Andrew Lord of Despair(42)

Henry’s grin broadened. “It ain’t their waving fingers that makes me come running, Dougie.” He was so overcome with mirth at his play on words, he had to sit, and still he managed to spill a few drops of his drink on the only good carpet remaining in the house.

“Henry, I will take my leave of you. Your dazzling wit is more than my feeble brain can bear. Please present yourself at a proper hour and reasonably attired on the morrow. Mother is taking the coach, and I will accompany her on horseback.”

Henry gulped back more of his drink. “You would ride the distance rather than join Mother in the coach, wouldn’t you? I think Herbert’s death has made her worse. She’s gotten downright whiney. So whiney you’ll sit a horse for two hours rather than put up with her. What would my late brother say if he could see this?”

My late brother, not our late brother.

“Maybe he would say good night,” Douglas replied, willing to leave Henry alone with the decanter if it meant Douglas could take himself off to bed.

When he gained the solitude of his room, Douglas folded his clothing into the clothes press—he did without a valet quite nicely—and made use of the washbasin before climbing into bed. One of Henry’s crude remarks came back to him as he began the nightly ritual of fighting to fall asleep: “Do you think she’s getting lonely yet?”

She probably was lonely. Douglas would have wagered money he could ill afford to lose on the certainty she had been lonely before Herbert’s death.

Viewed from that perspective, Herbert’s death had probably been a blessing to his wife. Douglas rolled to his side, grateful at least one other person could feel relief that the late Viscount Amery had gone to his untimely reward.

***

Andrew forced himself to consciousness through the cozy certainty he should remain wrapped around the delightful, warm curves sharing the bed with him.

In the next brutal instant, he stifled the impulse to scramble off the mattress, for he had fallen asleep in Astrid’s bed—in her very arms. No sounds came from the lower floors, and if he’d had to guess, he would have estimated that dawn was an hour away.

So he had time, minutes anyway, to resolve what he’d been too cowardly to deal with as Astrid had drifted off in his arms hours earlier.

“Don’t go.” Astrid punctuated her command by taking his arm and wrapping it around her middle.

He should invite her to make a visit behind the privacy screen. She was still shy about pregnancy’s effects on her body, and the idea that she’d be shy about anything with him was dear and painful.

“I’ll stay for a bit.” He didn’t want to leave her alone in this bed, and he didn’t want to leave her alone, but he was going to. “You did not respond to my proposal.”

And because he needed to see her face when they had this most miserable discussion, he hoisted her over him so she sprawled on his chest. By the embers in the hearth, he could see her braid was a mess and her cheek bore a wrinkle from where it had been pressed to the pillow.

“Did you propose, Andrew? I heard you describing a scheme hatched by our brothers, not an offer of marriage.”

Peevish. She was peevish that he’d not gotten down on bended knee and prettied things up. She was going to be more peevish still.

“If we were to marry”—not when we marry—“I would not get children on you.”

She paused midnuzzle on his chest. “Then we won’t have children. You’ve told me there are precautions to prevent conception. Besides, we are likely to have a brace of nieces and nephews, so it hardly matters.”

The better to focus both of them on what needed to be said, he took her hand as it began a southerly peregrination. “I’ve told you about certain precautions. I’ve also told you no precautions are a perfect safeguard, and the only way to prevent conception for certain is to remain celibate. I am telling you”—he forced himself to make the words pass his lips—“if we marry, I will be your bodyguard, your friend, and until you deliver this child, I will be your lover. After that, I will not be intimate with you lest you conceive my child.”

For no child should have him for a father. He’d been certain of that since before his sixteenth birthday, and he was certain of it still.

Astrid curled her fingers around his, her grip fierce. “You are saying you would be celibate rather than risk another child?” Oh, the hurt in her voice, but still he’d insist on hurting her further.

“All I can promise you is I will be celibate with you.” Even if it meant more years of subsisting on thin soup, breathing the stench of cooked cabbage, and missing her.