“And where are these other exemplars of manliness?” Lucy asked, drawing a thin blanket over her child.
“Felix went up to the manor, I think. Henry took Jem and Gray by the kennels to see his new foxhounds. They’ll be around shortly.”
“I’m not even sure why Gray goes along with you,” Sophia said. “He doesn’t like violence.”
“Neither does Jeremy,” Lucy replied. “He never could bring himself to shoot a single bird. And then there’s Felix, whose aim has always been hopeless. Soon Tommy will start begging to go along, and that may put a stop to the hunting excursions completely.” She cast a glance toward her older son, who was entertaining a trio of little girls downstream: two fair, one dark. Lucy continued, “Jeremy’s determined that no child of his will ever touch a gun.”
“That’s not wise,” Toby said. He could understand his friend’s protectiveness, considering how Jem’s brother—Tommy’s namesake—had been tragically killed. But he didn’t agree with it. “The boys will only grow more curious, if he forbids them, and it’s curiosity that breeds accidents. In fact, I once knew a girl who secretly followed a hunting party and very nearly got herself killed.”
“Oh, really?” Lucy asked, feigning innocence. They both knew he referred to the day they’d met, when young Lucy startled a covey and Toby’s shot missed her by inches. They’d been close ever since.
“What an incorrigible child,” she continued. “I suppose she came to a very bad end indeed.”
“Not at all. She grew into a lovely, elegant countess.” He smiled. “Don’t worry about the boys. I’ll talk to Jem.”
A chorus of squeals broke out as young Tommy plucked a grass snake from the rushes and held his wriggling prize aloft. Shrieking, the two blond girls went scurrying up the bank. The third, darker girl held her ground, however, shouting not at the snake, but at Tommy—adjuring him to set the poor creature free.
Toby smiled. That was his Lyddie. She’d inherited her mother’s keen sense of justice, along with that dark, glossy hair.
“Drat,” Sophia muttered, putting aside her sketch to chase after her two daughters. “They’ll run crying all the way to their papa now.”
“So sorry,” Lucy called after her. She shook her head and grinned at Toby. “I wouldn’t know what to do in her place. It’s a good thing I give birth to boys, while she has the girls.”
“So far.” He flicked a meaningful glance toward Sophia. “We’ll see if the pattern holds true in six months.”
“Truly? She hasn’t said a thing.” Lucy’s cheeks dimpled with a wide grin. “But I suspected she’d brought home a little memento from Italy.”
“And,” Toby said cannily, “Sophia’s baby won’t even be the next.”
She gasped. “Surely Isabel isn’t—”
“No, no. It’s far too soon.”
“Well, I know it’s not me,” Lucy said. Her chin ducked. “Is it?”
“No.” He nodded toward two women sitting under a beech tree: their hostess, Marianne Waltham, and Sophia’s sister, Kitty. “Looks like Felix has finally hit the mark.”
“Oh, thank heavens. Kitty’s been waiting so long. For a moment there, I thought you meant Marianne again.”
They laughed together. Henry, as the first to marry, had them all bested with six children … but so far, Toby judged, no seventh on the way.
“Is Isabel up at the house?” he asked.
“What an old, complacent husband you’ve become. You went all of five minutes without asking after her. Yes, she took the baby for his feeding, a short time ago.” She touched the back of her fingers to her own child’s cheek. “You will talk to Jeremy, about the boys and hunting?”
“Yes, of course. I have my ways of making him listen.”
“I know you do, brilliant politician that you are. And Jeremy would never let on, but I know he respects your opinion immensely.” A breeze feathered her dark-brown curls, and she tilted her face to it. “As do I. Now that Aunt Matilda’s gone … besides Henry and Marianne, this group is all the family we have. You must promise me you’ll never stop returning to Waltham Manor each year.”
“Are you jesting? Isabel and Lyddie love it here. You couldn’t keep us away.”
“Good,” she said. “This has never really been a hunting party, Toby. It’s always been a family party, long before any of us married. And you were always the one who held us together, with your affable nature and warmth. You taught a handful of surly, wounded orphans what it was to be happy and secure, surrounded by people who care.” She gave him a self-conscious smile.
“That must be why I was so in love with you, all those years.”
“Oh, were you?” he teased, remembering the way she’d clung to him all those autumns, like a spindly second shadow. “I never guessed.”
“Liar.” She lifted one eyebrow. “But here is something I’ve never told you.” Despite the fact there was no one but a sleeping infant to hear, she leaned closer and lowered her voice to a whisper. “Do you know, that year you brought Sophia here … I was so desperate with jealousy, I planned to sneak into your room and seduce you, so you’d have to marry me instead.”
Toby’s jaw went slack. No, he hadn’t known that. “Truly?”
“Truly.”
“Well, what happened? I suppose you came to your senses in time.”
“In a way,” she said, smiling impishly. “I somehow ended up in Jeremy’s room instead.” Her head made a pensive tilt, and she looked up at him, a girlish vulnerability shining in her green eyes. “I sometimes wonder, though … what would have happened if I’d found my way to yours?”
“What indeed.” He chucked her under the chin. It was a tender, reassuring gesture honed through years of practice—a gesture he often used with his daughter now. “Lucy,” he said,
“please take this in the kindest possible way. I’m very glad we’ll never know.”
Slowly … gingerly … easy now.
Bel lowered her sleeping baby to the bedding. She rocked his cradle gently, keeping one palm flat on his tiny belly until his rhythmic breaths told her he’d fallen into a deep sleep. Still she stood there, admiring the tiny notch carved in his earlobe, and the sweet curve of his eyelashes fluttering against a rounded, cherubic cheek. Such a beautiful, perfect boy. Love swelled within her, until her heart ached.
“Duérmete, mi amor,” she whispered. Sleep, my love. When she’d first married, Bel had been terrified by the intense emotions her husband inspired in her. Gradually, with Toby’s patience and care, she’d learned to delight in their shared passion rather than fear it. But nothing could have prepared her for this—the fierce, boundless love a mother felt for her children. There was no controlling this emotion, and certainly no way to separate it from fear.
As she watched her baby sleep so innocently, guarding him with the light pressure of one palm, it pierced her heart to acknowledge that, no matter how she and Toby tried to protect him, no matter how tightly they wrapped him in love—this child would inevitably know pain, illness, danger, sorrow.
But he would never know them at his mother’s hand. Of that much, Bel felt assured. The door creaked softly behind her.
“Only me,” a familiar voice whispered. “Don’t be startled.”
The door clicked shut just as quietly, and moments later, strong arms cinched around her waist. Toby settled his chin on her shoulder. “Is he asleep?”
“Yes, just.”
“Good.” His lips grazed the sensitive place beneath her ear, and the kiss echoed in the soles of her feet. Bel released a sigh of pleasure. He always knew just where to kiss her, to set her knees quivering.
“Lyddie’s down at the stream with the others,” he whispered. “We have some time to ourselves.”
She leaned back against his chest, and his hands slid to cup her breasts. They were emptied of milk now—soft, and sensitized at the tips.
“I don’t want to wake the baby,” she protested feebly, and insincerely.
“We won’t,” he said, taking her hand and tugging her toward the adjoining bedchamber. “We’ll be very, very quiet.”
She gave him a mischievous smile. He knew as well as she, it was difficult for her to be quiet when they made love. Being in Toby’s arms—it was the safest place in Bel’s world, and the one place she released all her inhibitions. He delighted in making her cry out in bed. Sometimes he made her scream. Oftentimes lately, he made her laugh.
And sometimes, like this afternoon, when a sleeping child was nearby and they needed to be very, very quiet—he loved her so gently, so sweetly, he made her weep silent tears of pleasure and joy.
Afterward, she lay in his arms, breathing deep, labored breaths scented with his comforting masculine spice. The afternoon sunlight gilded the sculpted contours of his shoulders and chest and painted amber streaks through his light brown hair.
“You are beautiful,” she told him.
“Darling,” he replied, “I was about to speak those exact words to you.”
Together they floated in that magic, idyllic space between wakefulness and sleep.
“Toby,” she asked softly, “will we always be this ridiculously happy?”
“Probably not.” His voice was drowsy. “Will you still love me anyway?”
“Yes.” She hugged him tight. “Oh, yes.”
No sooner had she whispered the words than the baby woke crying. A quarter-hour after that, in came Lyddie with tears in her eyes and two scraped knees. Then an express arrived from Wynterhall, bearing news that meant Toby must leave at once … some sort of crisis with the sheep.
Their afternoon idyll was over, the perfect enchantment broken—
But the love remained, beneath it all. Always.