“I have been taking care not to plant a baby in your womb. I got carried away this time.” There might have been something else he wanted to add but then he closed his eyes and lay back upon her.
A baby? Eliza hadn’t been thinking of children. She had enough to deal with, with her brothers and sisters and now Sarah. They’d had this discussion and he’d said he’d not bring another bastard into the world. She’d told him she never wanted children of her own, only to ensure her siblings made it to adulthood, to happiness. They’d practically agreed, no children. Not ever. But for three very long moments, Eliza wondered what she would do after she finished taking care of everyone else’s children. What would she do when she was all alone, Darius gone on long trips around the world’s oceans, laughter and light absent from her life while she occupied the big house with only a handful of others?
Ever since the scandal with Harold, she’d always imagined growing old alone, perhaps caring for her brother’s children when he had them. She was going to ask for a small room close to the nursery where she would live out her days knowing her sacrifices came to fruition and that everyone was settled. Everyone except for her.
She would be forever alone. Forever taking her brother’s charity and his screaming children so he could share this with his own wife. So he could lie on the oversized armchair in front of a crackling fire, in the arms of the woman he loved.
Love. It was the one part of life she would never lay claim to. She would be loved like a sister, like an aunt, like a friend and companion. But not like this. Not like she was beginning to want to be.
Darius’s voice intruded upon her melancholy and she came to with a start when his hand cupped her cheek.
“I’m sorry, I was wool-gathering.”
“Mindless indeed,” he chuckled. “Are you terribly upset with me?”
“Upset?” she repeated, flashes of her years-long misery beat her mercilessly to distraction.
“It is not my intention to make you pregnant, Eliza. Though you would be irresistible, fat with child.”
She could see it in her mind and she almost wished she did become pregnant. As much as she liked to think her husband was now all hers, he was not. He belonged to the sea, to his men, to his business interests. Her soul yearned for someone or something that was all hers. Someone she would never have to part with. Someone who could never be taken from her by another. She would only ever have one husband but could she wish for a baby? For her very own companion through the long years ahead?
No, she couldn’t.
Life was not fair to her like that. Putting on a brave face, she returned Darius’s chuckle and made a remark about getting fat but in the back of her mind, the truth sat stark and bare. If she wanted to share her life with someone, it would not be her husband. She would have to work harder to guard her heart against him. Against the possibilities she saw in him time and again as more than a protector and friend and roof-giver.
Perhaps she was happier when she was just a shell of a woman, when her only goal had been to protect her siblings. She could have lived her life without knowing the warmth of man’s touch, without the fullness of his body invading hers, without the knowledge that no matter what she did, he would never really be hers.
She had to stop seeing Darius as the slayer of her dragons before he sailed off into the sunset with her heart and her soul in his pocket.
*
Eliza lay on her back the next morning beneath the mighty branches of the Christmas tree in the parlour and imagined herself in the pine forest, a blanket of fragrant needles under her as the summer sun peeked between the foliage to warm her face. Freedom beckoned but she pushed it away. There were barely a few hours left before they were to pile into a carriage and travel to London where they would board Darius’s ship in the dead of night and then sail to a new land. Sarah gurgled and played with her own fingers next to her on the carpets, carefree and blissfully naïve to the hurdles ahead.
Would she ever see her mother’s Christmas tree decorations again? They were going to be aboard ship while happy families enjoyed festivities in country seats and city mansions. Eliza had pilfered what she could in the way of gifts for Gabriella, Grace, Nathanial and Ethan from Darius’s attics. She’d found a glass statue of a great stallion for Ethan. A jewellery box for Grace. A small and delicate music box for Gabriella that worked by turning a crank on one side. Nathanial’s gift was almost impossible. She’d about given up when Darius had offered her his late grandfather’s cufflinks. They didn’t bear the mark of Wickham, instead adorned by tiny rubies, worthless in value but drowning in sentiment.
She’d nearly cried when he’d wrapped them in a handkerchief and placed them in her hand. When he’d kissed her forehead and strode from the room, a tear did roll down her cheek, and then several more until she’d lost count.
Even if she did return to England to see Nathanial proudly take his rightful place in society and history, she would never leave the country. She would never see the capital or dance at a ball. She had already been a social pariah due to scandal. Now she was a bastard’s wife. An ex-pirate’s lover. A good man’s friend.
She had begun to think that
