“Quite certain,” she said, trying to hide a smile. “I wasn’t sure until, well—”
Marianne seized his hand and brought it beneath the hem of her dress, sliding it up to her belly.
“Stay there a moment. I’ve experienced the quickening.”
Frederick was all amazement. Quickening already would mean that they may have made their baby, why, that first disastrousnight when he’d tried so hard not to scare his bride. Or the night he’d fucked her repeatedly on the forest floor.
“But you’re still so trim,” he said, terrified of how happy he was at the news. A child! Already!
“I’ll grow round yet, just you wait,” she said wryly.
“I’ll give you every nut in my possession,” he growled, nipping at his wife’s lips.
Marianne laughed, the sound now as beautiful to him as those notes of the harp. What a miracle she was, his duchess, and she was all his.
Well, perhaps notallhis, not now.
“Here!” she cried, grabbing his hand and moving it to where the babe fluttered in her belly. “You made me laugh, and the baby awakened.”
“It sleeps?” asked Frederick in wonder as he stroked the taut skin of her abdomen.
“I think so,” she said. “Sleeps, rolls, kicks. It’s faint right now because she’s small yet.”
“It’s a girl?” asked Frederick, his heart lifting.
“Oh, I just call her that. Trying not to get my hopes up for an heir,” she said shyly.
Frederick temporarily could not speak. He wanted to reassure his wife that any child born to them would be a perfect miracle and exactly what he’d wanted.
“Baby,” he said.
“Yes, a baby,” replied his wife, cradling his face in a way that made him feel as though his bones could melt with pleasure at the love radiating from her touch.
“I’ll love them,” he said. “I’ll love any child born to us. Not just my heir. A daughter who plays the harp as beautifully as her mother…”
He paused, overcome by the vision. Yet through the emotions, he never faltered in his thrusts.
“What you make pleases me beyond measure, my duchess.”
“What we make,” she gasped as he slid over a spot that never failed to make her clench reflexively.
At that, he couldn’t find words, simply dropped his hand to the places he knew to play the notes that set his bride crying in pleasure.
It had become his favorite tune, even more than the one that had drawn him to her. The music that had captured his heart.
Coda
The Forest, London, 1882
“Say, you wouldn’t have seen a camera lens, would you?” asked Clarence Brocklehurst, relieved to have finally gained access to the headquarters of the Grand Bucks. He’d last spotted the lens while a masked man drove his piece into a woman well on her way to being ruined.
A small man, who was diligently cleaning the fabric on a chair, looked up at the young gent about town.
“You’ve come for it?” he asked.
“Why, yes, I have!” Clarence exclaimed, delighted to know that his lens had been found.
The man continued cleaning, his face somewhat gray, as if struggling from exhaustion.
