Page 98 of The Last Duke She'd Marry
To think, she’d once dismissed this marvelous man as shallow and careless. How wrong she’d been. He was everything that she’d ever wanted. He was everything that she’d never even thought to want.
As if Lucas read her thoughts – it was uncanny how often he tracked the workings of her mind without her saying anything – he stroked the plain of her stomach. “Don’t you have something you’d like to tell me?”
She smiled out over the dreaming city. “I wanted to be sure.”
“Are you?”
Her smile broadened. “Yes.”
His grip firmed, and he turned her to face him. The candelabra on either side of the doors shed enough light for her to read the elation in his expression. “You’re carrying our child?”
“Yes. I’m so happy.”
“Oh, Juliet…” He hauled her into his arms and kissed her with a clumsy ardor that betrayed his joy. By the time he came up for air, she was breathless and trembling.
“My darling, I hoped. But then you didn’t say anything. I wondered if perhaps you didn’t recognize the signs.”
She gave a short, shaky laugh. “ Of course I recognized the signs. Was I not the source of all marital information for my maiden sisters?”
Lucas responded with his own laugh. He caught her waist and stared down at her, as if she was a miracle that he could hardly believe he witnessed. “You could tell them a lot more now.”
She gave a dismissive huff. “I suspect these days, I don’t have to tell them a thing.”
“No, perhaps not.” Her dry response made him smile, but she could see that he had no attention to spare for Portia or Viola. “When?”
Juliet had no trouble interpreting his question. “Around Easter, I think.”
He still looked like a man who had bent to pick up a penny and found himself in possession of a guinea. “A baby in the spring.”
She studied him. “You’re genuinely pleased?”
“A child born of our love is the crowning blessing.”
“A baby will curtail our freedom.”
“A baby makes us a family.”
She blinked away tears, as the last of her lingering worries disappeared. Worries that she now realized had been unnecessary.
As ever, Lucas was too perceptive to miss her reaction. “Did you think I might resent becoming a father, you silly girl?”
He sounded fondly exasperated rather than upset, thank goodness. “I married a rake, after all,” she said in a thick voice.
“No, you married a reformed rake. There’s a difference.”
“You won’t mind settling down?”
He leaned in and kissed her with a reverent adoration that made her heart clench. “I look forward to a lifetime of love with you, my darling – and to the arrival of as many children as the good Lord grants us.”
“Lucas, I don’t deserve you,” she said. To her dismay, she began to cry in earnest.
He surveyed her with wry affection. “Of course you do, you beautiful goose. You’re my reason for living. You’re everything to me. You must know that.”
Hearing that only made her cry harder.
With a groan, Lucas bundled her up in his arms until his warm, spicy scent surrounded her. That scent would always be the smell of home to her.
By the time she’d regained control, they shared a tapestry-covered armchair and she was sitting on his lap.
