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Eden could not believe Raven would seriously suggest such a devious ploy. “Do you honestly expect me to deny I was Alex’s wife? I thought you abhorred pretense.”
Raven sighed as he conceded that point. “I do, but you’ll have to admit the circumstances of our marriage were extraordinary. Besides, I don’t want you to deny anything. We’ll just postpone revealing the truth until people are better able to accept it.”
Eden shook her head emphatically. “No, you’re wrong. They’ll not become more understanding if they learn the truth several months from now. They’ll just be all the more outraged by our duplicity and never trust a word we speak ever again.”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take.”
“Well I’m not,” Eden insisted. “I won’t have you compromising your dearest principles to protect me. I know this may be difficult to understand, or believe, but even if I have to spend the rest of my life as the object of gossip, the time I shared with Alex will have been worth it.”
“A month with him would be worth a lifetime of scorn?” Raven asked incredulously.
“Yes, I loved him that much, Raven. I really did.”
Impressed by her spirit, or perhaps merely her stubbornness, Raven reached out to take her hand. “No one is going to insult you. I’ll not allow it. I’ll call out any man who dares to whisper a single word of criticism about us and I’ll think of a way to silence the women too.”
“If you kill a man in a duel, it will be called murder,” Eden reminded him. “I won’t have it, Raven. I buried one husband, and I wouldn’t survive if you were hanged for killing a man in a misguided attempt to champion my honor.”
Raven hoped that meant she cared for him, at least a little bit, but the prospect of being hanged for murder was not nearly as important a concern as avenging his honor, or hers. “I’m flattered you think I’d win any duels I fought. Thank you for that vote of confidence,” he remarked with a broad grin.
“Raven, please. This is too important a matter for you to make jokes of it.”
Raven disagreed. “I consider my good name, and yours, as important as my life. Just think about my idea. Old gossip isn’t nearly as titillating as new. That I’ve married will astound most people. That Alex died, well, everyone who knew him will grieve with us. Those two events ought to keep everyone occupied for a good long while.”
Raven’s tone was soft and conciliatory, but Eden could not be a party to the deception he suggested. “We can’t lie about Alex and me” She got that far, but her cheeks began to burn with an incriminating blush when she couldn’t bring herself to explain why.
Eden looked so stricken with guilt at the mere suggestion of a ruse, Raven could not help but wonder if he had not seriously underestimated her integrity. Wouldn’t a woman who was concerned only about wealth and position have welcomed the chance to protect her name? He had not offered the option of postponing the announcement of her marriage to Alex as a test, but if he had been using it as a clever means to assess her character, she had definitely passed with flying colors. Had all of his impressions of her been equally unfair? There was too much to sort through for him to come to a just decision at the moment, but he began to suspect his desire to protect Alex from a devious female’s wiles might have led him to misjudge her all along.
“I think I owe you an apology,” he offered graciously.
“For what?”
“For always questioning your word. I’ve not known that many women well, and while that’s no excuse, I should have realized that anyone who cares as passionately about a hopeless cause like the Confederacy, or who would brave a lifetime of shame to marry a dying man, had her own vision of truth and that it’s an honest one.”
Eden bit her lip to force back her tears. Only Raven Blade could pay such an insult-laced compliment, but while he clearly thought he had gained some sudden insight into her character, she knew he still understood far too little.
“I’m not a deceitful person, Raven. I know that’s the way some men see women, but I think it’s seldom the case. Oh I know there are women who are forced to lie, who pretend to love men in order to survive, but I have too much respect for myself, as well as men, to want to fool them. I never lied to Alex, and I won’t lie to you either.”
When Eden again looked away, her expression still troubled, Raven gave her hand an encouraging squeeze. “Maybe something else will occur to me before we get home. I won’t force you to keep your marriage to Alex a secret if it would upset you so badly.”
“I can’t keep it a secret, Raven.” Thinking only of how proud Alex would have been to have a child, Eden finally found the courage to confess the reason why. “I’m not absolutely certain yet, but there’s a possibility I’m carrying Alex’s child.”
Raven was completely dumbfounded by that totally unexpected announcement, and needed a long moment to collect his wits in order to respond. Even then, his expression still mirrored his astonishment. “But you were only married to him for a month!”
That was not the sympathetic response for which Eden had hoped, but now that she had made such a difficult admission, she had no trouble discussing it openly. “A woman need sleep with a man only once to create a babe. You must know that. Alex was a very loving husband, and we had many such opportunities.”
Raven slumped back in his chair, still too shocked to comprehend how this latest development was going to affect them. “Alex and Eleanora were married for three years and she was never able to conceive. It didn’t even occur to me that you could have.”
“Maybe I didn’t,” Eden mused. “It could just be wishful thinking and in a week or two I might know it’s not true.”
In the meantime, Raven knew he ought to be happy for Alex that there was even the possibility he had fathered a child, but he was too distraught to feel anything but dismay. He was as badly depressed as he had been when he had seen Eden’s handwriting on the envelope containing the note summoning him to Briarcliff and had known instantly that Alex was dead.
The last two months had been the most trying of his life. First he had lost Eden to Alex without even being able to enter the contest for her affection. Then he had lost Alex, but Alex had always been generous to a fault, and had made it possible for him to make Eden his wife. Raven knew she had no idea how badly he had wanted her, but he had been unwilling to wait for her to grow fond of him and had seized his first opportunity to marry her. He had been positive that even if she had captured Alex’s heart with a string of enchanting lies, he would not fall victim to any clever romantic illusions.
Now it appeared Eden’s love for his uncle had been real, and even if she was not yet certain, he did not doubt that she was pregnant. Of course she was. She and Alex had been everything to each other and it was only natural that they would become parents as well. Where did that leave him? he wondered sadly. Alex had raised him, and he would never refuse to do as much for Alex’s child, but the fact that he had again lost out to Alex, and that Eden’s first babe would not be his, was almost more than Raven could bear.
“I know how desperately you must want Alex’s child,” he finally forced himself to promise, hiding his anguish as best he could. “I want you to know I’ll be as fine a stepfather as any man can be.”
Raven was concentrating on their hands rather than looking up at her, and Eden realized he was struggling with the same powerful emotions that continually tore at her. She left her chair then, moved to his lap, and hugged him with all her strength. “Thank you,” she whispered, and when he responded with a kiss of nearly heartrending sweetness, she knew they were again taking comfort in the fiery desire that was so easily ignited between them but she craved the peace that followed in passion’s wake too desperately to care.
