not know his own mind. I love you and I intend to marry you and nobody else.’
‘You love me?’ she asked and gaped up at him like a fool. Even as she gasped out that almost unthinkable question warmth ran through her like quicksilver and all the cold and lonely places Daniel left her when he died suddenly felt full of light and air again. He had said he cared about her and there was that stumble over the like word, but she had not dared to hope he actually loved her. She let the wonder of it lift her up and make her feel new again and met his gaze with all she felt for him in her own dazed eyes and never mind if they could see each other clearly or not in the ever-increasing darkness. She even stepped forward, ready to walk into his arms before she remembered why she could not and would not marry him. ‘But I am barren,’ she reminded them both bleakly as if he might not have taken all the implications of that sad fact in even now.
The empty feel of that stark word reminded her how it felt not to be with child month after month, year after year. She had longed for Daniel’s child because she loved him so much it would have been wonderful to make a baby between them. He would have been a fine father as well, patient and full of fun, but stern when he had to be.
And his children would be growing up without him even now, Marianne, her sensible inner self reminded her.
They would have to live their whole lives with only vague memories of his strength and feeling secure and loved by their father and that would have been so very sad for them and for her as well. She still regretted the lack of a single one of them to say she and their father loved one another through thick and thin and that love would always live on in his children. With Alaric that lack would become monstrous because of all he had to pass on to a son and she could not endure even the thought of him coming to hate his childless marriage.
‘I really and truly do not care, Marianne,’ said Alaric Defford, Lord Stratford, with one of those mighty shrugs of his to say why on earth would he?
‘I do, though,’ she told him flatly and knew she was being unreasonable, but the memory of those miserable days when her courses returned relentlessly month after month was not easy to blot out of her mind and make her listen to reason.
‘Why?’
‘Because you have a title and great wealth and probably more than one fine estate to hand on to your eldest son,’ she fudged because she did not want him to see the pain her childlessness had caused her during her marriage to Daniel, just as she used to guard Daniel from it at the time.
‘Not good enough for me, Marianne. You must come up with a better reason to avoid me as a husband than that one. If I could be rid of my title, I would do it tomorrow. It bent me out of shape and made me look at life from the wrong side of the mirror and now it is standing between you and me. How could I even want a son of mine to be landed with something that could twist him into a man he should not be, Marianne? If there is no obscure Defford branch that fell away from the family tree many years ago to inherit my title and entailed land, then Juno’s children can petition for it if they choose to. Best to let the whole vainglory die with me, but if they want it they are welcome.’
‘You
