Chapter 25
They made love again in the tub as they cleaned themselves of the mess he had made of her art studio.
Love, he supposed, was her telling him that his creation, which despite his best efforts in no way resembled her, was one of her favorite art pieces she had seen, and her insistence on displaying it somewhere when it fully dried.
Love was having her in his arms to sleep beside for the first time in what felt like years. A weight lifted from his chest.
“We should discuss what we ought to do about Joyce,” he said as Thalia snuggled more firmly against him.
The physician had said what he already knew: that there was nothing more to do about his chest than to bind it and wait for it to heal all on its own.
In the interim, he refused to sacrifice any intimacy with Thalia.
“Joyce?” she asked, her hand coming to rest on his.
“She was the one who betrayed your secret.”
“Ah. Rossi.” She let the silence fall between her. “I suppose I ought to be angry with her.”
“I was angry. Very much so. If it weren’t for Lydia, I would have prosecuted her.”
“For what? Disclosing the truth?”
“I would have found something,” he said grimly. “At the very least, I would have thrown her on the streets. But if I had done that, Lydia would suffer.”
“What did you do?”
“Sent her to Cornwall. At some point, I will have to make a decision about her future. She did her best to break us apart, and she might have succeeded, too.”
“She did so out of love for Lydia.”
“She might have thought so,” he countered, “but she did so out of her own selfishness. Her position is cemented when Lydia marries well, and she felt as though Lydia’s chances of marrying would be lessened if we had a child.
” He felt Thalia stiffen in his arms and held her closer.
“Which is something else I want to speak to you about.”
“Do you want children?” Thalia said in a rush, as though she had been waiting a long time to say that. “I mean—of course I know you have every intention of siring an heir. But that is very different from wanting children.”
He buried his face in her hair, inhaling her scent and feeling, as always, the way his muscles loosened. Her proximity was enough to chase away the worst of the fears.
“I thought I didn’t want children, all while knowing they were the inevitable by-product of marriage.
When we married, they became a more concrete possibility, but I still never considered them much.
At least at first.” He chose his words carefully.
“With you, Thalia, I want everything. Children, both boys and girls. A family. Not heirs the way my father wanted them, the heir, and the spare, but a family.”
Her fingers traced along the back of his hand, her breath expelled from her in a long, slow exhale. “Then I hope we will have children sooner rather than later.”
“You want them too?” He wished he could see her expression for this conversation, one it had never occurred to him to have, because children were the inevitable lot for most marriages.
But it seemed important to him now to discuss the things they wanted from their future. “I know your art is important to you.”
“Art is nothing without love,” she said, rolling in his arms so she could look up at him.
“And a family is love. Marriage is love. I know I won’t always be happy—that is too much to ask—but I hope that the love that comes from being your wife and being the mother to our children will inspire me to create more beautiful things. ”
Relief flooded him. “You will be the most wonderful mother.”
“And you, a doting father.” Her face split into a smile that was, he was sure, the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. “I’ve seen the way you treat Lydia; our children will be given every indulgence.”
“I don’t spoil Lydia,” he protested, although perhaps it was true he had endeavored to give her everything he could.
She and Joyce, in a way, were the only connections he had left to Christopher.
And if there was one thing he knew for certain, it was that his brother would want Lydia’s happiness. And Maxwell was in a position to grant that; it only followed that he would do everything in his power to ensure it came true.
Thalia laughed a little under her breath. “She is a very lucky girl, and I am sure that with or without her mother around, she will make a very advantageous marriage. But you should be generous toward Joyce.”
“For what reason, pray?” he asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “She whispered in your ear that you ought to be grateful to have any of my attention at all. Her marriage was unhappy enough that she attempted to interfere with ours.”
“Something that could not have succeeded if you were not so adamant you did not love me.” Thalia softened the statement with a smile. “Her life made her bitter and mistrustful, and if you hadn’t loved me at all, it would have been prudent advice.”
“The spirit in which she gave it—”
“A lone woman in the world has every right to feel uncertain about her future, and to do what she can to secure it. I understand the urge, even if I disagree with her methods. I know you’re angry, and you’re not wrong about that either, but she is a woman in a vulnerable situation, and is it really so surprising that she was afraid? ”
He chuffed a little under his breath. “How do you have so much sympathy for a woman who treated you like that?”
She leaned up to kiss his cheek. “She treated me like a threat because she saw me as one. We shouldn’t brush it under the rug or merely forget about it, but she’s Lydia’s mother and the love of Christopher’s life.
” She touched his arm as though she knew intimately the bolt of pain that thought brought.
“Whatever you think of her, and whatever he might have thought of her as he aged and grew, she deserves some level of respect, Max.”
“She lost her right to respect when she harmed you.” He looked into his wife’s eyes and sighed. “But I will do my best to forgive her in time.”
“Good. And remember, once Lydia marries, she will be able to provide for her mother, and we won’t have to worry about her any longer.”
“And if her husband refuses?”
“I doubt Lydia would marry a man who refuses to care for her vulnerable mother, Max.” Thalia stroked his face. “If my mother or brother were still alive, and the condition of marrying me—or remaining married to me—were contingent on you providing for them, would you?”
“Of course,” he said instantly. There was no question in his mind; whatever she needed, he would provide. Always. He loved her enough for that—more than enough.
And whoever Lydia married would love her too. His niece wouldn’t settle for anything else; if Joyce had taught her one thing, it was to marry a man she could love and respect.
“They will be all right,” Thalia said, snuggling down against him. “And we will have a chance to focus on ourselves.”
“I can’t argue with that.” He held her close, ignoring the discomfort in his chest. “What would you like to do? We can retire here for the remainder of the Season if you would like for the rumors to die down before you return.”
“I couldn’t. Think of Lydia.” She frowned up at him. “Where is Lydia?”
“I left her with Anna and Simon.”
“Oh.” She relaxed again. “Well, they can hardly provide for her throughout the remainder of the Season. Besides, I would rather show my face. Our faces. Let the world see not only that you support me, but that we love one another. The ball you threw proves beyond doubt that, for all the critics, I have my supporters too.”
“As long as you are kind and talented, you will always have supporters,” he said. “So, you would like to go back to London?”
“In a day or two, when your ribs are a fraction better.”
“I fear they will take longer than that to heal,” he said.
She sighed, her breath brushing his bare skin.
The bruising, now hidden under bandages, truly was spectacular.
The journey back to London would be uncomfortable, but Thalia was right—they needed to return for Lydia’s sake. “But we can stay here a day longer.”
“I dislike having to share you with the world,” she murmured, trailing her fingers across her skin. “And I dislike the thought of you sneaking out of the house to fight and lose.”
“No more,” he promised. The words were surprisingly easy to say. After Christopher, he felt as though boxing was his only release, a place where he could be himself and let go of all the pain in his chest.
But now that pain had dimmed. He had Thalia, and God knew he would have to work to deserve her. There was no more room in his life for that sort of penance, nor that sort of pain.
“I will fill this house with sculptures,” she said as she slipped slowly into sleep. “Even if no one else in the world wants them, we can have them all.”
He smiled, certain of this, at least. “The world will want them.”
“Thalia will never be as popular as Rossi.”
“She doesn’t have to be. Rossi was never sustainable, my love. You must have known that.”
Thalia pouted sleepily. “Until Joyce discovered my secret, I could have kept going.”
“The waiting list was growing longer and longer,” Maxwell said.
Out of curiosity, he had looked into her business model, if one could call it that.
Calloway had done much of the heavy lifting, positioning himself as a go-between and taking on new commissions for ‘Rossi’ to complete. “And you had new duties as a wife.”
Both brows crept up her forehead. “Duties?”
“In my bed,” he clarified. “And hosting dinners and balls and suchlike too, I suppose.”
“And this is to occupy me every night?”
“Every single one,” he said. “In particular, your duties in my bed. I am very particular when it comes to those.”
“Mm? And if I should slack?”
“It is my duty to make you willing and eager.” At the thought of it, his cock stirred, although he ought to have been fully sated.
Then again, there was no should with Thalia.
All the rules he had previously lived his life by no longer applied.
“It is my pleasure to make you willing and eager. But I’m not merely speaking of your wifely duty. ”
“Stop calling it a duty,” she said, though her lips twitched.
“Your duties in my bed involve sleeping in it with me, every night,” he said. “And waking beside me in the mornings. And greeting the new day with a kiss. Do you suppose you can rise to the occasion?”
She reached down to palm him with a laugh. “It feels as though you already have.”
“You are all I want,” he said, eyes focused on her. “You, Thalia. Until the end of time. Can you do that?”
“Want you back?” A smile softened her teasing, and she kissed him gently on the mouth. “Oh, Maxwell, I already do.”