“Well, then I reckon I’ll drink mine, too,” Kendra said with a wink.Enjoying Trick’s impatient gaze on her, she drank hers down more delicately.
He took the tankard from her hand and slammed it down beside his.“Now…”
Smiling woozily, feeling warm and tingly, she watched him finish detaching her stomacher while her hands went to his laces.Her fingers fumbled.“Od’s fish.I’m suddenly feeling very tired.Not pretend-tired so we can get away from everyone, but really, really tired—”
He shut off her words with a kiss.A rush of bliss and excitement overtook her, and she threw her arms around his neck, breathing in his enticing sandalwood scent.But he pulled back all too quickly, blinking in bewilderment.“I’m really tired, too.”
“Maybe we should lie down for a few minutes.After the long day, perhaps a tiny nap will revive us.”
“Perhaps,” he said.
And the next thing she knew, he was on the bed snoring, fully clothed.
A moment after that, she was beside him and sound asleep, too.
Fourteen
Caithren
“WHERE HAVEyou been?”Jason asked Caithren half an hour later.“Surely that tale set in Newark made for a short story.I lived it, if you’ll remember, and there wasn’t much to it.”
He was already in bed.
She’d been half-hoping he’d already be asleep.
Steeling herself to tell him about the bairn, she kicked off her shoes.She’d just answer his question first.“I helped put the children to bed.”
“What?They couldn’t put themselves to bed?”He set his book on the bedside table.“Jamie is fourteen.And Griffin and Adam—”
“I meant I helped put Kendra’s children to bed.”She sat on a chair to roll down her stockings.“Since she and Trick ran off so quickly.”
“They aren’t little children, either.Elspeth is older than Adam, and Cas and Pol are twelve, aren’t they?”
“Thirteen.”She rose and began detaching her stomacher.“I just walked them over to the cottage, made sure they didn’t need anything, got them some water—”
“And that took forty-five minutes?”
“Well, then I helped pick up all the wrappings and ribbon—”
“Ford has servants to do that.”
She shrugged.“I’m sorry.I didn’t realize you’d be waiting.”
Rising from the bed—stark naked—he moved toward her.
Caithren’s breath caught.
“I told you earlier I was missing you.I want you.”He reached her in all of two strides.“Surely you don’t find that surprising?”
Nay, she didn’t find that surprising.The two of them had never tired of each other, never gone more than a handful of days without falling into each other’s arms.Nothing had changed that, not children, not familiarity, not time.
She knew the current look in his eyes as well as she knew the back of her own hand.That look made her heart race, as it always did.
She had to tell him she was carrying a bairn.
She had to.
Instead, she stepped into his embrace.
