He shook his head at that thought. Desire had always been something he could rely upon. Control, even. It came, he slaked it, it faded and he was finished. But with Katherine something was…different. His body might be satisfied as she drew his pleasure from him with her sultry, sensual passion, but his mind?
Thatneverseemed fulfilled. He always wanted more. More and more of her.
Something about his demeanor must have changed, as well, for his friends had stopped haranguing him about the wager he’d made and teasing him about her. Oh, they still watched. They seemed patently incapable of not watching, but they did not interfere. Which made him just as nervous as the fact that he desperately wanted to hold Katherine’s hand right now.
“Oh no,” she whispered, leaning closer and making him so very aware of the sweet scent of her hair. “You are disappearing into your head, Roseford. Do come back.”
He blinked. She knew him so well now that she could see that too. See it and draw her to him with just a whispered word. Part of him wanted to turn tail and run away from that realization. The other? Well, that was the part that seemed to be in charge and it forced him to stay just where he was.
He leaned in closer. “Perhaps I am simply reliving every moment of last night,” he whispered. “Especially the part where we pleasured each other with our mouths and then you begged me to take you from behind.”
Her eyes widened, and she glanced up at the group ahead of them. Butthatwas another thing that had changed. While Katherine was still proper, of course—she could be nothing but—she no longer scolded him about potential damage to her reputation.
“You are a shameless cad,” she whispered, laughter thick in her voice.
“And you love it,” he retorted, then edged away to a more proper distance as they reached the picnic blankets that had already been laid out by servants earlier in the day.
He stared at the scene before him. Although most of the party events had been reserved for the adults, today the families were together. Bibi toddled around the blanket in front of Emma and James. James smiled at the little girl, laughing at her endless chatter, coaxing even more from her. From time to time, he leaned in to kiss his wife’s neck and rest a hand on her belly.
Isabel was moving to take her place on a different blanket. Matthew held her arm, easing her down as they both laughed at her increasing size. Helena was sitting on the same blanket and she smiled at Baldwin, something knowing that made Robert wonder if they, too, would soon have an announcement for the group. The foursome was sharing their blanket with Katherine’s Aunt Bethany, and Robert’s gaze moved to her. She was important to Katherine, a slender tie to the mother she had lost as a girl. And he liked the woman. She was as sharp and kind as her niece. And protective. He knew she watched him, and he didn’t mind it as much as he once might have.
As for the others, they were scattered on another two blankets and seemed to be making a game of passing Charlotte and Ewan’s gurgling five-month-old son, Jonathon, and Simon and Meg’s nine-month-old son, James, back and forth between them. Meanwhile, Graham reclined with his head in Adelaide’s lap, their seven-month-old daughter Madeline curled up sleepily on his chest, sucking her thumb and patting his face from time to time.
Once upon a time, Robert might have found this wholesome, family scene a bit stifling. It was why he’d initially turned down James’s invitation to this event. Where was his place here? And yet now he felt something else stirring in his chest. He might have called it longing, but that was ridiculous. Wasn’t it?
“Katherine!” Charlotte called out from one of the blankets. “Come and sit. I want to talk to you about Christmas plans.”
Katherine gave him a little look, her face bright with happiness, then slipped off to take her place beside Charlotte and Ewan. Robert remained standing, staring as Charlotte handed off Jonathon to Katherine.
She shifted the child into a more comfortable position and began to talk to him. Baby talk, though Robert could not hear it from this distance. In that quiet moment, a wave of emotion slammed into him.
Could he have this? This thing that had bewitched his friends, his family? He’d never been able to picture it, so he always avoided the exercise. But now…there it was, ten feet away from him, holding someone else’s child.
He saw a lifetime in Katherine face. He saw her expression as he took her around the world, sharing all his favorite places with her. He saw her smile as they shared their home with their friends and her beloved aunt. He saw her standing in his bedroom, ready for his touch, only she would never leave. He saw waking up beside her until he was gray and slow and forgetful of everything except for her.
He saw alife. And it was no longer stifling or unpleasant or constricting or terrifying. It looked…perfect.
Katherine kept glancing at him as she talked to Ewan and Charlotte. At last she handed over the baby and got up. He knew everyone was watching as she made her way to him. But he couldn’t move. He was frozen.
She reached him and tilted her head as she looked at him. “I was teasing earlier about you being in your head, but you look like you’ve seen a ghost. Why don’t we walk?”
He nodded. It was all he could do when the source of all his consternation was standing in front of him and the last thing he wanted to do was escape her. Escapewithher—that was another story.
She took his arm, smiled back their friends and said, “His Grace and I will be back. Don’t drink all the wine!”
There was laughter as the group went back to their lives and Robert stumbled after the woman who was becoming the center of his. They walked for a while. Normally a silence between them was comfortable. Today he felt the weight of it. It made him hear his own thoughts, and right now his mind was screaming at the top of its lungs about things he had never considered.
They turned onto a winding path that took them into the deeper woods. He felt her hand tighten on his elbow as he took her over fallen logs and down a little hill. In the distance, a tiny cottage roof peeked up over the bramble of trees, and he stopped as he stared at it.
“Meg and Simon’s cottage,” he muttered.
Her eyes went wide as she lifted on her tiptoes. “Is it? Meg has told me a little more about the beginning of her marriage to Simon. That caused quite the upheaval in your group of friends, didn’t it?”
Robert pressed his lips together hard. “It nearly destroyed us. At the time, I was shocked that Simon would let such a thing invade his sense of brotherhood. Now…”
She tilted her head. “Now?”
He looked at her from the corner of his eye. Now he understood it more. He couldn’t say that out loud.
