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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

T hey remained in bed, awash in the afterglow of their intense mutual pleasure.

After multiple rounds of lovemaking, they had briefly retreated to their basins to clean up, flushed and sweating from the exertions. At last, allowing for the final act, Diana had removed her pessary. She’d no need of it given Albie’s versatility and talent with the thin sheath he had used.

The force of the delicious madness from before still pulsed faintly between her legs. Diana would gladly partake of this pleasure repeatedly, as often as Albie was willing.

This was the part of the marriage he had described as “fun.” But that word did not give the act even half its due.

Behind their fans, the matrons might whisper of a woman’s “obligation” to her husband.

She suspected that the same women who spoke of conjugal relations in such glum terms hadn’t the pleasure of an Orcan husband.

If what happened between them tonight was considered an obligation, it was one to which Diana happily relented.

Albion had arranged for an evening repast, and Diana had worked up a splendid appetite.

To her great delight, the delicacies included drinking chocolate, an indulgence her father had not allowed Diana and Lil as of late.

It arrived in two tall, narrow chocolate cups with matching saucers adorned with hand-painted blackbirds and orange peonies.

Albie insisted on feeding her, piercing one of his enormous forks into the plum cakes, cherry tarts, and giant blueberries baked into fresh scones and offering them to her. The intimacy of the gesture touched her, and she offered to do the same for him, but he held up his hand.

“Let me serve you this time, Dais. Let me pamper you.”

“And not for the first time today.”

“I am glad you enjoyed our tumble together,” he said with a hint of pride.

“Who would have thought a lesson in combat could lead to romance?”

Albie gave a hearty laugh. He reached for a slice of brioche flavored with rosemary, parsley, and thyme, offering her a bite.

She let the savory flavors roll over her tongue. After another few bites, she brushed off rogue crumbs and declared, “I believe I am satiated, husband.”

“How disappointing.”

“I’ve no doubt we shall make time for more wicked fun in the days ahead. But now I wish to enjoy your company in other ways. If you will permit it.”

He set the plate of food on the pedestal next to his mammoth bed and then wrapped his arms around her, leaning back against the surfeit of pillows arranged against the heavily carved headboard. “Is this an acceptable form of companionship?”

“Very much so.”

Diana yielded to the sensual warmth, running her hand up and down the intriguing black hair, thick, curling, and soft, that formed a path from the base of his torso down to his sex.

She traced patterns on his bare chest with the tip of her finger, thinking there could be no greater satisfaction in the world than this, regardless of the future.

She shouldn’t even think about the future.

Yet there it stretched in her imagination—one in which they were bonded, heart, body, and soul.

As the fire in the hearth dimmed, their aromas mingled with the dying flames.

His scent had altered slightly from their exertions, but she did not mind.

Rather, she found it intoxicating. That had to mean something.

Sharing this bed, ensconced in satin sheets and warm quilts, comforted and excited by his presence, a life together seemed the most natural thing in the world.

Between her pessary and his sheaths, they’d both taken care to avoid a child.

Diana owned no regrets, as this had allowed them both to focus on their lovemaking rather than its consequences.

Neither of them wanted to force a decision about that future influenced by anything apart from their desire for one another.

Could they conceive a child? Given their bodies fit so well together and the anatomical differences between Orcan and human men trivial, they must be able to do so.

Blazes! Yet her mind refused to relieve her of this strange notion.

Preventing a child was for the best. Even so, she wondered what such a child would look like, a combination of herself and Albion.

The best parts of each of them. She imagined a child with Albion’s steadiness, kindness, and inquisitiveness.

A child living in two worlds and thriving in each.

Were there any family names he wished to pass on as a legacy?

For that matter, would his family even want Albie to bear a child with her?

She recalled the stern looks from his mother had targeted when Albie escorted her to his brother’s wedding.

Supposedly, she had encouraged a match with an English lady.

But Diana didn’t think the woman liked her, and had not a clue how to curry her favor.

“What is your mother’s name?” she asked, finger pausing in its path along his chest. “I’ve only heard her referred to as the Dowager.”

“Freya. After the flower the English call a primrose. And your mother’s name?”

“Elsbeth.” Diana thought the sound of the syllables pretty but had no intention of naming any daughter of hers, hypothetical or otherwise, after her mother.

“And what brings names to mind?” Albie stroked Diana’s hair, tucking a few loose strands over her ear.

The truth almost escaped. Diana need not wait until the deadline they had set, the close of the summer elections, to tell him that she wanted this marriage to last. If they loved one another, the marriage was sanctified and could rightly involve children. When they were ready.

Those words might have come, but for the sudden tension in his body. If Albie was not ready for such a conversation, she was not daft enough to force it. Instead, she steered the conversation in a different direction.

“You are already spoiling me. Spoiling me rotten, my mother would say. Will you allow an additional request? We are planning to go to Lord Mandeville’s Midsummer Ball, are we not?”

“As is everyone else in London.”

Lord Mandeville’s ball was the last one held before Parliament recessed and the ton retreated to their country residences. Father had always made them spend the better part of three months at their estate in Leicester, too far north of London to be of any interest in Diana’s view.

“Is it your custom to retreat to the countryside after Parliament goes into recess?”

“With the rest of Society, you mean?” Albion said in his delectably deep voice—a voice she found all the more delightful when tinged with a healthy dose of skepticism.

“To sit around and stare into space rather than partake of London’s delights.

But I spoke imprudently. I take it you have grown accustomed to summers in the country. ”

“Yes, but you did not speak imprudently. I find the countryside a terrible bore.” She hesitated. “Come to think of it, though, I did not spend this past summer there. Since my parents sent me abroad.”

“Shameful,” Albie muttered. “On their part.”

Toying with a tassel fringing the top quilt, Diana’s thoughts returned to the ship that had transported her over the ocean and back, the gust lashing her face and stinging her bare ears as she focused on the steps ahead to take fresh air on the deck.

The wind carried salty traces of the sea.

She listened to the sailor shouting at one another as they attended to the masts and riggings.

Surrounded by nothing but the rhythmic waves, land out of sight, she felt as though someone had lifted a tremendous weight from her soul.

The farther they pulled away from England, the less substantial her problems seemed.

While Diana had suffered from seasickness—who on the crowded packet ship had not?—she saw the journey as a grand adventure. Despite the unfortunate circumstances that had prompted its necessity.

“Shameful? Perhaps. Ultimately, I found the experience far more rewarding than summer at our gloomy country seat.”

Diana turned to her side, and Albie followed suit so that they faced one another. She could stare openly at his wondrous fire-colored eyes. Ask him. Her chest fluttered uncertainly. Are we to remain as we are after the season concludes? Or are we to be man and wife in name only?

But a tiresome nag that spoke in her voice, from inside her own head, insisted that she did not deserve Albie.

“How did you manage such a voyage?” Albie asked. “Few orcs have dared to cross the great sea, yet the English seem to make a habit of it.”

“I kept to my journals and books and spent more time than I care to remember staring aimlessly at the ocean, trying to escape the sour housemaid my parents insisted should stay at my side.”

“Not Miss Isabel, I take it.”

Diana emitted a laugh that came perilously close to a snort. “Hardly! But truly, Albie. I own the circumstances may not have been ideal, but I survived well enough.”

“You thrived. Anyone can see it. Adventure suits you. Boldness suits you. But I still detest your parents for seeing fit to cast you away. That’s the truth of it.”

“I wouldn’t phrase it quite as bluntly. I comforted myself that I should not have to spend the summer months in perpetual boredom at the very least.”

“So we are both town mice rather than country mice,” Albie said. “As Aesop would have it. Though, hopefully, we shall not be stalked by a giant cat as the proud town mouse in that tale.”

She delighted once more at learning something new about her husband. “You read Aesop’s fables in the Hidden Realm? Or did you read the tales here?”

“This Aesop fellow’s stories made it our way in the time of the ancients. We kept foreign armies from our land but welcomed literature from around the world. But I digress. Tell me more of your interest in Lord Mandeville’s ball. It’s not for another week, is it?””

“Which shall hopefully suffice,” she told him. “For I have decided I need a new gown.”