Chapter Twenty-Seven
He maneuvered them both to the sofa in the center of the room and sat down, holding her close. He didn’t want her to explain it another day—he wanted her to tell him now.
Well, what he really wanted to do was hunt down Oliver Carrington and make him pay for hurting his wife.
But she had not trusted him enough to tell him whatever was going on, and so he would not push her. Not today. He wanted her to know that she could trust him—that he only wanted what was best for her. And if she came to that realization on her own, then it would surely be better.
He presumed whatever was going on with Oliver was linked to the pawnshop he had seen her going to. And he wanted to tell her not to worry, to ask if she needed money, to suggest that they just leave London and all of this behind them and disappear into the countryside.
And perhaps he would—but not today. Today, he needed to be there for her.
She leaned her head against his chest, and he stroked her hair absentmindedly, knocking free some of the pins. She didn’t seem to mind. Instead, her body relaxed in his arms, and when he looked down, her eyes had fluttered closed, although her breathing suggested she was still awake.
“Sometimes I think I might have been better off not having a brother, however much I wished for one,” Laurence said.
Anastasia gave a short, sharp laugh. “You might be right.”
“Although I hope, when we have children, they will not have such issues with their siblings. Not like you and Oliver, or my father and his brother.”
She seemed to stiffen in his arms again at the mention of children. He hoped she didn’t think he was pressuring her; after all, these things took time. It wasn’t as though they weren’t doing everything they could to try to conceive. He was sure it would happen, eventually.
“You never told me… What went wrong between your father and his brother?”
“I don’t know all the details. I’ve only met him a handful of times, because the feud goes back many years.”
“Oh, so he’s still alive then?” Anastasia said, sounding surprised.
Laurence nodded and continued to card his fingers through her hair.
“Yes—he’s quite a bit younger than my father. All I really knew was that he had wasted a lot of money, gambled it away, brought disrepute on the family name. It was why my father was so insistent that he should never be able to inherit the title or the estates.”
He had shared his thoughts without thinking, but he wished he had not when she pulled her head back and looked up into his eyes.
“How could he ensure that, if his brother had a right to inherit?”
Laurence licked his lips, which had suddenly gone dry, and tried to decide whether she would be offended at the notion that he had married her because he needed to marry and reproduce.
But then, she surely knew it was not a love match.
The circumstances had certainly not been that way for either of them.
“He made me promise on his deathbed that I would settle down, marry, and produce an heir. So that his brother would be less likely to ever inherit.”
He pressed a kiss to her forehead and grinned. “And I’m sure you can agree that we are certainly doing our best on that score.”
*
Anastasia blushed at the suggestive nature of his words and tried to smile, but found she could not. Whilst his words were true, they prickled uncomfortably in her heart.
The fact that he had promised his father he would wed and produce an heir did not concern her. After all, whether or not it had been promised, that was the aim of most gentlemen who married—and she had known from the beginning that she would be expected to carry the future Lord Walsham.
The fact that she might be carrying him at this very moment both excited and terrified her.
No, that wasn’t what made her uncomfortable.
It was the thought that all those nights on which they had made love—the nights where she’d felt they had truly had a connection, the nights which had given her hope for a successful marriage…
It seemed they had only been in pursuit of conceiving a child.
And that had only been because of a promise he made to his beloved father.
None of it was for Anastasia, or inspired by her. It was all duty…and she had been foolish to think otherwise.
She had hoped for something more than an arranged marriage—and she had thought, perhaps, that they had been building toward it.
Not just with the pleasure they shared at night, but also with the time they had begun to spend with one another in the day, the questions they had asked, the knowledge they had shared.
But now it seemed she had been kidding herself, giving in to foolish romantic notions. And who had she hurt, save for herself?
He had a reputation among women, as her brother had so gleefully reminded her. And those names he had taunted her with stuck in her mind: Lady Frindley. Mrs. Askew.
“Are you well?” Laurence asked. “You look rather pale.”
She swallowed back ridiculous tears and nodded.
“Yes, thank you. I just think this whole ordeal has exhausted me. I think I must be alone, to lie down for a while.”
He nodded, standing as she did, and followed her to the door.
“Of course. If you need anything, I’m happy to—”
“I’ll be fine, thank you. You’ve done plenty today.”
She hurried from the room before the tears could fall, for she had no idea how she would explain her emotions to him. What would she tell him? I think I’m in love with you? I thought you loved me? I’ve only just realized I’m merely a broodmare?
No. It was better to keep all of that locked away, and to keep her distance until she was confident she could keep a lid on her emotions.
As she lay on her bed, staring up at the blue canopy above it, she rested a hand on her stomach.
It had been weeks and weeks since she had bled.
She had not paid an awful lot of attention to such things in the past, but she was fairly sure that this was the longest she had ever gone since her courses had started.
Was it just a coincidence? Or had they indeed conceived the child that Laurence—and his father—so wished for?
She imagined that she was growing such a life inside her—and in her mind’s eye, it was a little boy who looked just like Laurence. It wasn’t only him who wished for a child. Being a mother would surely be a wonderful experience. Somebody to love, somebody who would always love her.
Even if Laurence didn’t.