Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (28 page)

When her first dress had been dropped over Lark’s head, she regarded herself in the cheval glass from every angle, both amazed and flattered. “This cannot be me. I feel as though I am wearing someone else’s clothes.”

“Well you must surely be, My Lady,” the dressmaker said as she attempted to fasten the buttons up the back. “Because this dress is too small for you.”

“I heard that,” Ash said, “and I am pleased to hear my campaign to fatten up My Lady is become a success. She was all bones a month ago, you must own, still is, in my eyes.”

“I can hear this conversation,” Lark said. “Please refrain from discussing my plump self within my hearing, if you do not mind.”

On the opposite side of the curtain, Ash chuckled, Brian gave a giggle, and the additional snicker Lark heard was surely Micah’s.

“Won’t take but a rip and a stitch or two to fix, My Lord,” the dressmaker said.

“Happy to hear it.”

The dressmaker whipped the first dress off and settled another over Lark’s shoulders. “Here now, this one fits as it should. The empire style suits you,” she said, “and the emerald green color makes your flaxen hair shine.”

Lark stepped into a pair of satin high heeled slippers of the exact fabric and accepted a striped-silk fringed shawl the color of the blonde lace on her bodice.

As she stepped from behind the curtain, her family applauded, Brian’s eyes surprisingly wistful, Micah’s wide, and Ash’s hot and … inspired.

Lark grinned, certain she understood the degree of her husband’s inspiration. “I take it you approve?”

“The style suits you, and the way it looks on you suits me.”

“Good because I am fond of this style and ordered several, though I do feel like a child playing dress up. Look, my slippers match the precise color of my dress and each other.” She raised her hem to show her emerald silk slippers to good advantage, and did a dance step that had the children giggling.

“You have slippers to go with every dress.”

“Oh, Ash, surely not. That would be … extravagant.”

“Nevertheless, you have them. Your order was modest, Lark, I simply made it more practical, not excessive in any way, I assure you.”

Lark took a chair among them. “I wish to see Brian in one of her new dresses.”

Brian did not hesitate for a moment before she stepped behind the curtain, for she was too precocious by far, now that she’d lost her fear, and almost too beautiful as well. Lark wondered if her mother had been so striking, so alive, and if Ash saw the woman he loved in Brian’s perfect Irish features and fine raven hair.

Did he yearn for the woman even now? Lark almost hoped that the news about Brian’s paternity, due from Ellenora’s friends in London, never came, for she would as soon never know that her husband had fathered a child with the woman he loved.

CHAPTER TWENTY

As the dressmaker dressed Brian in her new clothes, Ash regarded Lark. He adored her in her own new things, though he would adore her more out of them, which he believed she read in his gaze even now.

As every new day passed, he became more enamored of his bride and more torn by their goal—odd how he thought of it in terms of
their
goal now.

While Lark must soon get with child, to keep them in grandfather’s will so as to save the estate, Ash dreaded the day he would be forced to stop going to her bed.

He had wondered recently if grandfather would accept Brian as the child Ash must produce before Christmas … if Brian proved, indeed, to be his. But he had realized soon enough that to claim Brian as his own would be to declare her as illegitimate and ruin her in the eyes of society.

Though Brian would not use her true name—Lark had convinced him she must have her reasons and they should keep her secret—she was legally the Lady Ashley Briana Fairhaven, legitimate daughter of the late Lloyd Harvey, Duke of Amesbridge, and so she would remain.

Even if it meant losing grandfather’s favor, and losing Blackburne Chase as well, come to that, Ash would not destroy Brian’s future, whoever her sire might be.

All was not lost, he reminded himself now. Lark might yet conceive. Nearly four months were left to them before Christmas after all, and what better sport could be found than baby-making with Larkin Rose?

The fact was, despite his bride’s guttersnipe beginnings, she had become like a sprig of fresh lavender in his life—unspoiled yet spirited—a blend he found soothing and invigorating at one and the same time.

Beneath her oft-times unbendable surface, he had found Lark to be a woman of great passion, a woman he enjoyed having as his wife, his helpmeet, his lover—a woman so rare, even his curmudgeon of a grandfather had taken a fancy to her. So rare, she would love her husband’s natural child as her own.

Ash fingered the puzzling note in his pocket from Jane Hawking, Ellenora’s bosom friend, asking him to come to London where she would tell him everything she knew of Nora’s child. One way or another, he must discover whether he had left Ellenora carrying his child or not.

“Lark” he said, making a decision on the instant, I must away to London soon to look into the matter concerning which I have sent inquiries.” He regarded the curtain pointedly. “Do you suppose you could do without me for a day or so?”

“I think you would be missed by us all, but we would manage. What say you, Micah? Shall you, Brian, and I, become adventurers, out here in the wilds of Gorhambury on our own for a full twenty four hours or more?”

Micah looked at Ash with fretful eyes, but he nodded all the same, and then Brian came out wearing … a dress, and took all their attention.

A termagant into a swan.

The first thing Brian did was curtsey before Ash. “I believe I will be pleased to dress like a girl again,” she said.

“Oh,” Ash said on a chuckle, tweaking her nose, “and shall you be pleased to be named like a girl as well? Someday you will be forced to settle on one name only, you know, and be content to live with the one only for the rest of your days.”

“Not yet, if you please.”

“Fine,” Ash said. “So you will wear dresses but still be called Brian?”

She looked at Lark, as if for reassurance, and raised her chin, much as Lark was wont to do. “I would like to be called Briana now, please.”

“Briana,” Ash said. “Close enough to your—to … Brian, and not so difficult a change to remember. It is a fine choice.”

That night Lark and Ash discussed the fact that Briana did not want the world to know her first name was Ashley, so they agreed, with apprehension, that neither would use it under any circumstance.

* * *

The following week, a note arrived from Huntington Lodge. “
Dearest friends, you may wish us happy. Alex and I are proud to announce the arrival of our son, Brandon Alexander Wakefield, two weeks old today, and as perfect as his mother. Alex sends her love and bids Lark visit soon. She cannot wait to show him off.”

Lark and Ash toasted Hawksworth’s heir that night at dinner, and worked very hard afterward to produce an heir of their own.

Two days before Ash planned to travel to London, the Hawksworth carriage arrived promptly at nine to whisk Lark away on her adventure to visit Alex and the baby. Ash, Briana, and Micah, waved her away from beside the carriage. Mim, Cook and Grimsley stood on the steps waving her off as well, for Lark had alerted all available hands to keep the children in line during her absence.

Huntington Lodge, by Devil’s Dyke, topping the steep hill beside the River Ver, was not the leaking, tumbling pile Lark had been led by Alexandra to expect. The pristine Lodge stood an imposing mortared brick edifice, ruddy of face, and straight of line, with at least two score of men scrambling over its roof like ants on a hill high above them.

Everywhere Lark looked, happy, energetic men and women worked like bees in a hive. Among the tenants’ cottages, home farm and outbuildings, she saw dovecotes, granaries, even a pottery, as if the lodge were a world unto itself. Hawksworth had certainly made improvements, judging by Alexandra’s description of the home she originally inherited.

The man himself welcomed Lark and helped her from his carriage with a kiss to her hand, and before bringing her to Alex, he gave her a tour of the Lodge.

“The family chambers are now livable,” he said some time later, if a bit threadbare, as are the kitchens and servants’ quarters. Few of the guest-chambers have been touched, because we chose to build the tenant cottages first. Ah and here are my wife and son,” he said, beaming as they ended their tour in a rose silk drawing room.

Hawk sat Lark beside Alex on the sofa and bent to kiss his wife’s lips then his son’s brow. “Perfect,” he said lovingly cupping the boy’s tiny head as he slept. “Absolutely perfect.” He beamed at Lark. “Did Alex not do a fine job on this one?”

Lark smiled inwardly at the imposing Duke of Hawksworth turned to jelly by the sight of his wife and babe. “She certainly did,” Lark said, reaching tentatively, and was rewarded with the smallest armful of babe she ever held. “Oh my,” she said. “He is so soft.” She kissed a tiny hand. “I am in love.”

“And so you should be,” Hawk said, kissing Lark’s brow. “Again,” he said, and bowed. “Welcome, and enjoy your visit.” Hawk exited the drawing room and left them.

Lark cuddled and crooned to the babe and told him how fortunate he was to have such wonderful parents who loved him.

Alex beamed upon her son. “Yours will be as fortunate. When shall I hold him, or her? Did the doctor give you an approximate date?”

Lark laughed. “No, for I have seen no doctor. I am not as yet increasing, and I believe Ash is disappointed, though he says he is not, and that he is pleased to work so hard at his favorite sport.”

“Oh but you are with child,” Alex said. “You bear all the signs, Lark.”

Lark raised the babe in her arms to look at her belly. “I see no signs.”

“Have you had your monthly flux since my visit?”

“Well … no.”

“Aha. And how long has that been? Two months at least. You are breeding, mark my words. Your breasts are bigger too, and tender I’d warrant. Do you nap more often than not?”

“Oh.” Lark held the babe in her arms closer, felt a warmth of joy and love rush through her. “The dressmaker said something on the fit of my bodice the other day, but I had not considered. And I have dropped off to sleep at the most peculiar times. Why the children dressed me in a lavender crown, as I slept in the grass beside the field one afternoon, and I awoke feeling like a virgin sacrifice.”

Alex took her hand. “Before my visit to your home, when did you last have your flux?”

“I … do not remember.”

“Do you remember the last time you did?”

“Oh, yes, for I was ever so embarrassed at having Ash see me—” Lark warmed and brought the babe up for a kiss.

“Nonsense, rogues who fought with Wellington take blood, of all things, in stride, though try and remember to have Sabrina tell you about her daughter, Julianna’s, birth and Gideon’s hand in it.”

“Gideon was present at the birth?”

“He delivered the child.”

Lark paled. “I would not know what to do.”

“Neither did Gideon.”

They shared a chuckle. “We need to know how far along you are,” Alex said. “Pray, liken the time of your last flux to the season, if you please. Were the lilacs in bloom? Fruit in blossom, lavender, roses?”

“Oh, I do not know. I remember that, at least a week previous, the blossoms had been falling from the apple trees.”