The square jaw she loved so much was covered in a well-trimmed beard that left his lips visible. Lips that curved in a smile for her.
“Love you,” she said, meeting his gaze with her own.
“Love you, too.”
“Two, my love?” she said, holding up thumb and forefinger.
John’s smile faltered slightly, handsome features showing a lack of understanding.
“Do you love us both?”
“Both? Wha—”
“I am pregnant, husband,” she said, kissing him.
“What?” he said, loud enough the rest of the table grew silent.
“I am carrying our child, John Dexter Ennis,” she said, equally loudly, punctuating the statement with yet one more kiss.
“Uh—buh—” he sputtered, stunned.
She touched his face as the rest of their friends stood and moved to surround them, faces bright with happiness, and congratulated them both.
“How far along?” Priscilla asked.
“Just about a week past the first trimester.”
“But—” John said, still struggling with the news.
“Awww, so nice that he’s forming complete words again…” Priscilla mocked, ever so gently.
“Be nice,” Monique said, rapping her fan against the table.
“I didn’t, I just…”
“Thought I was getting fat, did you, John?” Ilsa asked with a playful pat on his cheek.
He tilted his head against her hand, smiled and said, “Really?”
She smiled back, and nodded, feeling tears well in her eyes. “Really.”
“I’m going to be a father,” he said, voice thick with emotion.
Ilsa kissed him gently.
Rodney clapped him on the back with one shovel-sized hand, the other men pressing in to congratulate him.
“I’m going to be a father,” John repeated.
“Yes, you are,” she answered, actively refusing to consider any outcome but the one she desired for him, for herself, and for the child they would have together.
* * *
Pris couldn’t help but smile at the look on John’s face.
Rodney nudged her, brows raised in question, then moved aside to let Monique, Gervais, and Bertram congratulate the expectant couple.
“Just trying to find the word that best describes John’s expression,” she said, smiling up at him.
He chuckled. “J.D. does look pretty stunned.”
“You bet he does, but I think I will settle for pleasantly bemused.”
“Settle?” he asked, wrapping her shoulders with one arm and hugging her to him. “You’re not one to settle.”
“Well, at first I was thinking poleaxed, but I don’t think one can be happily poleaxed, do you?”
Ear against his chest, she felt as much as heard his chuckle. He kissed the crown of her head and asked, “Did you know?”
Pris nodded. “She told me this morning, but I half suspected the last few weeks.”
“Oh?” he asked.
“This place isn’t that big.”
He pulled away slightly and looked another question at her.
She shrugged. “Not so big I didn’t hear her getting violently ill after breakfast every day I was home to hear.”
“Oh.” He shook his head.
“What is it, Rodney?”
“Just thinking how clueless I can be, even with my training.”
She pulled herself back into his embrace. “It’s normal. You don’t have ladyparts, so you miss some clues.”
“Ladyparts?” he asked.
She nodded gravely, cheek sliding across the silk of his robe and the hard muscle underneath. “The new technical term. I will spread it through the harem!”
His chuckling grew to laughter, then to great guffaws.
Ilsa and the rest left off their conversation to stare at him, which only made him laugh harder.
Priscilla stepped back from him, wondering what she’d said.
“What’s got him laughing?” Ilsa asked, smiling tentatively.
“Spread—parts.” Rodney gasped, tears at the corners of his eyes now.
“What?” John asked.
“I don’t know. I was telling him—” Her eyes widened in shock as she figured out what had struck him so funny.
“Oh, Jesus, Rodney!” she cried, slapping him on the shoulder. Then she stifled a mad laugh herself. It was funny, but what made her lose it was his attempts to control himself, as he rarely suffered such attacks. It wasn’t that he was humorless; he was constantly making her laugh with his dry humor.
Their friends waited, with various levels of patience, for an explanation. At least all of them were smiling indulgently.
Rodney sobered enough to gasp out, “She”—he pointed at Priscilla, who was still laughing too hard to speak—“threatened to spread”—he bit a broad knuckle and eventually managed to gurgle—“her ladyparts.” He gnawed on his knuckle once more, then said, quite clearly, “Through the harem,” and fell to laughing again.
Ilsa’s bright, infectious laugh silvered the air first, quickly followed by that of the rest of their friends.
Chapter 26
Asirgarh
Nur’s tent, Shuja’s camp
“There is only so much I can do, Nur.”
“I know this as well as you, perhaps better, Shehzada.”
The look he gave her was not meant to put her at her ease, nor show understanding.
Nur, tired in her bones, accepted his disapproval without bowing to it. She busied her hands by plucking a folded letter from between her toes and proffering it, knowing early news of the explosion outside Agra would cover many sins.
He did not take it. “From who?”
“One of your many friends at court,” she said, offering it again. Unsurprised that he need not bother to ask which court. He was very clever, this great nephew.
He took the letter in hand, but did not open it.
“You will want to read it, Shehzada.”
“What I want, Nur, is assurances.”
Nur fought the urge to shrug. Aurangzeb—indeed, most princes—did not respond well to an apparent indifference to stated desires from subordinates. “The ferenghi want what they want. I report to you what they conveyed to me, as you require.”
He leveled a stare at her, dark eyes glittering in the lamplight.
Nur was struck by the fact he’d grown into a magnetic, handsome young man. This, despite the severe piety that drove him to suck all pleasures from life but the thin ones prayer provided.
Five heartbeats he stared at her. Five heartbeats she returned his regard. One does not show fear to the lion unless one wishes to be eaten.
He was the one who broke the silence. “There is a limit to a prince’s patience, Nur,
