Love Only Once (23 page)
“Posh,” Meg scoffed. “You’d give your eyeteeth to know what they said about you.”
“You assume they were arguing about me.”
“If not you, what then?”
“What indeed?” Nicholas asked from the open doorway.
Meg turned in a huff, cursing herself for not closing the door. Reggie, lying on the floor, tilted her head back for an upside-down view of her husband. She was flat on her back, her son stretched out on her chest. She sat up slowly.
Nicholas approached her, seeing a small head on her shoulder, one fist jammed firmly into his mouth. Black tufts of hair and vivid blue eyes were unmistakable. A Malory, through and through.
He came around her and offered her his hand. “Do you do this often, love?”
She wasn’t fooled by the mellow tone. There was a hard set to his lips, a heated glow in his
eyes. Why, he wasn’t pleased about his son at all! How could he stand there looking at him and not be delighted? Her mother’s pride came rushing to the fore. She held on to his hand and stood up, but the moment she was on her feet, she turned her back to him.
“If you haven’t come here to see Thomas, you can leave,” she announced frostily.
“Oh, but I have come to see him.” Nicholas smiled grimly. “You named him Thomas, after your father?”
Reggie gently put the baby down in his bed and leaned over to kiss him. She turned and faced her husband. “Thomas Ashton Malory Eden.”
“Well, that certainly takes care of
your
side of the family, doesn’t it?”
His sarcasm made her boil. “If you wanted him named after your side, you should have been around for his birth.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
Her eyes narrowed. In another moment they would be shouting, and this she would not allow in the nursery.
“Meg, stay with Thomas until Tess returns, will you?” Then she said to Nicholas, “My rooms are across the hall. If you care to finish this conversation, you may visit me there.”
Reggie didn’t wait for him but stalked across the hall and into her sitting room. Nicholas followed, closing the door loudly. She turned around and glared at him. “If you wish to slam
doors, kindly do so in another part of the house.”
“If I wish to slam doors, which I did not do just now, I will bloody well do so in
any
part of my house. Now answer me! Why didn’t you tell me?”
What to answer? She wasn’t going to admit that she hadn’t wanted to hold him that way. She wasn’t at all certain just then that anything could have held him, not when he had failed to show the slightest inkling of pleasure in either her or his son.
At last she simply asked, “Would it have made any difference?”
“How will we ever know, since you didn’t tell me?” A sardonic note entered his manner. “Of course, there is the possibility that you didn’t know and therefore couldn’t tell me.”
“Not know that I was four months pregnant?” She smiled. “I did have very few symptoms, it’s true. But four months? Any woman would know by then.”
He moved closer until he was standing directly in front of her chair. “Usually at four months everyone else knows as well,” he said softly. “For the obvious reason of an increased girth. You were lacking that, love.”
Reggie’s eyes met his and widened at what she read. “You don’t think he’s yours!” she whispered incredulously. “No wonder you barely looked at him!” She stood up and he moved back to allow her to pass. She spoke to
the room at large. “Oh, this is famous. I didn’t once consider this.”
She could see the humor in it, though, and under other circumstances she’d have laughed. What a perfect revenge for his treatment of her, presenting him with another man’s child on his return. But Reggie was in no condition to feel the humorous side of things. There was the shock of seeing him again, and the nastier shock of his ugly conclusion.
He touched her shoulder, swinging her around to face him. “Is this pretended surprise the best performance you can manage, madame? You have had ample time to invent some excuse to explain why your wedding gown clung to your very tiny waist the day I married you. I am most curious to hear your fabrication.”
The gypsy slant of her eyes became more pronounced as they narrowed to furious slits, but she kept her voice calm. “Are you? There is the obvious excuse of a tightly laced corset, so shall I say that’s what it was? Would you believe that? No? Just as well, since I never lace my corsets tightly.”
“Then you admit it?” he snarled.
“Admit what, Nicholas? I tell you that I had a most unusual pregnancy. It was so unusual, in fact, that I began to worry that something was wrong with my baby when I was seven months pregnant and saw a woman only five months pregnant who was twice my size.” She took a deep breath. “Uncle Jason assured me that my grandmother was the same way. People hardly
knew she was pregnant until the babies were born. He said he and his brothers were all born just as tiny as Thomas was, and look how they turned out. And he was right. Thomas is growing in leaps and bounds, perfectly formed, perfectly normal. He will probably turn out just as large as his father one day.” She finished, out of breath, still furious, but a little relieved. She had told him all of it. What he believed or didn’t believe was up to him.
“That was a good, original story, love, certainly better than I expected.”
Reggie shook her head. He had formed his opinion and wasn’t going to let go of it.
“If you don’t want to claim Thomas as yours, then don’t. I really don’t care what you think,” she said simply.
Nicholas exploded. “Tell me he is mine! Tell me in plain words.”
“He is yours.”
“I don’t believe it.”
“Fine.” She nodded her understanding. “Now if you will excuse me, my dinner is getting cold.”
He stared in amazement as she passed him and headed for the door. “You won’t try to convince me?”
Reggie glanced back at him and hesitated. His bewildered, faintly hopeful look almost made her relent. But she had done all she could. The convincing would have to be up to him. “What for?” she answered. “Thomas doesn’t need you. He has me. And he certainly won’t
lack for male attention, not with four great-uncles to dote on him.”
“Not bloody likely!” he bellowed. “I won’t have those autocratic bastards raising my—” He clamped his mouth shut, glaring at her furiously. “Go eat your dinner!”
As she returned to the nursery Reggie smiled, her humor greatly restored. Well! That certainly gave her something to think about, didn’t it?
N
ICHOLAS sat up slowly, frowning at the unfamiliar noise that had wakened him. He shook his head and lay down again, but in no more than a moment he was fully awake. The infant was crying. He was hungry, wasn’t he?
He had identified the noise, but he remained wide-awake, wondering how often this business of having one’s sleep disturbed occurred. But it didn’t matter. Tomorrow he would pack them all back to Silverley. And if he stayed there as well, his rooms were farther away from the nursery there than here.
If
he stayed? Why shouldn’t he stay? Miriam had kept him from Silverley for years, but Miriam had already done her damage in telling Regina about his birth. That done, the rest of the world finding out didn’t matter anymore. Miriam couldn’t hurt him now. And he certainly wasn’t going to let Regina keep him from Silverley. Silverley was, he reminded himself fiercely, his home. He still had some rights in this world!
The house was quiet now, the infant no doubt being fed by his wet nurse. Had Regina been
awakened? He pictured her in the next room, curled up in bed, probably sound asleep. She was probably accustomed to these disturbances and slept right through them.
Having never seen her in bed before, he couldn’t get a clear picture of her. Would her hands be clasped under her chin like a child’s? Would her dark hair be loose or tucked into a nightcap? How long
was
her hair? He had never seen it other than formally arranged. What did she wear to sleep in? He didn’t know anything about her, and she was his wife.
He had every right to walk the few steps to her room, wake her, and make love to her. He wanted to. But he never would. She was no longer the passionate but innocent young woman who gave him her maidenhead on a warm summer night. She would reject him, treat him with contempt and scorn. He wasn’t going to let himself in for that.
But…she didn’t have to know if he tiptoed into her room and looked at her, did she? Nicholas was out of bed and into his robe before the thought was finished. Soon he was in the hall between Regina’s sitting room and the nursery. Her door was closed and there was no light beneath it. The nursery door was ajar and soft light spilled out. A woman was softly humming a familiar lullaby.
Nicholas paused with his hand on the closed door, Regina’s door. But he felt a strange pull coming from the nursery. The wet nurse wouldn’t like being disturbed, yet he suddenly
had a powerful urge to enter that room instead of Regina’s. He hadn’t gotten a good long look at the boy earlier. What better time than now?
Nicholas nudged the nursery door open. The nurse, Tess, was fast asleep in a cot against the wall. A small lamp glowed on a table next to a stuffed armchair. In that chair sat Regina feeding her son.
It brought him up short. Ladies of quality did not suckle their children. It wasn’t done. She was in profile to him, her head bent to the child, softly humming. The fashionable short curls of the day framed her face, while the rest of her hair was long and gleaming, spilling over the back of the chair in midnight waves. She wore a long-sleeved sheer white robe, open, revealing a nightgown of the same material, pulled down on one side enough to bare one breast. The infant’s mouth was greedily working, and one small hand rested just above the nipple, as if holding the breast in place.
Nicholas was mesmerized. Out of his depth, unfamiliar feelings assailed him, tender feelings, holding him spellbound. Even when she sensed his presence and looked up, he didn’t move.
Their eyes met. For a long time, they simply stared at each other. She showed no surprise and no anger. He felt none of the old hostility. They seemed to touch each other without hands, a current passing between them that transcended their differences.
Regina was the first to look away. “I’m sorry if he woke you.”
Nicholas shook himself. “No, no, it doesn’t matter. I…didn’t expect you’d be here, though.” Then he asked shyly, “Couldn’t you locate a wet nurse for him?”
Reggie smiled. “I never looked for one. When Tess told me my mother defied tradition and nursed me herself, I decided to do the same for Thomas. I haven’t regretted it for a moment.”
“It’s rather confining for you, though, isn’t it?”
“I have nothing to do, nowhere I want to go that would keep me away from Thomas for any length of time. Naturally I can’t make many calls, but that’s no hardship for me.”
He had nothing to say. But he didn’t want to leave. “I’ve never seen a mother suckling her babe before. Do you mind?” he asked clumsily.
“He’s your…no, I don’t mind,” she finished, keeping her eyes on the baby.
He leaned against the door for a moment, studying her. Was the child his? She said he was. And every instinct of his own said he was. Then why was he stubbornly denying the truth? Because leaving a wife who had forced herself on him was one thing. But leaving a pregnant wife was something else again. True, she hadn’t told him. But his leaving was still, in view of the pregnancy she’d borne alone, contemptible. Damnation take it. She had put him in this position by keeping silent about her condition. How the devil was he to get out of it?
Reggie turned the boy around to give him her other breast. Nicholas caught his breath as both
creamy white globes were revealed to him in the moment before she covered one of them.
He approached her slowly, drawn against his will, and didn’t stop until he stood before her chair. She looked up at him, but he didn’t trust himself to meet her eyes. It was all he could do to keep from touching her.
He kept his eyes on the child, but that led his gaze to her breast, and to her open throat, and to her soft lips. What would she do if he kissed her? He bent over to find out.
Nicholas heard her gasp just before his mouth took hers. He kept the kiss short and sweet, the lightest touch, ending it before she had a chance to turn away. He straightened, still without meeting her eyes.
“He’s a beautiful baby, Regina.”
It was several long moments before she replied, “I like to think so.”
He smiled hesitantly. “I envy him at this moment.”
“Why?”
He looked directly into those dark, clear blue eyes. “You have to ask?”
“You don’t want me, Nicholas. You made that quite clear before you left. Have you changed your mind?”
He stiffened. She’d like him to beg, wouldn’t she? That would give her a chance to humiliate him. She had sworn she’d never forgive him and she probably wouldn’t. He didn’t blame her, but he was not going to make things worse. He turned and walked away without a word.
H
E was serious! He actually meant for them to pack everything that would go to Silverley and leave within the same day. Nicholas made his high-handed announcement at breakfast, having the unmitigated nerve to use the excuse that he could not remain in a house where he had no study. What could she say, she who had given him that excuse in a long-ago moment of pique? Infuriating man!
Well, she wouldn’t go without Eleanor. All she needed was to be stuck in the country with two unfriendly people. No, Eleanor must come along. But she didn’t tell Nicholas this, she told Eleanor. Ellie refused at first, but Reggie persisted until she gave in.
And so for the rest of the day they were all kept quite busy—except for Nicholas, who simply stood around looking satisfied with the upheaval he had caused. There was no time for Reggie to say any good-byes to her family. Quickly jotted notes had to suffice for that. But even with everyone pitching in to help—everyone except Nicholas—it was nearly eve
ning before the last trunk was loaded onto the extra wagon that had been procured.