Married to the Viscount (36 page)

Tightening her arms about his muscled back, she cradled him close. Hers. He was hers forever, irrevocably hers. Spencer would never make love to her if he didn’t mean to keep her. He was too much a gentleman for that.

His breath warmed her cheek as it slowed to normalcy. “Are you all right, my darling?” he murmured, then kissed her ear. “Not too much pain, I hope?”

“Pain?” She laughed. “There was pain?”

His rumbling chuckle made his chest vibrate against her breasts. “Apparently not.” He rolled off to lie on his side facing her, his eyes gleaming. “A less trusting husband might worry that you’d lied about your innocence.”

She flashed him an arch look. “And you, my lord? What do you think?”

“That I’m damned lucky to have a wife who’s a natural wanton.” He propped his head on one hand while his other idly stroked her belly.

With a saucy smile, she skimmed her own hand down his ribs and waist to his hips. He faced the fire now, and for the first time the scars riddling his left side were fully illuminated.

She couldn’t help staring. The hair that had brushed her fingers earlier when she’d stroked him grew thickly on the right, but on the left was only a smattering interspersed with puckered scars.

She lightly traced one. “I never did get to kiss these and make them better.”

“If that works, you’d best not tell anyone,” he said, his voice suddenly strained. “Or droves of wounded soldiers will soon be beating down our doors.”

“How did it happen?”

“At the Battle of Bussaco, a man next to me was kneeling to aim his flintlock when it misfired and the barrel exploded. I was luckier than he was—a fragment of metal entered his brain and killed him instantly. The fragments that showered me merely wounded me.”

“Why does it still hurt? I mean, that time when I touched you—”

“You merely happened to hit a fragment still imbedded in the flesh.”

“The doctors left all that metal in you?” she said incredulously, wondering if English doctors were completely mad.

“No, of course not. But a couple lay too near my vital organs to risk removing them.”

“Oh.” She explored his scars very carefully. “Does it pain you much to have them in there?”

“Only if I should happen to bump hard against something.”

“Or if your overenthusiastic wife presses them,” she quipped.

He didn’t respond. She glanced up to find him watching her with a brooding look so shadowed it struck alarm in her chest. “Spencer?”

“When you said you loved me, did you mean it?”

“Of course I meant it.” So he’d heard what she hadn’t intended to speak aloud. And her declaration must not have been completely welcome, judging from his expression and the fact that he made no similar declaration.

All her pleasure faltered.
Please, God, don’t let this be like the night we were in my bedchamber. I don’t think I could bear it
.

“There’s something I should have told you long ago, my darling, and most certainly before we made love.” Guilt flashed over his taut features. “But I didn’t want to risk losing you.”

Thank heaven. “You won’t lose me.”

He flinched. “I might. Especially after you hear this.” He hesitated, his hand stilling on her belly as he stared beyond her with that bleakness she’d sometimes seen in his face. “You were right—my career had nothing to do with my unwillingness to stay married to you. It certainly had nothing to do with your suitability as a wife. To be honest, until you came along, I’d never planned to marry at all.”

“Never?”

“No. I didn’t tell you, because it would raise questions I didn’t want to answer. Now I have no choice.” He dragged in a breath, then went on unsteadily, “You see, I can’t…I can’t have children.”

Relief coursed through her. Was that all, him and his silly ideas about children? “If you’re going to tell me again that you don’t like them—”

His tortured gaze shot to her. “I didn’t say I
won’t
have children, Abby. I said I can’t.”

She stared at him, uncomprehending. “But we just—”

“Yes, all my parts work. I’m not impotent. But I am sterile.” He shifted to lie on his back and stare up at the damask canopy. “One of the metal fragments that entered my flesh apparently injured me in a way that prevented my seed from reaching my…er…staff. So although I can make love and find release, my spirit has no seed.” He lowered his voice to an aching whisper. “I can’t sire children.”

As the full ramifications of that struck her, her blood slowed to sludge in her veins. Dear heaven, if that was true…With a sinking dread, she dropped her gaze inexorably to the scars on his loins. Now she noticed those that crisscrossed his privates.

“Are you sure?” she asked, still not wanting to believe it.

With a sigh, he tucked his hands under his head, exposing his tufted underarms. “Countless doctors informed me when I was first wounded that I might never sire children.” Firelight streaked across his rigid jaw. “And countless years of my sowing my wild oats without ever producing a by-blow have proved them right.”

The torment shadowing his features deepened. “Why do you think I fought this marriage so hard? Because all women—and you in particular—deserve husbands who can give them children. I can’t.” He paused, and in the stillness the crackling of the fire sounded as loud as pistol shots. “If you stay married to me, it will always be just the two of us.”

The words echoed in her brain, a solid blow to all her recent joy. No children. Ever.

Suddenly so many things made sense. His irrational behavior that day she’d brought the children here. His violent reaction to her attempts to seduce him. The way he seemed to desire her one minute and resent her the next.

She ought to be glad it wasn’t her he objected to, yet all she could think was
No children, ever
. No babies like Lydia or scamps like Jack. In a daze, she slid off the bed and wan
dered the room until she found her chemise. But even the motion of putting it on couldn’t silence the endless clamoring of her fevered brain.

No children, ever.

When she faced him again, he was sitting up with his back propped against the headboard and his lower body now covered by the golden counterpane. He watched her with a furtive gaze that turned remorseful when he caught sight of her probably dumbfounded expression. “I know I should have told you before I took your innocence.”

She thought of all she’d suffered by believing that he considered her unsuitable to be his wife, and anger flared to life inside her. “You should have told me long before then.” Sarcasm lent her words an edge. “The day I arrived to announce that I was your wife might have been an appropriate time.”

He stiffened. “It’s not something a man likes to admit to just anyone. I’ve never told a soul before you. Well, except for Genevieve. But she considered my sterility an advantage. For everyone else—”

When he glanced away, a muscle tightening in his jaw, she felt an unwanted stab of sympathy. How hard it must be for an English lord expected to sire an heir and carry on a dynasty to learn that he couldn’t do it. He would certainly never admit such an unmanly lack to his friends.

But what about to his family? “Does Nat know?”

“No.” He frowned, as if some thought had occurred to him, then shook it off. “He wouldn’t understand.”

“How do you know if you don’t tell him? He’s your brother, for heaven’s sake.” When his surprised gaze shot to her, she stalked up to the bed. “But that’s the trouble with you, Spencer. You won’t tell any of us a thing. You engineer these elaborate schemes to protect your family from scandal, but you don’t bother to inform
them
of why you’re doing it. You simply march on with your usual arrogance, telling us it’s none of our concern while you shut us out of your life.”

His eyes glittered in the firelight. As she turned to walk away, he snagged her arm and tugged her down to sit beside him. “When you first arrived, you took me by surprise. It’s not as if I owed you any explanation then.
I
hadn’t been the one to manipulate you or deceive you. And since I had no intention—or so I thought—of continuing our marriage, I saw no point to revealing a secret I considered very private.”

“Yes, but what about later? When you realized I cared for you?”

He swallowed. “I was afraid you’d say it didn’t matter. And that I’d want so badly to believe you that I’d be lulled into thinking it was true. I was afraid that when you came to your senses and realized it did matter, you’d want to be free of me. I was afraid that the pain of losing you after having you would be too much to endure. I thought it better not to risk it.”

She stared down at her hands. “Far better to let me think that you considered me a silly fool with no social graces and nothing but my body to commend me.”

“Devil take it.” He clasped her by the chin, forcing her to meet his gaze. “I thought you believed my tale about my career. If I’d had any idea you thought such nonsense—”

“You would have told me the truth?”

He released her chin abruptly. “Perhaps. I don’t know. I only realized tonight how you were interpreting my resistance to marriage.”

“Yes, what about tonight? What made you change your mind about our future? Why are you now willing to risk the pain of losing me, as you put it?”

A feverish need shone in the silvery depths of his eyes. “I realized I already couldn’t bear to lose you. And I hoped that if we shared a bed, you might stay. At least for a while. It was utterly selfish and wrong, I know, but I can’t regret it. I—” His voice dropped to a choked whisper. “I’ve never wanted anything as much as I want you, Abby.”

Her pulse quickened. He looked so earnest. How much
had that admission cost a man as proud and seemingly self-sufficient as him? Still, he’d said nothing of love. And what did he mean, “at least for a while”?

“Let me see if I understand you,” she said. “You want me to remain your wife.”

“I have no right to ask it under the circumstances, but yes. I’ll take however long you’re willing to give me and consider myself fortunate.”

Temper flared in her chest. “You value yourself too little, Spencer.”

“I value you too much. You have a right to expect children. I can’t provide them. Eventually that will bother you. When it does, I don’t want you to feel as if you’re…trapped in this marriage. There’s no reason we can’t put my initial plan into place five months, two years, ten years down the road. You’re still young, after all.”

She gaped at him. “Whatever do you mean?”

“When you tire of our childless marriage, we’ll go to America, dissolve it legally, and separate.”

“After living together and being together for years—”

“The courts don’t have to know that. We can invent a reason we didn’t find out until—”

“It’s not the logistics I’m questioning. How could you think I’d leave you after living with you for more than a day?”

His lips tightened into a grim line. “I’m giving you an out, that’s all.”

“Maybe I don’t want an out. Maybe I believe that marriage should be ‘until death do us part.’”

“I’m sure you do. For now. But I can’t give you children, Abby.”

“Still, there are other options. You don’t have to have children of your own blood. There are foundlings and—”

“No.” His face shone starkly angry in the flickering firelight. “I won’t take in foundlings.”

Alarm seized her chest. “Why not? Surely you don’t really
believe that nonsense about a child’s lineage dictating his character. Even if you do, we could find some gentlewoman who has made a mistake—”

“It has nothing to do with bloodlines,” he snapped.

“If you don’t care whether the child is of your own blood, then I don’t see what difference it makes who gave birth to it.”

“It makes a difference, believe me. It always makes a difference.” The bitterness in his tone gave her pause. “There are bonds of blood between a mother and her own child that don’t exist between a woman who merely takes in another woman’s child.”

“A mother,” she echoed. So
that’s
why he was being an idiot, suggesting a marriage with no permanency and forbidding even the possibility of adoption. “I notice that you say nothing about the bonds between a father and his child.”

“That’s different. The father doesn’t carry the child, but the mother—”

“You’re saying that if a woman doesn’t carry a child in her own womb, she will not love or care for it properly.”

He looked flustered. “I’m only saying it’s not the same, that’s all.”

“She really hurt you, didn’t she?”

“Who?”

“Your stepmother.”

Releasing an oath, he slid out from under the counterpane and went to jerk on his drawers. “It has naught to do with her.”

“It has everything to do with her. She married your father under certain conditions and then wanted to change them. She mothered you, then abandoned you.”

“It wasn’t her fault. She expected what any woman has a right to expect, and when she realized what she’d given up she regretted it.”

“As you think I’ll do.” Anger mingled with pity to clog her throat. “So you’re taking no chances. You won’t commit to a
wife whom you’re sure will leave you eventually, and you certainly won’t bring any children into a marriage where the mother might abandon them because they lack some essential ‘blood bond.’”

“Abby—”

“Better to prepare yourself for heartbreak from the beginning, right? That way you won’t be surprised when the woman turns out to be just what you expected—a soulless creature with no honor, no sense of responsibility, and no loyalty.”

He whirled on her, eyes alight. “You always twist what I say to make it seem as if I think ill of you.”

“Don’t you?” She approached him with an aching heart. “A woman of character stands by her choices. She doesn’t leave a man she loves and children who need her simply because she changed her mind. But apparently you think I’m not a woman of character.”

“I think you’re too young and inexperienced to know what you want from life. It’s no reflection on your character if in time you discover you want more than I can give.”

“Every person, young or old, risks the possibility of their life not turning out as planned. Especially when it comes to marriage. They might find they aren’t suited for marriage after all. Or their spouses might die of an early illness. Taking a risk on another person is what marriage is all about.”