Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (18 page)

He was like a small wounded bird and did not seem to know her, but why would he? It had been a year or more since she’d been able to visit him, though she’d paid for his keep regularly, and was shocked to find him in this deplorable undernourished state.

She’d met a number of seven year olds among the tenants recently, all better fed and clothed, and when she realized it, she looked at her husband through new eyes and with a new dawning respect as well.

Ash did his own estate management to economize for his tenants’ sakes, tenants who ate well and lived in warm, well-kept cottages. So much for his roguish ways, she thought. Perhaps Ashford Blackburne was as much of a fraud to the better, as the family to whom she’d sent money for Micah’s board were, to the worse.

“Ash,” she said, stopping before Micah when he began to tremble. “This is my nephew, Micah. Micah, you may not yet remember me but I am your Aunt Larkin and His Lordship, here, the Earl of Blackburne, is my husband. We will see that you are cared for now and neglected no more.”

Micah looked at her with surprise, then as silent and wide of eye toward Ash.

Ash rested on his haunches before the boy. “I am pleased to make your acquaintance, Micah, and glad you will be living with us.”

Micah said nothing but slid down the wall and closed his arms around his knees, narrowing his small shoulders, as if he could become invisible.

“You will now be living in a very special village,” Ash said. “Did you know that Gorhambury is famous?”

Though Micah made no move to show he’d heard, Ash continued. “Father Christmas lives here,” he said, hoping the name might evoke some life in a child. “Many of the villagers have actually seen him.” Ash regarded Lark. “Does he not know Christmas either?”

“Look at him and tell me why he should.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks with her hands.

Ash sighed and rose. “Then it will be up to us to teach him.”

“We had best start by showing him that he will eat regularly,” Lark said.

They each took Micah by a hand and brought him up to the old nursery that housed more toys than most children would see in a lifetime, more certainly than Micah had ever seen, if he had seen any, Lark thought.

There, Lark was surprised to find Mim waiting as if she knew they were coming.

“Mim has brothers and sisters,” Ash said, “and she is willing to sleep in the bedchamber adjacent to Micah’s and help you with him whenever needs be.”

“Thank you, Mim,” Lark said, grateful her nephew would not be alone at night in a strange place, but more so for the look on Micah’s face as he fingered one of a regiment of tin soldiers.

“That was my regiment,” Ash said, “The Life Guards, the regiment I joined to fight Bonaparte under Wellington’s command.”

Micah regarded her husband with wide eyes but not as wide as the look he gave the tray of food that arrived shortly thereafter, which he denuded like locusts in a wheat field.

Lark took several of the tin soldiers and dropped them before Micah in the corner, then she returned to stand beside Ash to watch her nephew.

“When he used to speak, he called me Aunt-eee, as if I were someone special to him,” she said.

“How long has it been since he’s spoken?”

“As long as a year, perhaps longer. I could not visit all that often. It took me months to gather enough money to make the journey.”

“Gather?”

“Da’s customers … sometimes … when I served drinks?”

Ash nodded and Lark breathed easy again.

“At least we know that he
can
talk,” Ash said, “though I would feel we made progress, if he did not look so frightened in our presence.”

“I agree. Perhaps he needs to understand that he has a home for good. Perhaps when we write that letter to our babies, we should write one for Micah. Could we? I know it would be asking a great deal of you?”

“Asking a great deal? To write a letter?”

“No, not to write the letter, but to abide by the promises in it … until Micah is grown.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Ash regarded the boy he had promised to raise—sleeping now, curled in the corner he had chosen for himself—and determined to ease his life, not because he was a good man, but because Lark had asked him to do so.

He knew his weaknesses well. He was a rogue, pure and simple, quick to place a bet, bed a wench—until he married. Quick to spend a guinea, so quick, he’d spent the few he had before responsibility came to him. He used to think his lust for drink, women, money, and a good time had saved him after his first jilt. He was certainly looking for all of those distractions when he went to the pub after his second jilt, but he got Larkin Rose instead.

Amazingly, now that he had her, he was beginning to think his consolation prize of a bride might prove to be his salvation, in more ways than the obvious, and frankly, the notion made him skittish. He did not know if he wanted to be saved, but he did not think he could avoid it, if he wanted to.

Lark never took for granted what another woman would surely demand. She appreciated every kindness, no matter how paltry or late in coming. Somehow, she served as a mirror and made him see good in his own reflection.

“I will abide by our letter in regards to your nephew,” he said to her now, meaning it, as he took the sleeping boy and placed him on the small nursery bed in the next room. He bid Mim keep watch and took his wife’s hand to lead toward their own rooms. “I will raise him until he is grown.”

Lark stopped walking and stepped into his arms for the first time ever of her own accord, encircled his neck with a freely-given embrace, and toyed with the hair at his nape as she offered her lips for his kiss.

Ash accepted her unspoken offer.

“You deserve better than me for wife,” she said when he came up for air, “better than a guttersnipe with her sister’s misbegotten child in tow—”

“Do not!” Ash snapped. “Do not speak in that way about my family.”

Lark followed her husband toward her room. She understood. Ash had his pride. Fine. None would hear the brazen truth from her lips again, but she would still know in her heart, what she was, what Micah was, and she would be sorry until the end of her days for the way she had cheated and trapped Ash into taking them both on … well, into taking her on, anyway. Getting him to take Micah had turned into the good that came of her own wicked ways, and for that she would never be sorry.

More than ever, after the gentle way he’d treated Micah, she wanted to tell Ash the truth. More than ever, now that Micah was safe and in Ash’s protection at last, she dare not take the chance.

The truth never helped anybody, so her Da often said, and so life had often proved.

“Ash,” she said, as she stood by her bed, her stomach quivering at the notion of fulfilling her bargain, of pleasuring her husband, of him pleasuring her, “my monthlies have stopped. We can begin making that baby now if you wish.”

“
If
?” Ash’s body stood at ready attention. Her words alone had accomplished the deed, though he doubted his sanity in hearing them. Then again, Lark was a prideful woman, a woman true to her word. They had made a bargain—Micah for a babe in her belly, and now she had Micah, ‘twas her turn to pay.

Ash almost wished she wanted him as much as he wanted her, another turn that did not fit any previous philosophy in his roguish life. He must be going soft with all this talk of babes, and welcoming little boys with big eyes who needed knowing they had a home … and with broken doll brides who needed knowing they were cherished.

He looked into those doll’s eyes now, with every shade of green and gold imaginable, changing from facet to facet, revealing her as vulnerable and intense, giving and wanting.

Did she want him as much as he wanted her?

Ash called himself a fool as he turned her to undo the thousand buttons that must march down the back of her dress. Little bone buttons stuck into littler fabric loops, one by blasted one, Ash undid them, until he was harder than the proverbial rock, and randier than a strutting cock.

“If the act isn’t called making love, which ours would not be,” Lark said, “what other way can you describe what we are about to do? You never told me.”

That fizzled his cock. “You mean, you want to know how to refer to it?”

Lark nodded.

How to find an expression that would not turn her from baby making forever. “Nothing I tell you can be spoken in company, only when we’re alone, do you understand? This act is never, ever discussed other than between a husband and his wife.”

“Not even between a man and his mistress, or a trollop and her customer, because we had a few of those at the Pickled Barrel, and now that I think back on it—”

“Forget the inn! I’m talking about now—from now on, all right?”

Lark nodded, looking a little surprised at the tone of his voice. “As you wish.”

“Thank you,” he said. “You may refer to the act as “doing the matrimonial.” Now that isn’t too shocking, is it?”

“What else?”

Ash wanted to smack his head against the wall. “You would want more. How about we’re “taking a tumble” or I once heard a Scot refer to it as “playing the blanket hornpipe,” and there’s plain old “ballocking.” Your choice milady.”

“Can we just call it making a babe?”

Ash barked a laugh and pulled Larkin into his arms. “Making a babe, it is. Let us begin, shall we?”

“I do not know how, precisely, and the only references I have are animals, but I don’t like the way dogs and horses do it.”

“Can we not simply enjoy getting there,” Ash said, “And stop talking about it?”

Lark crossed her stubborn arms as if to protect herself. “If I am worried about something, I need to talk about it.”

“All right.” Ash clamped a hand to the back of his neck. “All right. I can see that you do. Fine. Not like dogs or horses. Fine. There are plenty of other ways.”

“What are they?”

Ash cursed and apologized. He harrumphed and sighed. “You can lie on your back and I can hover over you.”

“No!” she said, with rising panic. “No, I don’t want you hovering over me.”

“We could do it standing up.”

“That would work,” she said. “Then we would be equal and you would not be looming over me as if to attack. I could not bear that.” She looked around the room. “Where can we stand? Here?” She went to stand against the wall, fully clothed, and closed her eyes, as if she were waiting to be shot, or run through. Er, fine, a near enough description. Perhaps he understood.

His bride opened her eyes and huffed as if he had been dawdling too long. “Come along, then,” she said. “Let’s get it done.”

“This is so exciting,” Ash said, tongue in cheek as he went to stand before her. “It might help if you took off your clothes.”

“But this is wrong, that part of you meets my chicken peck.”

“Your what?”

“She pointed toward her middle. A chicken pecked me here and gave me a scar.”

“Who told you that?”

“My sister, when she was ten.”

“Then how do you account for the fact that I have one too?”

Lark shrugged.

Ash sighed. “Can we talk about the chicken peck another time? That’s not what it is by the way.”