Even when he had invited her to lie beside him and had started to kiss her, he had not meant to take the embrace any farther. He had wanted to touch her, to discover the changes in her body that the presence of his child in her was bringing about. He had felt the slight and soft thickening of her waist.

And it had all become suddenly and achingly real to him. She was with child by him. He had known it with his head for some time, had planned a whole lifetime around the fact. But for the first time he felt it with his body. She had taken his seed into her. Their child was gradually swelling her body. The body of the woman he was touching. The woman he loved.

And without any conscious decision on his part, he had started to make love to her, his mouth and his tongue inviting her to physical intimacy, his hand beneath her clothes, against her warm and enticing flesh. And she had made love to him. Though she had not moved or opened her eyes while she was on the ground, and though she had knelt above him, her head thrown back after he had lifted her astride him and joined them, and was thrusting his own need and love into her. She had made love to him too. He had felt her need, her total surrender to him. And she had cried out his name a moment before she had shuddered into release.

He had been right in what he had said to her before she fell asleep. He must convince her of that when she woke up, her defenses firmly in place again. Their marriage would have a chance for success. They were friends. They were good together sexually. He loved her. There was only one ingredient for happiness missing. And that did not have to be disastrous. He would not smother her with his love. He would be content to be her friend day by day, and to pour out his love for her in bed, where perhaps she would not quite recognize it for what it was.

His mind wandered back over the past few months to the disaster that had succeeded Madeline’s unexpected arrival in her rooms in Brussels. They had come a long way since that dreadful afternoon. He had much to be thankful for. And a whole lifetime of hope ahead. He was not going to let his mind dwell on the one small source of discontent.

His mind slid into sleep.

ELLEN WAS DISORIENTED for only a moment after she woke up. She was lying against Dominic, her cheek pressed to the lapel of his coat, his one arm beneath her neck, the other hand at her waist. She could tell from his breathing that he was asleep.

Had she become an utter wanton? They were on an open hillside, not quite surrounded by trees, lying asleep in each other’s arms. And before they had fallen asleep, they had made love without even a thought to possible discovery. And in a way more erotic than she had ever experienced before.

It was nothing short of scandalous.

It had been wonderful!

She eased her head back to look up into his face, but his eyes opened even as she did so, looked blankly into hers, focused on hers, and smiled in that way that never failed to make her stomach turn a somersault inside her.

“Are you offended?” he asked. “I didn’t set out to seduce you, Ellen. It just happened. But you are to be my wife soon anyway.” He kissed the tip of her nose.

“Yes,” she said.

He drew back his head and looked at her. “Why do your eyes always turn bleak when I mention our marriage?” he said. “Don’t you want to marry me, Ellen? Do you feel coerced?”

She did not answer for a while. “I just wish the baby had not forced it on us,” she said.

“Is that what you think?” He frowned. “You think I am marrying you only because of the child?”

“Well, it’s true, isn’t it?” she said. “And it’s the sensible thing to do and the responsible thing to do. And I honor you for being willing to do it, and I am not going to back out, because it would be selfish and irresponsible to do so. I just wish it were not so.”

“The baby is not why I am marrying you,” he said quietly. “It is just the excuse.”

“The excuse?”

“I have been unfair to you, Ellen, and I’m sorry,” he said. “I used the argument that I thought would best work with you, and it seems that I have succeeded very well indeed. But it was an argument that came from desperation.”

She merely looked at him.

“I didn’t think there was any other way of getting you,” he said. “But it was not the honorable thing to do. I owed you the truth, especially since I was asking you to be my wife. Married couples should not have any secrets from each other.”

“What is the truth?” she asked.

He looked rather shamefaced. “Pure selfishness, I’m afraid,” he said. “I love you, and I love the child because it is yours. Ours. I haven’t stopped loving you since I discovered you hovering over my bed in Brussels, the only stable being in a world of delirium and pain. In fact, I love you more now than I did then, because we have developed a relationship since then. I’m sorry, Ellen. I know you don’t need this when you have just lost Charlie. But I won’t burden you with my love, I promise you.”

“I did love him,” she said carefully. “For those years there was nothing brighter in my life than my feelings for him.”

“I know,” he said. “I will never make you feel guilty for feeling that way.”

“I love him still,” she said. “He is a part of me. And I won’t ever stop loving him and occasionally crying for him.”

“I know, Ellen.”

“I will never love you as I loved him,” she said.

He nodded.

“But then, I never loved him as I love you.”

He looked into her eyes, his expression quite blank.

“I never knew,” she said, “that love for two men could be so intense and all-consuming and yet so different. Charlie was my very best friend, my brother, my father, my protector. And, yes, my lover too, for we had a quite normal marriage and I loved the physical part of it because it brought me closer to him than I could be at any other time. I would have been happy with him for the rest of my life, Dominic. I would never have allowed anything more than a vague and unwilling attraction to you.”

“I know.”

“And you are my consuming passion, my web of love,” she said. “I don’t think I can ever have enough of you. And yet it is not just physical, either. At one time I thought it was, and that was when I despised and hated myself. But it is not. It is a passion, a hunger, for you, not just for your lovemaking. A hunger to be with you and part of you for a lifetime. I can return your love, Dominic, provided only you accept that a part of me will always be Charlie’s.”

He laid a finger along the length of her nose. “I would think the less of you,” he said, “if I thought that it might ever be otherwise.”

They smiled tentatively at each other.

“So, Ellen Simpson,” he said, “do you feel a little better now at the prospect of marrying me?”

She nodded.

“Before Christmas?”

“Tomorrow, if you wish,” she said.

“Alas,” he said, “there are such things as banns.”

“A shame,” she said.

“Besides, I have to ride to London, with or without you, to ask the Earl of Harrowby for the hand of his daughter. Do you think he is likely to cut up nasty?”

She smiled slowly at him. “You are going to do that?” she asked. “When I am a widow of five-and-twenty, and perhaps not his daughter anyway? How lovely, Dominic. He will be very pleased.”

“Not likely to poke me in the nose because I have caused his daughter to be increasing?” he said.

She shook her head. “I think he will thank you for making it possible for him to become a grandpapa so soon.”

“I can have the banns read next Sunday, then?” he asked.

She nodded.

He sat up suddenly and got to his feet. He reached down a hand for hers.

“How indisposed is your condition making you feel?” he asked, pulling her up beside him.

“Not at all,” she said. “I have never felt healthier in my life.”

“Good,” he said, stooping to wrap his arms firmly about her waist and lifting her from the ground to twirl her around and around until she was shrieking with laughter.

“It is so good to hear you laugh, Ellen,” he said as he came to a stop and set her feet back on the ground. “I am going to try to fill your life with laughter.”

“I wonder if the world will ever stop spinning wildly about me for as long as I am with you,” she said breathlessly.

“Absolutely not, my love,” he said against her mouth, before deepening the kiss. “I make you a solemn promise here and now that it never will.”

“Then good-bye equilibrium and sanity,” she said, wrapping her arms up about his neck. “My love.”