Regency 09 - Redemption (26 page)

Dare watched her face and
watched the brush in his hand as it glided through her hair. He’d
dreamed often of her hair, spread over his pillow, lying on her
shoulders, masking her naked breasts. He’d dreamed of her so often
that his fantasies had merged with his reality causing him no end
of melancholy and physical discomfort.

He glanced in the mirror
again to find her watching him, the expression in her cornflower
eyes unreadable. But he sensed her pain and knew he was the cause
no matter what her father had done to precipitate his
flight.

He set the brush aside and
crouched down beside her stool. Taking her chilled hand in his own,
he tried to smile. He was afraid it more closely resembled a
grimace, however.

“Jenny-love, we have to
talk,” he told her, his voice breaking slightly on his pet name for
her. He cursed under his breath and firmly reined in his disturbing
emotions.

He wasn’t sure she’d
answer. When she did, her words sliced through his heart,
threatening to bleed him dry.

“Why did you
leave?”

He sucked in a harsh
breath, his fingers tightening involuntarily. “Your father said you
wanted me to go,” he said woodenly.

“After all we’ve shared,
how could you believe I would want you to go?”

All the hurt, the feelings
of abandonment, and betrayal were painfully clear in her voice.
Dare reacted instinctively, pressing his lips to her bare knuckles
with a reverence he’d never felt for another woman.

“I was stupidly proud, my
love,” he admitted in a whisper. “Too proud, too frightened of the
possibility that it was true to even consider asking you. My
damnable pride, something I have not suffered from for more years
than I can count, decided to rear its blasted head.” He curved his
free hand over her cheek, feeling the wetness of her tears. “I am
not making excuses, Jenny. I am truly sorry for the pain I’ve
caused you.”

Jenny’s eyes fluttered open
and he thought he just might drown in those azure
depths.

The moment had come. Dare
could no longer avoid it. He had to tell her what was in his heart,
what made him breathe, what kept him sane.

So he did.

“I love you, Jenny. With
all my heart and soul, with every breath in my body, with all my
being. I wish to spend my life proving to you how important you are
to me and how sorry I am for forcing you through so much
hell.”

Jenny’s fingers tightened
on his. Her lips twisted into a small smile, which grew as she
replied, “Only if you allow me the same privilege, my dearest
love.”

At his questioning look,
Jenny released a tinkling laugh. “I could have hunted you down, you
know. I could have told you long ago how I felt. I didn’t want to
burden you and make you feel obligated to me. It was my pride that
made me refuse to debase myself by pouring out my heart when I
wasn’t sure what it was you felt for me.”

“None of this was your
fault,” he insisted, in true gentlemanly fashion.

Jenny laid her hand against
his stubbled jaw. “As I took part of the blame for my pregnancy, I
take part of the blame for every contretemps we’ve gotten into from
the start. We’ve neither one of us behaved very admirably this past
year, Dare.”

He would have refuted her
words but she placed a gentle finger over his lips, silencing his
protest.

“And so, I ask that you
allow me the same privilege you have requested. To love you with my
whole heart, soul, and being, ‘til my dying breath. And to spend my
life proving to you how important you are to me and how sorry I am
for causing you so much needless suffering. I am truly sorry, Dare.
I never meant to add more pain to your already tormented
past.”

“Oh, Jenny-love, you have
no idea how I needed to hear you say that.” He wrapped his arms
around her, laying his head against her chest, a sigh of deep
relief echoing through his body and into hers.

She smiled as she stroked
her fingers through his silky, black hair. “My admission that I
caused your pain?” she asked facetiously.

She felt him smile against
her belly, the movement causing familiar flutters of sensation
quivering all through her body.

“No, that you love me. You
could tell me that every minute of every day for the rest of our
lives and I would never get tired of hearing it.”

“Then you’ll stay?” She
asked tentatively but with such a vast amount of hope that he was
momentarily too choked up to reply. After taking a deep breath, he
smiled, saying, “Aye, Jenny-love. Of course I’ll stay.”

Taking his head in her
hands, Jenny leaned down. Her lips pressed sweetly to his, her
innocence despite being a mother charming him all over
again.

They rose as one and he
pressed her full-length against him, an action she aided by moving
so close he thought she just might be trying to disappear under his
skin.

He swung her up into his
arms, intent on her bed on the other side of the room when a sudden
thought occurred to him.

“Is it too
soon?”

Jenny smiled with true joy
for the first time since their wedding. She shook her head, a laugh
escaping when his pace quickened.

An hour later, Dare leaned
up on his elbow, absently fondling a lock of his wife’s hair. She
stared up at him, her dazed expression the highest compliment she
could have paid him. He smiled and leaned down to place a soft kiss
on her slightly parted lips.

She sighed when he moved
back. “That was beautiful,” she breathed.

He laughed. “A rather
lukewarm description but I’ll accept it as a compliment,” he
said.

Jenny lightly slapped him.
“I meant the kiss, you looby. The other was”—she blushed and
released a little contented sigh—“earth-shattering.”

He rewarded her for that
with a deep, soul-stealing kiss that left her weak in the knees and
begging for more.

An infantile cry from the
next room interrupted their loveplay. Dare lifted his head, his
face freezing at the sound. He’d forgotten their child. How could
he forget his own daughter?

“Miranda,” he whispered,
his dark-eyed gaze fixed on the door opposite.

Jenny smiled, her white
teeth flashing. “Would you like to meet your daughter?” she
asked.

He breathed the word,
“Yes.”

Jenny rose and drew on a
sapphire blue silk dressing gown. After shooting him an utterly
seductive, utterly endearing grin, she disappeared into the baby’s
room.

Dare sat up and pulled on
his breeches. He sat there for a moment, nearly lost in thought,
before dragging his fingers through his hair and tying it back with
one of Jenny’s ribbons. He didn’t bother with anything
else.

He was at the door only
seconds after Jenny’s departure, gazing into the room that held his
wife and daughter, the two most precious beings in his
world.

His bride turned at his
entrance, a serene smile in her beautiful eyes and an invitation to
join them on her perfect lips.

Dare approached cautiously,
more nervous than he could ever remember being in his life. He
carefully blanked his expression, not wanting to alarm Jenny and
unsure of the amount of fear a child could sense. His bride handed
Miranda over, calmly confident in his nonexistent knowledge of
babies. Her attitude helped calm him…a bit.

Dare took his daughter into his
arms, cradling her tight to his bare chest. When he looked down
into the palest blue eyes and smelled that sweet baby smell,
something in him cracked.

Gazing down at his child
with fascinated awe, the young father moved away from his wife. He
started whispering words of love and devotion to the child, not
even bothered by the fact that his behavior was not in keeping with
how their class operated.

This child, this bright
spot in his life, was worth more to him than any ridiculous
strictures imposed by a Society that encouraged infidelity,
hypocrisy, and every other vice known to man.

This child…and his
wife.

His beautiful, strong,
willful wife, with her mistaken beliefs and humorous tendencies.
She loved him when no one else did and refused to see him as
anything other than a man worthy of her tender regard, someone
worth redeeming. And while Dare hesitated, even now, to agree with
her assessment, he couldn’t help but love her for the belief he’d
always craved but never hoped to receive.

Jenny watched her husband
with love, hunger, and an odd twinge of pain. He was so obviously
in love with his daughter that Jenny fell in love with him all over
again. It was distressing how much time they had lost due to their
stupid pride.

As if sensing her disquieting
thoughts, Dare looked up, meeting her eyes. His own looked rather
wet. Jenny smiled hesitantly feeling the sting of tears and not
even bothering to stem the flow.

Dare’s expression was no
longer blank. He stared at her with all the love in his heart and
soul. Then, whispering so low that she had to lean forward to hear,
he said, “Thank you.”

The End

Page forward for an excerpt
of

Honor
by Jaimey
Grant.

One

Autumn 1815

Under the cover of absolute
darkness, a slight female figure climbed awkwardly down an
ivy-covered wall. With a cautious glance left and then right, the
cloaked figure darted across the open parkland at the rear of the
manor house and managed to reach the relative safety of the trees.
Just before she reached the woods, a shaft of moonlight broke
through the clouds, highlighting the pale features of a young lady,
beautiful and desperate. In a swirl of midnight cloak, she was lost
among the trees.

She carried nothing more with her
than a very small and very shabby valise containing one extra,
equally shabby dress, some underthings, and enough money to catch
the southbound stagecoach once she reached the posting house—money
that had been given to her by some of the servants who wanted to
help her escape.

The time neared four o’clock and
considering her past, she should have been terrified out of her
wits to be alone in the dark of early morning. But she found fear
of her father’s plans lent her the courage she needed to traverse
the night-blackened forest with little thought for her past
experience there.