Page 153 of A Story of Love

Her lips parted in that distracting way she had.

Fast smirked. “Although I certainly plan to practice breeding you often and vigorously.”

She raised her hands to her pink cheeks. “You also plan to keep me in a perpetual blush.”

“I do,” he agreed. “But as to the matter of children, I will make every effort not to put a baby in your belly until and if you are ready for it.” He gave her a faint smile. “I think you know I’m more than delighted to take and give pleasure in a variety of other ways.”

“What if I never want to have a baby?” she asked quietly, no longer smiling.

“Then we will do our best to make sure you don’t fall pregnant.” He tilted his head. “You really don’t want children?”

“No, I want them. Very much, in fact. I just want to make sure that isn’t the reason you are marrying me.”

Fast couldn’t help feeling relieved at her words—at least the first part. As for the second…

“I can’t believe you would think I’d only marry you for heirs, Lorelei.”

She stroked a soothing hand over his chest. “I don’t. I just want everything to be… clear. I’ve seen too much misery when there are no children—or if there are girls, and no heir. I want to know that you will not be terribly disappointed if I cannot have children. Or if I only give you daughters.”

“I would adore having a daughter with you. Especially if she looks like you.” He sighed and laced their fingers together. “I don’t think I made my feelings entirely clear, Lorelei. I will be forty years old in a few months, so I have not been in any hurry to marry. I want a family for my own pleasure and happiness, not to secure a title I care very little about. The fact that my marriage will please my grandfather is just a happy bonus.”

“Hmmm. Forty,” she said, eying him speculatively.

“What? Is that too old for you, you little shrew? How old are you by the way?” He cast his gaze ceilingward and said, “Please say you are at least twenty.”

“I am five-and-twenty,” she retorted. “Is that too young for you?”

He grinned at her taunting. “For your information, you are perfect for me. You are perfect, full stop.” He raised her hand to his mouth and nibbled on her finger, regarding her hungrily from beneath his lashes. “Every single part of you is perfect.”

Her cheeks blossomed with color. “You can’t resist an opportunity to make me blush.”

“No. I cannot.”

She snorted and shook her head. “You are a rake. I can’t imagine how devastating you were when your powers were in full bloom.”

“I like to think I’ve just become better with age.”

She laughed.

Fast kissed her thoroughly, until she was breathless with something other than laughter. “Witch,” he muttered. “You have enchanted me thoroughly.”

His brazen little newspaperwoman shyly lowered her gaze. When she looked up again, she said, “What did your grandfather say about you marrying a newspaper woman?”

Fast hesitated, and then admitted, “I did not raise that subject with him. I told him what little I knew of your family connections. And I mentioned you lived with Lady Sedgewick.”

She pulled her hands away from him and the joy drained from her face. “So, in other words, you utterly concealed who I am.”

“My grandfather is almost ninety years of age, Lorelei. He is the product of another time and set in his ways. He would not approve of your aspirations to be a novelist, and he emphatically would not approve of me marrying a newspaper woman. However”—Fast raised his voice to be heard over her scoffing—“however, there is no reason that he should know of your ambitions, is there? At least not immediately.”

“What about the book contract you all but negotiated for me, Fast?”

He was genuinely surprised by her question. “What about it?”

“Do you expect me to just refute the offer if I agree to marry you?”

“Of course not!”

“Then how will your grandfather not find out about me?”