Page 97 of Tempted
Damaris couldn’t contain her delight. “Oh how marvelous—you must be overjoyed!”
Tina said, “I’m certainly not overjoyed about this child, Ada. I wish to God I hadn’t conceived so quickly.”
Damaris was stunned. “Tina, how can you possibly feel this way? My tragedy wasn’t just that I died, but that I died before I had time to have a child. If I had left behind a son or a daughter who I could watch grow up, my demise wouldn’t even matter. The longing and yearning for a child that you know can never be almost devours your soul. For over fifteen years I’ve hungered, and now you will have the child I could not have.”
Tina looked up and blinked back tears. “The damndest part is, I already love it.”
Damaris closed her eyes and let out a long sigh.
Ada held out the towel she had warmed at the fire. “Of course you do, and one day you’ll be damned thankful his father is so much man.”
As Tina sank into the soft bed she said, “I’m weary. I wish Mr. Burque were here. I have a craving for hippocras, and he has a secret recipe for the stuff.”
Dawn saw the return of Gavin Douglas deeply tanned from his sojourn aboard the Caprice, now renamed the Revenge
“Ye didn’t anchor at Leith, I trust?” asked Ram.
“Give me credit fer some brains! She’s well hidden at Bo’Ness. We just had tae ride directly south.”
“Henry Tudor has offered a reward of a thousand pounds per annum for the capture of Lord Vengeance.”
“Christ, I’ll turn him in myself!” laughed Gavin.
Ram said dryly, “My exact words tae the king. Joking aside, if yer captured, they’ll hang ye for piracy. Yer every bit as much Lord Vengeance as I am.”
“The English vessels stay well out in the North Sea, but we sank a couple skulking on the far side of the Isle of May.”
“When ye raid, stay clear of Berwick,” Ram warned. “The English have troops garrisoned there.”
Gavin’s mouth became hard. “Coldstream and Kelso have been devastated. All the fine autumn harvests are now just charred fields.”
“Did ye replace their winter fodder?” Ram asked.
“Aye, we went clear down tae the Tyne and raided all along its fertile banks.” He grinned.
“Did Drummond captain one of Angus’s ships?”
Gavin nodded. “Ian also, an’ Jamie’s almost ready tae command a ship. It seems tae come naturally.”
“Douglas blood is in reality salt water,” Ram confided.
“What about our little brother Cameron? Dinna ye think it’s time ye let him out of leadin’ strings?”
“He’s got all the responsibility he can handle at the moment. I left him in the borders in charge of a score of mosstroopers.”
Gavin whistled, feeling slightly envious. Ram guessed his thoughts. “Be satisfied, man—ye can’t do both.”
“You seem to manage it,” Gavin said dryly.
Tina found that if she lay quietly for half an hour after she awoke, the nausea receded. When she surveyed herself in the mirror, she realized that pregnancy had given her radiance. Her hair crackled with a life of its own, curling madly about a face that fairly glowed with good health. Her breasts were definitely larger, giving her body a ripe, sensual allure.
When her thoughts strayed to Ram Douglas, she knew she enjoyed their personality clashes, their shouting matches, and their blazing quarrels as much as she enjoyed their sexual jousts. He was a worthy enemy. She did not regret anything that had passed between them—not one word, not one look
She dismissed Ram from her thoughts, eager to take the lap desk she had brought up to Mad Malcolm.
Jenna had just bathed him, and he was in a feisty mood, but when Malcolm saw Valentina and the present she had brought him, his eyes lit with pleasure. He waited with a suppressed air of secrecy until Jenna departed, then pulled his writing sheets from beneath the mattress and laid them out on the desk top.
Tina was pleasantly surprised that the room was not littered with wine and whisky decanters, and for once Malcolm was not reeling drunk. She showed him the clever mechanism that revealed the secret drawer, and he grasped its workings immediately “Yer the answer tae a prayer, lass” He carefully placed some pages he had selected into the secret drawer, and when he pressed the ornate carving, they were concealed as if they had disappeared into thin air “I’m almost finished the grisly history of Castle Dangerous,” he confided “Has he returned?”
