She managed another nod without the room swimming or upending. Her heart was not pounding nearly as furiously, but she still felt strangely feverish, her upper lip covered with a fine sheen of perspiration.
He kissed her cheek, his expression concerned. “I will fetch you a cool cloth for your brow.”
She did not want him to leave her side, but nor could she manage much coherent speech at the moment. So she watched as he crossed the room in long-legged strides, the simple dressing gown she had gifted him flapping about his calves.
I am going to have his child.
The thought hit her, sudden and jarring.
Part of her was overjoyed at the notion. A child! A babe that was hers and Robin’s. She had yearned to be a mother for so long. Here was the opportunity she had been denied in her unhappy union with Longleigh. And yet part of her was terrified. How would the duke react when he discovered the news? How would it change their plans? Worse, what if Robin did not want another child, having loved and lost?
He had been willing to get a stranger with child and then leave, had he not? Was it because, like Tilly, he’d been left with no other choice save that which Longleigh offered? Or had leaving his child behind not mattered to him?
So many questions, ones she had never considered before, washed over her.
Robin returned and sank to his knees before her, a damp cloth in hand. Tenderly, he eased it over her brow, her cheeks. He tended to her as if she were made of porcelain instead of hewn from flesh and bone.
Such care.
“Thank you,” she murmured as he passed the cloth down her throat, leaving her feeling refreshed, her stomach somewhat mollified.
“Do you think you can manage a sip of water? Just a small one?” he asked.
“A small one, yes.”
“Good.” Another kiss to her forehead, and he was gone, returning with cool, refreshing water from the faucet in the bathroom, a filled glass.
She found herself desperately thirsty, eager to wash down the sour sickness in her mouth. Tilly took the glass from him and brought it to her lips.
“Small sips to start,” he cautioned.
So protective.
She obeyed, taking a tiny sip and waiting to see how her stomach accepted the addition. Better. Another sip, then another. The water was as refreshing as the cloth had been. The room was no longer spinning, and she no longer felt as if she were going to swoon.
But her worries remained.
“You have done this before,” she observed, wondering again at his past.
He clenched his jaw, then cleared his throat. “Yes. Amelia was similarly ill when she was first carrying Arthur.”
And of course he would have taken care of the woman he loved, the mother of his babe. His wife.
It was wrong of Tilly, she knew, to experience the abrupt pang of jealousy as she thought of his past love. But she could not help herself. She wanted to be Robin’s wife. Oh how she wished their situation were different. Innocent. That she was not the wife of another man.
“You loved her,” she said.
“I did.” His response was simple.
Achingly poignant.
“I am sorry.”
“It was years ago now.”
“Your son—”
“Years ago,” he interrupted, repeating the phrase.
