Tainted by Temptation (26 page)

“I should like nothing better,” he whispered back. Reluctantly he let Iris go. He curled Velvet against his side and turned to Evans. “Did you know Nellie was obsessed with me?”

“I knew she ran off the household staff by scaring them, but I had no idea she had murdered your wife and Miss Gowan. I’m sorry, sir. I shall be less remiss in the future.”

“I’ll hold you to that. As the butler, you will have charge of all the staff.”

“Very good, sir,” said Evans as he tried to mask a fist thrust in the air with a shooing wave toward the loitering staff.

Lucian led Velvet into the library. A quick glance around told him the room was empty. He closed the door and pulled her toward the blazing fire.

“Velvet, I cannot give you children, but there are plenty of foundlings and orphans in the world. I can promise we can take in as many as you want.”

She didn’t respond. His desperation clawed at him.

“Iris is as much a daughter to me as if she were mine. Could you live with that? We could raise them as our own.”

She tilted her face up to his. Tear streaks had channeled through the mud on her face. Her hair was tangled and stringy with dirt. Her dressing gown was filthy and torn. He wanted her more than he wanted life itself. But had he lost her forever?

“It is the best I can offer, Velvet.”

“Are you asking me to marry you?” she said in a tiny voice.

“Yes, please marry me. I don’t think I can bear to live without you by my side.”

Stretching out her hands, she turned to the fire. “You no longer need to marry Miss Bowman in order to repair your reputation, but what about your plans to expand?”

“None of it means anything if I can’t have you.” Lucian gripped her shoulders and turned her. “I never would have married Miss Bowman. I kept finding reasons to delay making an offer. I love you, Velvet. I love your courage, your tenacity, your goodness, and even the way you challenge me.”

Her green eyes searched his. “You don’t need—”

“You make me believe I can be a better man. I need you to feel whole. Please, I beg of you, marry me.”

“Then yes,” she whispered. “I will marry you.”

He pulled her to him and held her like he’d never let her go and never intended to let her out of his sight ever again.

V
elvet put a hand to her aching back, bent and sucked in a deep breath as the pang shot through her lower abdomen. When the pain passed, she finished her preparations of the bed. She waddled out the door and down the stairs. Opening the library door, she braced herself. “It’s time.”

Lucian stood so fast his chair toppled backward. He went white, the scars standing out against his skin in stark relief. His mouth pulled back in a grim expression. Ignoring papers falling to the floor, he rounded the desk. “What are you doing? Shouldn’t you be in bed?”

Velvet offered him a faint smile. “The midwife is on her way. And walking won’t hurt.”

Lucian steered her out of the library. “It can’t be time, you aren’t due for five weeks.”

“I am as big as a house. Perhaps I conceived before the accident.” The accident when Lucian’s sheath had ruptured.

He’d gone white then too. In the last few months he had lost weight and his face seemed perpetually creased with worries.

She had another suspicion about why she was so big, which she shared with the midwife, but Lucian was too on edge to further distress him.

Velvet’s belly tightened. The pain, sharper and harder than before, caught her off guard. Gasping, she leaned forward and caught Lucian’s shoulders.

He supported her until the pain eased. “You can’t do this now,” he whispered.

“I don’t think there is a choice, love,” she told him, and cupped his face.

“John has finally gone down for his nap,” said Iris as she descended the stairs. “He was fighting it the whole time, but I read him his favorite story.”

Lucian turned to his daughter and his face darkened. “You are never having children. You are never getting married.”

Iris’s face crumpled.

“Lucian!” Velvet protested.

Iris adored her foster brother John, even if the dozen years between them made her more of a second mother than a sister. Lately, though, her thoughts had turned to young men and marriage and children of her own.

Velvet turned to Iris and said, “What he is trying to say is he can’t face the idea of losing you right now.” She shook Lucian’s shoulder. “She is barely fourteen. You cannot tell her she can never marry.”

“But there are boys sniffing around her already,” he protested darkly.

“He is trying to say you are a beautiful young woman,” Velvet told Iris.

Iris scrunched her nose in response. She no longer cared so much about external beauty.

“We should never go to Bath again,” muttered Lucian. “The whole point was to find a doctor to be here for this.”

Lucian had wanted to hire a doctor to live with them, but Velvet was more comfortable with the local midwife.

Iris tripped down the stairs. “Are the bab—”

Velvet shot her a silencing look.

“Is it time for your lying in?” Iris asked instead.

Velvet nodded, while Lucian growled “Yes.”

“What can I do?” Iris slid her hand under Velvet’s elbow.

Velvet didn’t want to be on the stairs when the next contraction came. Reaching for the railing, she lifted one foot. “I don’t think there is anything to be done yet.”

Lucian swept her up. “You can hold her door for me.”

“Lucian, you cannot carry me.” She weighed a ton.

His jaw set, and he proved her wrong as he took the steps at a steady clip.

She sighed and tucked her head against his shoulder. “I may need you to keep your father calm,” she said to Iris.

Iris rolled her eyes but gamely said, “I shall try.”

But five hours later Iris stood beside the bed and wiped Velvet’s brow with a damp cloth. “Papa is going mad. I thought John would distract him, but he scared the living daylights out of him. Meg is cleaning up the glasses he broke, and Delilah has taken John out for a walk.”

“I have never seen a man more upset,” said the midwife. “You’d think he’d never gone through this before.” She glanced pointedly at Iris.

“Yes, but he lost several babies, and my mother did not survive childbirth,” explained Velvet. “Let him come in.”

“Don’t like men in the birthing room. They just get in the way,” groused the midwife.

“He can help me sit to push,” said Velvet. With her huge belly, the midwife and Iris had to pull her up with each contraction.

“I’ll go get him,” said Iris.

Poor girl had been running back and forth all afternoon.

When Iris returned with Lucian, he hesitated in the doorway. He’d cursed and cried and thrown things, but nothing would rid him of this crushing dread that he would never see Velvet alive again or that the child was too early to survive. Not even John could cheer him, although usually the toddler’s ceaseless “whys” amused him.

Velvet looked around the midwife and said calmly, “Come sit behind me and help me sit to push.”

Her green eyes were clear and her skin was flushed. Her hair was only slightly mussed, no worse than it ever was after making love. Velvet’s eyes glazed then, and the midwife pulled her up to partially sit.

“Push, push, push,” coaxed the older woman. “Her contractions are coming fast. It won’t be much longer.”

Lucian hurried to the head of the bed and took over supporting Velvet.

The gray-haired woman lifted the sheet over Velvet’s knees and said. “Ah, we have a head of dark hair. Takes after Papa, looks like.”

She reached under the sheet. Lucian didn’t even want to know what she was doing.

Velvet gasped and breathed hard. Before he even had time to settle in behind her and try to make her comfortable, she was straining again.

He braced her shoulders and kissed her cheek and tried to hold his emotions in check. How he would be strong for Velvet when the child turned blue and ceased to live, he didn’t know.

“Keep pushing,” instructed the midwife.

Velvet cried out.

Lucian had never felt more helpless in his life. Then a tiny squall filled his ears.

“You did it,” he whispered to Velvet.

The midwife held a skinny-legged red infant on one arm, while she wiped the baby down with a towel. With a rapid-fire efficiency, she ignored the lusty wails, tied off the cord and sawed through it. Then she tied a red ribbon around the tiny wrist. She swaddled the baby and thrust it toward him. “Hold your daughter, sir.”

Velvet strained forward and moaned. Her eyes closed, and once again she held her breath. He took the squirming, mewling bundle and attempted to brace Velvet with his other arm. Everything swirled around him as he tried to comprehend what was happening.

“This one is in a hurry,” muttered the midwife. Once again she reached under the sheet, which blocked his view.

A few minutes later there was a second infant, with male organs seemingly far too large for his scrawny little red body. He jerked his arms as if falling and trying to catch himself. His angry cries filled the room.

“Healthy lungs,” said the midwife as she tied off the cord, then cut it and wrapped the baby.

“His father’s temper,” answered Velvet, reaching out for the second infant.

Lucian supposed he deserved the dig. The infant in his arms blinked open her blue eyes and stared up at him. Her little rosebud lips pursed. If they all lived, he couldn’t imagine he’d ever have reason to be angry again.

A daughter and a son?

Velvet promptly unwrapped the infant boy and checked his fingers and toes. She twisted and checked her baby girl.

Lucian stared at the pink skin, waiting for the color to fade and the babies to turn blue.

“A little on the small side, but healthy as all get out,” said the midwife as she washed her hands.

“I want my mama,” yelled John in the corridor.

Velvet smiled. “They’ll need good lungs around here.”

She looked tired but not exhausted. The babies continued to mew and remained pink. His world spun. He couldn’t believe this was real.

He bent and kissed the tiny forehead.

“Everything looks good,” said the midwife. She carried a large bowl toward the door. “I’ll be back in a few minutes to help you nurse them.”

The door clicked shut behind her.

“Are you all right, Lucian?”

“Of course I’m all right. You are the one who just gave birth. Twice.” Tears stung at his eyelids, and he turned to hide his weakness from Velvet.

She wasn’t having it. She reached around and put her free arm around his neck. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it?”

It had been horrible, the most painful eight months of his life. Every second he’d feared losing her, feared losing the baby. Not even his daily swims could calm his battered nerves. Never once had he believed this happy moment would come. Even Velvet’s serene acceptance of the situation had grated on him.

“Shall we discuss names?” asked Velvet, bringing him back to the ordinary in her soothing way.

“Lucian and . . .” He hesitated. After Nellie’s trial and conviction, they’d begun their family with their foster son. When they collected him from the orphanage, Velvet had asked if they could name him John for her brother, but with this pregnancy he’d refused to discuss names when she asked. He hadn’t planned on naming a son after himself. Especially not a name that could be twisted into Lucifer.

The door opened and, his chubby face streaked with tears, John ran across the room and climbed onto the bed. “Mama!”

“I’m sorry,” said Iris. “I tried to keep him out. Come, John, Mama is tired.”

“How about another flower?” Velvet curled an arm around John. “Rose?”

“Lucian and Rose,” he murmured. He really should rethink naming a son after himself. “Or perhaps Henry and Rose.”

Iris smiled softly. She was ten times as beautiful as her mother had been. “Lucian and Rose. Henry and Rose would always have me thinking of the Hundred Years War.”

“John, meet your new brother and sister, Lucian and Rose,” called Velvet.

“Baby,” said John eagerly, while Velvet put little Lucian in Iris’s outstretched arms.

“May I hold my daughter?” Velvet asked.

Lucian reluctantly placed Rose in her arms and wrapped his arm around her shoulder. The babies seemed healthy. Velvet seemed healthy. Iris cooed to the new infant, while John tried to poke out Rose’s eye.

Lucian caught the boy’s hand. “Gentle.”

John lost interest and slid off the bed.

Seemingly sensing their need to be alone, Iris reluctantly laid baby Lucian in the basinet by the bed. “I better go catch him, and I’ll ask Cook to send you up a tray.”

Only then did Lucian notice there were two bassinets and two of everything needed for a baby.

“I love you,” he whispered to Velvet before the door had closed on his daughter.

“And I love you,” she answered. “You have given me more than I ever hoped for.”

“And you have made my life worth living again,” he whispered. “My cup runneth over.”

Her lips pursed. “I told you to trust in God.”

So perhaps he wasn’t totally forgiven for the bear he’d been for the last few months, but he’d make it up to her. “I should have known to trust in you.”

He kissed her as a husband kisses his treasured wife. He stopped only when Rose protested being squished between her parents, although he’d taken care not to hurt her or Velvet.

He cupped the infant’s head. His living, breathing child.

“So when I am well, there will be nothing between us,” Velvet whispered.

He heaved a deep breath. Four children were enough for him, but obviously Velvet wanted more. Her eyes shined so brightly he couldn’t deny her anything. “If that is what you wish.”

“We’ll see,” said Velvet with a knowing smile.

And his heart was truly so full, he didn’t think it could be contained in his chest. But baby Lucian’s protests made sure he could not dwell on how happy he was with Velvet as his wife. Perhaps, though, if he had a lot of sons, he should once again consider expanding his businesses.

Then again, who had time for business dealings with babies to rock, John to take digging on the beach, and fending off Iris’s overeager suitors? He lifted the tiny baby from the bassinet and cradled him. No, life was perfect and bright.