Page 15 of Lie Down With a Lyon (The Lyon’s Den)

August 10, 1805

D áire’s sisters arrived with a flourish midafternoon on the tenth of the month.

They had both come for two days’ visit soon after Adelaide was born. But this visit would be for three weeks until they returned to school.

On the day of their arrival, they scrambled out of the traveling coach Dáire had hired to fetch them from Maidstone. They ran past the butler, yelled upstairs proclaiming their presence, and skidded to a halt in front of Dáire, who met them on the second landing.

“Wonderful to see you so well and here at last.” He hugged and kissed them both.

“Where is our sister-in-law, sir?” prodded Alys with a toss of her long, fiery curls.

“Upstairs. The master. She is nursing the baby,” he told them, trying to keep his voice level and urge them to a sense of calm. “Now, I suggest both of you come with me for only a minute. Then you may go wash your hands and your faces, have a cup of tea, and unpack. Later, we will have a leisurely visit during dinner.”

“Let’s go,” said Alys.

Dáire entered the room first, leaving the two girls at the door to giggle and whisper in their excitement.

Addy lay asleep in Blanche’s arms.

“Shall I let the girls in, or would you rather wait until she’s awake?”

Blanche got to her feet, her precious bundle secure in a crocheted blanket Susana Edmunds had made for her. “Yes, let them come. Only for a minute, though. I just got her to sleep and I want to put her down. After that, we can visit for a few minutes. Then I want to nap.”

“If you are up to this.” His wife continued to be very tired. She nursed their daughter, refusing the offers of her husband, her aunts and uncles, and her father to find a wet nurse for the baby.

“I am,” she said with a bright smile. “I am always ready for family to visit.”

He waited as Blanche walked to the alcove where they had placed the cradle. Soon, he would have to order a cabinetmaker to fashion a larger bed with sides. Addy grew quickly—her feet now touched the end of the little bed.

“Come in, please,” he called to his sisters at the door.

They rushed inside, quiet as little mice.

Standing around the cradle, the four of them beamed at the baby and each other in turn.

Then Dáire raised a hand to shoo them all toward the bedroom and the hall. Blanche emerged with them to hug and greet both girls with kisses to their cheeks. “Do go settle in your rooms now. I must retire. I’ll see you at dinner, and we will have a jolly time hearing your news.”

“I got top marks for history and etiquette,” reported Marie with pride.

Alys pressed her rosebud lips together. “I did well in dancing and pianoforte.”

“All of that sounds useful.” Blanche liked to praise others for all the positive things they accomplished.

“Run along now,” Dáire urged them. “We’ll see you both at dinner.” Then he offered his arm to Blanche and they returned to their bedroom.

Alone together, they strode in silence to their bed. There, Dáire sat her down. As he did each day at this time, he removed his wife’s shoes and unfastened the pins in the bodice she’d hastily secured after nursing their daughter. Her gown gaped, and the sight of his wife’s added contours from feeding their daughter had him smiling to himself.

“Those pins are such a nuisance.” She sighed as she reclined on the bed.

Dáire stretched out beside her and pulled her into his arms. “Dressmakers should make gowns that allow a woman to nurse her children more easily.”

“More buttons.”

“Or ribbons,” he added. “Anything other than those prickly things.”

She nuzzled him and kissed his throat. “The best would be to do without them all.”

“I know. How long do you think a mother continues to feed her child?”

“Corrine and Delilah tell me eight or nine months.”

He nodded. Both ladies were married to Langley men, and therefore Blanche’s aunts by marriage. Their relationship among her mother’s family was a rich and rewarding one. The ladies often appeared for tea, and did so more frequently now that Blanche was recovered from the drain of the first few weeks after the birth.

Blanche and Dáire’s relationship with her father remained strained, stilted. But the man had written a month after Addy’s birth to ask if he might view the child. The four of them had met at a bookshop near Lambeth. Blanche had written to stress they would meet for only five minutes and that he must come with only one bully boy to assist him. Dáire had brought two of his runners as their protection.

Tears had dotted Rivers’s lashes when he saw the babe.

“She’s as lovely as you were. As beautiful as her grandmother, too.”

When Blanche told him they had named the baby for her, he’d had a terrible time suppressing a sob of joy. He was weak, frail. In the intervening months, he had lost more weight, more color, more height.

Blanche had cried after he left, fearing he was not long for this world. “I wish we could be closer, but I cannot do it.”

She had good reason. Recently, rumors in the newspapers and from Dáire’s associates in government said that one of Jonathan Rivers’s men had been caught associating with a double agent for France. The man had killed the suspected agent, and though he claimed the fellow was an agent for France and he had done his duty to Britain to do away with him, he had no proof. He was not absolved. He had gone to prison, accused of treason.

Dáire sympathized with his wife’s wish to find more in union with her father, but he had no solution to the problem.

Instead, now, he did the only thing he could. Dáire inched closer to his wife and offered comfort. “I understand, my darling. But I do believe your father does, too.”

She fought her tears and sniffed. “I want him to know how grateful I am for what he did do for me.”

Dáire threaded his fingers through her hair and smiled down at the woman he adored. “He knows that also. It’s why he feels free to ask to visit.”

She snuggled closer. “I love you, Dáire O’Neill.”

He dropped a kiss to her fragrant hair. “It is the honor of my life that you do.”

“And a joy,” she added as she pulled back to unwind his cravat.

He stayed her hand. “That way is a joy, but not wise.”

“Who says?” She cocked a brow at him, whimsy in her twinkling gray eyes.

Desire surged hot through him. “You may still be…tender. Unready.”

“I’d say I am ready.” She pushed up and climbed over him to press her body along the top of his. “I want to show you how dear you are to me.”

His heart overflowed as he gripped her shoulders. “You’ll tell me if I hurt you.”

“You cannot. Ever.”

And so Dáire O’Neill took his darling wife to him for the first time in three months.

That afternoon burned bright in his memory for the next forty-two years he lived. In fact, his wife’s invitations to intimacy were the charming aspect of her recovery from the birth of each of their four children. She loved him, and that was more than he’d ever expected of this life or the next.