“Yes?”
“Take me to bed and stop thinking about your sister’s wedding.”
“That’s an excellent suggestion.”
Later—much later—as dawn crept through the curtains and painted patterns on the ceiling, they lay entwined, Adrian’s hand making lazy circles on her belly.
“Do you think we’re ready for it all?” he murmured. “A child. Catherine married and gone. Becoming proper parents?”
“I think,” Marianne said softly, “that no one is ever truly ready. But we shall manage it—together.”
Epilogue
“Absolutely not. I forbid it. Categorically, completely, and with the full weight of my ducal authority.”
Adrian’s voice carried through the morning room with enough force to rattle the delicate Sèvres teacups, though whether from sheer volume or aristocratic indignation was difficult to say. He stood before the fireplace like judgment embodied: impeccably dressed, scarred features set in lines promising imminent destruction to anyone foolish enough to oppose him.
“You do not get to forbid me anything,” Marianne replied with perfect equanimity, though maintaining such composure while her lower back throbbed with what Sarah had delicately termed “preparatory pains” required no small effort. “I’m your wife, not your property, however the law may interpret matters.”
“You’re nine months with child!”
“Eight months and three weeks,” she corrected. “If we are being precise.”
“Marianne, you can scarcely walk unaided. Your ankles have swollen to the size of melons—”
“How poetically phrased, my love.”
“—you are winded after three stairs—”
“Five. I counted.”
“—and you still insist on attending the opera? In public? Where all society will gawk at you like some sort of… of…”
“Breeding mare?” she supplied sweetly, shifting on the settee in a futile attempt at comfort. The child currently within her had developed a profound enthusiasm for kicking directly beneath her ribs, particularly during disputes with its father.
Adrian flushed. “That is not— I do not— you know I don’t view you as—”
“I know precisely what you think.” She extended her hand; despite his outrage, he took it instantly, thumb settling over her pulse in the way it always did. “You think I am risking our child’s safety. And my dignity.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Perhaps. But Adrian—consider the poetry of it.” She guided his hand to the great curve of her stomach, where their child performed a decisive somersault. “We met at the opera. Don Giovanni, specifically. Tonight they are performing it again, and I have an overwhelming feeling that—”
“No.” His voice snapped with panic. “Do not even suggest it. Our child is not making its entrance at the opera house.”
“Children arrive when they choose, not when or where we command.”
“Then we shall ensure you are safely at home when it chooses!”
From the doorway, Catherine’s voice floated in. “Are you still quarrelling about the opera? You’ve been having this same discussion for three days.”
She entered with the particular glow of a woman four months married and still besotted with her husband. Her morning dress of pomona-green silk whispered against the floor as she moved to kiss Marianne’s cheek, then Adrian’s, completely ignoring his scowl.
“We are not quarrelling,” Adrian insisted stiffly. “We are engaged in a civilised discussion about the appropriate activities for women in advanced stages of confinement.”
“You are quarrelling,” Catherine corrected, settling with the ease of long practice. “And Marianne is winning, as ever.”
“I am not winning,” Marianne protested. “Adrian is immovable.”
