Page 22 of Courting the Duchess (Spy Society #1)

S terling cradled his infant son in his arms with infinite care. All the while, the squalling babe screamed as loudly as his lungs would allow. Employing a combination of bouncing and rocking, Sterling grumbled, “You’ve clearly inherited your mother’s lungs.”

“I take offense to that,” came a woman’s voice from the doorway.

Sterling turned to find Alaina standing in the doorway between the ducal bedchamber and the adjoining room she’d once occupied before it had been converted into a nursery. Gone was the duchess’s furniture, replaced by a bassinet and lace curtains, swaddling clothes, and other items deemed vitally important to raise a child.

True to form, Alaina had eschewed convention for women of her superior rank and insisted that they forgo a night wet nurse. She claimed she’d waited too long to become a mother to simply hand the child over each time he needed feeding, and she was just as capable as any other woman of functioning on little sleep in those early weeks and months of motherhood.

And, as with many things in the year following his return, Sterling had made the concession and deferred to Alaina’s wishes.

Now, however, he was questioning the wisdom of it.

He adored his son—was enamored of every little movement or sound the child made—but he missed sleep with a desperate intensity…almost more than he missed sweat-slicked interludes with his wife.

Almost.

Ruefully, he had pondered several times how he’d once gotten more hours of sleep at bacchanalian events in Italy. The amount of screaming and bodily fluids was oddly correlative. He struggled not to shudder.

Alaina floated across the room in her gauzy nightdress and it was all Sterling could do not to seek out the dusky halos of her nipples and the sway of her breasts through the fabric. He was grateful when she retrieved the baby from his arms because the impurity of his thoughts was quickly drawing the blood from his limbs and shooing it elsewhere. He had to force himself to focus on the sweet way Alaina cooed to their son as she curled up on the cushions of her beloved window seat. She proceeded to deftly untie the neck of her nightrail and positioned the babe at her naked breast heavy with milk.

The sight never ceased to move Sterling, his wife holding their son. Motherhood suited Alaina, but it was a far cry from taming her. She was still his beloved hellion and challenged his mental faculties almost daily. The intense swing of her emotions during pregnancy had nearly been the end of his sanity as well as his bollocks, but he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Even when they had their spats and arguments, he never doubted her love for him; she loved twice as hard as she fought, and Alaina could hold her own in any ring against even the most vicious prizefighter.

Once their son was situated and suckling happily, little noises of contentment rising from his throat, Alaina settled back and Sterling perched upon a nearby chair to revel in the peace. The quiet was a relief.

“You should sleep while you can,” Alaina whispered to him as she stroked their son’s downy blond curls. “We have our meeting with the foundation in the morning and you should be well-rested. A drowsy duke is not a sharp duke.”

“I will go when you do,” he replied in a husky whisper, still unable to tear his eyes away from the domestic sight before him. “Besides, I won’t sleep without you there anyway.” Alaina smiled warmly at him, melting his insides as the expression normally did. He pulled a chair over to where she sat limned in moonlight and gently propped her feet in his lap. Her moan as he thumbed her high arches went straight to his groin. If Alaina noticed, then she was merciful enough to say nothing.

He had to clear his throat before he could speak. “Are you looking forward to the meeting?”

Alaina’s head lolled back against the wall as he continued to massage her feet and her babe suckled at her breast, his pale little hand wrapping around a loose lock of her golden hair. “Of course,” she replied with a dreamy smile. “We have been working toward this for nearly a year and it’s about time some real progress is made.”

After turning down the second assignment on the Continent, Sterling had devoted himself to politics and his seat in the House of Lords; namely championing a cause close to his wife’s heart. Together, they now worked to ensure a better system and situations for children in group homes. They made an example of themselves and began investigating more ways to become involved. Their upcoming meeting with their new foundation was one of the final steps in putting together their plan for expanding more orphanages to include schools with more regulated educational standards. They were planning on starting with Mrs. Worthy’s Home and School for Girls, the orphanage Alaina had continued to visit on a bi-weekly basis.

The Duke and Duchess of Morton had created a reputation for championing the abandoned and the forgotten. Sterling had assumed more than a figurehead role on the board of the girls’ home, and the improvements to the school were promising. Already, the children were demonstrating better reading and writing skills. If they showed an aptitude in a specific subject or trade, then the Morton Foundation would help find them apprenticeships or positions within those areas. They desired above all to give children who had so little support the opportunities fortune had snatched from them.

To say he was excited by how happy this made his wife was an understatement. It was rewarding to see the children thrive, but most of all, he loved being able to help Alaina feel fulfilled and to work on something by her side. In return, Sterling felt as if he was doing something worthwhile. It made him feel like, for the first time, he and Alaina were a team against the world. To have someone at his back was unfamiliar yet comforting in the most primal of ways. He still hated to dwell upon the time they’d lost during their eight years apart, but he recognized that that distance had allowed Alaina to develop into the amazing woman she was.

“I agree,” Sterling replied, rubbing his wife’s heels with the pressure he knew she liked. It earned him another delicious groan of approval. “It took some doing, but you and Miss Smythe are quite the formidable team.” It had been quite the coup, but, with their help and some creative convincing of Mrs. Worthy’s grandson and former patron of the girls’ home, Miss Smythe was now in charge. Under her careful guidance, the school was flourishing and the girls were thriving. A couple of the older ones had even found secretarial positions thanks to their aptitude for numbers and letters.

“The next step is to implement the efforts in children’s homes around London.”

“That’s my wife—ever ambitious and never satisfied,” he groused playfully. Alaina wrenched her foot from his grasp and pressed it into the center of his naked chest so he leaned back in the chair. He tried not to stare at the impossible length of her smooth leg as the hem of her nightrail slid up.

“You say that as if I am a harpy who is difficult to please.”

“Well, that is patently untrue.” He circled her ankle with his hand and raised her leg higher so he could kiss the inside of her calf. If he caught a glimpse of the gilded curls at the crux of her creamy thighs, then so be it. “I can think of a few ways to please you. Give me five minutes, and I’ll come up with a hundred more.”

Her blue eyes flashed and she shot him a sinfully wicked grin. “My memory may need some refreshing.”

“In due time,” he chuckled. Five days, to be exact. Dr. McCullom had advised them to wait at least six weeks before engaging in any strenuous activity or vigorous intercourse. Sterling respected the physician’s advice, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t counting the days like a prisoner waiting to be freed back into the arms of his beloved.

Sterling’s hands worked their way up from her foot to knead the lean muscle of her calf. She turned her attention back to their son and stroked his downy head with gentle fingertips. That smile as she held the child was something Sterling would never forget.

He cherished these tender, quiet moments and knew he would look back upon them fondly once the chaos of their life resumed.

Much to his chagrin, Alaina had continued organizing her Reading Society meetings, but he had gotten somewhat used to rooms full of women dancing on furniture and passionately debating literature. Luckily for Sterling, he’d discovered a few more friends of his own in the husbands of those Society members—many of them like-minded men utterly enamored of their unconventional wives—thus expanding upon the camaraderie he had with Sommerfeld. He had a life full of a new kind of chaos and he loved every minute of it.

Alaina caught him staring. “Is everything alright?”

He smiled in reply. “Never better.”