Darius: Lord of Pleasures

Nineteen

“You might consider warning a man before you have mail delivered to his office.” Worth Kettering passed Darius several letters as he spoke.

“I might.” Darius took an elegant Louis XIV chair and sorted through the missives. “Except I’m a bit at sixes and sevens these days. My thanks, though. I think this one is the one we’ve been waiting for.” He opened the single folded piece of paper and scanned the contents.

“Game, set, and match.” He passed it to Kettering, who took the second seat. “She identifies Ainsworthy right down to the scar on his left earlobe where he tried to pierce himself at the age of sixteen. She says there’s another scar on the tip of his…”

Kettering’s smile was not nice. “I can read it. The lady has a memory for detail.”

“‘Hell hath no fury,’” Darius quoted, feeling the first sense of relief he’d known in days. “That’s two of them, and I’m ready to confront the man.”

“And if he calls you out?” Kettering’s tone could not have been more casual. He crossed his feet at the ankles, making the little chair creak. “One doesn’t like to brag on such a thing, but I make a fine second.”

“I’ve promised Vivvie I won’t meet him over pistols or swords, but if he challenges me, my choice of weapons would be these trusty appendages, and the timing as immediate as I can arrange.” Darius held up two clenched fists and met Kettering’s gaze.

“You would have made a fine barrister, Lindsey.”

“And you mean that as a compliment.” Darius abandoned his seat—it had precious little padding for all its elegance—and helped himself to a drop of Kettering’s brandy. “This is an interesting letter from Able Springer—it arrived to my address this morning and explains some forged marriage lines he found reposing in his wife’s workbasket.” He passed the epistle over to Kettering and sipped his drink, finding it very fine potation, indeed.

When he finished reading, Kettering looked up. “Are you ready to take on Longchamps as well as Averett Hill if the man emigrates to America?”

Darius set his glass down and rolled his shoulders. “One feels for Mr. Springer. William didn’t tell me Springer’s mother was married when she gave birth, which means Able is technically the legitimate issue of some other fellow.”

Kettering refolded the letter and set it aside, his expression suggesting he expected it to sprout eight hairy legs momentarily. “So the unfortunate Mr. Springer is married to a woman who forged marriage lines between Longstreet and Springer’s mother. I suppose the intended effect was to posthumously label Vivian’s son a bastard and visit the viscountcy on Springer.”

For which Portia ought to hang, there having been not one dishonorable bone in William Longstreet’s body. “Portia was also apparently in ignorance of the circumstances of her husband’s birth. The result of her efforts would have been to make Able’s mother the bigamist, any marriage between William and her invalid, and William’s subsequent marriages would have remained entirely legal. I do not envy you your profession, Kettering, if issues like these are your daily bread.”

Kettering spared the letter another chary glance, got up, and made a circuit of the room. While Darius took another sip of brandy, Kettering came to rest with his backside against the windowsill, arms folded. “What will you do?”

He would see that Ainsworthy was effectively silenced, marry Vivvie, and devote himself to raising up their child—their children, God willing.

“I would like to say I’ll manage Longchamps for the baron until he’s in a position to take it on himself, but that decision still rests in his mother’s lovely hands. She has another several weeks to make up her mind about who Will’s guardian will be. In those weeks, I shall deal with Ainsworthy in as decisive a manner as possible.”

“Your literary aspirations are threatening Vivian’s peace of mind, Ainsworthy.” Before his guest was seated, Darius closed the parlor-door latch with a soft snick. “Or do we call you Thurmont Ainsward, or perhaps Torvald Ainsely?”

Ainsworthy took a seat amid the comfortable opulence of Wilton House, the London residence of the late, unlamented Earl of Wilton, and present abode of nobody in particular.

“My name is Thurgood Ainsworthy. Says so on my marriage lines, and I’m not threatening anything. I’ve merely been doing some creative writing and attempting to turn a coin or two on it. I’ve a wife and child to support. Surely you can understand how that goes, Lindsey? Or do I forget? You had only yourself to support, and yet you still took coin where you could find it.”

“Prove that,” Darius said easily. “I’m happy to prove you’re a scheming bigamist, whatever your name is.”

Ainsworthy plucked at some imaginary lint on his sleeve, his self-possession likely the natural by-product of having no conscience. “Names can be very similar. England is a big place, and I’m sure those other fellows don’t look a thing like me. Now, how much are you willing to offer should my writing talents be put aside, Lindsey? I’m sure Ventnor would contribute—the cits are inordinately sensitive about these little social tempests. Then, too, I am loathe to queer Vivian’s marital prospects unnecessarily. One does, after all, feel some familial loyalty, and scandal could perhaps be profitably avoided.”

“Familial loyalty?” Nigh six and a half well-muscled feet of Trenton Lindsey, Earl of Wilton, sauntered into the room. “We understand that, don’t we, Darius? Did I hear this man attempt to blackmail you?”

“You did,” Darius said, “except he alluded to a familial connection with Vivian Longstreet, with whom it has not yet been my privilege to form a legal union. Unfortunately for Thoroughgoing Arsewipe here, he was married when he took his vows with Vivian and Angela’s widowed mother. This makes his marriage to the countess invalid, his use of her funds fraudulent, his contracting marriage on Angela’s behalf equally fraudulent, and the farthest thing from a display of family loyalty.”

“Unfortunate,” Trent mused. “You know, the magistrate might have caught wind of this. I understand he’s signing warrants for the arrest of one… what were all those names you said? I happened to glance at the documents when information was laid, and there were at least five names on them.”

“Who is this?” Ainsworthy’s tone was dismissive, but his eyes betrayed the first hint of uncertainty.

“Wilton.” Trent bowed graciously. “Earl of, at your service, whoever you are. Are you going to call him out, Dare?”

Darius cocked his head. “He’s got literary aspirations. I might accidentally blow off his fingers and damage his writing hand rather than put a ball through his black heart.”

Ainsworthy rose. “There’s no need for violence. This is all a simple misunderstanding, probably the work of some jilted wife who married a man with a name like mine. Or several wives, getting up to nonsense because they aren’t properly supervised.”

“Is that so?” Nicholas Haddonfield emerged from the hallway. “Several wives, acting in concert, all with husbands who have names like yours?”

“Right.” Ainsworthy swallowed audibly at the sight of Nick, who topped Trent by a couple of inches of height and at least two stone of brawn. “If you get descriptions, you’ll see the error of your conclusions.”

“Nicholas, Earl of Bellefonte.” Nick grinned menacingly. “Perhaps the man has a point, Darius. You can’t be calling a fellow out on mere whim and speculation.”

“Heaven forefend,” Trent added, “that any brother of mine react so cavalierly when a man’s good name, much less the arrangement of his face, his ability to walk, and possibly his ability to sire children hang in the balance.”

“Well, then.” Darius lifted a document from the sideboard. “Nick, perhaps you’d assist the man out of his breeches? We can clear this up easily enough.”

“Out of my breeches?”

“Rhymes with screeches,” Nick said, approaching Ainsworthy. “Interestingly enough. We’ll settle this right now, and I’m sure Mr. Lindsey will offer apologies all around if he’s wrong.”

Trent grimaced, taking Ainsworthy’s other arm. “One does wonder how a man would acquire such a scar.”

“His wife says”—Darius peered at the document—“his current wife and two previous wives, anyway, say he has a scar on the tip of his cock in the shape of the letter L, running from… what?” He looked over at Ainsworthy, who’d blanched white as ghost.

“Who said I have such a scar?”

“Your present wife, for starters,” Darius said slowly, as if the man were simple. “Bellefonte chatted her up with an officer of the court on hand to take her statement. Sweet woman, if a little too trusting, though Bellefonte’s charm is legendary. She described your scars, the exact shape of various intimate attributes, and a few other details only a wife would know. And by sheerest coincidence, two other women describe their husbands having precisely the same characteristics. Moreover, we went to the trouble of bringing witnesses to those marriages up to Town, Ainsworthy, and they each identified you by sight as the errant husband.

“Now the strangest coincidence of all.” Darius paused, and his tone became flat. “Each woman was well set up until she married you. Her fortune, or as much as she turned over to your keeping, disappeared with you.”

“And correct me if I’m wrong,” Trent said, “but didn’t those women have children to support?”

Nick gave Ainsworthy’s arm a nasty little shake. “And wasn’t one of them expecting when her dear spouse accompanied the entire harvest of wool into London, never to be seen again?”

“All right!” Ainsworthy glanced nervously from one man to another. “I’ve been unlucky in love. It’s not a crime to leave your wife.”

“It isn’t,” Darius agreed, “though whether you leave or not, she’s still your wife, and it is a crime to marry again while the first wife is extant. Moreover, you owe your deserted wife support at all times during the marriage, and you surely owe your own child the same.”

“You cannot expect me to sit here and listen to this nonsense,” Ainsworthy sputtered.

“You can read the sworn statements,” Darius said, “but you won’t convince us we’re in error without dropping your breeches. You can let him go, gentlemen, though I’d guard the exits.”

Nick took one doorway, Trent the other.

Ainsworthy rose, tugging down his waistcoat with a righteous jerk. “Name your seconds, Lindsey. I am at your service.”

“Present company. Yours?”

Ainsworthy’s chin came up. “That will take some time. Honorable challenges must be handled delicately.”

“Well, then, the choice of weapons is mine, I believe. But then, perhaps you’d know more about this than I would?”

“I know about it,” Nick said cheerfully. “Choice of weapons goes to the challenged. Time and date at the mutual convenience of the parties, location generally chosen by the seconds for discretion. I’m feeling very discreet right here and now.”

“This is a premeditated assault, nothing more,” Ainsworthy spat. “Three against one, and the two of you titled and immune from prosecution.”

“We’re not immune, are we?” Nick looked adorably confused to ponder such a thing.

“Why, no,” Trent replied. “We’re prosecuted in the Lords, if we’re caught, except I’m not sure what our crime would be, since we’re not touching the man, are we?”

“I’m not.” Nick shrugged massive shoulders. “Darius, what’s your pleasure?”

“Either wave the goods before witnesses, Ainsworthy, or name your seconds. Makes no difference to me.”

It took another hour, but two men eventually posted from the nearest club, and the matter was taken out to the mews.

“Rules of engagement?” one of Ainsworthy’s reluctant seconds asked.

“I won’t kill him,” Darius said. “Trent, you’ll make sure I don’t?”

Trent’s expression became considering. “You might regret letting him live,” he said quietly. “He preys on women and children.”

“Don’t let me kill him,” Darius said, his gaze going from Nick to Trent and back. “Vivvie deserves better than a man who kills with his bare hands, whatever other crimes I’ve committed.”

“All right,” Ainsworthy’s man said. “You fight until one man is done in, by agreement of the seconds. I have to say, I can’t like this.”

“You think I’d give him a chance to tamper with my guns?” Darius asked as he began to strip from the waist up. “Or disappear with his present wife’s remaining funds? She has a child, by the way, much like her predecessors, though the boy isn’t Ainsworthy’s get.”

“One hopes it wouldn’t come to that,” the man replied.

“And one hopes it needn’t be said,” Darius added, “but this is a bare-knuckle fight, no weapons. Not knives, not cravats used to strangle, not rings used to cut.”

“A clean fight.” The fellow hustled over to Ainsworthy and gestured for Darius’s opponent to remove his several rings.

The circle was drawn in the cold dirt, and as will happen, the stable boys from the nearby mews soon gathered, then some other men coming to fetch their horses, until the circle was ringed with male spectators. Oddly enough, no one was willing to bet against Darius, and the crowd became strangely silent as Nick and one of Ainsworthy’s seconds gave the signal to come out swinging.

Darius toyed with his opponent silently, letting Ainsworthy start with a glancing blow to Darius’s ribs. The pain was a trifling thing, not enough to make a man intent on his objective blink.

A series of blows in rapid succession all over Ainsworthy’s lily-white midsection conveyed Darius’s initial sentiments.

“Damn, he’s quick.”

“Accurate too.”

“Blighter’s mad,” another man said. “Look at them eyes. Barkin’ bloody mad.”

Nick and Trent exchanged a look at that comment. Darius’s response was to land a single blow to the jaw that left Ainsworthy staggering. Darius backed away, despite all instinct screaming to the contrary, until the man was righted by the spectators and turned back into the circle.

When Ainsworthy was pawing the air with his fists again, Darius started in once more. For Vivvie, for the baron, for Angela, for the wives, their children, for William… Blow after blow fell, the sound and feel of each reverberating through Darius’s soul like a tocsin.

“Relentless as a mill wheel, that one.”

“A damned maniac.”

“Look at his eyes, lad. He’ll kill the idiot, see if he don’t.”

“Poor bastard shouldn’t have crossed that mad bugger.”

Another single hard right, only this time Ainsworthy went down. Darius didn’t back away immediately but hovered, until Nick and Trent marched him backward, while the rest of the crowd tried to jeer Ainsworthy to his feet.

“Have some damned pride, man!”

“On your feet, boyo. You’ve yet to land a decent shot.”

“Stay down, unless ye want him to finish ye for certain.”

The seconds conferred while Ainsworthy hung on all fours, lungs heaving. When he managed to get to his feet, he spat in Darius’s direction.

“Bad form!”

“Make him pay for that. This is me own mews he spat on!”

“Fetch the parson. The skinny bastard’s done for now.”

Darius waited, letting Ainsworthy weave closer, then closer still. With exaggerated care, Ainsworthy pulled back an arm, and while he was choosing his moment—a scientific fighter, clearly—Darius hit him with a right jab that sent him into the dirt again, unable to rise.

“Show’s over,” Nick said meaningfully. “Back to work, lads, before the King’s man reads us the Riot Act.”

Somebody tossed a cold bucket of water on Ainsworthy, while Trent threw his greatcoat over Darius’s naked shoulders.

“Trent?”

Trent put an arm around his brother and bent close. “I’m here.”

“Get me away from this place,” Darius said, chest working like a bellows. “I want to kill him. I want to put my hands around his miserable throat and choke the life from him. I want to kill them all.”

Trent started walking Darius toward the townhouse. “Kill who-all?”

“The damned skulking, bastard predators,” Darius panted. “Ainsworthy, Wilton, even the women.”

“I know.” Trent hugged his brother closer. “But you didn’t, Dare. You wouldn’t let yourself.”

“Trent?”

“Love?”

“It felt good to beat the shit out of him. It felt wonderful. I want to do it all over again. I’m going to be sick.”

Trent hovered, despite having obligations out at Crossbridge, and Darius let him hover for two days.

On the third day, they rose and went to the docks to watch as Ainsworthy scurried onto a ship bound for Boston.

“How many warrants did you say were drawn up against him?” Trent posed the question as the gangplank was raised and the ship drifted out toward the current in midchannel.

“Five felonies at last count, and at least three angry women are out for his blood. Ariadne seemed mostly relieved, but her fortune was still largely intact.”

Darius stood beside his brother, the bracing wind off the river slapping ropes against hulls and making unfurled sails luff madly. For a few minutes, they watched the ship slip farther from the dock.

“Does it help, to know you’ve hounded him out of the country?”

“It helps.”

To see the ship depart helped a great deal, like weight taken from Darius’s chest, like somebody had turned up the lamps and opened a window. Beating the stuffing out of Ainsworthy had helped too, as had having Trent and Nick’s unquestioning support. It all helped—but not enough.

“You’re for Longchamps?” Trent asked.

Darius nodded as Ainsworthy’s vessel caught the current and began to turn downriver.

“You have a special license?”

Another nod.

“Then what the bloody hell are you waiting for?”

“It’s like this.” Darius addressed the small bundle in his arms—though perhaps not quite as small as even a few weeks ago. “I can’t very well ask permission of anybody else, but I feel the need to ask permission of somebody, and you’re the only fellow on hand.”

The baby gurgled happily and grabbed Darius’s nose.

“None of that strong-arm business now.” Darius retrieved the paternal beak from the child’s grasp. “This is serious stuff, your lordship. Baby Baron, your mama calls you, and you probably like it, don’t you?”

The infant made another swipe at Darius’s nose, but Darius was getting wise to his son’s tricks.

“So you won’t mind too much if I marry your mama?” He settled into a rocking chair with the baby. “You won’t get colicky and difficult because I love you both until I’m mad with it? You have scared years off my life, boy, just by being precious and dear. Say something, why don’t you?”

Except Darius knew damned good and well the baby was far too young to offer any words of comfort or encouragement. A child this young didn’t even understand—

“By God, you’re smiling at me,” he whispered. “You’re grinning like a sailor hitting his first tavern on shore leave. You, sir, are a rascal.”

The child beamed at him some more, and the toothless grin was the greatest blessing a man bent on courtship might have wished for.

Vivian deserved better than the not-always-so-very-Honorable Darius Lindsey, there was no arguing that, but she was at least fond of her lover. She understood him, and the comfort of that was immeasurable.

“You have to know something,” Darius said to the child now drowsing in his arms. “I’m going to be a papa to you in every way that counts, provided your mama will have me. When you are a grown fellow, we may have to explain a few oddments to you, about why you resemble me but inherited all manner of wealth and consequence from dear William. He loved you too, and he loved your mama. I’d stake my life on that.”

Darius fell silent, sending up a prayer that William was reunited with Muriel and their sons, and beaming down from some happy cloud.

“Your mother and I will muddle through those details as best we can at the time—if she’ll have me.”

The child fell asleep, and Darius lingered a long while, admiring his son—and gathering his courage.

A new mother got used to the prodding of instinct, even in the middle of the night—maybe especially in the middle of the night. Vivian rose from her nice warm bed, slipped into her mules and night robe, and headed for the nursery down the hall. A glance at the eight-day clock told her Will had nursed not two hours earlier, but some awareness tickling at the back of her mind had awakened her.

She opened the door to the nursery and was greeted by a current of cozy air. The fire was kept going here, lest Baby Baron take a chill.

Baby Baron had taken something worse than a chill, for the child was not in his bassinet. Panic sent Vivian’s heart hammering against her ribs in an instant—until she noticed a long, dark form sprawled on the daybed against a shadowed wall.

Darius Lindsey lay fully clothed but for his boots, fast asleep without so much as a blanket to cover him. His hand cradled a small bundle on his chest, one wrapped in a pale receiving blanket with an embroidered hem of peacock feathers.

Her menfolk, no doubt worn out from exchanging confidences. The sight of them in slumber, both with hair of the exact same dark shade, did something queer to her heart.

“You have been out carousing on your papa’s chest long enough,” she crooned to the baby. She would have lifted him into her arms, except the instant she touched the child, Darius’s eyes flew open, and his grip on the child became implacable.

Then, “Vivvie.” He bundled the infant up and passed him to her. “I was telling Will a story. He wore me out.”

The baby yawned, a mighty effort from such a wee lad, and subsided into sleep.

“You’re worn out from riding out from London by moonlight,” Vivian chided. She took the rocking chair, while Darius rolled to his side and propped his head on his fist.

“What woke you?”

“You.”

“Should I have sent another note, Vivvie?”

“I rather liked the note you did send, and I wish I could have seen Ainsworthy off on his travels myself. Five felonies has a nice, permanently inspiring ring to it.”

Darius rolled to his back, his gaze on the ceiling until he turned his head to spear her with a look. “A permanently intimidating ring to it, I hope. I put out his lights first, Vivvie. Rather decisively, and he won’t be scribbling any fiction for the foreseeable future.”

This recitation of violence was another one of Darius’s tests of her understanding. Vivian cuddled the baby closer before she answered. “I hope you landed a few blows for me and for Angela. I should have liked to kick Ainsworthy in a particular location when you already had him retching in the dirt.”

Darius’s brows twitched. “Would you really?”

“Hard, repeatedly.”

He shifted around on the bed, sat up, and visually located his boots but didn’t put them on. “Why, Vivvie? You are the one person who was able to dodge Thurgood’s schemes, to outwit him and to equip yourself with allies who could best him.”

Vivian wanted to cuddle the baby closer, and then realized she’d commit the mortal sin of Waking the Baby if she didn’t put the little fellow in his bassinet soon. “Will you tuck him in?”

Darius rose and prowled out of the shadows to regard Vivian in the rocker. “He looks very content where he is. One is loathe to disturb a fellow at his pleasures.”

“One had best do as the fellow’s mother asks,” Vivian replied, handing Darius the baby, “unless one wants to answer for the consequences.”

Darius accepted the bundle of baby and cuddled him close enough to run his nose over a sleeping-baby cheek. “He bears your scent, Vivvie. I am jealous of a mere scrap of a lad.”

The tenderness of Darius’s smile as he beheld that lad was enough to break Vivian’s heart all over again. She had never thought to behold such a thing, not in the middle of the night, Darius in his stocking feet and looking so tousled and dear she could weep with it.

“If you two fellows are going to be up until all hours, I am not going to be a part of your folly.” She struggled to her feet, only to find Darius’s hand under her elbow.

He stood there next to her, the baby cradled against his chest, his expression unfathomable. “Vivvie, will you marry me?”

She sat right back down.

“You ask me that now? Here?” It was all she could think to say in reply, though he’d spoken words she’d longed to hear.

“I had to ask the baron’s permission—and there was that business with Ainsworthy.” Darius did not put the child in the bassinet, but rather, took up residence with the infant on the footstool beside Vivian’s rocker. “Our situation is all backward, you see, and the child was the only one I could think to ask.”

“For my hand?”

“For permission to court you, yes. You and I were intimate, though I could not court you. I hope we became friends, then the baby arrived, and we are lovers—you said that—and it’s all muddled, but I have the sense if you’ll marry me and be patient with me, then I can get it turned right at last.”

He fell silent, kissed the baby’s forehead, and said again more softly, “I can get myself turned right at last.”

Vivian stroked a hand over his hair. There was a flaw in his reasoning, somewhere, somewhere… but not in his conclusion.

Insight struck, but she took a minute to gather her courage. “Tuck the baby in, Darius.”

Darius rose, gently laid the child in his bassinet, and tucked in the blankets. “Good night, little baron. Sweet dreams, and know your papa loves you.” Rather than resume his perch on Vivian’s stool, Darius picked up his boots with his left hand and winged his right arm. “I will see you tucked in too, my lady. The hour is late, and you should be abed.”

What did that mean? She took his arm. She did not intend to simply capitulate, though it was tempting. If they got to expressing themselves emphatically over this will-you-marry-me business, then they needed privacy.

The corridor was chilly, and Vivian’s room not much warmer. “Come to bed, Darius, and we will discuss your latest question.”

“My proposal?” He sat on the side of the bed to pull off his stockings. “When you invite a fellow to bed to discuss his proposal, you do know he’s inclined to be encouraged?”

But cautious, too. The caution, the hesitation to presume, was there in his eyes.

“I cannot be held responsible for a new father’s queer starts.” Vivian took off both her night robe and her nightgown, and hopped onto the bed in a state of complete undress. In a moment, Darius joined her, equally unclad.

He made no move to take her in his arms. “Talk to me, Vivvie.”

Beneath the covers, Vivian reached across the cool expanse of the mattress and took his hand in hers. “I am the daughter of an earl. You are the son of an earl. A match between us would be seen as appropriate, if precipitous, given William’s recent death. I am a widow with a child to rear. You’re a spare. Nobody would raise an eyebrow at your becoming Will’s guardian, particularly not when Viscount Longstreet himself chose you for the child’s godfather.”

Darius’s fingers laced with hers. “You’re naked in bed with me, Vivvie, and spouting logic. I am not encouraged by that at all.”

“Hear me out, because you are inclined to spout logic, sir, to do the sensible, selfless thing when it makes no sense at all.”

She was getting ahead of herself. Vivian turned on her side to face him, keeping her hand in his. “You love your son. I have every conviction you loved the child before he was born, loved the idea of him and the possibility of him. Fiercely, without limit.”

A cautious nod, then Darius rolled to his side to face her too. “Go on.”

“If you are offering marriage to me because it ensures you become Will’s guardian, then be at peace, Darius, because Able will not contest your right to serve in his stead. He assured me of this before he and Portia took ship. If you are marrying me to keep me safe from Ainsworthy, then I think we need not fret he’ll trouble me from points unknown. If you are marrying me out of duty, as William did, then I can promise you, I have no interest in that sort of union, even with my lover.”

Darius traced her hairline with one finger. “I am not marrying you for any of those reasons, though they are sound enough, and I considered them. I hope you consider them too when you give me your answer.”

“Why do you want to marry me, Darius Lindsey?”

He brushed the pad of his thumb over her lips. “My reasons are selfish, Vivian. For once in my life, I must be selfish—purely self-interested. I have to be with you. You keep me safe from my worst impulses, from bad judgments and poor choices. You’ve hauled me out of a thicket where every turn was a wrong turn and I was contemplating dire alternatives far too soberly. I was so lost—”

He stopped and kissed her fingers one by one, and she waited for him to sort himself out.

“I cannot be the man I am supposed to be without you, Vivian. Unless I can love you, I will remain lost. I tried making my way on my own, relying solely on my own wits and wiles, and it was… you saw what I became. Please, Vivvie, let me love you. Let me be the one to love you as your husband, as your friend, as your lover, as anything—” He stopped and swallowed, closed his eyes, then opened them and looked straight at her. “I love you. I’m begging you to marry me because I love you and only because I love you.”

This time, his thumb brushed a tear from Vivian’s cheek. She scooted across the mattress, into his arms, and addressed the muscular expanse of his chest.

“I married William because he was my only option, and I was his best hope of companionship in his declining years. I married for duty and expedience. I could not bear another such marriage, Darius, not even with you. I was a biddable, unpaid nurse-companion in an ugly dress. I am not… I am not the woman I am supposed to be, unless I am with you. I had no courage. I had no fortitude. I had no trust. I was nobody’s mother, nobody’s lioness, nobody’s lover.”

She had to pause while he used the edge of the sheet to wipe her tears. “I want to marry you, Mr. Lindsey, desperately, to be all those things you showed me how to be, and to be your friend too, but mostly”—another pause, while she forced herself to look up and meet his gaze—“mostly, I want to marry you—I need to marry you—because you are the man I love, and the man who loves me.”

His embrace was fierce and cherishing as he shifted over her. “I do love you. I love you past all reason, to madness and past madness to unshakable sanity.” He kissed her forehead and her eyebrows. “I love you until I want to shout with it, until I could beat my chest for all to see.” He kissed her mouth, her nose, and again, more lingeringly, her mouth. “I love you until I could weep with it, Vivvie. I love you, I love—”

She kissed him, tenderly, using means other than words to match his verbal effusions.

In the hours, days, and years to follow, they resorted to words, and to those other means frequently, until the baron had three sisters and four brothers, until both Averett Hill and Longchamps were known for their generous hospitality and comfort, until even young people who thought themselves quite expert on the subject declared that The Honorable Darius Lindsey and his Lady Vivian carried on well into their golden years like a pair of newly besotted lovers.

Which, in fact, they did, each day and night of their marriage—exactly like a pair of newly besotted lovers.