Chapter 3
Edmund was glad he’d taken a seat before his wife lowered the axe to his neck.
“A baby.”
“Yes, I’m getting on in years,” she said, every bit of her radiating youth and good health, “and I cannot wait.”
“So you came to London to…get a baby by Clarence?”
She laughed, the trilling sound not fooling him. “Oh, Clarence, or any number of men, really. It matters not.”
She arched on the bed, showing off her lithe figure to its best advantage.
“You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.
Did he mind if other men fucked his wife? Edmund found he minded less than he should. As a member of a secret society that often shared other men’s wives, he had no right to restrict Ann’s activities. He had settled on a properly disinterested answer when she spoke up again.
“I always supposed that if you wished to have a legal heir of your own blood, you would have gotten one on me before now.”
Oh, his wife knew how to twist the blade in his belly after all. He’d thought that — besides sparing her his attentions — leaving her in the country might ensure that she remained an unspoiled woman of good sense and fine moral character. Something had happened in Shropshire. But what?
“Perhaps we’re each to have one child born on the wrong side of the blanket,” she said, finally referencing Eddie. “Though…as your legal wife, my child will be recognized as your heir, whether or not you actually father him.”
Edmund tried not to make mistakes. Hence, he had but one illegitimate child. One suit from a tailor inferior in his craft. One investment in an overseas railway that turned out to be a mistake.
But he knew then that he’d made a colossal error, the biggest of his life, by writing to his wife about Eddie’s arrival rather than riding out to tell her himself. She’d clearly taken offense to the way she’d been informed, and she was now going to make him pay.
“I do say, Ann,” he began, “I’m terribly sorry about how I told you about Eddie.”
“Eddie,” she said faintly. “Your son.”
Edmund thought back to that blasted letter.
“Yes, my son. Edmund.”
“You named him Edmund.”
He felt the room spin, something about this conversation seeming decidedly off.
Or perhaps it was the brandy he’d had at Chevestrer’s this afternoon.
She turned her whole body away from him, facing the far wall.
The existence of his son, and especially the fact that the son was named Edmund, must have hurt her.
It was unlikely that a later-born child would bear the same name.
“His mother named him,” said Edmund. Then he realized this didn’t make it better. “Without consulting me.”
“Did she?” asked Ann, as if she, too, were spinning through space because of their conversation.
“We’re no longer…”
“That’s not my business,” she replied quickly.
“As my wife, it is your right to—”
She was lying on the bed, still. “As your wife, many things are my right.” It was clear: Ann had been denied her rights as a wife for far too long, and she’d come to town to claim them. Or create havoc.
“Ann, I—”
Edmund stopped himself when he saw her ribs expand, then quickly contract. She was crying, silently. Ann was hiding her pain from him. She wasn’t merely angry; she was hurt.
A profound rage blurred his vision as he sat naked on the bed, regretting the pain he’d caused her but not little Edmund’s existence. Fucking Crispin ruining Miss Ann Cardmaker had ruined his life. Her life, too, if today was any indication.
Maybe they could have been happy, even as a marriage arranged hastily to prevent scandal, but she’d been too young to be a wife at the time of their marriage. Edmund cursed his parents, his brother’s tutors, the whole fucking aristocracy.
And mostly, he cursed himself. He should have come back from the minor estate in Keswick to rein his younger brother in. Truthfully, Edmund had written his behavior off as youthful folly, not imagining he’d seduce a draper’s young daughter so completely that pregnancy was possible.
At the time, Edmund had felt sorry for the girl, but he’d mostly felt sorry for himself. Cursed with a bride selected by his dead younger brother’s cock, a scrawny little scrap of a girl, all pretense of choice snatched from him.
She’d looked at him with unmasked terror in that chapel on his country estate as they’d exchanged vows, despite his attempts to stoop and draw in his shoulders to appear smaller.
Then that horrifying, ratty little doll had driven home how young his bride had been.
How unprepared she had been for what Crispin had put her through.
And if elegant, lithe Crispin overwhelmed a girl, what would a hulking beast of great appetites do to her?
And so, the night of his wedding, Edmund had drunk so much brandy in the Wake Court cellars that he’d vomited into his boot and railed at those earthen walls. He vowed to lock himself in that subterranean cell forever rather than trouble his child bride.
His reactions weren’t all noble. His curses, hurled at the heavens, included some aimed at her.
He was burdened with a silly little girl who’d fallen prey to an obvious rake, and their bond would last until one of them died.
Full of self-pity and cursed with a hard cock, he made his way to London and raked enough for two healthy men. For fourteen years.
And now, much older, he realized that the magnitude of what he’d lost was nothing compared to her loss. The loss of childhood. Years of solitude as she’d waited to be a wife. And what of…
“Did you lose a baby?” he suddenly asked, wishing to understand the depths of hell awaiting him.
Ann rose to seated, her wet face stricken. He’d been unclear, blast.
“After our marriage. Crispin’s…”
“No,” she said, nodding. “Not that I know. There was no quickening.”
Small fucking mercies. At least she’d been spared that. They sat on the bed so near each other, both nude. Edmund regarded her sad face — his own work — and wanted nothing more than to soothe her as he did Eddie.
“I have to know,” he said, his voice trailing off.
“Yes?”
“Did he force you? Did Crispin force you…when he…”
Ann placed her hand over his. It was warm, soft, and much smaller. The gesture felt enormous to a man suddenly adrift.
“Crispin forced nothing,” she said in a low voice. “I willingly welcomed his attentions.”
“He shouldn’t have done that,” bit out Edmund, sick at the thought of his brother preying on a mere girl.
“He shouldn’t have,” she said, “but I viewed it as a grand romance.”
Edmund studied their overlapping hands. Neither of them wore their wedding rings. “And now.”
“Now, I’m sad,” she said. “For all of us.”
Edmund nodded, understanding her perfectly. Crispin lay in the family crypt, and the Marquess and Marchioness of Montfort hadn’t been in the same room since their wedding over a decade ago. What once felt like a farce was, in fact, a tragedy.
“But I can’t continue allowing sadness to dominate my life. If I can’t be happily married, I at least want the comfort of children. A baby in my arms.”
She’d never had that experience. Had never experienced the physical and emotional weight of cradling her child. He’d stepped in to spare what remained of her reputation while denying her something far more precious. How silly he’d been at 31!
“I’ll give it to you.”
Ann’s eyes traced the blankets, as if searching for his meaning.
Edmund had said those words impulsively, but even he didn’t know what he meant.
He considered his options. Most obviously, he could impregnate his wife.
But it appeared he’d trained his cock to never react to that scruffy little doll he’d married, and her transformation into a desirable woman was proving insufficient to overcome that image he’d carried in his head.
“I’ll ensure that you get what you want,” he said, clarifying.
“You’ll give me a baby?”
“Afraid that’s not in the cards,” he said, gesturing to his wilted cock. His guilt and anger seemed to make the idea of getting hard ever again impossible.
He could hire someone — a stud, even — to impregnate Ann.
Failing that, he could ask a friend to step in and sire a child.
But all of that took time, and he was suddenly very guilty about the time he’d already taken from Ann.
Guilty for the children she wouldn’t have because he’d ignored the problem of his marriage for so long.
He needed a more immediate solution. A very private one.
And sometimes, the answer to concerns about privacy was not to make one’s circle smaller, but larger — and only containing the right, very discreet people.
“Then how—”
“If you’re not opposed to being bred by someone else — as the interlude with Clarence shows — I know men who could step in as studs. So you can have a baby.”
“You’d invite a random man to get a child on me?” she asked, sounding both horrified and intrigued.
It seemed she was under the misapprehension that this was to be one man undertaking a civilized breeding. He needed to clear that up immediately so he could learn if his plan would work.
“Men. Several men. All at once,” he said.
Ann’s lips parted, but she didn’t cry out in shock or disgust. If anything, Edmund thought he spotted arousal in her swollen lips and flushed cheeks.
“And they aren’t random. I know them well. They’re known as the Grand Bucks. I am, in fact, one of them.”