Chapter 30
Wonder and joy both were naked on Nathaniel’s face. Everything was there, laid bare for her to see.
“Early March, if I’ve counted correctly.”
He smoothed his thumbs across her belly before cupping it, as though hoping already to feel beneath his palm the life within. “She’ll have your eyes,” he said decisively. “Bluets, after her mother and grandmother both.”
“Or tiger’s-eyes, like yours.” She touched the outside corner of his eyelid with her thumb. In the soft, dim light from the heavy clouds outside, the tawny streaks in his eyes were hidden today.
“Had you planned to tell me?” he asked softly. “Had I said nothing? Or said I was leaving?” His fingers still traced her belly.
A fair question given she’d been holding the news to herself well past the point of certainty. “Yes, I would have told you. Was going to tell you soon. But I suppose . . . We’d not spoken yet of the future and . . .” She shook her head at herself. “I did not want to take away your own choices.”
His brow was stern, but his eyes were not. “You cannot believe I would choose anything other than you, love.”
Oh, how she loved this man. “I suppose I left some of my courage in France to claim what I want.”
“I might argue you found your courage there. Although surely it has always been part of you. Perhaps circumstances in France merely allowed it full chance to shine.”
“Circumstances . . . That is one way to put it.” She laughed softly. “Ours is not the conventional story.”
“Nay.” He smiled, the rarest of ones that never failed to steal her breath. “But it’s ours.”
“I’d not have it differently, even could we rewrite it.
Although that is not entirely true. I wish it had come at no cost to Lucy.
But as for what passed between us there .
. .” It had begun in France, their love story; they’d just not known it then.
Even had they, what would have been the use of acknowledging it then?
Any sort of future was too remote to envision. Impossible, even.
Now, however . . . “I love you,” she said again. For his ears, yes, but also for the pleasure of saying it aloud. “I was not ready yet, in France. To love anyone else,” she clarified.
“I know, love.” How tender he could be for such a stern man. “Even had you been, I hadn’t the grace for myself yet to recognize love in myself. Not then. Nor could I have imagined this for myself. Hoped for it.” He cupped her belly again. Again, awe was writ on his features. “Any of it.”
“You’d have known soon enough,” she told him. “My body will not conceal her much longer.”
“Perhaps it hasn’t entirely, at that.” His hands slid upwards, thumbs stroking over her nipples and sending a sharp twist of want spiking straight to her core. “I had noticed this. You’re more sensitive here.”
She shifted restlessly, a needy throb igniting between her legs. How easily he roused her; already she pulsed with want. It had ever been so. “I was remiss in not mentioning one of the things your hands can do.”
“This, do you mean?” He stroked her again, this time shaping her nipples between thumb and second finger.
Another stab of pleasure as she looked down at him. “Yes, this. All of this, a ghràidh. Everything with you, everything you are.”
Everything on his face and the future in his eyes.
“Forever, now that we’ve begun?” he asked softly.
She was distracted briefly from the teasing strokes of his fingers. His words recalled a memory: his face by the light of an oil lamp just before they’d kissed for the first time. “You told me once it would be easier once we’d begun. Do you remember?”
He smiled, another of those full smiles that transformed him from arresting to outright beautiful. “Aye, love, I remember.” He shifted her, angling her face so his next words were whispered against her mouth. “And is it? Easier?”
“Yes, a ghràidh.” And she kissed him, claiming him and welcoming the sweet, deep ache of loving him.