Patricia Rice (53 page)
Authors: Moonlight an Memories
Nicholas cupped her face in his palms and held her gaze. "I love you, Eavin O'Flannery Dupré. I did not think to ever hear myself say those words. I am not yet certain what they mean. I only know I could not face life without you. I will not let you regret what we have done this day."
"I will not give you time for regrets." Pulling his head down to hers, Eavin proceeded to show him what she meant.
They were in the bed before they could shed half their clothes. Determined to do this wedding night properly, Nicholas tugged Eavin's recalcitrant bodice until it fell away, then cursed when it revealed a chemise and a light corset. Using teeth as well as fingers to tear at the ties, and with Eavin's eager help, Nicholas threw the garments to the floor.
Stripped now of all but his breeches, he leaned over her, forcing himself to go slowly, to touch and relearn those places he had loved over the past summer. As he ran his hand over a place he remembered as flat and hollow and discovered it rounded, he lifted his gaze with hope and fear.
"Eavin?"
The catch in his voice said what his words did not. This was what Eavin had been waiting for, the
sharing
that made what they had wrought real. Smiling through her tears, holding Nicholas's hand to her abdomen, Eavin finally admitted what she had feared to say aloud before. "This is the reason I could not come to you. I wanted to be by your side, but I dared not risk your son."
Incredulous, Nicholas spread his fingers over the slight rounding, trying to imagine his child growing there. As he realized the wish he had denied by marrying Eavin had come true after all, he whooped with joy. Grabbing Eavin, he almost fell from the bed as he rolled across it in triumph.
As the cries from the bedroom resounded into the crowded hall where the guests reveled, the French among them laughed knowingly and whispered about the speed of young love. The rough-clad soldiers elbowed one another and eyed the delicate young women floating among them with appreciation.
Standing beside Clyde Brown, Jeremy lifted his wineglass in salute, and the lawman sadly did the same. Preparing to depart, Alphonso turned white, but coming to bid him farewell,
Hélène tapped his arm with her fan. "I daresay Nicholas has just learned his wife carries his child. I'm certain you would have made as good a father as Nicholas is to Jeannette, but it is much better this way,
n'est-ce pas
?"
Looking startled, the young Spaniard agreed, but his gaze still wandered reluctantly in the direction of the bedroom.
And in a bedroom not too far away, where Nicholas's whoops couldn't be heard but his joy was shared, a pale oval face hovered above a grinning wide Irish one, and a slender hand worked a different kind of magic on a man who had never known love.
"You are a mad Irishman," Belle whispered as Michael grabbed her hair and hips and halted her spell with an upward thrust that joined them physically and without a hint of the supernatural.
"And I may never know what you are, Belle, but I would keep you if you'll let me," he murmured huskily as she lowered herself on him.
Almost purring as she heard what she wanted to hear, Belle leaned over to kiss his ear. "I would some day visit this place where you and your sister come from,
mon chéri
. It cannot be the same as the rest of the world."
"Aye, it's the same. It's the leprechaun in us that keeps you guessing." And with that, he turned her beneath him and proved his reality better than her fantasy.
* * *
"Nicholas!" Eavin sighed his name as their bodies rocked with the final throes of their lovemaking. "Sometimes I love you so much that it hurts."
Nicholas lifted his weight with his good hand and stroked her cheek with the other. He imagined her eyes were the color of the wide Irish hills, and he smiled naturally, as he would not have a year earlier. "Let me bear the hurt,
ma petite
. I have been waiting a lifetime to hear those words."
Eavin caressed his stubbled jaw and drew him deeper within her. "You will hear them every night and every day from now on. You will grow tired of hearing them. Someday you will say 'Bah, what nonsense!' and seek a woman who does not talk so much. And I will have to kill her."
Chuckling, Nicholas rolled over and drew her with him, making the most of this opportunity to touch her all over. "No,
ma chérie
, one
petite amie
is all I need, and she is you. I think I know how to make you be quiet when I need to."
Kissing her, he showed her how, until Eavin was laughing and struggling against his ardent attention. "Nicholas! We cannot. Not again. We have guests. This is unconscionable."
"No, this is New Orleans. They will not be surprised if we do not come out for a week. I mean to keep you in here and feed you well until you are plump and round and everyone knows you belong to me in every possible way. I want the whole world to know that you carry my child for me. It makes me..." He whispered a few French phrases in her ear that had Eavin giggling again. "Just to think about it," he finished, and nibbled on her ear.
"I have never seen you like this," she replied in wonder when she was better able to speak. A lighthearted Nicholas was a man she could come to love even more thoroughly than the one she knew now.
"Give me time, and I will show you more." Nicholas gathered her against his shoulder and stroked her breast, admiring the weight of pregnancy and allowing some of the joy to seep deep inside him, healing the wounds of the past. "I cannot promise to be a saint, but I may have to be a politician. The doctors say I may never use this arm for a sword again. My fighting days are over. I married you under false pretenses."
Eavin laughed and smoothed the silken hairs on his chest. "Oh, I wouldn't say that. It isn't your sword arm that interests me. And saints aren't my style, either. If you can settle for a wife who would rather write flaming newspaper articles than gossip, I think I can manage a husband who prefers politics to swords."
"Manage me, will you?" Nicholas rolled over and covered her with his long body to show her just how unmanageable he was, and Eavin laughed and held him as he did just precisely what she wanted, and they were both the better for it.
In the other rooms, the guests ignored the sounds from the master chamber as they discussed the spring planting and the steamboat whistling loudly on the river and the ball to be held in Jackson's honor on the night after next. If one of the brave young soldiers took this opportunity to slip out onto the gallery with the girl of his choice, this minor indiscretion was smiled upon with understanding. After all, was it not an American who had saved the city?
And was it not an American who had tamed the lion Saint-Just? Perhaps all would be well, after all. Glasses clinked, wine disappeared, and outside, dark faces stared at the candles gleaming in two bedrooms, and prayers were whispered to the rising moon, as the memory of jasmine drifted up and away into the starlit heavens.
Author Bio
With several million books in print and
New York Times
and
USA Today's
bestseller lists under her belt, former CPA Patricia Rice is one of romance's hottest authors. Her emotionally-charged contemporary and historical romances have won numerous awards, including the
RT Book Reviews
Reviewers Choice and Career Achievement Awards. Her books have been honored as Romance Writers of America RITA® finalists in the historical, regency and contemporary categories.
A firm believer in happily-ever-after, Patricia Rice is married to her high school sweetheart and has two children. A native of Kentucky and New York, a past resident of North Carolina, she currently resides in St. Louis, Missouri, and now does accounting only for herself. She is a member of Romance Writers of America, the Authors Guild, and Novelists, Inc.
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