Victoria Thompson: Texas Blonde

"I had no right to take you that day," he said, brushing wisps of golden hair off her forehead. "I forced you so that you would have to marry me."

"I knew that," she informed him sweetly. "The only thing I couldn't figure out was why you wanted to marry me."

"What?" Josh said in complete astonishment.

"It's true," she assured him, "It never occurred to me that you might actually be in love with me."

"It never occurred to me either," he replied with a self-mocking grin. "I was just as surprised as you were. But I do love you, more every day," he added, rolling off of her and carrying her with him so that she now rested against his chest.

"And I love you even more," she said with an impish grin.

But he did not return that grin. Instead he grew pensive. "Are you sure that just being my wife is going to be enough for you? If you change your mind about Philadelphia…"

"I'm not going to change my mind," Felicity said with some exasperation. "I told you, I was feeling a little desperate about my photographs back when I thought they were the only 'babies' I would ever have. Now I know that's not true, and for the time being, at least, I'll be perfectly happy to simply photograph my own children."

"Children?" Josh repeated suspiciously.

"Of course," she assured him. "You didn't think I'd be happy with just Claire, did you? I intend to have lots more, because I know you only got married so you could have children to leave the ranch to-"

He used a kiss to cut off her outrageous charges in mid-sentence. When she was breathless, he pulled away again. "You're absolutely right," he assured her just as outrageously, "and I think we'd better get started on the next baby right away."

"I thought we just did," she said innocently.

"That," he informed her, "was only practice."

In doing research for my previous novels, I would occasionally come across a photograph of what appeared to be a sleeping baby. The captions to the pictures explained that the child, who was invariably dressed in a long christening gown, was dead. I found such captions incomprehensible according to my twentieth-century understanding. Then I finally happened across the explanation that traveling photographers were often asked to photograph infants prior to burial so the parents would have a memento of the deceased child. People who lived during the Victorian era were perhaps more sentimental and less squeamish about such things than we are today.

The details about Felicity's childbirth experiences are based on actual fact. The story, as told to me, was so fascinating that I have remembered it for almost two decades until at last I have the opportunity to put it into a book.