Simply Love

had realized anew during the day how wealthy he must be. He had even insisted upon taking her to a jeweler’s, where he had bought her the diamond earrings and gold chain with a diamond pendant that she was also wearing this evening.

She had bought him a new fob for his watch at the same jeweler’s, recklessly spending almost all the money she possessed. He had stood in the doorway of the bedchamber, fingering it as he watched her and David admire their own far more lavish gifts.

Anne had been very aware all evening of the other bedchamber-the one with the large canopied bed-at the other side of the private sitting and dining room, where she would presumably spend her wedding night with her new husband.

Although David had been with them the whole time, something in Sydnam’s manner all afternoon and during dinner had assured her that though this had been a forced marriage, he nevertheless desired her and had no intention of making this a mere marriage of convenience.

She did not want a marriage of convenience either. She wanted to be a normal woman. She wanted to have a normal marriage.

And perhaps, she thought, now that she had been with him once, her body would believe what her mind had told her. Perhaps it would be a magical wedding night.

All day she had been partly terrified, partly excited at the prospect.

She felt the tension again now as she sat on the side of David’s bed telling him a story, as she still did each evening before he settled for sleep. As usual she picked up the narrative from where she had left it the night before, continued it for ten minutes or so, making it up as she went along, and then broke off at a particularly suspenseful moment. As usual she laughed at David’s sleepy protest and bent to kiss him.

“How are we expected to live until tomorrow night before finding out what happens to poor Jim?” Sydnam asked from the doorway, where she knew he had been standing though she had been sitting with her back to him.

“You have no choice,” she said, getting to her feet. “Until tomorrow night I will not know myself what is to be Jim’s fate.”

She turned back to smooth David’s hair away from his brow and saw resentment in his eyes for a moment before he closed them.

Oh, David, she told him silently, give him a chance. Please give him a chance.

“Good night, David,” Sydnam said, not advancing farther into the room.

“Good night, sir,” David said-and then, after a brief pause, “Thank you again for my paints.”

Anne followed Sydnam back into the private sitting room a few moments later, closing the door of the bedchamber behind her.

“He will be wanting to get to Ty Gwyn as quickly as the carriage wheels can turn,” she said, “so that he may use his new paints. You could not possibly have given him a more welcome gift.”

“I think we will not go there immediately,” he said. “We are relatively close to Alvesley. I would like to have my parents meet my new wife. I believe we will go there for a few days.”

Anne froze as she sat again at the cleared dining table and Sydnam sat opposite and picked up his wineglass. It was strange that in all the time she had waited for him to come to marry her, it had not once occurred to her that she would also be marrying into the family of the Earl of Redfield. Whatever would they think of her? The answer did not bear contemplating.

“Do they know about me?” she asked.

“No,” he said.

And for the first time she realized what an awkward position she had put him in with his family. Though she must not begin to think that way. He was as much to blame for what had happened as she was-if blame was the right word.

“We must indeed go to Alvesley, then,” she said.

There was a twinkle in his eye suddenly and he smiled his lopsided grin.

“You sound as if you are agreeing to attend your own execution,” he said. “You will like them, Anne, and they will love you.”

She doubted that very much indeed. Even though she might continue to reassure herself with the knowledge that they were equally responsible for having conceived a child and thus having been precipitated into an unplanned marriage, she did not doubt that his family would see matters quite otherwise.

“Will we tell them…everything?” she asked.

He set down his glass, though his fingers played with the stem.

“I want them to know,” he said, smiling again, “that I am to be a father. But for your sake we will say nothing at present. I will let them know in a letter after we have gone home to Ty Gwyn, and they may draw whatever conclusions they wish when the child is born sooner than expected.”

His gaze slipped downward to her abdomen, and Anne resisted the urge to spread her hand there. It seemed strangely unreal that they had created life together in her womb. She felt an unexpected but very welcome surge of desire between her thighs and in the passage within.

“Kit and Lauren have three children,” he said. “They are all considerably younger than David, but even so he may enjoy having some cousins to meet.”

“He loves playing with young children,” she said. “I think it is a natural reaction to having spent the last few years with older girls. Young children make him feel important.”

“We will leave for Alvesley in the morning, then,” he said.

They fell into a short silence that might have been comfortable if it had not been so charged with sexual tension. But the discomfort, Anne thought, feeling her breath quicken and her nipples harden, was very pleasurable. They were man and wife, and tonight and for the rest of their lives they would share a marital bed, and they would make love whenever they wished.

Dread receded to be replaced by hope. She remembered the desire, the need, the pleasure with which she had approached their lovemaking last time. It had all been perfectly wonderful until the moment when he came inside her. But the memory of him there had surely replaced the other memory. All would be well. They had not married under the best of circumstances, it was true-she knew that he had not really wanted her as his wife-but she knew equally that he would make the best of those circumstances just as she would.

“Anne,” he said, “after going to Alvesley we ought to go into Gloucestershire so that I may meet your family.”

“No!” she exclaimed.

“It would be a fitting time to do it,” he said. “Any embarrassment they may have felt over your unmarried state while you had a child will be soothed by the knowledge of your recent marriage. And we will be able to assure them that I look upon David as my son just as if he had been born of my seed. It is time-”

“It is not time,” she cried, getting to her feet and crossing to the fireplace, where she stood with her back to him, looking into the glowing coals, “and never will be. I have no family.”

“You do,” he said with quiet persistence. “You have a husband and son. You have in-laws and nephews and a niece at Alvesley. And you have parents and siblings in Gloucestershire-my in-laws and David’s grandparents and aunts and uncles. Perhaps cousins too. You have never given me full details.”

“Deliberately so,” she told him, “because I do not know the details myself. My family was not there to comfort and support me when I needed comfort and support, and so I managed without them and discovered that in fact I did not need them at all and would never need them again.”

“We always need family,” he said. “Some poor souls literally have none, and they are much to be pitied. Other people turn away from the family they do have and are perhaps more to be pitied. But at least they always have the chance to turn back again.”

“I was not the one who turned away,” she told him, angry and upset that he should bring up this topic now when she had told him her feelings on it while they were in Wales. “I have no turning back to do.”

“I disagree with you, Anne,” he said. “I know you are not a happy person. I do not believe you ever will be happy until you have at least tried to reconcile with your family and to make your son-and your husband-known to them.”

“And I suppose,” she said, turning on him, “my new child too, who will be very legitimate indeed and very