Untamable Rogue (Formerly: A Christmas Baby) (14 page)

Lark laughed, which cheered him as much as it annoyed him. “With my knee at your knockers, I think not. One good shot and you would have been at my mercy, much as you were the other morning when I threw you from my bed in that precise way.”

Ash remembered that occasion well enough. He hurt for remembering it. But had she bested him on their wedding night at the pub? He thought not. Well, possibly, though not as well as with the pistol later, of course.

“At least have the decency to call my man parts by their proper names, if you please. “Knockers” are what rogues call women’s breasts, “ballocks” are the proper word for a man’s … resources.”

She threw open the door to the root cellar and proceeded down the steps. “Fine, then I had you by the ballocks. Feel better now?”

CHAPTER TEN

In the chill dank underground storage beneath the scullery, Ash watched with no little amusement as his bold as brass bride rooted through a bin of carrots, then one of parsnips, to see if she could find a vegetable that matched the size of his not inconsiderable manhood at its saluting best. She began by holding up a parsnip the size of a pizzle on a two year old.

Ash shook his head in denial with regret for her sake and relief for his own.

“This one then?”

“Too thick on the bottom, too pointed at the top.”

“But the length?”

“Too short.”

“Bloody Hell,” said the Lady Blackburne, falling into her guttersnipe vocabulary as she went back to searching for a root to match his own.

She chose one, looked it over, swore like a pub drunk, and made to put it back, but after a bit of hesitation, she raised the biggest parsnip Ash had ever seen in his life and watched for his reaction as if with baited breath.

Ash considered it for a moment, to make his bride squirm, saw her eyes grow wide, and her face go pale. He lost the fight. “Too big.”

“Thank the bloody gods,” she said and then she beamed, a sincerely beautiful sight, until she frowned. “You frightened me intentionally, did you not?”

Ash failed to answer but hid his smile and lowered himself to a wooden crate. He crossed his arms to watch, beside himself enchanted by the sight of her. Perhaps they had not quite come to a stage of comfort between them while discussing the sexual act, but this must surely be a first step toward marital intimacy, however skewed her approach.

He considered searching with her, for just the right sized representation of his manhood, but he preferred to feast his eyes on the child-woman before him. Even in a dress, stained and tattered though it had become in the hour she’d worn it, she moved like a boy, likely from long practice, and he could clearly see that skirts hampered her progress in a way that annoyed the devil out of her. Another notion that charmed him.

Yet there was a vulnerable womanliness to her as well, which called to him, something in her that needed nurturing, or healing, he was not certain which. He knew only that she seemed more broken than he, and he wanted suddenly to be the man to heal her.

She raised another parsnip, and another, and Ash continued shaking his head, keeping his amusement at bay.

Even at rest, he was, unfortunately for her peace, but providential for her pleasure, rather well endowed, judging by many—though not all—of the comrades he’d seen in the buff during their frequent river-baths in the army.

“Ashford Blackburne,” said his bride, “you are alarming the devil out of me. I wish you would come and help before I run screaming into the wilderness.”

“Surely the Larkin McAdams who bested me on our wedding night is not admitting fear,” Ash said as he rose and approached her.

“Certainly not.” She straightened her spine. “Only that the prelude to fear is beginning to … sneak upon me with snapping teeth, and if you do not put period to my torture, the mere anticipation of alarm will get the better of me.”

“I see,” Ash said, searching, for all the world, through a season’s worth of parsnips for one the exact same size as his ponderous pride.

Finally, he came upon a fearfully large parsnip, too large actually, and held it forth for her perusal.

Lark made to swoon as if in a comedy on the stage, delighting him with her antics. But when he caught her sobering gaze, he snapped an inch off its top, which went a great distance toward relieving the true anxiety she tried valiantly to hide.

“For my lady wife,” said Ash, presenting it with a bow and a flourish like a handful of posies, “for your delectable and insatiable pleasure.”

Larkin took the respectable parsnip, regarded it with silent assessment, then she gripped it as she had gripped his lance, testing its length, ran her hand up and down, down and up—growing him, if she but knew it, as if ‘twere his root she stroked.

Then sighing in loud resignation, she placed the prototypical parsnip in her pocket and led her silent way up the steep granite steps of the dank root-cellar and out into the spring sunshine.

They walked the perimeter of the house after that, she rather forlorn, for longer than he’d like. “You still haven’t given me a full tour inside the house,” she said, making an effort at turning her mind, he thought, as she regarded the front of his bay-windowed, brick-faced home with curiosity. “What rooms occupy the matching towers at either end?”

“The tower rooms are all circular,” he said. The east tower boasts a library on the main floor, and above it my study, down the hall from the master bedchamber suite, and below it, on the first floor, a small receiving room. The west tower rooms are used for … storage … mainly.”

Lark nodded and turned unexpectedly toward the spinney, but she passed it and continued on toward the horse chestnut tree beyond, where she had hidden the day of her reading lesson. She climbed back into the crook she preferred, tearing a ruffle from her bodice in the process and patted the limb beside her.

Ash climbed up, oddly honored to be invited, wondering if she wanted more than to rest. The last time he’d joined her, she had ended by tossing him to the ground, a rather significant parody, actually, of their courtship to date, now that he thought of it.

“What is it called?” she asked, her hand in her parsnip pocket. “This making of a babe?”

Before answering, Ash settled himself with his arms around her, glad she let him, because he believed that embracing her whenever he could might help her become less fearful of his touch.

“The most respectable term is, “making love.”“

“But we do not love each other.”

“Right. We do not even know each other very well, do we, which will change in time, but I like you, Lark. I like you better than either of the two brides who jilted me.”

“How fortunate for me.”

“No, the fortune is mine. I never knew I could like a woman; much less the one I married. You are quite the revelation. We will make you into a fine lady. You shall see. I will hire a score of tutors, but for now, what I need most from you is for us to make a babe.”

“It does not seem right,” she said.

“What doesn’t?”

“Making a baby to save an estate.”

“Ash sighed and smoothed his hand away from her dress, where he’d been about to place it close to her breast. After her words, touching her did not seem right of a sudden. “I had not thought of it in quite those terms.”

“Let us make it some promises and write them down.”

“It?”

“The baby we’re going to have. Do you know how to write?” she asked.

“Yes, and I shall have someone teach you that too. Wait, what good will promises do if we decide later to go our separate ways—your suggestion, you will remember.”

“For my part, I would evoke that condition only in extreme circumstances. In my own way, I am a woman of honor, as I know you to be a man of integrity, therefore, I feel justified in making promises that I am confident we will both keep.”

Ash did not feel justified in vouching for his
own
integrity, which made him wonder why he felt comfortable depending upon hers. Nevertheless, her words presented him with a modicum of relief in the face of her earlier inflexibility. He nodded. “What kind of promises shall we make it then?”

“We promise it we will … feed it whenever it’s hungry, change it’s bottom, keep it warm with clothes and a snug home to live in. We will promise to embrace it and let it cry on our shoulders when it must. That’s important, I discovered today.” She regarded him. “What would you have liked your parents to do for you that they neglected?”

“Tell me they liked me, even though I was not normally a well-behaved nor even a good son. Teach me to be responsible.”

“Oh yes.” She sat straighter. “We will definitely like our baby, though we might not always like what he or she does, and we shall tell it so. We will also teach it to be responsible.” She touched his arm. “We have to stop calling our future baby, “it,” you know. We shall write two letters, shall we, one to a boy and one to a girl, so we may present the right letter when the time comes. What shall we name them?”

“Them?”

“A boy and a girl. We shall choose a name for each.”

“Ah, I see.” Ash was enchanted.

“And Christmas,” she added. “We have to promise that in the letter; we’ll give them Christmas every year, because my father did not, though I heard of it and yearned for it.”

“Christmas,” Ash said. “Splendid idea. And their names are? Let us pick them now,” he said. If she knew more about her children, he wondered, would she be ready to let him start begetting them? He certainly hoped so. “Are there any names in particular that you like?”

She did not have to think for long. “Isobel is the loveliest girl’s name I ever heard. It sounded like music the first time I heard it. Can we have a daughter named Isobel?”

That sobered him. A daughter named Isobel—it felt so real, frighteningly real. “Any special reason you picked that name?”

“It was my mother’s and she deserved the kind of life we’re giving our own Isobel.”

Our own Isobel. “Fine,” Ash said, feeling his cravat tighten. “Isobel, it is, and for a boy?”

“I’d like a son named Zachary. Perhaps we should have one of each.”

Ash crushed his bride in his arms, without thought, and gave in to the sort of inner merriment that reminded him of children rolling down grassy hills in sunshine. Then he stilled and sat back and regarded her curiously, as if seeing “inside” Larkin Rose for the very first time.

He placed a finger beneath her chin and lifted it until their eyes met and held, and he touched his lips to hers, a teasing flutter at first, cool silk grazing warm, until within the kiss, almost without conscious thought, he passed the fullness of his feelings, whatever they might be, to her without words.

She nodded, the movement of her head so slight he might have missed it, and he thought she might be as pleasantly confused by the exchange. “Thank you for liking me,” she said her throat working. “I do not believe anyone has before, other than my sister. Why do you?”

“Why do I like you? For … naming our children before you let me beget them, for that parsnip in your pocket, even for siding with my grandfather, though I should put you over my knee for that.”

“Yeek,” Lark jumped from the tree and ran.

Ash jumped as well to chase after her, as ever, and he could have sworn that when she found an idyllic spot, she let him catch her.

They fell to the ground and kissed in the lavender field beneath the warm spring sun. Rolling in tall grass, and beside fragrant azure blossoms, they explored each other’s mouths, with lips and tongues, as if that kiss had been the first and she wanted more. They slipped curious hands into each other’s clothes, undid a few buttons and gave into an afternoon of unexpected laughter and erotic exploration.