Page 82 of Tempting the Marquess

“Yes. We did. But it seems they aren’t so reliable after all. They can move. Dislodge. Leave some, ah, seed behind when removed. If you recall, William, you filled me with a great deal that night. Repeatedly.”

Christ.

Could it be true? He was going to be a father?

Fierce emotion poured through him, making his eyes sting and his limbs unsteady. Very, very tentatively, he reached out and rested a hand on her belly.

“Mine?” he said roughly.

“Of course it is yours,” she said in a dull, flat voice.

His gut clenched. “But so many people said...is it true you visited Alexander at all times of the day and night?”

“Yes. After Lord Robert returned and told us what happened, I collapsed. I wouldn’t leave my chamber and I couldn’t eat or sleep. The only notes I read were the ones from Alexander, when he would send news from Whitehall. Sometimes, I think I just needed to talk to someone who was as frantic with worry as me. No one else truly understood except Aunt Jane and Stephen, really. Then I started getting sick each morning, but thought I’d just picked up some horrid illness. Pregnancy didn’t even cross my mind until Aunt Jane came in one day when I was bent over a chamber pot and started asking questions.”

“She knows?”

“Yes. As does Caroline, so probably Stephen too. They have…expectations as to how this will finish.”

Of course they would. Marriage, at once. And if they were a few months in the future when Samantha turned twenty-one, he would be sprinting to the archbishop for a special license so fast his boots would make sparks on the ground. But right now she was twenty, and English law said she had to have her father’s permission or the marriage would be invalid. In that Claremont was a traitor who wanted to killhim…

William briefly closed his eyes, self-loathing almost paralyzing him. If he’d left Samantha alone, like an operative with any sense, exercised actual judgement and control…

“Samantha, I’m sorry,” he began.

She held up a hand. “Don’t bother, your face just told a thousand tales. And I understand perfectly. Why would a Hastings wed a Buchanan? I’m just like my mother, after all. The lowest of thelow.”

“That is not it atall—”

“Besides,” she continued relentlessly, every word stabbing him like the dagger she’d thrown so accurately in Hyde Park, “it doesn’t matter. My being with child will barely rate on the list of family scandals. I’ll just go somewhere, pretend I am a widow. Maybe one day I’ll meet a man who wants to share his life with me and my baby, and we’ll marry.”

“You will do no such thing!” he bit out, wincing as a jolt of agony raced from his shoulder to his toes, the wound beginning to throb in time with a shocking headache.

But Samantha’s fresh, beautiful face aged and hardened before his eyes. “Farewell, William.”

And she wasgone.