Page 37 of The Duke of Swords (The Highwaymen #4)

THEY STARTED TRYING to remedy the fact that she wasn’t with child on the ship back to England.

Rae thought it might have been more exciting for the fact that they were in close quarters, in the belly of a ship that was turning this way and that on the water, and the walls were thin. They had to be quiet.

“I really thought you were with child,” he said the first time.

“Bit disappointed I’m not?” she said, giving him a smug little grin. “Because there is something you can do about that, you know.”

Then, nearly every night, he would run his hands all over her flat belly and talk about how he kept picturing her heavy with his child. His hands would go higher to cup her breasts and he’d say that he’d pictured her nursing the babe, her nipples rosy.

“Nursing?” she would say, giggling, and strangely aroused by this conversation, which she thought really shouldn’t be arousing. “I shall have a wet nurse, obviously.”

“Then what shall we do with your milk?” he said.

She covered her face with both hands and screamed out a giggle, and he shoved his hands over her mouth and said that they would hear her, and she must be quiet if she wished to be gotten with child.

“You do wish that, don’t you?” he’d whisper in her ear. “You do wish to take my seed and get quite heavy with my babe?”

And that would make her whole body feel thick with a kind of intense arousal that seemed ever so wrong on every level and yet was quite, quite compelling. “Yes,” she would whisper. “Yes, get me with child, Oliver, get me with child please .”

“You will have to be quiet, though,” he would breathe, “because if anyone discovers us, they’ll stop us.”

“I am quiet!”

And there would be blistering kisses and his fingers everywhere and his mouth on her breasts, and his thick, hard cock prodding at her between her thighs, and she would feel heavy there, heavy and slick and ready.

“There,” he’d say when he was pushing his way into her, when she was stretching and making room for him and when every little thrust and nudge of him felt quite, quite good. “There we are, just like this. This is what you wanted, isn’t it, my pretty wife?”

“Yes,” she’d gasp.

“Quiet, quiet,” he’d soothe, because she’d be making too much noise, breathing heavily as he worked himself in her. “You’ll make me come if you keep doing that.”

“You wish to come in me, though, husband,” she’d say. “Because you’re quite eager to put your seed in my womb.”

“Want you very, very pregnant, yes,” he’d say, emphasizing the word as if saying it made him ever more aroused. “Want to make you that way, want to see what I’ve done to you, watch you get round with the evidence you’re mine.”

“I’m quite definitely yours,” she would say.

“My beautiful duchess.”

“Get your duchess with child,” she would groan.

“Not so loud,” he would admonish.

Anyway, she was probably gone with the babe by the time they got off the ship, but she couldn’t be entirely sure, as she had bled during the first week of their voyage (not that this had deterred her husband, who seemed to have no qualms about rutting her straight through it, blood or no blood.

He did say he wasn’t much bothered by the sight of it, and she supposed that was true).

Whatever the case, she did not bleed again and Rutchester was entirely too proud of himself.

And there were no more outbursts, either, which she could hardly trust at first. A man doesn’t change overnight, at least she had not thought so. But he was careful with her, quite careful with her now that she was increasing, and he was brilliantly excited about the baby.

He was also, well, excited about her swelling belly, and not exactly in a toward way.

If she had thought he’d visit her bed less once he knew he’d succeeded in breeding her, she was quite wrong in that regard.

He seemed even more aroused by the idea of it, and he liked her belly rather a lot.

As the pregnancy progressed, they had to get more and more inventive to find positions that made the act even possible, but he was quite up for the challenge, and she couldn’t say she minded.

She dithered about telling her father about the babe.

He would be a grandfather, and the babe would not have any other grandparents, for both of Rutchester’s parents were gone.

Her father had not come back to darken their door after Rutchester had cut all the buttons off his jacket and waistcoat, nor had he meddled in their marriage. He had made no public objections, brought no more mobs to their door.

She wasn’t sure if it was because she was increasing or not, but she felt as if her anger towards him had melted away to some degree. Yes, he had been wretched and self-centered, but it was the way of the world, wasn’t it? Men always thought they were the center of everything.

Rutchester didn’t, she supposed, but perhaps that was because he’d been so horribly abused.

She would rather he hadn’t been abused, of course, and she knew there had been more disadvantages than could ever be made up for, but it was nice to find some silver lining in the midst of the nightmare, she supposed.

She spoke to Patience about it, who had given birth while Rae was in America, to a beautiful little girl named Agnes. Rae held her and tickled the tiny girl’s tummy as she explained the situation to the Duchess of Nothshire.

“You will only ever have one father,” said Patience. “My brother has not been the most understanding or giving family member, but he is family.”

“Yes,” said Rae. “You don’t choose family but that doesn’t mean they don’t mean something.”

“We do seem to have a dearth of grandparents, though,” said Patience, tapping her bottom lip. “Hmm.”

And then, some months later, Patience asked if Rae had decided to speak to her father.

“I did write to him,” Rae told her, and explained that her father was eager to see the child when it was born, though he had said he did not know if he wished to ever be under the same roof as Rutchester.

“Hmm,” said Patience. “Well, I shan’t invite him, then, which is unfortunate, truly. He would have been the only grandfather.”

“Invite him to what?” said Rae.

IT TURNED OUT to be a grand country gathering in the summer at the Nothshire estate in the north.

All of the dukes were there with their wives. And the dukes who had children had their children there as well.

Rae’s little girl was only a few months old at that time.

The grandparents were comprised of Nothshire’s mother, Arthford’s mother, Dunrose’s grandmother, and Rae’s father. For, yes, he’d come around a bit. She could not say her father and her husband were fast friends or anything of that nature, but they were capable of residing under the same roof.

Dunrose’s grandmother was there because she was not going to have any great-grandchildren any other way, since Dunrose and his duchess were firm in their stance that they did not wish to have children.

Since the remaining dukes did not have enough grandparents between them, however, she was included.

The biggest surprise, however, was Seraphine, whose child was only a little older than Rae’s Annabelle and a bit younger than Patience’s Agnes.

Rae did not think that any of them liked Seraphine. In truth, she thought Seraphine was one of their enemies. Probably the only enemy they truly had left.

But Patience said that Hyacinth wanted her here. “Oh, Seraphine was sort of a mother to Hyacinth, I think,” said Patience. “And now she really is a mother. And to a little marquis, at that.”

“Who’s son do you think that child is?” said Rae. “I know it’s not actually Fateux’s.”

“Could be anyone’s,” said Patience with a shrug.

The grandparent gathering was quite a success, so much so that Patience professed that she would hold it every year as the children grew bigger, and everyone else agreed this was a good idea.

Rae, Rutchester, and little Annabelle retired to Andiley to spend the autumn, where Rae had to nudge off her husband, who seemed eager to get her with child again, though she was not even remotely ready for such a thing.

Even so, she was increasing again by the spring. “You are monstrous,” she told him when she discovered this. “I have been wrong all along!”

They went to visit Arthford, Marjorie, and their little one, David, before she got too huge this time, and Dunrose and Hyacinth were there too.

Bluebelle Grange was lovely in the springtime, and they were all happy to see each other, even if they were missing Nothshire, Patience, and their brood of children.

Arthford was in the midst of reorganizing his library, which was vast. He smoked his pipe and wandered amongst the stacks of books and carried David on his shoulders when they all went outside, which they did often.

Sometimes, in the evening, the three men sat in a corner of the library, surrounded by unwieldy stacks of books, and drank brandy together.

Sometimes, one of them would marvel at the idea that they could really have all managed to get married.

“How could that even be possible?” said Dunrose.

“Yes, and the women even seem to like us,” said Arthford.

“Clearly, none of us are particularly likable,” said Rutchester.

“Oh, speak for yourself,” said Dunrose. “I am a delight .”

Rutchester and Arthford exchanged a glance and then they all laughed. There was more brandy and more laughter, and they were merry in a way that was borne of their long association with each other.

They were closer than brothers. Had been always. Would continue to be.

Even as they grew old and they had children and they grew ever so much more boring and staid.

Most afternoons, they were all together, with the children as well, wandering the gardens of Bluebelle Grange. Hyacinth often went around with David trailing after her and little Annabelle on her hip.

One afternoon, the men took the children for a game of battledore and shuttlecock, and the women went off together into the gardens with a bottle of wine.

“Are you sure you don’t want any children?” said Marjorie to Hyacinth. “It must be difficult to prevent it.”

“Wild carrot seed,” said Hyacinth with a shrug. “I swear by it.” She had Annabelle in her lap. “It’s not that I don’t love children, you know. It’s only that Dunrose and I are quite selfish and petty people, and we wish to remain that way.”

Marjorie snorted. “Ah, yes, I see that about you, your pettiness, Your Grace.”

“It is true,” said Hyacinth airily, “Your Grace.”

“None of us are petty,” said Rae. “I think we have all been through quite a great deal, each of us.”

“The men haven’t dressed up and robbed a carriage in some time,” said Marjorie. “Even you and Patience have given up a great deal of your scheming.”

“Well, Patience is busy,” said Hyacinth. “But she’ll be back. And the boys will be back, too.”

“You think so?” said Rae, sitting up straight.

“Might be a while,” said Hyacinth with a shrug. “But, yes, I think so. I don’t think they truly wish to give it up. And we are only robbing people who need robbing, after all.”

Marjorie scoffed. “As if that’s something we could know, if someone needs robbing.” She shook her head. “You know, there’s a reason my Simon doesn’t indulge in any of that.”

“Oh?” said Hyacinth. “Why?”

“Something Champeraigne said to him once,” said Marjorie, furrowing her brow. “It shook him so completely that I remember it word for word, in fact.”

“What?” said Hyacinth.

“Yes, what did he say?” said Rae.

“He said that even if they ever got free of him, they’d always be his. He said he’d made them over in his own image,” said Marjorie.

“No,” said Rae. “That’s not true.”

“Definitely not,” said Hyacinth.

“Even so,” said Marjorie, “it leaves a mark, one’s traumatic past. One never does get quite free of it, does one?” She smoothed out her trousers and beckoned to her little boy. “Come on, sweet one, let us go and see where your papa is, shall we?”

Hyacinth narrowed her eyes. “I killed Champeraigne.”

“Yes, I know,” said Rae. “And Rutchester killed Fateux. And finished off all their fathers.”

“Yes,” said Hyacinth. “And now, we are entirely free of all of them. Entirely.”

“No,” said Rae.

“Yes,” said Hyacinth firmly.

“Well…” Rae sighed. “There is a mark left behind, I think, as Marjorie says. But you’re right, too. We are free now.”

“We are,” said Hyacinth.

Outside, the buds were green on the trees, new growth overtaking the world around them.

Springtime in England, the air wet with the promise of the newness of growth and change, the clouds fluffy in the brilliant blue sky.

Outside, the birds sang as they flew to and fro over Bluebelle Grange, over the women walking together and the children swiping at the shuttlecock and missing it completely as the men stood over them and chuckled.

“Let Uncle Daniel show you how to do that,” said Dunrose, kneeling down.

David shook his head firmly. “Do it all by myself,” he said sternly.

“He’s stubborn,” said Arthford, shrugging at Dunrose. “You should understand that.”

“I really don’t think the children are big enough for this game,” said Rutchester.

“Nonsense,” said Arthford. “Never too young to hold a racket.” He cleared his throat. “Four or one, boys?”

“There are only three of us here right now,” said Dunrose, getting to his feet as David scurried off with his racket, taking the shuttlecock with him too.

“One,” said Rutchester.

* * *

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