“In a day or two, when your ribs are a fraction better.”
“I fear they will take longer than that to heal,” he said. She sighed, her breath brushing his bare skin. The bruising, now hidden under bandages, truly was spectacular. The journey back to London would be uncomfortable, but Thalia was right—they needed to return for Lydia’s sake. “But we can stay here a day longer.”
“I dislike having to share you with the world,” she murmured, trailing her fingers across her skin. “And I dislike the thought of you sneaking out of the house to fight and lose.”
“No more,” he promised. The words were surprisingly easy to say. After Christopher, he felt as though boxing was his only release, a place where he could be himself and let go of all the pain in his chest.
But now that pain had dimmed. He had Thalia, and God knew he would have to work to deserve her. There was no more room in his life for that sort of penance, nor that sort of pain.
“I will fill this house with sculptures,” she said as she slipped slowly into sleep. “Even if no one else in the world wants them, we can have them all.”
He smiled, certain of this, at least. “The world will want them.”
“Thalia will never be as popular as Rossi.”
“She doesn’t have to be. Rossi was never sustainable, my love. You must have known that.”
Thalia pouted sleepily. “Until Joyce discovered my secret, I could have kept going.”
“The waiting list was growing longer and longer,” Maxwell said. Out of curiosity, he had looked into her business model, if one could call it that. Calloway had done much of the heavy lifting, positioning himself as a go-between and taking on new commissions for ‘Rossi’ to complete. “And you had new duties as a wife.”
Both brows crept up her forehead. “Duties?”
“In my bed,” he clarified. “And hosting dinners and balls and suchlike too, I suppose.”
“And this is to occupy me every night?”
“Every single one,” he said. “In particular, your duties in my bed. I am very particular when it comes to those.”
“Mm? And if I should slack?”
“It is my duty to make you willing and eager.” At the thought of it, his cock stirred, although he ought to have been fully sated. Then again, there was noshouldwith Thalia. All the rules he had previously lived his life by no longer applied. “It is mypleasureto make you willing and eager. But I’m not merely speaking of your wifely duty.”
“Stop calling it a duty,” she said, though her lips twitched.
“Your duties in my bed involve sleeping in it with me, every night,” he said. “And waking beside me in the mornings. And greeting the new day with a kiss. Do you suppose you can rise to the occasion?”
She reached down to palm him with a laugh. “It feels as though you already have.”
“You are all I want,” he said, eyes focused on her. “You, Thalia. Until the end of time. Can you do that?”
“Want you back?” A smile softened her teasing, and she kissed him gently on the mouth. “Oh, Maxwell, I already do.”
EPILOGUE
SIX MONTHS LATER
Thalia braced her hands on her hips as she looked around the table, which had been meticulously set for Lydia’s engagement dinner. Small cards labeled the seats, written in elegant script—Thalia’s own hand. Maxwell had been happy to leave the aesthetics to her.
In the center of the table stood the sculpture she had made for the new couple. Lydia’s chosen partner in life was a viscount who had struck Thalia as being entirely unprepossessing upon first glance. He was a scholarly gentleman who appeared to like his books more than social events. But from the first moment he had seen Lydia, he had been so taken, he had been prepared to follow her everywhere.
Even to events.
Eventually, he had summoned the courage to approach Maxwell and gain his permission. Maxwell, recognizing the younger man’s devotion, had been more than happy to give it.
He came up behind her now, both hands coming to rest on the small bump on her stomach. At five months, she was really beginning to show, and although she had been nervous to tell him at first, he had thrown himself into fatherhood with an eagerness that had touched her.
“How are my two favorite people?” he asked, caressing her belly.
