Chapter 12 #2
“It’s a British tributary,” Adam corrected her. “Constance’s uncle has the power to run a lot of things his way, but the Raj would jump at any excuse to depose the family and annex Nandapur outright… like finding out that the maharaja is romantically involved with his lawyer.”
Ellie felt a flare of quick anger. “How desperately unfair!”
“You think so?”
“Don’t you?” Ellie pushed back angrily.
“As it happens, yeah. But that’s not an opinion everybody shares.”
“I have never much cared whether my opinions were popular or not,” Ellie grumbled.
Adam chuckled warmly. “No, you sure haven’t.”
Sympathy tugged at her. “It must be terribly hard constantly having to hide what the person you love really means to you.”
Ellie’s mind caught up to the words that had just come out of her mouth—and connected them to the man lying beside her with a lurch of guilt. “But then, you’d know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
Adam gently pushed her back down onto the floor, bracing himself over her. “Pretty sure I’ve made my opinion about that clear.”
Ellie’s corset was hanging from a shelf on the wall. Her chemise and drawers lay in opposite corners of the room.
His trousers were draped over a paint bucket.
“You might have,” she allowed—a mite breathlessly.
“Then one of these days, you’re going to have to stop apologizing for it.”
An enticing sense of threat darkened the words. Adam’s skin brushed against her own like silk every time she inhaled. The sated feeling of the moment before was rapidly evaporating, replaced by a rising swarm of very appealing possibilities.
“What are your feelings about preventatives?” Ellie blurted out.
Adam’s expression blanked with surprise. “Say what?” he demanded, half choking on the words.
“You know.” Ellie’s cheeks flushed. “Devices designed to interrupt the natural consequences of the act of…”
“I know what they are, Princess.” Adam’s eyes twinkled. “Curious where you heard about them, though.”
“The Cairo book bazaar,” Ellie informed him. “You remember when we paid it a visit before we left for India? I might have accidentally purchased a very informative volume by Mr. Richard Carlile on the prudent regulation of the principle of love.”
“That the one you were gonna use to teach Connie Latin?”
“Er… no,” Ellie awkwardly corrected. “That was a different volume of very great—er—scholarly interest which sadly escaped our possession.”
Adam’s mouth twitched with suppressed humor. “I see.”
He moved off her. The change did make it easier for Ellie to concentrate—even if she somewhat regretted it. He propped himself up on an elbow at her side instead, gazing down at her.
“It’s only that as creative and enjoyable as your improvisations have been,” Ellie offered tactfully, “it seems to me that there’s another area of activity we might explore if we had a reliable method of preventing the potential complications of conception.”
She gave in to the impulse to raise her hand to Adam’s arm, exploring the smooth, taut texture of his skin.
The hungry, appreciative look he gave her in response sent a shiver over her skin despite the languid heat of the afternoon.
“Unless you think we’re not really missing out on much,” she added diplomatically.
“That’s not exactly what I’m thinking right now.”
“I see,” Ellie replied, feeling the room get warmer.
“You would if you looked down,” Adam returned with a smirk.
Ellie gave him an admonishing shove. Adam obliged her by rolling onto his back.
She took this as an invitation to prop herself up on his chest. “But I’m serious! Do you think something like that could work for us? Could we even find what we required if we wanted to?”
Adam drew her head down to rest against his shoulder, Ellie’s arm draped across his chest. His fingers stroked through the tangled waves of her hair.
Her pins were scattered all over the floor.
“I can probably track something down if I ask the right people,” he mused. “Not sure whether it’d be legal, though.”
Ellie lifted her head with alarm. “I don’t want you to be arrested for purchasing contraband materials in a foreign country.”
Adam’s mouth curved into a wicked smile. “It’d be worth it.”
“Adam…” Ellie began.
He pushed a tangle of hair away from her face. “Don’t worry about it. I’ve got a fair amount of experience with not getting arrested.” His expression grew more serious. “But none of this stuff is completely foolproof.”
Ellie felt a burst of irritation. “One would think that the scientific world would put a bit more effort into such matters—perhaps by developing a safe and reliable means of pharmacologically adjusting a woman’s chemistry to prevent one or more of the necessary components for conception.”
“I’ll write to my senator about it,” Adam quipped. “But in the meantime—if we do this, we’d need to do it with an understanding that it’s still possible you’d end up pregnant.”
“How possible?” Ellie pushed back uneasily.
“If we use it right? Pretty unlikely,” Adam allowed. “But you’d need to consider how you’d feel about it if something did go awry.”
Ellie sat up. The conversation had become too serious to have while lying on the floor. “How would you feel about it?”
“Over the moon?” Adam replied where he still laid beside her.
Ellie blinked down at him with shock. “What?”
Adam sat up, running his hand through his hair as he gave a helpless chuckle. “This isn’t quite the conversation I thought we’d be having when I dragged you in here.”
“You hardly dragged me. As I recall it, I’m the one who had hold of your belt buckle. And I didn’t think we’d be talking about anything at all.”
Adam gave her a self-satisfied smirk. “Kept your mouth pretty busy for a while, anyway.”
Ellie blushed at the memory.
He sobered. “Getting back to what you were asking… I don’t want you to get me wrong. The idea of being responsible for something as helpless as a baby scares me more than an army of carnivorous ants.”
He raised his hand to her face, brushing his thumb tenderly along the curve of her cheek. “But I’d do it with you. In a heartbeat.”
The room began to spin.
Ellie stepped away from him. She plucked her combinations from the floor, pulling them back on.
“But we’re not married!” she burst out desperately.
Adam came to his feet as well. He tugged on his trousers and fastened his belt with a casual yank. He gently took hold of her shoulders. “I am aware of that. But I’m pretty sure I made it clear that I’m in this for the long haul.”
Ellie melted into him, her arms circling his waist. “You have,” she admitted—and then pulled back to look at him worriedly. “But what if I never want to have any children?”
“You don’t. You already told me that.”
Ellie released him to pace across the canvas. “I find them deeply off-putting. Like little monsters who are utterly incapable of articulating their needs but punish you for failing to meet them regardless.”
Adam regarded her warily, as though he had found himself in the room with a cornered hyena. “Have you actually been around many kids?”
“I generally avoid them.”
“I mean, not that your description’s entirely inaccurate, but—”
“They are tiny bundles of inescapable obligation that tie a woman even deeper into the virtual slavery of the patriarchy.”
“Ooookay,” Adam returned carefully. “That’s one way of looking at them…”
Fear snapped through her like a shot of ice in her chest.
“I don’t know if I can ever bring myself to do that,” she blurted out, holding her arms close to her chest.
Adam gazed down at her softly. “Why’s that a problem?”
“Because it means if you stay with me, you’d be giving up your chance to become a father,” Ellie pushed back, the fear still clawing at her.
Adam cupped her cheek. “I’m all right with that.”
The fear pushed harder. “But what if—”
Adam set a finger to her lips. “I picked you. I’m going to keep on picking you. That’s how this works.”
Ellie’s fear broke, shivering away like falling petals. She fell into Adam, leaning against the warm, bare skin of his shoulder as his arms came around her back. “You say the most unforgivably romantic things sometimes. Do you know that?”
“Maybe I’m trying to get you into bed.” His voice danced with humor.
“You just had me in bed.”
“That was the floor,” Adam reasonably countered.
She raised her hand to trace the delicate lines at the corners of his eyes—the ones that always looked to her like joy.
“I love you, you know,” she said softly. “Rather desperately.”
Adam dropped his lips to the top of her hair with aching tenderness. His chest pushed against the circle of her arms as he drew in a deep, uneven breath. “Me too, Princess. Me too.”