Rogue for a Night (16 page)

With effort, Lucinda sat up and looked at him. “Stop. Ronan, I love you.”

He blinked and all words died on his lips. “You love me?” he repeated after a long moment.

She nodded. “I love you and I want to be with you. Always.”

He swallowed and she could see him running all the scenarios in his mind that made this wrong. That made it impossible.

“But your daughters-”

She shook her head. “My daughters need the kind of affection you showed them yesterday. Margaret couldn’t stop talking about you all last night and into today. And they
need
a happy mother. The only way I will be happy is if I can love you and have you love me in return.”

He sat up slowly and cupped her cheeks in his big, rough hands. “What about being lovers? We could be lovers. Meet in secret.”

She shook away his touch in frustration. “No! That won’t be good enough. Don’t you understand? I have learned the hard way that love is fleeting. In a moment, it can be snatched away and leave only pain and heartache. But it is worth the risk, worth any risk. So I won’t hide it or lie about it. I want to celebrate it and feel it and share it and proudly declare it any time I desire to do so. Otherwise I’ll lead only a half-life.”

He stared at her, his face completely unreadable in the firelight. Finally, he sighed.

“Then you leave me no choice.”

She stared as he got to his feet. Was he leaving? Refusing her, despite the fact that he loved her? Lucinda’s hand stirred to grab for him and demand he not take a coward’s form of protection, but instead of leaving, Ronan dropped to his knees before her and took her hand.

“A half-life is no way to live, Lucinda. Not for you. Not for me. So will you take the ultimate risk and marry me? Despite what some in Society will say?”

She covered his hand with hers as happy tears swelled in her eyes and overflowed onto her cheeks.

“I will,” she whispered as she pressed her mouth to his. “I will.”

Epilogue

“Stop pacing,” Stone said with a laugh. “You’ll only run a hole in the carpet and the baby won’t come any faster. Trust me, I know from experience.”

Rage watched as his friend cast a quick, loving glance at the basinet that was in the corner of the room. It would soon hold his own son or daughter, but for the moment it held Anthony, Nicholas and Jane’s first child, born just a few months before.

“Is this length of time normal?” Rage asked, glancing at the bedroom door with anxious worry. “And why has it gotten so quiet?”

As if in answer to his question, behind the door he heard Lucinda let loose with a long cry and then, like music on the air, came the squall of a child drawing his or her first breath. He could wait no longer. He shoved into the chamber just in time to see the midwife covering his wife and Jane placing a wiggling, red baby across Lucinda’s chest.

She lifted her gaze as he came into the room and smiled. “A boy,” she whispered.

He crossed the room. He could hear Jane saying something, the midwife also speaking, but he was too focused on his wife and his son to know what words were coming from their mouths. He sank onto the bed beside Lucinda and reached down to smooth a tangle of hair away from her forehead.

“Are you… well?” he asked, suddenly awkward as he stared at the baby boy who was snuggled into his wife’s chest.

She nodded with tears coming down her face. “I’m perfect.”

He smiled. “You are.”

Jane touched his shoulder and he finally looked at his sister-in-law. “Should I bring in Margaret and Georgiana?”

Lucinda was the one who answered. “Yes, I know they’ve been waiting.”

Jane stepped away and Lucinda adjusted herself up higher on the pillows. With a smile, she held out the baby to him. “Take your son.”

He nodded and let her place him into his arms. “He is so small. I fear I’ll break him.”

She laughed. “You won’t. You haven’t broken any of us yet.”

He glanced at her with a smile of his own, though they both knew full-well that she meant more by that comment than she might say. After two years together, over a year and a half married, life had taken on a deeper meaning. And Rage had never been happier. All his fears about shunning and consequences had proven to be unfounded. A few people whispered, of course, but most of the women seemed to admire Lucinda for picking a “wild, untamed beast” as her second husband.

Of course she was kind enough not to reveal that he was utterly tamed thanks to her. His anger was gone. His emptiness filled.

All thanks to her.

Behind him the door opened and Margaret put her blonde head through the entrance. “Mama?”

Lucinda smiled at her daughter. “Come in, darling. Meet your brother.”

Margaret came into the chamber, her younger sister at her side. While Margaret looked like Lucinda, Rage could see so much of Nicholas, and thus Anthony, in the younger girl. Once Stone had asked him if the resemblance troubled him, but that was something he had never even considered. He actually liked that Georgie favored her father. It kept him alive in the girls’ lives, as did the stories Nicholas and Lucinda told. He would never steal that from the children.

Margaret hesitated at the end of the bed and Rage tilted the baby down so the girls could see him. Immediately, Margaret’s worry seemed to fade. “Oh, he’s so small. Like my dolly.”

“Oh dear,” Lucinda laughed from behind him. “I see a round of dress up in my poor son’s future.”

Margaret and Georgie both laughed before Georgie reached up and touched the  baby’s hand gently. “I like him,” she declared.

“Good,” Rage said, and though he laughed he felt true relief. He had never expected the girls to be anything but accepting, but he was so glad that his son would be accepted by his family, welcomed as he had never been as a child. That was a gift. “Then we’ll keep him.”

“Give me a kiss now,” Lucinda said. “And then see if Auntie Jane needs any help before you two go to bed.”

The girls did as they had been asked, first kissing Lucinda and then Rage. Margaret led her sister to the door, but there she stopped. She turned back and looked at him with contemplation in her little girl eyes.

“I love you,” she said, frank and matter of fact. “I’m glad we are a family.”

With that, she and Georgie skipped from the room, their giggling voices echoing in the outer chamber as they found Aunt Jane.

When Rage turned back to his wife, he found renewed tears on her cheeks. And to be honest, he felt them in his own eyes.

“I think Margaret said best what I feel in my heart,” Lucinda whispered. “I love you. And I’m so glad we are a family.”

“Yes,” Rage said as he leaned forward to kiss his wife gently. “As am I.”