She paused in her stroking. ‘Are we being careful? I was thinking about Ruby and her predicament. What if…?’
He went up on an elbow to look down at her. There was no moon so only the faintest glow of starlight penetrated the darkness of the bedroom through the gap in the shutters. He could barely see her, just a darker shade against the white of the sheets. They were communicating in touch and scent and sound. He felt the curve of her shoulder under his questing fingers, the heat of her skin. ‘What if we made a child together? As a doctor I have to say we are doing what usually produces one eventually. I apologise. We should’ve discussed this before.’
‘And?’
‘And we can be as careful– perhaps more careful– as we have been to avoid that happening too soon.’
‘And if that fails?’
To shout ‘huzzah: you marry me and we live happily ever after!’ would be about as popular with her as oversetting a hive of bees in the breakfast room. She’d run out pretty sharpish, as Alex put it earlier. Jacob knew this was an important test for him to pass.
‘Then we welcome it. We enjoy seeing our child grow in you, we look after you both for the lying-in, and then love and cherish our child once it is here. I’m not going anywhere, Dora. Being a father doesn’t scare me.’
‘It should.’
‘Well, I suppose it does in some ways, but not the fact of making a child to raise with you. I think we will make excellent parents.’
‘We can’t be worse than mine.’
He huffed. ‘And we can be a hell of a lot more demonstrative than mine.’ The grief he’d been keeping at bay came back in sudden storm– damned inconvenient when he’d been intending to seduce her. His chest tightened and his eyes pricked with tears. His breathing turned ragged.
‘Oh, my love.’ Ever sensitive to his moods, Dora pushed him gently down on the pillow and kissed his eyelids. Jacob felt the tears escape and he tried to swipe them away.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said gruffly. ‘I was wanting to show you how much I adore you.’
‘Don’t be sorry. Tears are the coin we pay for love. I’m happy for you that you loved your father– I’m sad for you that you miss him.’
Letting go of the reins he kept on his emotions, and in the privacy of their room, Jacob mourned as Dora held him. Then, when that passed, they celebrated life and love with tenderness, reaching a new height of intimacy. It was an unforgettable night.
If the world did not want him to have Dora in his life, then it was the world that needed to change, Jacob vowed.
ChapterTwenty-Five
The sunlight slanted through the east-facing window in the library. Looking up from his case notes, Jacob took in his guests, each busy with their early morning occupations. Through the open door across the passage, Alex and Ruby were sharing a pot of tea at the dining room table while they gossiped about London. Now that Ruby had dismissed Alex as a potential protector, they looked to be on the path to becoming friends, or at least, acquaintances with teasing rights.
‘We need to speak to Moss again, work out a way to divine Knotte’s intentions, and potentially his next target,’ Jacob told Dora. He was acutely conscious of her moving about the library behind him, investigating his collection. After last night, they had agreed that they didn’t want the issue of forgery to lie between them. She was going to tell him if his collection could be given the all-clear and then they could move on to the next stage. He hoped that stage would be a commitment between them, possibly even the ‘m’ word, but he was taking it carefully, like a skater venturing out onto ice, not sure if it would bear his weight.
‘I’d like to know how Mr Wright is faring this morning,’ said Dora distractedly.
‘Indeed.’ Jacob wasn’t sanguine. He’d seen patients in comatose states before. There was little a doctor could do to help them apart from keeping them comfortable. If he and Dora had been quicker, could they have prevented the assault? The problem was that the poetic hints from Wordsworth’s autobiography only made sense after an attack and did not narrow down who might be next. Unless…
‘Do you think he will go after Wordsworth?’ Dora was now rummaging in something behind him. He turned to see what she was up to. ‘Dora?’
‘Well now, that isn’t good.’ Dora frowned at the contents of a drawer in his cabinet of curiosities.
Jacob’s heart sank and he marked the place in his notebook. ‘Trouble?’
‘How much did you pay for this?’ She held up a page from an early draft ofAbsalom and Achitophel.
He put his volume aside and crossed the room to stand at her shoulder. ‘The Dryden?’
She hummed noncommittally. Was that a guilty blush on her cheek?
‘Not much. I wasn’t sure about its provenance, but the dealer threw it in with a Pope that I paid over the odds for.’ He pulled out the drawer below and showed the letter he’d purchased for five guineas. For all his calm words, his heart was running the final furlong at the Derby. If the Pope was bad, then all the rest might well be. He’d stake his reputation on that being genuine.
She studied it carefully and gave a sigh of relief. ‘That one is good. However, the Dryden– you aren’t very attached to it, are you?’
‘Is anyone ever attached to anything by Dryden?’ A sick sense of foreboding gathered in his chest that had nothing to do with the skills of the poet.
