Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (16 page)

“Lark,” Ash said. “Please tell me what is wrong.”

“I must wear my trousers or something terrible will happen.”

Ash was startled by the melodramatic tone of her statement and tried not to smile.

She turned away. “I cannot tell you, because it is too terrible to say.”

“Show me then.”

“No!” she said with a gasp. “Good God, no!”

“Lark, I am your husband. Whatever is the matter, you must tell me, for husbands and wives should face the terrors of life together. Sickness and health, good and bad, remember?”

“You will know that you made a very bad bargain, if I tell you, and it will give you a disgust of me as well, then you will not want to make a baby with me. Better you should not know.”

Ash was intrigued no small bit and looked her over very closely for some clue as to her passionate concern. “Her honeyed hair, he saw still hung damp from her bath, the only sign she’d taken one, except for the towel with … a smear of blood.

Was it possible she did not understand the natural way of things?

With a father like hers? Entirely possible.

Ash sat Lark on the edge of her bed and knelt before her. “Do you have your monthlies, Larkin?”

She seemed relieved he’d changed the subject. “What are they?”

“They,” he said, talking to himself, wondering how to go on. “You do know that every woman of an age to bear children goes through a monthly bloody flux.”

Pomegranate cheeks, she wore once more, to match her dawning recognition.

“You do not remember your mother bleeding every month?” he asked.

“She died when I was born,” Lark wailed, her embarrassment flying at full mast.

“Your sister?”

“I thought that was because of what
he
did to her.”

“The bleeding is normal Lark, every month. It’s happening to you now, is it not? You never realized that it happens around the same time every month?”

“I do not read dates, so how would I?”

“What did you think the blood signified then?”

“I suppose I thought that someday I would … bleed to death. Sometimes I wondered when, or if I would have time to help Micah before it was too late.”

“So you basically thought you were dying for years?”

Lark raised her chin, pride in every line of her high cheekbones. “After a while, when I didn’t die, I … put up with it and worried less.”

Ash knew he’d been right; his Lark shed no tears for the possibility of dying, or even the reprieve thereof. Only extreme embarrassment brought tears to the eyes of Larkin Rose. That, and the suffering of another—her sister, her nephew, his mother.

“It occurs to me, Lark,” Ash said, “that your sister’s bleeding might have been natural at the time you found her. She might not have been forced but simply gave herself in the midst of her flux.”

Lark looked horrified.

Ash stroked the hair from her brow. “Do not fret; I will not importune you at this time. Not for your first experience, though I would hope, there might come a time when you would offer yourself, whatever your state.”

His bride looked as if she doubted his sanity, while he faced the happy realization that her virginity, or lack thereof, mattered not, for now he had physical proof that she carried no child of another, though her innocence had long since implied as much.

“Whatever you think,” he went on, “a man and woman may come together then and ‘twill be messy. Just know that you might have misunderstood the blood, and your sister might not have been hurt after all. Did she complain of pain? Did she weep afterward, for instance?”

“She wept always when he was done with her. She loved him you see, but he would not have her for wife, not even when she got herself with child and begged him to take her.”

“But no bruises afterward, no mention of pain?”

“No,” Lark said, her brows furrowed in thought.

“Your fears, I believe, have been magnified,” Ash said, “by an unfounded assumption made by a young girl who did not know better.”

“And your conclusions,” his bride snapped, “have been drawn by a man looking for a means to his own end.”

Ash grinned despite himself in appreciation of her strange blend of cleverness and naiveté. “We shall see then, for only time can prove me correct.” He reached for her trousers once more, but once more she stopped him.

“Larkin, I have undressed you previous to this, so why not let me take your trousers off you now? Or I will leave, if you would be more comfortable, so you may don your night-rail and climb into bed to await me.”

“The trousers hold everything up … It’s ugly, Ash.”

“It’s not, it’s natural.”

“The folded cloth gets ugly. How do women in fancy dresses hold them up without trousers, anyway?”

“I … have no idea, but I’ll go fetch cook, shall I, and get her to show you?” He rose.

Lark caught his hand. “No, please. Let me just wear my trousers for a few days and then I will wear dresses.”

“You would wear trousers to sleep as well?”

She nodded, and he raised a finger to her lips as she made to respond.

“I intend to continue sleeping with you,” he warned, “in whatever state you find yourself, but I would like to see you sleep comfortably.”

Lark threw herself back on the bed with a sigh, her legs hanging off the edge. “I cannot believe I am having this conversation with a
man
.”

“With your husband,” Ash corrected as he made to leave the bedchamber, “and do not forget it. Do not move from that spot. I will return shortly.”

Ashford Blackburne. Her husband. Teaching her about the bloody ailment that had been scaring the bejesus out of her for half her life. The bleeding between her legs, where he would put himself, if he were to be believed, and she believed everything he had to say, for as he himself had affirmed, he was an honest rogue, and he respected honesty a great deal in others.

Lark sighed for her own shortcomings, for the blasted dishonesty he would never forgive, which set her in his path, in his life, his bed, at his mercy, even into this most embarrassing situation. She supposed she deserved whatever he doled out, blast him.

Lark sighed, rolled to her side, raised her legs against her belly, and closed her eyes while she waited for her honest, gentle, tyrannical husband to return, with whatever new torture he could concoct for her.

By the time he woke her, Lark thought she’d been sleeping for some time, and could barely rouse herself. Besides, she was too embarrassed to open her eyes, as he slipped her trousers off her legs. Then she refused to open them as he slid the bloody rag from between her legs, washed her with a warm cloth, and replaced the soiled rag with something soft and tender. Then he slipped something akin to trousers, but not, up her legs and fastened a binding of a sort around her waist to keep the padded rag against her.

She should not become attached to him, Lark thought, as he went so far as to slip one of her new attic nightshifts over her head and place her beneath the covers. She would be foolish to become fond of him, which was why she set the condition that he stop coming to her bed when she found herself with child.

In the moment she made the stipulation, she had been afraid that she was already in danger of liking him too much. That was another reason why she had told him they could part, if he wished, after he received his inheritance, because she owed him that much at least, for cheating him into marriage.

And though she owed him a babe, she already wanted his child as much as he did, perhaps more. She must remember that however much he wanted a child and a wife before Christmas, she could be left in the literal cold after Christmas, if she were not cautious.

Yes, they had talked about a babe as if they would raise it together, but you never knew what the rich might do. Simply regard his grandfather’s machinations. No, she would be wise to be strong-willed where her bridegroom was concerned and not become overly sentimental or dependent.

“We will try making a babe in a few days,” he said now as he climbed into the bed with her, almost as if he had read her thoughts. “As soon as your flux is finished, so you may as well rest while you can.”

Lark hated that his “threat” to get her with child felt of a sudden like a hoped-for promise, an unsettling reaction that centered physically, there, where she bled, where his hand had made magic inside her, and where his manly parsnip would later invade her.

Lark hid her face against the shoulder of the very man she should be running from. When he tucked her head neatly beneath his chin, she placed her hand against his softly rising chest. “Tell me how people celebrate Christmas,” she said, and her husband covered her hand with his and did.

The following morning Lark woke alone, but before she dressed, she took the time to examine the “sling,” he had dressed her in and discovered that it must be nothing more than a pair of his own under-linen. Nevertheless, with trouser-type legs and a tie-fastened three-button front, the short drawers did a fine job of holding up the folded rag she used for her “monthlies,” and she marveled at his resourceful kindness.

Her fist thought was to thank him for his personal garment, but she decided that in the light of day, no such comment could be made. Husbands and wives must speak only in the bedchamber of such things, though now that she thought on it, they had become quite outrageous in their whispers in the orchard the other day, not to mention her search in the root cellar.

Her “feminine sling,” as Ash dubbed his gift at breakfast—speaking about such things outside the bedroom obviously did not embarrass
him
—worked marvelously well beneath her dress and made Lark feel, for perhaps the first time in her life, like a real woman. A woman not expected to die young. Fancy that.

When she learned that he would be attending to estate matters all day, and that she would not see him until dinner, Larkin visited his mother, and gave Nan an hour free. She told her mother-in-law about their marriage, every foolish detail, omitting their baby bargain and what went on in their bedchamber, of course. When Nan returned, Lark promised Ash’s mother that she would visit on the morrow.

Afterward, Lark turned to cleaning out the sitting room that would be her own. Cook and Mim came to help. “On the Earl’s orders,” Cook said.

Lark chose several beautiful old pieces of furniture from the attic for her sitting room—everything she needed for a place where she might go to rest, or dream, or read, if she learned. A place where she might sew clothes for the babe, when she learned to sew, and when she expected a babe. A place where she might draw or paint on parchment sheets, like a fancy lady in a fancy dress.

She had always liked to draw. Her sister had taught her to burn corks. She’d sketched with their charred edges on any surface she could find. Her favorite had been the smooth limestone wall out by the pigsty.

CHAPTER TWELVE

Ash stood waiting for Lark that evening in the drawing room and offered her his arm to escort her into the dining room. They sat in silence while Grimsley served.

Beside Ash’s plate there sat a missive which he opened after Grim finished. “I received this note today from Gideon St. Goddard, Duke of Stanthorpe, another rogue of the club, and I thought you might enjoy hearing it. Would you?”

Lark nodded, honestly interested.

“
Dearest Ash
” he read. “
Though Myles and Hunter still suffer the after-effects of your decline into depravity on the day of your last jilt, they have finally confessed that your own consequences will be of some longer duration.