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“Yes, dear.”
“Well, then.” Bertie’s eyes grew very bright. He rubbed them. “But I knew it would be all right, all along, like I told you. Mean to say, Cat, it ain’t all right, exactly. Very sick-making. Great Uncle Mortimer bangs his head against the wall. But megrims ain’t killed any of our lot yet.” He clapped Dorian on the shoulder. Then he took Dorian’s hand and pumped it vigorously. Then he hugged Gwendolyn. Then, red-faced, he broke away. “By Jupiter. A baby, by gad. Godfather. Megrims. Well. I’m thirsty.”
Then, frantically rubbing his eyes, Bertie hurried on to the house.
AN HOUR LATER, while Bertie was recovering his emotional equilibrium in the bathing chamber, Dorian stood with his wife, watching Mr. Eversham’s battered carriage lumber down the drive.
“We must get him a better carriage,” Dorian said. “People judge by appearances, and young doctors have a difficult time inspiring confidence. But a handsome equipage will indicate a profitable practice. If people believe he’s greatly sought after, they’ll be less likely to doubt his competence.”
“You think of everything,” Gwendolyn said. “But it is your protective streak—which I am beginning to suspect is a throwback to the Camoys’s feudal origins and the lord of the manor looking after all his people.”
“Don’t be silly,” he said. “I’m only being practical. The man will have enough to do between doctoring and supervising the hospital construction, without having to prove himself as well and get involved with local rivalries and politics.”
“Yes, dear,” she said dutifully. “Practical.”
“And you will have enough to do, without having to leap to his defense a dozen times a day—or bothering me about it. Pregnancy makes you cross enough as it is. Can’t have you antagonizing all of Dartmoor.”
They watched the carriage round a turning behind a hill and descend out of view. “The sun is setting,” he said. “The pixies and phantoms and witches will be at their toilette, preparing for the night’s revelries.”
His gaze returned to her. “Will you walk with me?”
She tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow and walked with him into the garden. He took her to the stone bench where he’d found her quietly waiting weeks earlier. He sat, taking her onto his lap.
The sun hovered over a distant hill. Its glow set fire to the clouds scattered about like goose down pillows on a celestial bed of blue and green and violet.
“Do you still want to build in Dartmoor?” he asked.
She nodded. “I like it here, and so do you. And Dain and Jessica are near.”
“We’ll need a larger house if we’re going to raise a family,” he said. He glanced behind him at the modest manor house. “I suppose we could add a wing. It would not be very grand. But Rawnsley Hall was grand and it felt like an immense tomb. Couldn’t wait to get out of there. At present, in fact, I am strongly tempted to forget about repairs and raze the whole confounded pile.”
“You don’t like it, but your heir might,” she said. “If you rebuild, you might give it to him as a wedding gift.”
He lightly caressed her belly. “Are you sure you’ve a boy in there?”
“No, but we are bound to have one eventually.”
“Even before I realized there would be an ‘eventually,’ I knew I should be just as happy if it were a girl,” he said.
“Ah, well, you have a soft spot in your heart for females,” she said. “But you also seem to have a way with little boys, and so I am not anxious either way. You will make a doting, devoted papa. Which is a good thing,” she added with a little frown, “because the women of my family are rather negligent mothers. But then, they are always breeding, you see, which is distracting.”
“Then I shall look after the children,” he said. “Because I should like a great many, and you will have the additional distraction of hospital matters.”
She stroked his hair back. “You have a gift for thinking ahead.”
“I’ve been blessed with a great deal to look forward to,” he said. “Watching the hospital rise from the ground, for instance. Discovering what modern medical ideas and principles can and cannot achieve. The possibilities. The limitations.” He shook his head. “It amazes me how much I’ve learned about medicine in these last weeks, and how interesting it turns out to be. It even has a sort of poetry to it, and its own logic and riddles, like any intellectual pursuit. And there is the same wonderful feeling of discovery as mysteries are solved. I felt that today, when Eversham explained where your notes had led you.” He kissed her forehead. “I’m so proud of you.”
“You should be proud of yourself,” she said. “You did not put obstacles in my way, though you wanted to—to protect me from myself. Instead, you tried every possible way to help me solve my riddle—by writing to Borson and sending for Eversham.”
“Eversham is not like any other doctor I’ve encountered,” he said. “He certainly does have his own ideas. While you were washing your face, I asked him why he had accepted you as a colleague. He told me that in olden times, women were the healers in many communities. But their arts, to ignorant folk, seemed like magic, which was associated with the Devil. And so they were reviled and persecuted as witches.” He chuckled. “And so I realized I had been right from the first. I had wed a witch. And he was right, too, for you are a healer. You’ve healed my heart. That was the part that was ailing.”
She curled her fingers round his neck. “You’ve healed me, too, Cat. You made the doctor part and the woman part fit together.”
“Because I love both parts,” he said softly. “All your parts. All of you.”
She smiled, the sweet everlasting smile, and weaving her fingers into his hair, drew him down and kissed him, slowly, deeply, lingeringly.
While he lingered with her in the warm forever of that moment, the narrow red arc of the sun sank behind the glowing hill. A faint thread of light glimmered on the horizon. The night mists stole into the hollows and crevices of the moors, and the shadows swelled and lengthened, shrouding the winding byways in darkness.
The sharpening breeze made him lift his head. “A beautiful Dartmoor night,” he murmured. “At moments like this, it is easy to believe in magic.” He met her soft gaze. “You’re magic to me, Gwen.”
“Because I’m your witch, and you are my devoted familiar.”
“So I am.” He smiled down at her. “Let’s make a spell, sorceress.”
She frowned her endearing medical frown. “Very well. But first you must help me find some eye of newt.”
He laughed. Then, cradling his bride in his arms, the Earl of Rawnsley rose, and carried her into the house.
Want more tales of passion from
New York Times bestselling author Loretta Chase?
Keep reading for a sneak peek at her new series featuring sisters from a scandalous aristocratic family
. . .
Silk Is For Seduction
Scandal Wears Satin
Available now from Avon Books
An Excerpt from
SILK IS FOR SEDUCTION
Prologue
IN THE SUMMER of 1810, Mr. Edward Noirot eloped to Gretna Greene with Miss Catherine DeLucey.
Mr. Noirot had been led to believe he was eloping with an English heiress whose fortune, as a result of this rash act, would become his exclusively. An elopement cut out all the tiresome meddling, in the form of marriage settlements, by parents and lawyers. In running off with a blue-blooded English lady of fortune, Edward Noirot was carrying on an ancient family tradition: His mother and grandmother were English.
Unfortunately, he’d been misled by his intended, who was as accomplished in lying and cheating, in the most charming manner possible, as her lover was. There had indeed been a fortune. Past tense. It had belonged to her mother, whom John DeLucey had seduced and taken to Scotland in the time-honored fashion of his own family.
The alleged fortune by this time was long gone. Miss DeLucey had intended to improve her financial circumstances in the way women of her family usually did, by luring into matrimony an unsuspecting blue-blooded gentleman with deep pockets and a lusting heart.
She, too, had been misled, because Edward Noirot had no more fortune than she did. He was, as he claimed, the offspring of a French count. But the family fortune had been swept away, along with the heads of various relatives, years before, during the Revolution.
Thanks to this comedy of errors, the most disreputable branch of one of France’s noble families was united with its English counterpart, better known—and loathed—in the British Isles as the Dreadful DeLuceys.
The reader will easily imagine the couple’s chagrin when the truth came out shortly after they’d made their vows.
The reader will undoubtedly expect the screaming, crying, and recriminations usual on such occasions. The reader, however, would be mistaken. Being the knaves they were—and furthermore quite truly in love—they laughed themselves sick. Then they joined forces. They set about seducing and swindling every dupe who crossed their path.
