A Scandalous Marriage (17 page)

This was fatherhood.

He’d never thought he’d have the opportunity to experience it.

For a moment, Devon let himself do the unthinkable: he rocked the baby in his arms and pretended Ben was his, all his.

Leah wasn’t certain what woke her. The hour was late, probably time for a feeding, but Ben hadn’t cried.

The fire in the hearth cast shadows around the room. Leah pushed back her hair and squinted in that direction until she realized she wasn’t alone.

The silhouette of a man stood in front of the hearth.

Devon.

He wore nothing but his leather riding breeches. It took a moment before she realized he held Ben in his arms.

She leaned back on both elbows, mesmerized. Devon hadn’t realized she was awake. He talked and cooed to the baby in a very low voice, as if they were alone in the world. His hand supported Ben’s neck and back so he could see his face. He swayed back and forth in the gentle way she did when she rocked her son.

In that moment, Leah fell in love.

True, she had believed she’d loved Devon before. But those feelings were nothing compared to how her heart expanded and overflowed with love for him now.

Love turned out to be something deeper, finer, and more satisfying than the “magic” she’d felt when they’d first kissed. Love was a private joy that sprang just from being in the presence of the ones she loved.

Devon and Ben.

Happiness erased earlier doubts and fears. It was enough to love… and with love came trust.

She spoke his name.

Devon turned to her. “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

She had not bothered to braid her hair before bed. She shook it back. “You didn’t. You seem surprisingly sober.”

“Carruthers and the others were already too far gone when I joined them. I drank ale and let them sink under the table.”

Ben heard the sound of her voice. He started fussing.

“He’s hungry,” Devon said. He carried the baby over to her and laid him beside her. Leah rolled on her side. Ben automatically started rooting, and they both laughed.

“He’s healthy,” Devon said with satisfaction. “Last night, I worried.” He started to rise from the bed to give her privacy, but Leah stopped him.

“Don’t go.”

Devon paused, his expression uncertain.

“Come to bed,” she said. “Lay beside us.”

She didn’t have to ask twice. She heard him slip his breeches down his legs and fold them. He lifted the covers on the other side of the bed. The mattress gave under his weight.

Conscious of his presence, Leah slid the shoulder of her chemise down her arm. Her nipple puckered in the night air until Ben found it and began nursing.

Devon leaned with his chest against her back. His legs aligned with hers as he propped himself up on one elbow to watch Ben.

It was a very private moment. A moment of joining them as a family.

Devon pushed her hair away from her shoulder. “I always dreamed of taking your hair down, one pin at a time.”

Leah loved the image.

He rested his head on her shoulder, bringing his arm across her to cradle both her and the baby. “He’s a gift, Leah. You will never know what he means to me.”

“He’s your son,” she said softly.

Devon pressed a kiss against her shoulder. “My son.”

Happiness filled her. Beneath the covers, his body radiated heat, a heat that wanned her soul. “He is the first of many,” she promised.

She’d expected him to agree. When he didn’t reply, she glanced over her shoulder, and froze.

The expression in his eyes had turned so bleak that it frightened her. “Is something wrong?”

He startled, as if being recalled to the present. “No, nothing.” But his smile seemed forced.

“Devon—?” she started but he cut her off.

“I must sleep, Leah. Tomorrow will be an important day. Tomorrow, I introduce you to my family.” He lay on his side and did exactly that, but his arm still held her close.

Ben finished and fell asleep at her breast, and it felt so good to snuggle him that she did not move him to the crib. Instead, she lay awake, sandwiched between her son and her husband, troubled by Devon’s sudden withdrawal.

Devon rose first. The sound of his bathing woke Leah. Her eyes had trouble opening. Then Ben started crying, and she had no choice.

“I don’t know if I will ever catch up on my sleep,” she muttered.

He’d moved the privacy screen in front of the fire, but in the mirror over the vanity Leah could see his large body scrunched up in the tub. Lather from the citrus soap he favored covered his neck and chest.

Its scent drifted through the air to her.

If she could see him, he could see her. Their gazes met, then his lowered to where her bodice still hung open, exposing the generous curve of her breasts.

A lazy smile appeared on his lips a second before he drew a breath and sunk down in the tub to wash off the bubbles. His legs came out over the edge. Water sloshed on the floor, and he looked so comical that she couldn’t help but laugh. The doubts and misgivings that had plagued her sleep now seemed as nothing in the light of day.

Ben didn’t want to wait any longer. She tended to him while Devon rose from the tub and dried himself.

Leah was very aware that on the other side of the screen he was naked. His body had felt good against hers last night. Comforting.

Devon dressed with economical movements. He wasn’t given to vanity. He combed his wet hair back with his fingers. “I’ll have Francis pack another hamper with bread, cheese, and ale for the road today. If we push it, we can make London by late afternoon. Can you be ready in half an hour?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” He paused long enough to rub Ben’s cheek with his thumb before he opened the door.

“I’ll send Bess up to help you. I’ll be waiting for you downstairs.”

He left. A moment later, there was a knock, and at Leah’s call, Bess entered. With Bess’s help, Leah was dressed in no time. Bess twisted her hair up and pinned it in place. Leah was pleased with how good the style looked. She didn’t have gloves, or jewels, or even a reticule, and she still wore her half boots, more scruffy than Devon’s and worse for wear, but she felt good about herself.

She’d dressed Ben in a soft wool dress donated from the church, and she swaddled his body in a blanket before wrapping him again in the fleece. She was ready to go, her red cape over her shoulders.

Downstairs, the tap room was surprisingly busy. Good-natured conversation filled the air, along with the shouting of orders. Ostlers rubbed elbows with lords, farmers with coachmen. She had assumed the drinkers would still be asleep this early in the morning.

Leah paused in the doorway, a step higher than everyone else, and searched the room for Devon. She didn’t see him… but a curious thing did happen.

The two men conversing closest to her suddenly broke off their conversation. They stepped back, one of them tipping his hat. Then another group noticed her and fell silent, as did another and another and another until the general hubbub died completely and the room was filled with slack-jawed men.

No entrance Leah had ever made during her heyday as a debutante had created this sort of reaction.

She shifted uneasily, her baby in her arms.

Then Lord Carruthers, whose bloodshot eyes indicated that he suffered from the disagreeable effects of too much wine, broke the silence. “Damn me, but it is Leah Carrollton.”

She had been discovered.

Leah wanted to retreat back to the safety of the room, but Devon came in the front door at the exact moment her name was repeated by Carruthers’s cronies.

His keen gaze quickly assessed the situation. He pushed his way through the crowd to her side, coming up on the step beside her. “Here, let me take the baby.”

Mutely, Leah handed Ben to him. “Courage,” he said beneath his breath.

She nodded. He took her arm at the elbow and escorted her down into their midst. Her legs wobbled like wire springs, but she held her head high.

The gentlemen took a step back, clearing a path for them. Several doffed their hats as she passed.

She whispered to Devon, “Why must they stare?”

“You don’t know?” he asked, bemused.

Before she could answer, they came abreast of Lord Carruthers. Leah decided that it was now or never.

After all, the man had been the first to recognize her. There was no sense in further pretense.

“Lord Carruthers,” she said in formal greeting.

“Miss Carrollton,” he scrambled to acknowledge, as if he’d been shocked that she’d spoken to him.

“No, not Carrollton,” Devon corrected him. “This is my wife, Lady Huxhold.”

If Lord Carruthers had been holding another tankard of ale, he would have dropped it, just as he had the night before. He turned to Lord Weybridge and Lord Scarleton as if to see if they confirmed that his ears didn’t lie. They were as stunned as he was.

“Come, Leah, we must make haste for London,” Devon said.

“Please give my best to your wife,” she said quietly before her husband hurried her toward the door.

Outside, Devon said, “I’ve never seen Carruthers speechless, and now I have witnessed it twice.” He helped Leah into the coach and handed her the baby before climbing in. “Last night he and the others quizzed me about your identity.” He knocked on the wall, a signal for the driver to go.

“Well, the secret is out,” she said ruefully as she settled Ben in her arms.

“It couldn’t be kept forever.”

“No,” she agreed. “It was so strange, though, the way they stared at me even before they realized who I was.”

“You’ve changed, Leah. You don’t resemble the girl you were a year ago.”

His words challenged her. “Changed in what way?” She saw no difference other than the fact that she felt a lifetime older, not much wiser, and far too aware of the world’s machinations and her limited place in it.

“It’s in your face. You’ve lost the girlishness.”

She sighed. “Yes, I’ve lost that freshness.”

“No, you’ve lost the doe-eyed gaze of a debutante. There is a maturity about you now. A serenity even.

Seeing you on that step, your child in your arms, reminded every man in that room of an Italian Madonna.

I knew you were frightened, but no one else did. If anything, your vulnerability made every man’s heart in that room beat a little faster.”

What about you?
Leah wanted to ask.
Did your heart beat faster?
But she didn’t. She would have posed such a question to the man who had been in bed beside her last night, the man who had cradled her with his body while she nursed their son.

But she sensed Devon was not that man this morning. His earlier reserve had returned. He seemed preoccupied. His hand rested palm down on the seat between them, but he made no move to touch her.

He said, “Carruthers will hit town before nightfall. I’d wager by the morrow, everyone will have learned of our marriage.”

Leah thought of her parents, her brothers. “I wonder if Lord Carruthers is the right person to spread the news.”

“No, you wonder what will happen when Julian learns of our marriage.”

“Yes,” she admitted. “What will happen?”

“That depends on him.”

They made good time, considering the poor condition of the road. The team was fresh, and Devon had given orders for the coachman to push them as hard as he could, changing teams as often as necessary.

The closer they drove to London, the more quiet Devon became. He held Ben most of the way. The growing bond between them helped settle Leah’s anxieties about the future. She’d decided to hold all questions until after Devon saw his grandfather.

Still, she couldn’t help asking, “Has it been a long time since you’ve seen your grandfather?”

“Maybe a year.” A year. Since he’d left London over the duel.

There was an edge to his voice that didn’t invite confidences. She settled back onto the seat, burdened by her own doubts.

Gradually, the scenery became more populated, the road busier. Leah had traveled this road to London several times in her life, but on this trip she noticed things she’d never seen before. Now she identified with the faces along the street as the coach entered the city. She was no longer blind to the poverty or to the number of motherless children running loose on the streets.

As they drove by a woman sitting right on the edge of the road nursing her baby and drinking gin, Leah had to reach for Ben and hold him close.

“Leah, are you feeling ill?” Devon asked. “Your face has gone white.”

“I just saw something that distressed me.”

“What?”

She started to answer, and then paused. Devon wouldn’t understand. No one who hadn’t experienced it could understand the fear and the uncertainty of a woman alone. “It was nothing,” she murmured.

He looked as if he might challenge her, but they were moving into a smarter section of town and toward Montclef, the marquess of Kirkeby’s home in Pall Mall.

Her family claimed that Montclef was one of those treasures the Marshalls had stolen from the CarroUtons. She had never thought to walk through its doors and now, she could someday be its mistress.

The coach rolled to a stop, and Leah caught her breath. The gray stone porticos seemed to reach to the sky. Windows stretched across the house, lit by what seemed to be a thousand candles in the gloom of the overcast day. This wasn’t a house. It was a palace.

Devon spoke. “There’s no black wreath hanging on the door. We’ve made it in time.”

The lacquered door opened. A butler and several footmen came out on the steps.

Devon didn’t wait for the coachman to open the carriage door but did so himself. He jumped down.

Leah lifted Ben out of the drawer where he’d been sleeping. She drew a steadying breath. In minutes, she would be meeting her new in-laws.

She wished she could hide in the coach.

“Wills,” Devon said, acknowledging the butler. “How is my grandfather?”

“Holding on, my lord. We are most relieved to see you. You are not a moment too soon.” Wills was of middle age, with a receding hairline. He was dressed in starched black, while the footmen wore the Kirkeby colors of green and gold.