She could be that most ennobled and powerful of things; that loving figure she’d always wanted for herself, and never had: a mother.
She rubbed her stomach, and this time she did smile.
Very well, little one. Welcome. You are going to have an interesting life.
But, oh dear. What are we going to do about your father?
What had Adam said about making her pregnant? That it would be a disaster?
He hadn’t clarified exactly what he meant by that, but it would unquestionably take a toll on his ambitions if it were known he was the father of Seraphina Arden’s bastard child.
He was a bastard himself. Would he make demands on her? Try to insist on marriage to give the baby his name?
Or would he do the opposite—deny paternity or insist on secrecy?
After all, there was his own family to think about. Jasper and Adeline would be affected if he acknowledged another child, especially if that child belonged to Seraphina Arden.
She tried to imagine what he might choose, how he would react—but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Telling Jonathan all those years ago had been the most chilling moment of her life. She still remembered how he’d looked at her. As though she’d done it on purpose, and he knew her game.
It made her want to avoid telling Adam altogether. After all, she’d laughed at him when he’d called bedsport risky. She’d preached to him the security of her methods of prevention. She’d done it in good faith, of course, but that would not change the truth of their predicament.
That would not change the fact that he’d been right.
But no. She was being childish. She would tell him, of course. Tonight, at supper.
That was what the woman she was trying to become would do. A woman who addressed her fears head-on, instead of burying them in a bottle of claret.
A woman who tried.
Adam knocked on Seraphina’s door like a man arriving for a funeral, not supper.
“Mr. Anderson,” Maria said, greeting him with a smile. “Miss Arden asked me to show you to the parlor.”
He followed her to a sitting room he had not seen on his last visit, a cheerful nook upholstered in the striking fabrics Seraphina favored for her gowns—a coral silk for the sofa, turquoise for the armchairs.
He sat down, feeling like he had been allowed one final night in a summer garden before exiling himself to permanent winter. He did not want to leave this house for good; he wanted to move into it.
Seraphina’s laugh entered the room before she did. “Why, Mr. Anderson, don’t you look morose.”
He rose and bowed as she floated in like a creature from some other, better world. He tried to smile. “Less morose now that I see you. You look beautiful.”
Her gown was a color he recalled from a painting of the Adriatic Sea—a crystalline blue, bright, with hints of green. A long gold chain fell down her neck between her breasts and her ears were hung with ruby drops that glimmered in the candlelight.
Her skin against those ruby drops was so creamy he wanted to taste it.
She smiled at him. “Come and kiss me before supper.”
It was a struggle to remain standing at a respectful distance, his face hurting from the smile on it, and not move to embrace her. But he was determined to exercise restraint. To get right to the point.
“Before we eat, there’s something I need to discuss with you,” he said.
She closed the distance herself, taking his hand. “Discuss? Sounds serious.” Her tone was playful, flirtatious, welcoming. “Maybe it can wait until I . . .”
She leaned in, threaded her fingers through his hair, and softly kissed him. He could not resist kissing her back.
One last time.
He pulled her closer, gave her his tongue. She laughed softly in the back of her throat, pleased at this show of enthusiasm.
He growled and lifted her off her feet. They went stumbling back against the wall, grasping and entwined, and it brought to mind that night in the rainstorm, when she’d lifted her arms to the gale and it had seemed like she was summoning the thunder, summoning the lightning, summoning something in him that drenched him as mysteriously and undeniably as rain.
She gripped his lower back, then slid a hand down into his breeches and clenched his buttocks, pressing his body against hers.
“Oh God, I’ve needed this,” she whispered. He blindly fumbled for her skirts, lifting them up and out of the way as best he could without breaking their kiss.
Fuck restraint. He needed this, too. One last time.
She hooked her foot behind his calf and he groped down for her cunt until he found it, slick and swollen beneath his palm. He cupped her, dragged a finger through the seam.
She arched back against the wall to open herself and he leaned with her, penetrating her mouth with his tongue and her quim with his fingers the way he wanted to do with his cock.
His groin spasmed with the rhythm, as though he actually was fucking her. She broke from his lips and put her head on his shoulder, her hips rocking to take more of his fingers inside her. He felt the heat and muscles of her cunt. He felt with his entire body her desire for him.
She let out a high-pitched cry and clenched around his fingers. He found her mouth again and kissed her as she came, and came, and came. Each wave that took her echoed in his balls, and he realized he was going to come, too, in his smalls, without her even touching him.
“Fuck,” he cried, as his legs buckled with the shock of it.
She kissed him hungrily, pulling him toward her by the buttocks as his hips frantically sought hers. He fumbled for the wall to steady himself but he was not able, for he was buckling with an orgasm that felt like it was radiating down to his cock from the middle of his spine. She gripped his shoulders to keep him from collapsing as she shuddered and made some unholy, anguished sound.
They slid down the wall together until they were a puddle on the floor, panting in each other’s arms.
He did not know how much time passed in that position. A minute. An hour. A year.
All he could feel was the goodness of it, this small, unlikely peace amidst the loneliness of life.
Sera smoothed a lock of hair that had fallen in his eyes. “There really is supper. I did not entice you here strictly to molest you. I am reformed, you see.” Her eyes sparkled with amusement.
In the light, the gold chain between her breasts glimmered. He touched it idly, lifting it to see what dangled at its end.
It was the amulet from his children.
Tears welled in his eyes. She saw, immediately, and her face tensed, like she was embarrassed to be caught.
“I suppose I was feeling sentimental. I never expected this to become . . .” She shook her head.
A great, wracking sob burst from him before he could swallow it back. He clutched her shoulders and pressed his face into her warm, sweet-smelling skin.
She held him, running her fingers over his hair. “Darling, why are you so sad?”
Darling? Had she ever called him something so sweet?
Why did she have to do it now?
Why did she have to wear that necklace, like proof she felt this thing between them, too?
When he lifted his head to look at her, her skin glistened with his tears, and a terrible fear was in her eyes, like he’d already said the words. But he hadn’t, and if he did not now he never would, and so he choked out what he’d come tonight to say.
“I can’t do this anymore, Seraphina.”