Desperate Duchesses

He bent down and kissed her tummy without saying a word.

“Damon?” And then, when he still didn’t say anything, “Darling?”

Finally he lifted his head. His eyes were filled with tears. “But—you never cry,” she said, foolishly.

“I’m happy. You make me so happy.”

She wound her arms around him and pulled him back on top of her. “Happiness makes you teary?”

He smiled at that. “I’ve always won things fairly easy, Roberta.”

She nodded. “Chess matches, fencing matches—”

“Money.”

“Lucky you.”

“Until you came along, and told me you were in love with Villiers, and you wanted to marry him. And that you didn’t want to marry me. And then he asked you to marry him, and for the first time in my life it felt as if something important was slipping away from me and I might lose.

“Even then I didn’t understand that you are the only important thing.” The tears stood unashamedly in his eyes.

“Oh silly one,” she whispered. “You have me, remember? I love you. I’m your wife.”

“I’m not playing chess anymore because there are no games that matter next to you, Roberta.”

She kissed him into silence.

A while later the Earl and Countess of Gryffyn lay curled together like two spoons, sleeping the kind of slumber that only happens in the afternoon, after the sweetest of marital intimacies.

But in the countess’s tummy a little baby was awake. She turned a few acrobatic circles and practiced swimming, an activity enjoyed by babies, mermaids and big brothers. Then she flung out her arms in a huge dramatic gesture. And finally, her tiny mouth quirked into something that would resemble a smile, except babies that small can’t smile. She resembled her papa most of all…which meant that joy would walk beside her all the days of her life.

Especially when she fell in love.