The Lion's Daughter (Scoundrels 1)

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Esme lay in her husband’s arms, listening while his breathing slowed. She felt the tension growing between them even as their bodies quieted.

The words he’d uttered had made her drunk with happiness. Now she understood she’d heard only the madness of passion. She tried to persuade herself passion was enough; it was a miracle he still wanted her, this man for whom desire was but the whim of a moment.

Even if she wasn’t a whim, she must represent an aberration. She was without beauty, grace, or lover’s skill. Coming of a race he viewed as savage, she had brought into his life everything he most disliked and avoided: hardship, confrontation, violence.

He’d stumbled into wedding her only because lust had wiped out reason. In these last two months away from her, though, he’d surely had second thoughts. While she was his wife, like it or not, she need not be the mother of his children. He’d not pollute the noble blood of the St. Georges with that of a foul-tempered barbarian.

When he nuzzled her shoulder, she tensed.

Varian raised his head to look at her. She fixed her gaze upon the ceiling.

“Esme.”

“Go to sleep,” she said. “You are weary.”

“You’re upset.” He sighed. “I’d hoped you wouldn’t notice. That was stupid of me, wasn’t it?”

“I have no idea what you are talking about. Go to sleep, Varian.”

“No. We’ll discuss it, as we should have done long ago if I’d possessed a grain of forethought. But I didn’t.”

Wrapping his arms about her, he pulled her round to face him. “I’ve two younger brothers to carry on the line,” he said. “I’d always assumed they would, for obvious reasons. You’re not obliged to give me an heir, Esme.”

“I understand. You do not want children.”

“It isn’t that. Our situation is difficult enough—nigh impossible, in fact.” Bitterness edged his voice. “In fairy tales, the prince and princess wed and live happily every after. But I’m not one of those pure-hearted princes. I took your innocence, knowing it was criminal, then wed you, which was more criminal still. Now we’re both paying. I won’t make an innocent babe pay as well.”

He held her too tightly, and his voice betrayed too much pain. The words he meant as reassurance only confirmed her fears. He blamed himself, blamed desire. But it was she, its object, who’d spoiled everything for him, made his life ugly and weary. With each passing day, his unhappiness would erode his desire for her. In time, he’d come to hate her for what she’d done for him…and she’d have no child. She’d have no permanent remembrance of their passion, no babe conceived in love, no child for her to love when its father turned away from her.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “We have only this night together, and I cause you distress.”

“It’s my own doing.” He brought her hand to his lips. His mouth was warm, so gentle upon her fingers. “I didn’t want you to see this moldering ruin I live in. I didn’t want to make love to you in this tawdry room.”

“I do not care where we make love, Varian. I do not care where I am, so long as I am with you. Even for a short time,” she added hastily.

“But you care about children, very much.”

Yes, she wanted to cry. Your children.

“I am not even nineteen years old,” she made herself answer. “There is time. Many years. It is not as though my only chance is now, this once.” Her heart rapped sharply with anxiety.

He smiled. “Of course not. I certainly don’t wish to keep repeating that nerve-wracking experience all the rest of my life. You’ve a talent for putting good intentions to naught, my dear. Behaving responsibly nearly killed me.”

“It—it was not the most agreeable way of—of ending.” Her countenance heated.

He touched her burning face. “There are other methods, but equally disagreeable, I’m afraid. Shall I embarrass my delicate flower with the gruesome details?”

She was deeply embarrassed, because preventing conception seemed a most unnatural act. All the same, she was aware he was trying to distract her, trying to be kind. “How gruesome?” she asked.

He chuckled, and as he went on to describe sheaths made of sheep bladders or fish skin, Esme giggled in spite of herself.

“You tie it with a string?” she asked incredulously. “Where? How?”

“Don’t be stupid. Where do you think?”

“It does not sound comfortable. You must not do it, Varian. If you tie the string too tight—”

His roar of laughter lightened her heart. He was made to laugh, to amuse and be amused. Because it amused him, Esme encouraged him to tell all he knew—of the sponges women were being urged by certain radical reformers to use, and of the various herbal concoctions some resorted to. Men dosed themselves as well, some with honeysuckle juice or rue, others with castor oil. There was an endless assortment of potions to be drunk or applied.

“There are also some benighted persons who believe violent lovemaking prevents conception,” he said, grinning.

“They are not logical,” she said. “How many children have resulted from rape? How can the civilized English believe such nonsense?”

“Wishful thinking, perhaps. Speaking of which...” His hand slid down her spine to cup her bottom.

“Oh, Varian, you’ve no need to wish. “

“But it’s not as you want, is it, love?” His hands moved over her so tenderly. Yet even the gentlest of his caresses was magic, making her crave more, crave all.

“It’s you I want,” she said.

She needed him. It was more, she knew, than her body’s hunger. She wanted all that he was: the lazy charm, the careless grace and easy laughter...the sin as well, the shadows darkening his soul. He was the Devil’s gift—and snare as well, for a woman. But she was glad to be so ensnared. He taught her pleasure, and his grace touched her earthbound warrior’s soul, to lighten it with dreams and delight.

She wanted all he was and to be his entirely. When he was inside her, in that long moment of joining, she could believe it was so, eternally so. She knew she’d no right to forever. She had this moment, though.

“Just love me, Varian,” she whispered. “Love me beautifully, as you do.”

No one disturbed them. The others, it appeared, had given up waiting and gone to the Black Bramble without them. The house was still, and night had long since fallen. In the darkness, Varian made love to his wife once more. Afterward, unwilling to waste their precious hours together in sleep, they talked.

Esme told him of her dancing master, her coiffeur, her dressmaker, and of Percival, who was always by to lend moral support. While her stories made Varian laugh, he hurt inside as well. It should have been her husband, not her young cousin, with whom Esme practiced her dance steps. It should have been Varian to whom she complained of hairpins and corsets, and Varian who unraveled the baffling intricacies of English etiquette.

At least, he consoled himself as he lay beside her, she was here to tell him. At least he could listen in the darkness to her faintly accented voice. He’d missed her voice, just as he’d missed the tumultuous intensity of her presence. He would have been happy to spend the night so, but sometime near midnight he remembered he’d kept Esme from dinner.

He gave her his shirt to wear, donned his trousers, and found an oil lamp—for candles were a luxury at present.

In its yellow light and reeking fumes he led her down to the kitchen. There they ransacked the dowager’s remaining travel stores, devised a meal of sorts, and settled down by the vast empty hearth to eat. While they ate, Varian found himself telling her of his own activities. Though the details of patching together his ravaged estate were dreary at best, mortifying at worst, it was better, he found, to tell her. In trying to shelter Esme from the truth these last months, he’d only made her feel shut out.

Watching her face while he talked, he saw the unhappiness fade, and that eased his own. Later, when they went upstairs together, she thanke

d him in her own way.

“I am glad you have told me all these things,” she said when they entered the bedchamber. “I like your letters with their amusing stories and clever nonsense, but I wish as well to know your troubles.” She looked up at him. “You never had a wife before, and so you are confused, but I will explain. A wife is not like a concubine, only for amusement and pleasure. A wife is to quarrel with and complain to as well—to ease your heart as well as your body.”

He shut the door. “Very well. Every other letter from now on shall be filled with nothing but my grievances. However, you must do the same. You scarcely write me at all, you know,” he chided.