Darius: Lord of Pleasures (20 page)

“I feel pregnant. Ungainly, a little worried. What are you doing here?”

“William is taking good care of you?”

“William is doing his best.”

“Vivvie?” He was closer, though she hadn’t seen him move. “What aren’t you telling me?”

She scooted a little away, the better to see him and avoid his scent, because as pregnant as she was, she wanted to make herself drunk on his fragrance.

“You have no business showing up here and accosting me.”

“I’ve done a great deal more than accost you.” The humor was back in his tone. “That gives me the right to at least inquire about your well-being. William stayed back in London, didn’t he?”

She nodded, glancing away.

“What can he be about?” Darius eyed her searchingly. “Leaving you out here among the servants to go into your confinement?”

“You think he meant for you to come and inspect his broodmare?” Even Vivian was shocked by the bitterness in her tone.

“Perhaps.” Darius’s tone gave nothing away. “I was more concerned for the mother of my child. You’re cranky, and that’s to be expected. Shall I hold you?”

“No.”

He shifted, sitting behind her, a leg on either side of her, and drew her against his chest. “I went through this with John’s mother.”

Vivian felt his chin resting on her crown, and the tears constricted her throat. She should fight him off, but it had been so long, and she was weak with longing for just this.

“She was weepy and grouchy, and so worried for her child she could hardly carry on a civil conversation for the last few weeks. Fortunately, Gracie was on hand, and little moods and snits didn’t alarm her in the least.”

“You loved John’s mother?”

“I pitied her. I do not pity you, much.”

“Damn you.” Vivian did try to shove him off, but he held her gently.

“Vivvie, calm yourself.” He propped his cheek against her temple and kept both arms around her. “John resides with Leah and her husband, Bellefonte.”

“You miss him.” Vivian sighed against Darius’s chest. “You miss John, and you can’t pester him to write to you because you want him to be happy.”

“Hush.” He stroked her back in slow circles, and Vivian felt her eyes grow heavy.

“I’m angry with you.”

“I know, love.” He brushed a kiss to her hair. “You’re furious and disappointed. You have every reason to be.”

She dozed off, and he held her, and when she woke up, he was still there, and when she’d managed not to cry for weeks, that made Vivian cry.

***

Had God in all His wisdom created a sweeter experience than to allow a man to simply hold the mother of his child? Darius hoped Vivian would sleep for hours, but in fact she dozed only for a few minutes.

She was angry with him, but all trust hadn’t been destroyed, or she would never have let down her guard to rest in his arms this way. He assured himself this was true, and assured himself she was in blooming good health as he took a cautious inventory of her appearance.

Her face was thinner, more mature, and more lovely than ever.

Her pregnancy was advancing visibly, and the sight was dear and erotic and amazing to him. He locked the eroticism away behind high walls of respect and guilt.

Her breasts were magnificent, her hips voluptuous, and her shape… Slowly, Darius slid a hand over her belly, his patience rewarded when the child shifted slightly, causing Vivian to move in his arms.

Ye gods, ye gods. A child, their child, alive and safe under his hand, under her heart. He had to blink and swallow and blink some more as he prayed Vivian didn’t choose that moment to wake up.

He wasn’t going to rush his fences this time. Vivian had been hurt enough by all his vacillation, and she wasn’t going to give up ground easily. But just to hold her… to hold her and know she was confiding in him and at least allowing herself the comfort of his embrace, it was enough.

It would have to be enough.

Vivian stirred, rubbed her cheek against his chest, then sat up and speared him with a look.

“You have to leave, Darius.” She tried to wiggle away. “I can’t tolerate any more of your hot-and-cold, here-and-gone treatment. It’s good of you to inquire about the child, but I’d appreciate it if you’d take yourself off now.”

***

“Able, not now.” Portia shoved him away and slid the letter she’d been writing off to the side—since coming home from London, Portia was doing a prodigious amount of letter writing. “You smell like a stable.”

“And here I thought breeding women were supposed to be affectionate.” Able obligingly withdrew, but he’d bothered to wash thoroughly before presuming to kiss his wife’s cheek, and the rebuke disappointed.

Portia gave him an exasperated look as she recapped the inkwell. “What do you mean, breeding women? Go maul Vivian if you’re attracted to breeding heifers.”

Able lowered himself into one of the chairs facing the desk, since Portia appeared unwilling to yield his proper place to him. “I’m not talking about Vivian. How far along are you, Portia?”

Her mouth opened as if to deliver another broadside then snapped shut with a click, and Able realized his wife hadn’t been being coy about her condition; she simply hadn’t known.

And now that she did, she wasn’t pleased.

“This is your fault.”

At least she was predictable. “I certainly hope so. The date of the child’s arrival will likely shed light on those particulars.”

She tidied a stack of green ledgers that needed no tidying. “And just what do you mean by that?”

“We’ve been married for years, Portia, and you’ve never caught before. A little trip up to Town, and there’s a blessed event in the offing. You don’t know how far along you are, do you?”

“I’m not… regular,” she hedged. “It’s hard to tell.”

She wasn’t
ir
-regular, but Able saw she was worried, and knew a moment of exasperation with the Almighty. Managing, scheming, grasping Portia might be, but she wasn’t enough of a steward’s wife to have timed her indiscretion so there was at least some possibility the child was Able’s.

“It’s all right, Portia,” he said tiredly. “Children are easy to love, and Vivian’s baby will have someone to call family. That’s for the best.”

“Vivian’s…” Portia’s hand went to her throat, then her expression shuttered. “This is for the best, you’re right, and the child is yours, Able.”

He considered her and recalled she’d permitted him intimacies just before they’d left for London, but not since. If the child were his, she’d be better than three months along, and the signs Able had seen were as much behavioral as visible. She was rounder, in certain places particularly, but that was hardly conclusive.

This child was not likely his. In his life, in his marriage, with his Portia, such a happy occasion was improbable.

“You’ll want to warn whomever you dallied with,” he said, rising and moving toward the door. “If the child were mine, I’d want to know, even if some other man would have the raising of it.”

He left her sitting at his desk, for once silent, the expression on her face detached and calculating. Disappointingly so.

***

“What if I said I’m not going to leave you?” Darius let Vivian go and shifted to sit beside her. The question was only half in jest. “Would you have William summon the King’s man to take me off your property?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Vivian glared at him but ruined the effect entirely when she reached out to brush his hair off his forehead. “You’ve been in the sun.”

Her touch, freely given, eased something miserable and desperate in Darius’s chest. “I’m spending the summer at the Markham estate, which Valentine Windham is hell-bent on restoring to its former glory.”

“Markham?” Vivian’s brow puckered. “I thought nobody lived there.”

“Bats live there. When we started it was barely habitable, but it’s coming along.”

She plucked clover from the grass and began threading a chain. “So you thought you’d just pop over and see how I’m doing?”

“No.” He’d thought he’d lose his mind if he had to face never seeing her again. “I thought I’d beg a berth with Windham so I could make amends for how I treated you this spring.”

“I’m a married woman,” Vivian reminded him, staring at her clover. “And I love my husband.”

They needed to air this linen, of course, but not at length. “I am not seeking favors from you, Vivvie.”

“You’re not?” The little note of wistfulness in her voice had him smiling again, though he was gentleman enough to try to hide it.

White clover was for promises, so he’d give her a promise and revel in the pleasure of that small token. “You love your husband,” Darius said slowly. “I promise to respect that. You would be upset if I sought to dally with you now. It would upset me not to offer you my sincere friendship.”

Vivian smiled too and tossed the chain of clover flowers at him. “Everything upsets me. Tell me about Windham’s estate.”

He spent an hour with her on that blanket, not touching, but talking, and by the end of it, she was talking too. Talking, Darius hoped, as she might have talked to a trusted friend.

“William tries to hide it, but he’s not doing well,” she finally admitted.

“What does that mean, Vivvie?”

“He’s fading.” She said it softly, as if it were a relief to share the reality with someone. “He’s tired of living, and now that I’m to have a child, he can assure himself my welfare is taken care of.”

“You’ll miss him.” Darius said it for her.

“Terribly. When there was nobody between me and Ainsworthy’s vile schemes, William shook off his mourning and married me, facing down scandal and talk and possible political repercussions. I’m grateful to him, but I love him too, and when I asked him to come down here with me early, he shook his head and told me to run along and enjoy being in the country.”

She sounded bewildered and forlorn, and in this, at least, Darius could offer a male perspective.

“He has a kind of courage,” Darius said. “Not simply the courage of his religious faith, which assures him an honorable life will find a reward in the hereafter, but a courage for living in
this
life, without you, without his first wife, without the faculties he had as a younger man.”

Vivian studied him for a moment, while the breeze riffled the branches of the ripening orchard above them and a fat bumblebee went lazily about its business.

“You admire him.”

“Of course I admire him.” Though he was only now realizing it. “He’s put aside his own convenience to do what was necessary to protect you, Vivian. How could I not admire a man with that much practical honor?”

She frowned as she digested this description of her husband. “Practical honor is a good term. William would understand it.”

“Remind me who Ainsworthy is.”

“My former stepfather.”

Darius watched emotions play across her features. “Given your expression, Vivian, I do not care for the fellow.”

She retrieved the chain of clover and wound it through her fingers. “When my mother died, he took it upon himself to launch my sister, except I saw what he did to Angela, and I wasn’t about to allow him to do that to me.”

“I thought you said Angela was happy with her… publisher?”

Vivian stretched her feet out and regarded her bare toes. Darius kept his gaze on her face lest he recall too clearly the taste of those toes when Vivian had been fresh from her bath.

“Angela is married to Jared Ventnor,” Vivian said. “They are happy now, but Jared essentially outbid the titles competing for Angie’s hand. It wasn’t a love match on her part. Angela barely knew her husband when they wed, and Ainsworthy was willing to use any means to secure the match.”

“And you.” Darius tapped her nose. “You consider your sister resigned herself to her fate so she’d have a household for you to come to when your turn arose.”

She frowned at the clover wrapped around her fingers. “Except I crossed paths with Muriel, who saw what was what and offered me a position as her companion.”

The bumblebee came around again, a reminder that time spent on a blanket with Vivian was time bartered for the sustenance of Darius’s soul from other responsibilities. “I will remember Muriel in my prayers. Shall I escort you back to the house?”

To make that offer openly and to mean it was a small moment of grace.

“Gracious, everlasting God,
no
. Portia is likely spying out of windows and bribing the servants to report my every move. The last thing she needs is to find some basis for her suspicions that I’ve played William false.”

“You’re going to have to explain me somehow.” Darius rose and offered Vivian a hand. “I’ll show up at the christening, and thereafter, and that is at William’s request.”

“Then William can explain you,” Vivian retorted. She let Darius pick up her book, fold the blanket over his shoulder, and offer her his arm.

Vivian scowled—even her scowls were dear—and accepted his escort. “You can’t walk me back to the house.”

“Let me see you across the stream.” He wrapped the reins of his courage around his wrists, and ambled along beside her. “I’d like to meet you here again on Friday.”

“Friday? This is not wise, Darius.”

He paused and looked down at her. “Your welfare concerns me. I know you don’t trust me, I know you’ve been disappointed in me and hurt by me. I am sorry, more sorry than you can possibly know. But if you’d allow it, I’d like to be your friend.”

To be her friend, a man she could rely upon for kindness, honesty, and decency, was the highest aspiration he’d ever held.

“What do friends do?”

She hadn’t ordered him off the property for his presumption. He took heart. “They occasionally pass the time together,” Darius said, resuming their progress. “They care for each other, and keep each other’s confidences, and they acknowledge each other in social situations.”

“Like you didn’t acknowledge me. On several notable occasions.”

“It won’t happen again,” he said quietly. “And I am abjectly sorry.”

“I believe you, but I don’t understand you, Darius. If you detest those women so much, why are they in your life? William has compensated you, hasn’t he?”