“It was July.”
“Drafts are not governed by months.”
She laughed then, and the sound loosened the last knot of terror inside him. Andrew drew her carefully into his arms. At first, he held her as though she might break. Then, when she came willingly against him and rested her cheek upon his coat, he held her as a man held his whole life. The orange trees breathed their green sweetness around them. Sunlight warmed the glass. Frances’s arms went around him.
“I am beyond happy,” he whispered into her hair.
She grew still.
Then she drew back enough to look at him. “Are you?”
“Yes.” He touched her cheek. “Terrified. Overwhelmed. Already planning how many physicians may reasonably be consulted without provoking your anger.”
“One.”
“Three.”
“One.”
“Two, and Philip may stand witness to my restraint.”
“Philip will side with me.”
“Then I must choose another witness.”
She smiled, but her eyes shone. “You are truly happy?”
Andrew looked at her: his wife, his love, the woman who had taught him that happiness did not become safer because one refused it.
“I am,” he confessed. “I once thought love only gave a man more to lose.”
“And now?”
He glanced toward the house, where Mary Grace slept somewhere among family, where laughter moved from room to room, where the future had begun to gather quietly and insistently around them.
“Now I think it gives him something worth staying for.”
Frances’s smile trembled. Then she rose onto her toes and kissed him. Andrew received the kiss with gratitude first, then joy, then that familiar longing which, even after months of marriage, had lost none of its power to unsettle him. He drew her closer, though carefully, and felt her laugh softly against his mouth.
“You are already treating me as though I am porcelain,” she murmured.
“You are carrying my child.”
“I am still capable of being kissed properly.”
His eyes warmed. “A correction I am happy to receive.”
This time, he kissed her more thoroughly, still tenderly, still with reverence. But with enough of the old fire that Frances’s fingers tightened in his coat and his own heart, battered and remade by love, answered with fierce certainty. When they parted, her color was high and her expression very satisfied.
“That was better,” she teased.
“I live to improve.”
“No, you don’t. You live to command, protect, brood, and occasionally make speeches that would be excellent if they were not so inconveniently moving.”
“I shall add kissing properly to the list.”
“You may.”
