The Earl's Pregnant Bride

Dragging his feet, he went to his mother. Herding him out ahead of her, she pulled the door closed as she went.

Genny stared at the shut door and promised herself that she’d steal a little time with Geoffrey before he had to return to school on Sunday.

* * *

They had dinner at eight in the State Dining Room, with its Chippendale sideboards and urn-topped pedestals and the glorious old table that could seat forty.

Geoffrey didn’t join them. Brooke said he was overtired and already in his room. The conversation was, for the most part, innocuous. Rory whipped out a camera and took several pictures right there at the table before the meal was served. She said she was headed to Colorado on Monday, to the town of Justice Creek and a long visit with Clara, her favorite Bravo cousin. Eloise spoke of her bedding plants and the vegetable border in the walled garden, which she couldn’t wait to show Genny. Genny’s mother and father were charming and agreeable.

And Rafe was his usual silent, watchful self. He ate slowly, with never a clink or a clatter. When he set down his delicate crystal water goblet after taking a sip, the water within hardly stirred. Genny tried not to stare at him, not to get lost in inappropriate fantasies of those four days two months ago.

Or in distant memories of the feral boy he’d been once, roaming the gardens and grounds, unkempt and unsupervised. His mother, Sabrina, had doted on him and refused to rein him in. His father, Edward II, had little to do with him, except to punish him for what the earl considered Rafe’s uncivilized behavior, punishments which were frequent and severe.

Genny had met Rafe during her first glorious visit to Hartmore, when she was five and he was thirteen. He was still running wild then. He’d dropped out of an oak tree practically on her head and she’d run off screaming. The next day, when he’d popped out from behind a topiary hedge into her path, she’d somehow managed to hold her ground. Before the end of that visit, they were unlikely friends: the earl’s big, wild second son and the five-year-old Montedoran princess. Her mother, who had always encouraged her children to get out and explore the world, had allowed her to roam all over the estate as long as Rafe was there to look after her. He’d told her that he hated his father. And she’d admitted that she wished she could stay at Hartmore forever.

That fall, strings were pulled and Rafe went away to St Paul’s in London. He shocked everyone by doing well there. After St Paul’s he attended Emmanuel College at Cambridge, where he’d finished at the top of his class. More than once in recent years, Eloise had confided in Genny that Rafe had a brain to match his giant body and an aptitude for money management. He’d taken a modest inheritance from a great-uncle and made some excellent investments with it. Now he was doing well for himself. Before Edward’s death, Eloise had even once let drop that Hartmore would be better off had Rafe been the heir.

Across the table next to Rafe, Brooke let loose with a brittle laugh. “Genevra, what are you staring at?” Of course she knew. She even turned a mean little smile on Rafe to drive home her point.

Genny ordered her cheeks not to blush and spoke up fast, so Rafe wouldn’t feel he had to step in and defend her. “Why, at you, of course, Brooke. Love that dress.”

Brooke made a scoffing sound and lifted her wineglass high. “To marital bliss, everyone. Though God knows in my experience it’s not all it’s cracked up to be.”

Chapter Three (#ulink_331794b1-0bb4-5c53-ba58-0bf6bfd074ea)

The State Rooms at Hartmore were open to the public Thursday through Sunday from noon to four in the afternoon, April through October. One small-budget film of Jane Austen’s Emma, as well as a couple of BBC specials, had been shot there.

Hartmore was also available for weddings. There were two wedding parties scheduled for the next day, the first at one in the afternoon and the second at four, both in Saint Ann’s Chapel, with receptions to follow in the State Dining Room and on the grand terrace, respectively.

By five-thirty, the second party had left the chapel. Hartmore staff got right to work switching out the flowers and hanging a fresh set of lace and floral swags from the ends of the gorgeous old mahogany pews.

At a quarter past six, Genny walked down the red-carpeted aisle in the six-hundred-year-old sandstone church on her father’s arm. She wore a sleeveless white-lace creation bought three days before in Montedoro and carried pink roses from Hartmore’s rose garden. Rafe waited for her at the altar dressed beautifully in a charcoal morning coat, buff waistcoat and gray trousers. To her, the whole experience had an air of unreality.

She was on her father’s arm and then, as if by magic, she stood at the altar with Rafe, beneath the stained glass window depicting the crucifixion and ascension of Christ. There were vows and she said them, obediently and a little bit breathlessly.

Rafe kissed her, his soft lips brushing hers for the first time since he’d kissed her goodbye after their brief time together two months before. She shivered a little at the contact and her body ached. For him.

So strange, really. She’d been at his side constantly in the five days since she’d climbed the villa wall to tell him she was having his baby. But they hadn’t really talked, not about anything beyond their plans to marry and what had to be done next.

And they hadn’t made love. He’d been distant and carefully gentle with her. Attentive, but in no way intimate.

Right after the ceremony, as she posed with Rafe and the family and Rory flitted about snapping picture after picture, she wondered if, just possibly, she might have lost her mind. Pregnant. Marrying Rafe, her dearest friend, who was now like a stranger. Mistress of Hartmore.

It didn’t seem real. It was all like some weird, impossible dream.

They had dinner, just the family, in the small dining room in the East Wing, where the family lived. For the occasion, Genny would have liked to have used the State Dining Room again. But it wasn’t to be. The paying wedding parties were still going on in the heart of the house. After the meal, they moved to the East Solarium. There was wedding cake, as well as champagne that she pretended to sip while Rory took more pictures.

At eleven, she found herself in Rafe’s bedroom, the East Bedroom, as it had always been called, though there were many more bedrooms in that wing of the house. The East Bedroom had its own sitting room, a dressing room and bath—and a second bedroom beyond the dressing room. The East Bedroom had been part of the original design of the house, back before the turn of the eighteenth century, and was revolutionary in its day. An en suite bath was rare at the time. Even the very wealthy went down the hall—or even out the back door—to the loo.

The bedroom itself was furnished with Chippendale lacquer furniture and an enormous, ornately draped canopy bed. Wearing the white satin, low-backed bit of silky nothing she’d bought the same day she bought her wedding gown, Genny sat at the lacquer dressing table and stared at her wide-eyed reflection in the slightly streaky antique mirror. She worried that he might not be coming to join her.

She started to chew her lower lip over it, but made herself stop. And then she leaned close to the glass to whisper furiously at her own reflection, “If he doesn’t come, you are not going just sit here and wish that he would. You are getting up and going to find him.”

And when she found him, she would insist that they sleep together as man and wife.

Because they had to start somewhere to build a real marriage. And since the sex had been so good with them, she couldn’t help hoping that lovemaking might be a way to break through the wall of emotional reserve he seemed to have erected around himself.

“No need for that, Gen. I’m right here.”

She gasped and whirled to find him standing there, not six feet away. “Rafe! You scared me to death.” Frantically, she tried to remember just how much of what she’d been thinking she’d actually said out loud.

He stood absolutely still, the crescent scar pulling at the side of his mouth in that perpetual false hint of a smile, his black eyes watchful. “Forgive me.”

She thought of the wild boy he’d been once, tormented by his own father, wary of everyone—except her. And nowadays, he was wary of her, too. She had no idea what he might be thinking.

His thick brows drew together. “Are you all right?”

“Of course. Yes, fine.” Dear Lord, this was awful. They really were like strangers, with the long, awkward silences followed by stammered-out reassurances. She rose and faced him, feeling way too uncovered in the revealing nightgown.

He blinked and announced gruffly, “Good, then. I’ll just be a few minutes.” He went through the door to the dressing room and bath, closing it behind him.

She realized she’d been holding her breath. Releasing it in one hard gust, she let her head droop and stared down at her bare feet on the gorgeous old Aubusson carpet. Would he actually come back? He’d said that he would. But there was that other bedroom in the suite accessible through the dressing area. Great lords and ladies, after all, shouldn’t have to actually share a bed if they didn’t wish to. Should she follow him, make sure that he...?

No. Time enough for that later if he failed to return. She drew her shoulders back, spun on her heel and turned off the lights, all but the one at his side of the bed. Then she climbed in between the heavy bed curtains, got in under the covers and sat up against the pillows to wait for him.

She pressed her hand to her chest. Her poor heart pounded away in there with a sick sort of dread. She feared that he wouldn’t come and she would either have to go after him—or know herself for the coward she was.

But then the door opened and there he was, huge and muscular and marvelous, really, in a pair of dark silk boxers—and nothing else. He strode right for her. Her heart pounded hard, but with excitement now rather than dread.

He turned off that last light before climbing in next to her. She sat there in the dark against the pillows, acutely aware of his presence beside her, of his size, his heat. And his silence.

About then, it became too ridiculous. The unreality of it all was too much for her. A silly, hysterical little laugh bubbled up in her chest. She tried to swallow it down.

But it wouldn’t be swallowed. It burst out of her, a breathless, absurd, trilling sort of sound. She slapped her hand over her mouth, but it wouldn’t stop.

“You think it’s funny, do you?” he asked from the darkness beside her.

She laughed some more. “I... Oh, God, I...”

And then she heard it, a low, rusty rumble. It took her a moment to realize that the sound was coming from him. He was laughing, too.

They laughed together, there in the dark, and she remembered...

How they used to laugh together often, over the simplest things—the antics of Moe and Mable when they were pups, or the way he would pop up out of nowhere, bringing a shriek of surprise from her. In the old days, they could laugh together at anything, really. She’d always felt so proud that he would laugh with her. He never did with anyone else. With her, he didn’t feel the need to be constantly on his guard, to hold himself in check.

In recent years, though, he’d become more distant, more careful with her. And she’d missed the playful times they used to share.

The laughter faded. The room was too quiet. Still, she realized she felt marginally better about everything.