Maxton sheepishly pulled up his breeches, tying them off. “That is not true.”
“It is.”
“That is not fair. I had very high hopes for this interlude, as you know.”
“We will never have a son this way.”
“Is that all you want? My son?”
Andressa laughed as she brushed at her skirts, smoothing them. “Of course not,” she said. “You are all I dream of, my love. But next time, we shall have to wait until the children are most definitely asleep and escape to some chamber where they cannot find us. Mayhap, we shall go to the next city simply to be sure.”
Maxton laughed softly as he watched her cross the floor. From the woman he met those years ago, that terribly starved pledge, to the woman she was today was like looking at two different people. She had filled out over the years, with beautiful, full breasts, a long torso, and a womanly shape that every man she came across noticed. Maxton had been forced to threaten and scowl at more men than he could count once they caughtsight of his elegant wife with her beautiful face and delicious figure.
He considered himself a lucky man, indeed.
“We shall revisit this later tonight,” he assured her, turning away from the door in the hope that his full erection would quickly die down. “I promise you, later tonight when they are all asleep.”
Andressa cast him a very dubious expression before unbolting the door and opening it. Instantly, three little girls bum-rushed in, as they’d been leaning against the panel. While the eldest one, Danae, stopped at her mother, the other two ran straight to Maxton. He bent over, scooping four-year-old Melisandra and almost three-year-old Ceri into his arms. Ceri was, indeed, weeping and Maxton kissed her wet face.
“Now, now,” he said. “Why the tears, sweetheart? There is no need to cry.”
Melisandra, her arms wrapped around her father’s neck, looked at her sister seriously. “She slapped me,” she said flatly. “I slapped her back.”
Maxton’s eyebrows lifted as he realized the situation. “I see,” he said. “Ceri, you must be kind to your sister. No slapping. We have discussed that.”
True to form, Ceri ignored him. She was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed cherub who was extremely smart. She knew how to get around her father. Rubbing her eyes, she lay her head on his shoulder, weeping softly, and Maxton knew that was the end of his scolding. That was all he could manage. As he looked at his wife, who simply shook her head in resignation, another figure appeared in the doorway.
It was Cullen, clad in mail and weapons. He looked at the little girls in the room with surprise.
“I thought they were sleeping,” he said.
Andressa sighed heavily. “You know better than that,” she said even as she cradled her eldest against her. “No one sleeps when they are supposed to around here.”
Cullen grinned; he’d been serving Maxton since the man had taken possession of his new property of Chalford Hill and was essentially one of the family now. He, too, knew that the Loxbeare brood never slept when they were supposed to. Even so, Chalford Hill was a remarkable place to raise a family, and Maxton and Andressa had the start of a big one. The fortress was also a very rich property with a large castle, something that Maxton had turned into a military outpost for William Marshal.
But there was a history to that.
After the events at St. Blitha those years ago, it had been Maxton, Cullen, Kress, Achilles, Alexander, and Christopher de Lohr who had gathered the army to oust Andressa’s aunt from the property. But before Maxton unleashed all of that military might and risked damaging the place, he’d had a meeting with the old woman and offered her a good deal of money to vacate the place as well as the promise he would not arrest her for stealing her niece’s inheritance.
As it turned out, Hildeth du Bose was very greedy, and knowing she could not fight off such an army, she readily agreed to the proposal and vacated the castle without incident. Now, she lived somewhere in the south of France, or did the last they’d heard. In truth, Maxton didn’t care what happened to the old woman and Andressa surely didn’t care, so she was forgotten nearly the moment she’d left Chalford Hill.
Andressa had regained what was rightfully hers without a drop of blood being shed, but the caveat was that it became a military installation, and a powerful one. All three children had been born here, including Danae, who had been born only six weeks after the incident at St. Blitha. Maxton had no sooner married the woman and return her to her ancestral home whenshe gave birth in the middle of the night, quite quickly and with very little trouble, to a small but healthy baby girl.
Maxton had immediately been in love.
It hadn’t mattered that Danae Eleanor of Loxbeare hadn’t been his biological daughter. He couldn’t have loved her more if she had been. All that mattered was that she was healthy, as was her mother, and Maxton and Andressa embarked on a new marriage with a new baby.
It was everything either of them could have hoped for.
Even now, as Maxton held two more daughters in his arms, he thought quite possibly that no man had ever been happier or more content. Life was good, and everything was wonderful, but as he stood there and reflected on his good fortune, he noticed a missive in Cullen’s hand.
“What did you bring?” he asked the man. “Did a rider come?”
Cullen nodded. “You did not hear the sentries?”
Maxton cleared his throat softly, glancing at his wife, who was fighting off a grin. “Nay,” he said. “I was… occupied.”
Cullen smirked as he broke the seal on the parchment. “It’s from The Marshal,” he said, carefully unfolding it. His gaze fell on the words written and, quickly, his eyebrows lifted in surprise. “It seems that The Marshal is raising an army to go to Ireland.”
