“Oh, Nick. I feel exactly the same,” she said, stroking a palm over his cheek. “I am so happy. And so looking forward to returning home to England to set up our household.”
“You have leave to do anything you wish with both the town house and Lynd Park.”
“Be careful,” she teased, “or I may just spend that fortune of yours.”
“I’m not worried, even if you are a princess,” he teased back. “I am glad, though, that your brother put your dowry in trust for our children. As I told him, I do not want it and the money will be a nice legacy for their future.”
“Yes, it will.” She fell silent for a moment, then resumed her tracing across his chest. “Speaking once more of the household, I was wondering if you would mind having company this summer.”
“What kind of company?”
“Ariadne—and Mercedes, if her family will let her stay. They will both graduate from the academy in June. After that, I am not sure what either of them plans to do exactly. But I know that Ariadne in particular has no one but her guardian. He’s an older man and not the kind with whom a young woman wants to stay. I thought, if you don’t mind, that we could—”
“Of course they may stay. Their Highnesses are always welcome in our home. If not for them, we might never have found our way back to each other again. I owe them a very great deal.”
A brilliant smile spread over her face. “You are too good.”
“You are better.” Finding her mouth, he claimed her for a long, ardent kiss.
At length, he came up for air. Once they had both regained their breaths, he resumed their prior conversation. “Your sister is always welcome to visit too, although I suppose once she marries King Otto this autumn she’ll have scant time for trips abroad.”
“No, I don’t suppose she will,” Emma mused. “She seems truly satisfied with the engagement, you know. Really happy. At our wedding she was bubbling over at the prospect of the new trousseau Otto is having made for her. And here Rupert bought her one only a couple months ago.”
“That sounds like Princess Sigrid.”
“And my little nieces are over the moon at the prospect of being flower girls. It will be quite the event seeing her wed with all the pomp and circumstance due a queen. She’ll be in heaven.”
“She will indeed. And we will journey to Rosewald for the ceremony, so long as there aren’t extenuating circumstances that prevent you from traveling.”
She raised a brow. “And what extenuating circumstances might those be?”
He bent his leg up so that his thigh slipped snuggly between her own, causing a delicious shiver to chase over her skin. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe being big with my child.”
“Oh.” She sighed, her eyelids sliding low as his hand moved over her bare bottom to shift her even higher, his shaft fully aroused again. “I suppose if we work on it, it’s possible I could be several months along by October.”
“Yes,” he said, gliding his lips over her cheek, then lower to nuzzle an area along her neck that never failed to drive her wild. “I think we’re both sufficiently rested again and should devote ourselves to the endeavor.”
Turning her head, she found his mouth and kissed him long and slow and deep, knowing this was but a taste of all the years of love and pleasure to come.
“Yes,” she said, letting him settle her fully over him. “Let’s not waste another minute, liebling.”
And laughing with happiness, he made certain they did not.