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He sat straight up, all sleepiness gone from his face, his muscled chest glowing in the blue moonlight falling through the windows. He stared at her stomach as if it were full of vipers.
That made her heart break all over again. Instead of the happiness she’d expected to see on his face—or even relief that it may be happening, that he may receive his inheritance—there was a look of pure terror.
“So soon?” he croaked out.
She swallowed, suddenly self-conscious, and picked up her dressing gown, wrapping it around herself.
“Yes, so soon.”
Still gloriously naked, he jumped from the bed like a lion and darted to the window. He carefully touched the curtain and looked at the street, then picked up his own dressing gown and shoved his arms through its sleeves.
“You wanted this, am I right?” she asked, feeling tears prickling the backs of her eyes.
His eyebrows were knotted, his eyes wide, his mouth a tight line.
Where was the joy of a soon-to-be father? The happiness on the face of the man whose wife may be growing a new life inside her?
“Of course I did,” he said without looking back at her.
But it didn’t sound at all like he did. He hadn’t looked into her eyes since the moment he’d heard the word “pregnant.”
She shouldn’t talk about it. Shouldn’t touch the very sensitive subject. They had enough unspoken secrets, promises neither of them wanted to keep, a paper-thin truce between them that could be broken forever with one wrong word.
And yet, her heart was full of Nathaniel, full of hope for their happiness, for the two of them—maybe for the three of them.
She should just keep her mouth shut.
“Then why aren’t you happy?” she blurted out.
Finally, he met her eyes—with a glare.
“Happy?” he snarled. “How can I be happy when—”
He cursed under his breath and closed his eyes, the powerful chest muscles rising in a deep breath. He pointed at the window. “There’s someone who surveyed my house for days. How can I be happy that he watches my pregnant wife and my three sisters? How can I be happy if they can invade my own house again? And now there may be an unborn child to protect as well.”
Her throat contracted. “But I haven’t gone and done anything by myself, just like you asked me. I didn’t go to Blackmore like I wanted to. I didn’t even breathe in the direction of Portside. I—”
Don’t say it, Calliope. Don’t say it. There would be no coming back from this.
“You what?” he barked.
It was probably that tone that did it. That fury in his voice, the contempt, the resentment. She knew they had their differences, the big questions between them.
And she snapped. The dam of unhappiness, of tiredness, of anger at him for confining her, and at herself for obeying him, pushed against her resolve like storm-roiled water crashing against a dam.
“I can’t do this anymore!” she yelled. “I stopped looking for my brother for you, so that you know I’m safe and to keep the girls safe. Do you think your forbidding me to leave would stop me if I really wanted to go? But I’m suffocating, Nathaniel! I’m suffocating!”
He narrowed his eyes in confusion, in pain. “But I have done the same for you! I have allowed you to do your investigation. I have allowed you to come with me to Portside despite thugs attacking you! Despite my sister being wounded and scared. Despite someone watching our house every day! And what about your books?”
Calliope frowned. “My books?”
“Yes. Your books. The ones about private inquiries. Aren’t they what put all those ideas in Violet’s head? Poppy and she were excited about the thug who followed you, thrilled to help you disguise yourself! And because of that, instead of running away and looking for help, they decided to fight three grown men alone!”
Tears welled in her eyes. The worst of it was, he was right. She was wrong for him. Wrong for his sisters. She thought he was one man who wouldn’t reject her independent spirit, her odd ideas.
She should have never opened herself up to him. She should have given him her body but not her heart.
Too late. He was already in her very bloodstream. Just like the girls. But it didn’t mean they had a future.
