The Haunting of a Duke(71)

"Then congratulations, my dear, for you are expecting the heir."

Emme couldn't speak. She couldn't do anything. As the implications of what Michael suggested fully began to sink in, the room spun dizzily around her.

Michael noted the sudden pallor of her face. Concerned, he stepped forward just as her knees buckled and she collapsed. He caught her, but only barely. He couldn't lift her, for what she had observed to be illness brought on by his excess drinking was in fact the result of having taken a ball to his shoulder.

Straining to hold her, her lush bosom pressed indecently to him, he looked down. He was a man after all, and it was a remarkably fine bosom. And that was how Rhys discovered them.

"I will shoot you, Ellersleigh. I will bloody well kill you."

"Someone already has shot me, Rhys, which is why I was unable to lift your lovely wife after she fainted. Would you be so kind?"

Rhys moved forward and lifted Emme effortlessly. Her head lolled against his shoulder and she stirred but did not awaken. “Emme doesn't faint."

Taking a little more joy in it than a good friend ought to, Michael said, “All pregnant women faint."

Rhys was halfway to the settee, his still unconscious wife in his arms, when the words fully penetrated the concerned fog of his brain. His steps slowed but did not falter. When he reached the settee, he laid her down gently and then slid to the floor in front of it. “She told you? She told you before even whispering a word of it to me?"

Had he been given to prayer, Michael would have uttered his thanks to the Lord for preserving him from the foolishness of love. Lust and like were as far as he ever wanted to be entangled with a woman, and truthfully, of the two, he would choose lust.

"You really are a damned idiot. No, she did not tell me. I guessed and when I said as much to her, it was apparently not a possibility she had been considering. She was quite overcome at the thought, hence the fainting."

Rhys stared at his friend incredulously. “You just walk around informing women that they may be increasing? With your usual lack of tact, no doubt. Is it any wonder she fainted? And how the hell did you guess?"

"Your lovely wife has quite a voluptuous figure, my friend, but have you not noted that certain areas have been more bountiful of late?"

He had noticed, but he wasn't going to say that to Michael. “That you've studied her form enough to note the difference doesn't endear you to me."

Michael chuckled. “Don't say anything to her yet. Let her tell you in her own time. Women like that."

Rhys would have demanded that Michael tell him how he could possibly know that, but was prevented by Emme stirring behind him.

Her eyelids fluttered for a moment before popping open and he noted that she looked positively terrified.

"Feeling better, love?"

Emme sat up and immediately wished she hadn't. Her head was still spinning. “I'm fine, just overtired, I suppose."

Rhys glared at Michael, as Michael smiled back at him, the cat who had gotten the cream. “Are you sure you're only tired, Emme?” he asked, his voice a model of solicitude.

Emme glared back at him. “One can never be entirely certain of anything, Lord Ellersleigh,” she said warningly.

He held up his hands in mock surrender. “Perhaps a footman can escort you to your room for a lie down? Whether one is ill or overtired, it is always a helpful remedy."

"Wisdom from an unlikely source,” Rhys said caustically.

"I think I will lie down for a bit. I will see you at dinner,” Emme said, and hurriedly left the room.

"Just leave it alone, Rhys. She will broach the subject with you soon enough."

"Why are you here, Michael?"

Michael folded himself into one of the chairs, “I am recuperating. Lady Whitmore did not take well to our parting."

Lady Whitmore was barely respectable. The woman had been involved in more notorious affairs then even Michael himself.

"When I asked you to look into Elise's friends I simply meant attend a few parties, talk to them. I did not intend for you to sacrifice yourself to an aging succubus. Why the bloody hell would you involve yourself with her?"

Michael retrieved a small leather-bound book from his pocket. “Because she and your late wife were fast friends, and her journal is a bit more revealing than Elise's has been."

Rhys took the book from Michael's outstretched hand. “She gave you her journal?"

Michael eyed him dubiously. “Perhaps gave is not entirely the proper word."

"You stole it?"

Michael smiled. “The lady said she would give me anything. It isn't my fault that she failed to add the caveat that ‘anything’ only included her charms and not her possessions."