Now.
Scrambling, she located the unadorned porcelain basin just in time to fall to her knees and cast up her accounts into it. She heaved again and again, eyes watering as she emptied her stomach. Humiliation washed over her as the sickness subsided.
She became aware of a presence at her side. A cool, damp cloth passed over her face.
“Not a monster, am I?”
Her husband’s grim voice did nothing to assuage her misery.
Dear God, he thought she had been sick at the sight of his scars? And still, he was on his knees at her side, tending to her. The notion hurt her heart on his behalf.
But before she could respond, another heave swept over her. She hunched over, attempting to keep her hair from the chamber pot’s contents. Another wave of wretchedness swamped her. Her body convulsed, but there was nothing left to bring up into the pot.
And still, he was there, passing the cool, calming cloth over her face once more. His hand traveling up and down her spine in steady, comforting strokes. Even when he believed she was having a violent reaction to his body, he was there for her.
Her heart ached.
The time to tell him the truth was now.
Here.
This moment.
She inhaled through her mouth, then exhaled slowly through her nose, willing her turbulent stomach to calm. A few repetitions, and the aggressive grip of nausea relented. She turned toward her husband, who watched her with an expression that was equal parts guarded and concerned.
“I was not ill because of your scars,” she told him.
His expression shuttered. “I do not give a damn if you were. I wear my past with pride. Every mark brought me to the place where I am today. If it disgusts you, you would not be the first. Nor shall you be the last.”
His callous words had their intended effect upon her. She wanted to rail against him, but she understood it was only his wounded pride speaking and not the man who had been so patient and gentle with her. For all that he was a feared lord of the East End’s criminal enterprises, he was also good. He was the man who kissed her with such sweet tenderness, the man who held her in his arms, the man who made her shatter.
The father of her child.
She must not forget that.
“I am with child.”
His swift inhalation cut through the stillness following her revelation.
Adele waited for him to speak, but he said nothing. “Dom?”
“You are carrying a babe.”
The words, leaving his lips, seemed to be sharp as blades. They cut her to shreds.
“Your babe,” she said. “What did you suppose? I gave myself to you in London. You are the only man I have known.”
“You are carrying…my child?”
The question left him slowly, as if the mere asking caused him undue effort. As if his tongue were rusted, when she knew quite well it was not.
She nodded, breathing slowly again herself to stave off a second rush of nausea. “Of course the babe is yours.”
His hand was on her arm, then. The grip was not punishing. But neither was it tender. “You have been carrying my babe for three months and you have yet to inform me of it?”
When he summarized it thus, her actions sounded awful. Unpardonable, even. However, he was forgetting one salient fact.
“I never expected to see you again, Dom. You believed me to be a gentleman’s mistress. I gave you my innocence in return for my brother’s safety. What happened between us was never meant to be more than what it was that night. And yet…”
