The Marriage Bed (34 page)

"How does one go about finding a wet nurse?" she asked the other two women. "I haven't any idea."

"See the local doctor," Daphne answered. "He would know."

"Excellent idea.
After we're finished here, I will call on Dr. Morrison."

"Are you certain you wish to take this on, Viola?" Grace asked. "There will be talk.
Mean and vicious talk.
Taking on a child that is not your own, an illegitimate child, is very difficult."

"You managed it," Viola pointed out, referring to Dylan's eight-year-old daughter, Isabel, whose mother had been a courtesan.

"I know, but Isabel was older, and Dylan wasn't married to me at that time," she answered. "And Dylan isn't a peer. Your situation is a bit different. No other lord's wife would keep her husband's illegitimate child in her own house and raise it. And what if
John
doesn't want to do it?"

"
John
will want to keep the baby." She was absolutely sure of that. She didn't know why. Perhaps it was because she remembered the look on his face when he'd been holding baby Nicholas.

Dylan and Anthony joined them just then and sat down, placing their tankards on the table.

"I agree with Viola," Dylan said, entering the conversation as he sat down beside his wife. "
Hammond
will keep it. He's mad on babies at present."

Anthony made a sound of clear
skepticism
. "How good a father will he be, is my question."

"There is only one important question involved in any of this," Daphne said. "Viola, does
Hammond
love you?"

Anthony groaned. "Trust a woman to always bring love into any discussion."

"Does he?" Daphne repeated, ignoring that comment.

Viola looked at her sister-in-law with a wobbly smile. "I honestly don't know."

At that moment the door of the Wild Boar opened and the subject of their conversation walked in. He took one look around and strode straight toward them.

He yanked off his hat and halted at their table, facing his wife, ignoring everyone else. He took a deep breath, looked into her eyes, and said one word. "No."

"What?" Viola blinked, staring at him.
"No, what?
Are you talking about the baby?"

"No, you're not leaving me. I won't let you."

Viola's lips parted in astonishment as his words slowly sank in. He thought she was leaving him. "
John
—" she began.

"No arguments about this, Viola." He gestured around the table with his hat. "They can all go home, but you're not going anywhere."

She tried again. "I—"

"And we're keeping James."

"What?"

"The baby.
We're keeping him, and we'll raise him.
You and
I.
Together.
See, I've been thinking things over and what to do about it all, and it has to be that way. I know I don't have any right to ask it of you, and it's going to be hard, but we have to do it. He's my responsibility, and I have to take care of him. You know I do. It's only right."

"Yes, of course, but—"

"And Emma's going to
America
. She doesn't want him, and I do. And you have to help me raise him. He needs a mother, so you can't leave me. You can't." His jaw set. "No running away, Viola. Not for either of us. That's been the problem all along, you know. We've both been running away. Mostly me, I admit, but that's not going to happen anymore. I told you that, remember? I promised I wasn't going to walk away from you, and I'm not. Not ever again. And I'm not letting you walk away, either."

She tried one more time. "
John
, I am-—"

"Damn it, I'm trying to talk to you. Woman, you're the one who always wants me to talk about things. Will you stop interrupting me so I can do so?"

"She gave it up.

"God, Viola, sometimes, you drive me insane, you really do. Wanting to talk, and then when I try…" He paused, with a sound of thorough exasperation with her. "No one gets under my skin like you. And I don't know why."

Viola fought to keep a smile off her face. A

smile
would ruin everything, and this was just getting good.

"I don't know what it is, but no one else can give me one look and shred me to ribbons. No one else can make the heavens open when she smiles at me.
No one but you, Viola.
I've had a lot of women in my life, God knows, but I've only had one who can make me remember that I have a heart inside my chest instead of an empty hole. And that woman is you."

Any thought of smiling vanished in the wake of that little speech. He was in complete earnest.
Nothing clever or amusing about it.
It was the most beautiful thing she'd ever heard.

John
paused long enough to suck in a breath, then said, "I love that you have eyes like mud and hair like sunlight, and I t
hank
God every day for blackberry jam. I love that mole at the corner of your mouth, and I love the way you laugh. I love fighting with you because I love making up with you. When I made up that poem that day in the boat, I meant every word of it.
Every word, Viola.
No face so fair and none so dear. And I don't want any other.
Ever.
For all the precious moments of my life, you're the only one."

He scowled at her, looking handsome and fierce, and so resentful. "Nobody
ever
gets to hear my poetry.
Nobody but you.
And I may be the stupidest man on God's earth—"

"Hear, hear," muttered Anthony.

John
ignored that. "And it may have taken me nine years to figure things out, but now I know what love is. I know because you taught me. I love you. Don't deserve you. Never did, but I love you. I love you more than my life."

He fell silent.

Viola waited a moment, but he did not speak again. She gave a little cough. "Are you finished?" she asked.

He glanced around, and she saw it suddenly dawn on him that the dining room of the inn was filled with people, and that all of them were staring at him. He lifted his chin a notch and straightened his cravat. "Yes."

He turned and strode away, but stopped at the door to look back at her. "I'll be at
Hammond
Park
," he told her, all that proud defiance in his face.
"
Our
home.
Waiting for
my
wife to come back there where she belongs!"

With that, he opened the door and walked out, slamming it behind him.

The room was as silent as a Quaker meeting. It was Dylan who spoke first. "Well," he said, leaning back in his chair, "I don't believe we need have any further debate on the subject. It's clear your husband is madly in love with you, Viola, because he just made a complete ass of himself."

Hill rose to her feet when he came in and bobbed a curtsy. He walked to her side and looked into the cradle. The baby was asleep in his white nightshirt, a plain one, and there was a linen cap on his head. Dark hair stuck out from beneath it, wispy strands of it over closed eyes with absurdly long dark lashes.

John
stared at the infant for a moment, reached down and touched his finger tentatively to the baby's hand, then pulled back. "He's so small."

"He'll grow, my lord." Hill looked at him and smiled. "He's only a month old now, I'd say.
Plenty of growing yet to do."

The baby's eyes opened at the sound of their voices. Brown eyes stared up at him. Brandy brown,
like his own
.

"Hullo, James," he said, and looked at the maid. "I want to hold him, but he seems so fragile."

"No baby's that fragile," she said, smiling with all the indulgence of a woman for male absurdities. "A baby's always ready to be held. It's just with a baby this
young,
you have to be sure to support his neck."

He pulled off his coat and threw it aside. "Show me."

He watched as the girl lifted the baby out of the crib, noting the position of her hands, one under James's bottom and one securely behind his head. She placed the baby in the crook of his arm, and
John
sank into the chair beside the crib.

"Am I doing this right?"

"You might have been holding babies all your life, my lord," Hill said, reminding him of that night at
Tremore
House when Beckham had made a similar comment. He hoped they were right, because he was going to be the best damn father in all
England
. Right now, however, he felt he was in way over his head.

James closed his eyes and drifted off to sleep again with a little sigh.

Hill sighed, too. "Right sweet that is, if you don't mind my saying so, my lord."

He didn't mind.

She gave a little cough. "If you please, sir, I need to be getting some fresh laundry for him. He'll need changing any time now. Do you want to give him back, and I'll take him with me?"

He shook his head, gazing at his son. "Not a bit of it. I'm not giving him over. Go on to the laundry, Hill. I'll stay here and watch him until you get back."

"Oh, no, sir!"
She sounded horrified. "I couldn't leave you. What if he started to cry and fuss? Men hate that."

"I won't hate it." He looked up. "Hill, get that worried frown off your pretty face and go."

He winked at her and smiled, and that made her
Jaugh
. He was still a shameless flirt. Probably always would be. Ah, well.

The girl bobbed a curtsy,
then
left the room, and he was alone with his son.

He touched the baby's cheek. It was the softest thing he'd ever felt in his life. "We'll buy you an estate," he said, thinking out loud. "And railway stocks."

James stirred, making a distressed sound in his sleep.

"What's wrong with railway stocks?"
John
murmured. "Railways are the way of the future. You watch and see if I'm not right. With an estate and good investments, you'll be a rich man by the time you're out of
Cambridge
."

His son hit him in the chest with one tiny fist, but did not wake up.

"
Cambridge
," he repeated for emphasis. "Not
Oxford
."

Brown eyes blinked open at the firmness of his voice,
then
closed again. The small mouth opened for a huge, uninterested yawn.

John
laughed softly. "Bored by school already, my son? You won't know what boredom is until they throw Latin at you." He smoothed the fine brown hair across the baby's forehead at the eyelet edge of the cap. "They'll be cruel, James. No
gettng
around it. They'll call you a bastard, and I'm sorry about that. But I'll teach you to keep your head up and act like you don't give a damn, because that's what a man has to do, you see."

James stirred again, turning his face to the side, his nose brushing the ruffles of
John
's shirtfront. He grasped a handful of the ruffles, still asleep.

John
looked down, staring at the tiny, perfect fingernails of his son, and something hot and fierce unfolded inside him.
A powerful feeling of wonder and awe and love that filled the last crevices of the hole in his soul.

"I'll take care of you," he said in a savage whisper. "Don't worry about a thing. I'll see that you have an income of your own, so you won't ever feel desperate or scared. And I'll be right there to see that you don't squander it on stupid things. No getting into debt. No deep stakes gambling. And about the women…"

He considered that for a moment,
then
sighed, giving in to the inevitable. "I know I'm going to lose if I even try to reason with you on that one." Leaning closer, he pressed a kiss to his son's brow and murmured, "We won't tell Viola. She might get upset about that."

If she comes home.

The thought whispered in his mind like a shiver in a cold room. If Viola didn't come home, what would he do?

That hideous feeling of helplessness returned, the same thing he'd felt looking at her in the Wild Boar. He could tell she hadn't been all that impressed by his little speech. He couldn't even remember what he said, but it hadn't been witty, and it hadn't been clever, and it sure as hell hadn't been poetic. And there she'd sat, staring at him in complete astonishment, as if he was off his chump for even daring to follow her and talk about love after what had happened.

John
knew there was nothing he could do to make her come home. Nothing he could say to undo the past or right his wrongs.
Nothing.
She wouldn't come back to him. After all, he was the one who had always done the walking away. No surprise if she turned the tables. He deserved it.

But desperate men did desperate things. He knew that better than anybody. Being a desperate man, he prayed. "Come home, Viola," he said, holding his son and praying hard. "Just come home."