“Nature calls,” she grumbled. Andrew held up the covers for her and kept his back to the privacy screen. She returned to the bed, resuming her place tucked against him, and wondered if she’d ever find another man with whom she could be so casually intimate.
“Your lunch is sitting well enough?” Andrew asked, notching his chin on her shoulder.
“Apparently so. If every day were as manageable as this one, pregnancy would be no burden. Feeling this good, I hardly know I am pregnant.”
“I know you’re pregnant.”
He sounded smug, the varlet. “How would you know?”
“Your breasts have become magnificently full and probably more sensitive. Don’t tell me your bodices aren’t fitting more snugly, and perhaps your slippers as well.” He caressed her breasts, lightly, gently—maddeningly.
“They are—bodices and slippers.” And he knew exactly how to touch her magnificent breasts, too. “Have you made a study of this?”
“Rather the opposite, though I can tell your womb has started to increase,” he said, slipping a hand down to palm her lower abdomen. “You are petite, so you will likely begin to show quite obviously in the next few weeks.”
“I thought my stomach was still flat,” she retorted, a bit miffed, though in truth she was not in the habit of examining her person in any detail—another gift from her oh-so-considerate late husband.
“Here,” Andrew said, rolling her onto her back. “Feel here.” He took her hand and splayed it under his over her pelvic cradle. “As trim as you are, this probably used to be concave, a little dish. Now you can feel it changing.” He pressed down lightly, and Astrid could sense the difference he described. “Your babe is growing, Astrid,” he said, a soft smile on his face.
The intimacy of that smile, of their posture, of what they discussed… Astrid closed her eyes to ensure she’d captured yet another memory to torment herself with. “When will the child quicken?” she asked, leaving her hand under his.
“You are about three months along?”
“Soon.”
“Probably another month or so, but I am sure these things vary. When you were last carrying, did you ever feel movement?” He inched his hand down in small, gentle circles.
“I did not,” Astrid said, loneliness pooling where their hands had been joined on her belly. And she hadn’t known the absence of movement was unusual.
“I am so sorry, sweetheart,” Andrew said, kissing her temple. “I said many prayers for you when I got Gareth’s letter. And just because I’m aroused”—he trapped her hand on its journey south—“doesn’t mean you have to accommodate me.”
Herbert had never once said anything to her about the miscarriage, except, “These things happen,” as if he were forgiving her for losing the child.
She laced her fingers with Andrew’s. “I don’t want to accommodate you.” She was very sure of that. “I want to make love with you.”
He settled his lips over hers, taking a teasing, tender approach to her arousal. When she was kissing him back, her hands skating along the muscles of his back, her thigh thrown across his hips, he shifted over her. She welcomed him into her body, and endured such an upwelling of tenderness and grief she thought she might cry.
She was going to lose him. She was going to lose him too, and the loss would haunt her for the rest of her life.
The pain of it wound into other griefs, and into the beauty of joining her body to his, of cherishing him with sexual intimacies she’d shared with no other, and Astrid felt pleasure bearing down on her.
“Love me, sweet,” Andrew whispered. “Hold me tight and love me.”
She heard the words, her hips rolling in counterpoint to his, her back arched to keep her close to him. The damned man held his own pleasure back, and waited, letting her arousal build further, giving her the solid thrusts that would allow her to join him in a mutual release.
She did not know how to hold back, not with him, not when it might be their last time. “Andrew—”
“I’m here.” With languid grace, he moved into her more deeply, forcing her pleasure to such length and breadth she keened and moaned and shook with it.
When her breathing had slowed, when she could put it off no longer, Astrid opened her eyes to find Andrew looking down at her, an expression of such wonder in his eyes she could not look away.
“Andrew,” she said, tears gathering, “how will I ever go on?”
She didn’t elaborate—she didn’t have to elaborate—but buried her face against his shoulder and bowed her body up into his. He settled a little of his weight on her, even as she felt him slipping from her body. He offered no words to comfort her, no glib answers to her question or her inconvenient emotion.