“But really, I wanted to give it to you today.”
“What is it?”
“Open it.”
She did so, her heart in her throat, even though she had some idea of what it would be.Instantly, she saw that she was correct.
When they had married, he had just purchased their house, their future home, and neither of them had thought wedding jewelry practical.And he had said that he preferred to wait until he could purchase her somethingworthy of her.
This ring certainly was.The gold band shone, and it had five diamonds strung across it, with the largest in the middle.
“Malcolm!”She gasped.“It is too much.”
“No, it is just enough.It is almost as perfect as you, my wife.”
A tear rolled down her cheek and he wiped it away with his lightly calloused thumb.
“I don’t know what is wrong with me.”
“If they are happy tears, then I have no objections.”
“Yes, of course they are.”
Now, she had to kiss him, and so she did, with trembling fingers.
When she drew back, she confessed, “I have no gift for you.”
He laughed.“I did not expect one.”
“Well, no gift, except a piece of intelligence.”She fingered the coverlet.She could have told him days ago, but she had been putting it off.“I believe-I believe we have succeeded.There will be a baby by March, I expect.”
“Scarlett,” he said, his voice gone hoarse.
Soon after their marriage, they had discussed how they both wanted children.But months had passed without her falling pregnant, and she had begun to worry it would never happen.
“It’s true.It’s early, of course.”
He kissed her and then pulled her into his arms.Then they kissed again and murmured to one another and spoke of what might be.
It was only later, when she lay with her back toward him and she began to think of sleep, that they returned to the night they met.And ofhowthey had first become intimate.
“You have never told me the details of your dream,” he teased.“The one that you had so many times that you did not notice the real man in your bed.”
She laughed, feeling his body curl around hers.It wasn’t true, of course.She had told him the full extent of those dreams long ago.They had discovered how similar their dreams had been, all the way down to the positioning of these torrid nocturnal fantasies.It had been a kind of fate.Strange and unusual and utterly right.
He pretended now to feign ignorance of her dream as a kind of joke because he liked her to tell it all to him again.
“You will probably be too scandalized, Mr.Brown,” she said, employing the aloof tone she had used with him that first night at dinner.“It would shock you.”
“Oh, but I love to be shocked.I delight in it.Tell me, did he take you from behind?This man in your dream?”
She could feel his cock hardening against her arse, and she laughed.His hand was pulling up her nightdress.
“That’s very improper.I am shocked you would think it.”
“Perhaps I think of it only because I once had a very similar dream.I never thought it could be real, of course.It was just a hopeless vision.The woman that I tupped was too beautiful to actually exist.”
She flushed, suddenly hot and needy.The pleasure of such language still undid her, even after a year of marriage.She couldn’t believe that he sawherin such a light.
