South of France
October
Winnifred found Asher in the garden on the bluff where they often stood together, gazing out beyond the limestone balustrade toward the vast blue of the cape. The afternoon sun was low enough in the sky to gild the breaking waves and the tops of palm tree fronds rustling in the Mediterranean breeze.
They’d been living in this paradisiacal white stone chateau as guests of Sir Roderick and Liliandra since they’d arrived in April.
Months ago, after learning the news that Sir Roderick’s hunting lodge had been sold, Aunt Lolly and Sir Roderick had set sail for England from their island home. The sale had meant that the treasonous privateer, Sir Roderick Devine, had been declared dead, and it was now safe for him to return.
Yet once they reached the coast of France, Lolly had been in the grip of a malaria fever. But she was determined to meet her great-nephew at last, so Sir Roderick vowed to bring him to her.
Winnifred recalled the instant she’d first met Lolly. She couldn’t believe that the slender, spirited woman with the dark eyes and shoulder-length hair the color of moonlight had ever been sick. Lolly was more full of life than anyone she’d ever met.
With a hearty embrace, she’d welcomed Asher as if he were her own son, then welcomed Winnifred with the same motherly affection. Well, if Mother had been a pirate.
Smiling at the thought, Winnifred grazed her fingertips over the smooth trunks of the skinned palm trees along the familiar stone path and made her way to Asher.
With his head bent and hands clasped behind his back, his attention seemed to be on the brightly colored fish in the fountain pool. As she drew closer, however, she noted the pensive furrows on his brow and wondered what was weighing on his mind.
Yet the instant he turned to see her approach, his contemplative frown disappeared into an easy grin. He held out his hand to her. “Have you finished your chapters, at last?”
“As you will note by the dreadful black stains on my fingers,” she said, offering them for inspection. He took hold of her hands and tugged her into his arms, drawing in a deep breath as she melted lovingly against him. “I fear it will take days before the ink will wash away.”
“All the better for me, because it appears you’ve given yourself a dark freckle here on your chin as well.”
She grinned when he kissed her there. “That must have been when I was thinking of how to answer some of Jane’s questions. She requires more information to understand just how and when I realized that you were a gentleman with honorable intent instead of a scoundrel bent on seduction. Though I suspect she has a personal reason for wanting to know. She mentioned a certain man in her letter.”
“Did you give her an answer, then?”
“I didn’t. I’m afraid my mind started to wander to . . . this morning.”
A wicked gleam lit his gaze. “Before our sea bath or after?”
“During,” she said on a low sigh as his lips grazed her earlobe and he began to nibble her neck. “You proved that the water wasn’t too cold, after all.”
“You kept me quite warm and snug.” He went back to the mark on her chin. “This gives me ideas of how I could put freckles all over your body and pay homage to them.”
“I will not have spots of ink all over my body. What will my maid think?”
“Likely that you’ve been frolicking in the buff with your husband in the broad light of day.” He waggled his brows with meaning and she blushed, thinking of after sea bathing. She’d had sand in more places than she ever thought existed on herself.
“Enough of that talk or we’ll soon be scandalizing those fish.” She tsked him playfully, then turned more serious as she brushed a wind-ruffled lock from his brow. “When I’d first walked into the garden, it seemed as though something was on your mind. Would you like to tell me about it?”
“I was only thinking about a report I’d heard from one of Devine’s crew. Apparently, my father has remarried.”
“Oh?” Winnifred’s brows lifted. “Do you suppose he fell in love?”
He shook his head. “Shettlemane can only love money. Which means that this American widow must have a great deal of it.”
“Perhaps we should warn her, do you think?”
“She’s a widow six times over. I’m not entirely sure that she is the one who needs the warning. And when you came upon me, I was contemplating whether or not to send him a letter.”
Winnifred smoothed his worry lines with the soft pad of her thumb and rose up on her toes to press her lips to his. “I think you should. You can send your letter along with mine. Oh, and my aunt Myrtle wonders if we plan to return by Christmastide, as do my mother and father.”
“Whenever you should like to return, you need only say the word. I am ever at your beck and call for any sort of adventure.”
Gazing up at him, she wondered how she could love someone so deeply in such a short amount of time and, moreover, have him love her in return. Perhaps it was just like Asher had once said to her—that with all the rain they’d encounter something was bound to take deep root and blossom, and for them it was love. Simple as that.
It didn’t seem possible, but she grew more content every day. In fact, especially today.
She was fairly bursting with the secret news she’d had on her lips since morning. One of the maids in the house was also a midwife, and she’d confirmed what Winnifred had been suspecting for the past two months.
“Then again,” he said, cutting through her thoughts with a tone of uncertainty, and drawing her attention to the way his gaze softened on hers, “perhaps we should wait until after our child is born.”
“You cad!” She swatted at him as he held her, though wriggling, in his arms. “How long have you known?”
He chuckled, nipping at the frown on her bottom lip. “Winn, we haven’t spent a single day or night apart. It became fairly apparent when you stopped having your courses.”
“Hush!” she said, blushing to the soles of her feet, searching the garden to see if anyone was near. “You could have made known your suspicions.”
“To be honest, I suspected you were going to tell me this morning before sea bathing, and I was so overjoyed by the very thought that I was swept away in the moment . . . before, during and after.”
“Then you don’t mind lingering here awhile longer?”
“I only want to be wherever I can hold you, where I can feel every beat of your heart, hear every sigh, breathe in your sweet fragrance, and taste every kiss.”
“Even if there’s . . . quite a bit more of me as the months go by?”
Whatever fears she may have had were put to rest as he splayed his hand in a warm caress over her middle. “I cannot imagine anything more beautiful than seeing your lush body swell with my child, and I know I will love you all the more.”
And, in the end, that was all that mattered.