Letters to a Lover, page 24
“Was there ever anyone you thought you might have written love letters to?” Eric asked at last.
She had already thought about it honestly. “No. That’s why it confused me. But I had forgotten so much…and when Dragan explained how my mind might refuse to remember things it didn’t like, I imagined it doing the same about other things. I didn’t want to have had an affair with anyone. I couldn’t imagine loving anyone but you. But I didn’t know, and that tore me apart. I have been…frail. Since Lizzie.”
His arm came around her. “You were never that frail.”
She dragged her gaze down to his face. “Did you never doubt me?”
“I think I doubted myself and my ability to make you happy. The way we have been…I could hardly have blamed you for seeking romance.”
She slipped her good arm around his neck. “I have all the romance I need. I always had. Dance with me, Eric.”
And he waltzed with her under the stars until it grew chilly, and they made their way back inside and upstairs to bed and a little more romance.
Epilogue
They had been two weeks at Trenchard when Eric walked out into the garden to find his wife smiling at nothing in particular. She sat at the rustic little table under the chestnut tree while the children sat on the lawn close, doing their lessons outdoors with Miss Farrow.
In her sun hat and light summer dress, with stray locks of hair escaping across her forehead and one cheek, Azalea looked extraordinarily beautiful, almost ethereal, in her own private world.
“A penny for them,” he murmured, taking the chair next to hers.
She blinked as though she had indeed been miles away and laughed with curious breathlessness. “For my thoughts? Oh, they are going to cost you considerably more than a penny. Or at least the cause of them is.”
“What cause?” he asked.
Before his eyes, her other-worldly quality seemed to melt away. She was a physical, very desirable woman and arousal stirred. Especially when she picked up his hand, playing with it as she gazed up at him and then, slowly, spread his fingers across her abdomen.
His breath caught. “Zalea? Really?”
Her eyes laughed at him. “You needn’t sound so astonished. Considering how often we have loved in recent weeks, it would be more surprising if there were no physical consequences.”
“Oh, there are always physical consequences to that,” he said fervently. He stroked her belly in wonder. “You are not afraid?” he asked because he had to. “Of the melancholy returning?”
“No,” she said frankly. “And even if it does, we shall deal with it together. I cannot imagine ever being less than deliriously happy with my life.”
He leaned forward and kissed her lips lingeringly. “Neither can I,” he said contentedly. “Neither can I.”
About Mary Lancaster
Mary Lancaster lives in Scotland with her husband, three mostly grown-up kids and a small, crazy dog.
Her first literary love was historical fiction, a genre which she relishes mixing up with romance and adventure in her own writing. Her most recent books are light, fun Regency romances written for Dragonblade Publishing: The Imperial Season series set at the Congress of Vienna; and the popular Blackhaven Brides series, which is set in a fashionable English spa town frequented by the great and the bad of Regency society.
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Lancaster, Mary, Letters to a Lover
