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CHAPTER NINE
VICTORIAHADNOTbeen prepared for the nursery.
Later that night, replete on the proper British Christmas dinner that the Italian cook had attempted to put together, complete with crackers at every plate and all the plum pudding she could eat, Victoria stood in the middle of the nursery floor. She hugged the drapey sweater she wore tighter around her, wondering why this was all so much more difficult than she’d expected.
The moon was high, coursing into the windows and making it far too easy to imagine what it would be like if she simply...stayed here. Just a few months from now she could sit right there in that rocking chair, holding her baby while he nursed. It would be easy. A blink of the eye between now and then. And here, in this room that made her feel so at home—in a way she hadn’t felt since she was a child and didn’t know the sorts of things her father had planned for her as she grew—she could be happy.
She knew she could. She might even convince herself that she was loved.
For what else could send a man like Ago on a quest to perfectly replicate the look of a room he shouldn’t have known existed? What could possibly have possessed him?
And thinking of it that way, she could even put what she’d overheard into context. Maybe he didn’t feel the way she’d assumed he must, outside his office, clinging to that bare, white wall. Maybe he didn’t think that he was trying to manipulate her at all. Maybe he’d said the kinds of things he had because he was trying to play to her father’s prejudices.
But standing there, drenched in moonlight, she blew out a breath and laughed.
Bitterly, and a little too long.
Because Victoria knew this particular cycle too well. She’d spent most of her life telling herself stories just like this to explain how her father treated her.
And what she knew was that stories were comforting. Stories were like light in the dark. Good stories could excuse away even the most egregious behavior.
But that didn’t make them true.
She turned and snuck back through the connecting door into the bedchamber she’d shared with Ago for nearly a month now. Already, it was hard to imagine sleeping on her own again. When before, she would have said that it was unimaginable that she could ever actually figure out how to sleep with another person beside her. Much less a man like him, so big, so implacably male.
Victoria would have sooner curled up with a lion.
He slept even now, the moon playing over the planes and angles of his beautiful body as he lay there.
She really didn’t know why it was she’d lingered here.
What she truly this sad? That one lovely Christmas, and one admittedly thoughtful gift, should make her question her own convictions?
Inside, her baby kicked. Hard enough to make her wince. And for no reason at all, she felt tears well up, sudden and fierce, tipping over to track their way down her cheeks.
“I know,” she whispered, so low that it was hardly more than her own heartbeat. “I love him too.”
And that seemed to dance there in the moonlight that teased its way into the room and made Ago look even more beautiful than he was.I love him, Victoria thought, and the wonder of that almost brought her to her knees.
But reality chased in behind it, keeping her on her feet.
The baby kicked again, and she felt the kick of a headache. She tried to blink it away. “But we deserve more than a cage, little bit,” she murmured. “No matter how pretty it is.”
And then she made herself turn, though it hurt. And even as she headed for the door, she knew she was committing every detail of the scene before her to memory. The way Ago’s dark lashes looked, there against the arrestingly masculine planes of his beautiful face. How easy he looked in repose, when he was always so stern and commanding awake. Sleeping, he could have been a different man. A softer, more approachable one.
But that was just another story to tell herself. To make the way she felt about him okay, when she knew it was probably just a little Stockholm syndrome mixed in with the Christmas pud.
Victoria tiptoed out of the bedchamber, and this time, she didn’t let the lure of the nursery call her back. She made herself walk as quietly and as quickly as she could through the rest of the master suite, then out into the hall.
She was tracing his back in her mind, thinking of all the times she’d explored it with her mouth, her hands. She was thinking of the hard grip of his hands and how they held her hips where he wanted them when she rode him, swift and so sweet.
But if it was only sex, she was sure it would be easier to leave.
Not that she really had the slightest idea whatonly sexmeant, really, given that this was all the sex she’d ever had. But that was what people said, wasn’t it?Only sex, as if coming together the way she and Ago had wasn’t life altering. When his touch could transport her so easily and there was a part of her that feared that it didn’t matter whether she left him or not.
In some way, she knew, she would always be held tight in the palm of his hand.
“That’s only a story,” she told herself as she waddled along. “And not a very nice one.”
