From Ruin to Riches

‘Are you sure you are all right?’ His forehead was furrowed with worry lines she had never seen before. ‘It must have been bad enough, these past days, but to have gone through all you have if you are carrying a child—’

‘I am fine,’ Julia said. ‘And I might not be expecting, we need to wait a day or two more in case it is simply stress disrupting my system. But I do not want to wait to make love to my husband.’

Will’s face relaxed. ‘I suppose we could. Just in the interests of securing the succession, you understand, now we cannot rely on Henry.’

The words You know? were on the tip of her tongue. Julia bit them back just in time, but Will smiled. ‘That was another thing that I thought about yesterday. It helped distract me when I was going insane worrying about you. I realised, when I was thinking with my heart, instead of…other parts of my anatomy, that I trusted you. I also thought about Henry dispassionately and not as simply my rather irritating heir and put two and two together. I may have made six, of course.’

‘No, you have not.’ Julia snuggled close against Will’s flank and inched her fingers across his flat stomach. ‘It will not be easy for him, but I have encouraged him to take chambers in London, where the presence of just one close servant would not be remarked upon. Are you shocked? I am sorry if you do not approve.’

‘I am not shocked, so much as anxious for him. But you have given him good advice. And now, having settled Henry’s love life to your satisfaction, might we resume our own?’

‘I thought I was,’ Julia murmured, closing her fingers around the evidence of her husband’s desire.

Will laughed and rolled on to his back, taking her with him. ‘Ravish me, then.’

His eyes were golden, laughing, clear of any shadow. She had never seen them like that, Julia realised as she knelt astride the slim hips and took him into her body with a sigh of pure happiness. ‘I cannot remember when I felt so content, so free of anxiety. So joyous. I love you very much, Will. I thought I would never be able to make love with you again.’

He pulled her down so he could raise his head to meet her lips and smiled up at her. At the look she melted, yielding and as boneless as a swathe of velvet. ‘We’ve been though hell to get here, my love. I think we are owed our little piece of paradise on earth. We will kiss and we will love and then we will sleep and then we will go home and be happy.’

‘For ever?’

‘I am prepared to devote the next eighty years to it,’ Will said. ‘We can review things after that.’

‘Very well, my lord,’ Julia agreed and sank into his arms and his kiss and delicious contentment.