“Why think that?Why?What have you done to deserve that?”
She waited, praying he didn’t have some dreadful secret on his soul.
“Perhaps nothing,” he said at last. “But perhaps I persuaded Seraphina into marriage before she was ready. I was an arrogant young fool, sure that every dangling fruit was my just possession.”
“Did she not love you?”
“Yes, but we could have waited. Her mother wished us to. I was impatient, however, and she was dazzled by my rank.”
“And your looks and charm, I’m sure.”
“Feeding me compliments?”
“Truth. Don’t try to deny your gifts. I suspect Seraphina wanted you equally as much as you wanted her, and her mother had no say at all.”
He chuckled. “You could be right. She was willful.”
“And age would have made no difference. You said the baby couldn’t be born. It wasn’t a fault in her, or anything to do with her youth. She could have been forty and suffered the same fate.”
“You’re not advancing your cause,” he pointed out.
“I’m pointing out a truth. There’s always a risk when a woman bears a child, but there’s greater risk when a man goes off to war. That hasn’t put an end to the army or navy.”
“Perhaps it should.”
“Perhaps it should, but it hasn’t and it won’t. More women die of smallpox than in childbirth, even now we have vaccination. I looked that up.”
“Then we should vaccinate everyone.”
“Probably. Of the women who died last year in their childbearing years, fewer than five percent died in childbirth.”
“My darling bluestocking, that’s five percent too many.”
“But think of the ninety-five percent who lived to enjoy their children! Twenty times as many females died of consumption last year. Twenty times! Some may have been older or younger than childbearing years, but that’s a huge number.”
“And a risk that can’t be avoided. It strikes where it will.”
“Very well, consider this, sir. I intend to take my chances and bear children. It will be with you, the man I love, or with some other. Choose.”
“You wretched woman.”
Ariana simply waited.
“You’d do it, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m determined on it. I know I’m asking a lot of you, but my life, my entire happiness, hangs in this moment. I wouldn’t do it if I wasn’t sure your happiness depends on it as well.”
He cradled her face and kissed her. “I surrender, but I’m not eloping. We’ll do it with dignity at Boxstall no sooner than the spring.”
“So that if I bear a child nine months later, there’ll be no raised brows? Challenging, but clever. Merely a few months to wait.”
“Or not. If we’re careful.”
“Careful?”
“I made a vow, but I haven’t been a monk. Or at least...”
“A monk?” she asked in surprise.
