“There are the rituals, and then there is the grieving, the real mourning, which is god-awfully miserable work.”

“We’ll mourn.” Nick leaned down and kissed her shoulder. “Nita said it was Papa’s wish we not observe deep mourning for more than six months, and then only on formal occasions. He’d buried two wives, two mistresses, and two babies, and didn’t see the sense in all the ritual and display.”

“Two children?” Leah’s hand drifted up the column of Nick’s throat. The touch was soothing and quite… personal.

“Between Nita and George,” Nick said. “A boy and a girl, both of whom died in infancy. He wanted to stop trying at that point, but my stepmother was desperate for more babies.”

“Everybody grieves differently,” Leah said. “Why don’t you want children, Nicholas? The real reason, if you please.”

Nick rolled slightly and buried his face against Leah’s neck. He had not seen this coming, not now. “There is risk to you, Leah. Honest-to-God risk, no matter what medical assurances are given, no matter how safely you bore your son.”

“You still think you killed your mother? I was certain you were bruiting that about as a mean sort of jest.”

“I would never jest about a woman’s death, much less my mother’s,” Nick said, his words muffled against Leah’s neck. His tongue slipped softly along Leah’s jaw, just taking a taste of female sweetness and warmth—to distract her, to comfort him.

“But you had nothing to do with your mother’s death, Nicholas. If anybody was to blame, it was your father.”

“I respectfully disagree.” Nick’s hand slid over Leah’s stomach, coming to rest on her opposite hip. “He was a third son inheriting a title later in life, and intent on doing his duty, and he succeeded, as yours truly lives and breathes.”

“But you were being weaned,” Leah said. “It was your father’s fixation on producing a spare that cost your mother her life.”

Nick abruptly pulled back and stared down at her. “I have the sense we are talking at cross purposes.”

“As do I.”

“My mother died as a result of complications following childbirth, and I am the only child she bore.” He knew this; he’d known it all his life.

“You were shy of a year old, Nick,” Leah said gently. “Della told me Sara had conceived again and was weaning you at your father’s insistence. Losing that second child before the pregnancy was full term is what led to her eventual death.”

Silence, filled only by the hiss of the last of the embers in the fireplace.

“Nana told you this?” Nick said slowly, rolling to his back.

“She most assuredly did.” Leah propped herself on his chest and peered at him. “You had nothing to do with your mother’s death. Not. One. Thing.”

He lay there, staring at the ceiling, trying to fathom the sense of her words. There was loss in what she said, but loss of a burden as well as loss of a dearly held belief. Leah tucked a leg across his body, folded herself down over his chest, and slid an arm behind his neck.

Did she seek to anchor him physically while his entire world went tumbling?

“You honestly thought you killed your own mother. Oh, Nicholas…”

His arms came around her, carefully, slowly. “How did Della convey this… information?”

“We’d finished fitting my wedding dress,” Leah said, “and I asked her if you’d killed your mother.”

“You were afraid?” Of course she’d be afraid. Nick was afraid.

“Curious,” Leah clarified, her cheek over his heart. “Your heartbeat is steadier than the beat of a clock. I love that you are so tall that your heart lies right under my ear when you hold me.”

That simple little compliment, coming on the heels of unexpected absolution for his mother’s death, sliced at Nick’s soul. She thought he was handsome, when most women of her station thought he was a freak. She was protective of him—all seventeen damned stone of him—when by any sane lights, protecting ought to be his exclusive domain.

“Leah…” But he had no words, so he kissed her. He meant to express things beyond words—gratitude, wonder, relief, and tenderness—but Leah surprised him. When his lips pressed against hers, she groaned softly and fitted her mouth over his. Tentatively, her tongue seamed his lips, asking entrance even as her hand moved over the contours of Nick’s shoulders.

He let her tempt him, assuring himself he was equal to the self-restraint needed to enjoy the kiss without letting it go too far. In careful increments, Nick felt Leah exploring the limits of a passionate kiss between spouses naked, in bed, in the privacy of deepest night. She sampled the heat of his mouth, the pleasures and textures of his tongue, and the soft fullness of his lips.

Without Nick wanting it or willing it, his wife was also learning how easily a well-kissed man became aroused.

“Lovey, we have to slow down.”

“You’re wrong,” Leah muttered, taking his hand and fitting it over her breast. “You were wrong about your mother, and you’re wrong about this too, Husband.” She closed his fingers over the fullness of her breast, and Nick felt a flash of heat from his hand to his groin. Leah’s head fell back, and her back arched, begging him to repeat the caress.

She had every right to expect pleasure of him. Nick marshaled his self-discipline, despite the hard throbbing in his cock. He brought his free hand up, framed Leah’s other breast with it, and urged her closer to his mouth.

“Nicholas…” His name was a hiss of pleasure and longing, and Leah’s nails digging into Nick’s forearm only confirmed the intensity of her passion. Gently, he laved her nipple with his tongue, knowing he could not deny her satisfaction, not on one of the last nights they would spend together. He was condemned to please, and take little for himself, just as he had been so often in the past.

Leah didn’t know of his devil’s bargain, though, and when her fingers feathered over Nick’s nipples, Nick felt pleasure buck through his body. His cock leaped at her sex, longing coursing through him with an ache he felt in his soul. The ache turned to torture when Leah eased her body over him, caressing his length with the slick heat of her sex.

“Leah…” Nick rasped, pressing his face to her chest. “You can’t…”

She did it again, and desire coiled more tightly in Nick’s vitals.

“We can,” she retorted in a fierce whisper.

“No.” Nick grabbed her wrists, but she used her body weight to push her hands apart and spread his arms out on the bed. With unerring instinct, she positioned herself so the head of Nick’s cock was nudging at the opening in her body.

“Leah… you must not.”

“You did not kill your mother, your reservations are groundless, and I need you.” As she captured him with her body and shifted that first, exquisite half inch downward, Nick went utterly still. Leah’s head dropped forward on a gusty exhale, and she eased her hips forward.

“Easy,” Nick cautioned, resigned to yet greater self-restraint. “Don’t let me hurt you.”

“You couldn’t,” she whispered, rocking her hips in a small, slow pattern of thrust and retreat. “You feel wonderful to me, absolutely, gloriously… Ah, Nicholas…” He lay beneath her, letting her have complete control as she took him more and more deeply into her body. His hands eased away from her wrists and moved gently over her face, then her neck and shoulders. He stroked her breasts, her belly, and her arms, and all the while watched her expression in the last of the firelight.

“I want…” Leah opened her eyes to plead with him silently.

He wanted to cry, to weep with the knowledge of what could not be his.

“I know,” Nick replied. “But slowly, Leah, and gently. I will not forgive myself if I hurt you.”

She shook her head. “You are lovely inside me, so sweet and full and unbearably… God… All I want is more of you. More and more…”

Her words hammered at him, hammered at the place inside him that said he was not entitled to take pleasure from a woman, not ever, for surely it pleased him to hear her sighs and her lavish compliments. It pleased him, warmed his soul, and aroused his body. He was already fighting the tightening up behind his balls that signaled his own impending orgasm, and the feel of Leah slowly hilting him in her body pushed his control to the limits.

“Nicholas?” Leah settled herself slowly and completely onto him then folded down onto his chest. “You aren’t moving with me.”

“I don’t dare,” he whispered, finding her mouth with his. “But you can move, Leah.” His hands caressed her back then gripped her hips, encouraging her into a slow, languorous rhythm. “Come like this for me.” He trailed one hand up to cup her breast and tease her nipple. “Take your pleasure of me.”

Torture me so this one memory, at least, will be mine.

He knew she couldn’t help herself. He intended that his voice, his hands, his kisses, the throbbing fullness of his cock lodged deep in her body, and the need to be as close to him as life on earth allowed converge. As soon as Leah withdrew and pressed forward again, he felt her silently shatter. Nick did move then; he rocked himself inside her, prolonging and intensifying her pleasure with slow undulations of his hips and glancing caresses to her breasts. When her passion ebbed, Nick brushed his thumb against the top of her sex and drove her up again, more forcefully still.

“Nicholas… oh, Nicholas…” She breathed his name so softly Nick felt it more as exhalations against his chest than words. His arousal clawed at him, and yet he let his hips fall still and cradled Leah against his body.

“You are all right?” he whispered.