Julia Quinn - When He Was Wicked With 2nd Epilogue (Bridgertons)

“How did you find the climate in India?” Francesca queried. “Is it as hot as they say?”

“More so,” he replied. “Or maybe not. I don’t know. I imagine the descriptions are perfectly accurate. The problem is, no Englishman can truly understand what they mean until he gets there.”

She looked at him quizzically.

“It’s hotter than you could ever imagine,” he said, spelling it out.

“It sounds . . . Well, I don’t know how it sounds,” she admitted.

“The heat isn’t nearly so difficult as the insects.”

“It sounds dreadful,” Francesca decided.

“You probably wouldn’t like it. Not for an extended stay, anyway.”

“I’d like to travel, though,” she said softly. “I’d always planned to.”

She fell silent, nodding in a rather absentminded manner, her chin tilting up and down for so long that he was quite sure she’d forgotten she was doing it. Then he realized that her eyes were fixed off in the distance. She was watching something, but for the life of him he couldn’t imagine what. There was nothing interesting in the vista, just a pinchfaced nursemaid pushing a pram.

“What are you looking at?” he finally asked.

She said nothing, just continued to stare.

“Francesca?”

She turned to him. “I want a baby.”

Chapter 7

. . . had hoped to have received a note from you by now, but of course the post is notoriously unreliable when it must travel so far. Just last week I heard tale of the arrival of a mail pouch that was a full two years old; many of the recipients had already returned to England. My mother writes that you are well and fully recovered from your ordeal; I am glad to hear of it. My work here continues to challenge and fulfill. I have taken up residence outside the city proper, as do most Europeans here in Madras. Nonetheless, I enjoy visiting the city; it is rather Grecian in appearance; or rather, what I must imagine is Grecian, having never visited that country myself. The sky is blue, so blue it is nearly blinding, almost the bluest thing I have ever seen.

—from the Earl of Kilmartin

to the Countess of Kilmartin,

six months after his arrival in India

“I beg your pardon?”

She’d shocked him. He was sputtering, even. She hadn’t made her announcement to elicit this sort of reaction, but now that he was sitting there, his mouth hanging open and slack, she couldn’t help but take a small amount of pleasure from the moment.

“I want a baby,” she said with a shrug. “Is there something surprising in that?”

His lips moved before he actually made sound. “Well . . . no . . . but . . .”

“I’m twenty-six.”

“I know how old you are,” he said, a little testily.

“I’ll be twenty-seven at the end of April. I don’t think it’s so odd that I might want a child.”

His eyes still held a vaguely glazed sort of quality. “No, of course not, but—”

“And I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you!”

“I wasn’t asking you to,” he said, staring at her as if she’d grown two heads.

“I’m sorry,” she mumbled. “I overreacted.”

He said nothing, which irritated her. At the very least, he could have contradicted her. It would have been a lie, but it was still the kind and courteous thing to do.

Finally, because the silence was simply unbearable, she muttered, “A lot of women want children.”

“Right,” he said, coughing on the word. “Of course. But . . . don’t you think you might want a husband first?”

“Of course.” She speared him with an aggravated glare. “Why do you think I came down to London early?”

He looked at her blankly.

“I am shopping for a husband,” she said, speaking to him as if he were a halfwit.

“How mercenarily put,” he murmured.

She pursed her lips. “It’s what it is. And you had probably best get used to it for your own sake. It’s precisely how the ladies will soon be talking about you .”

He ignored the latter part of her statement. “Do you have a particular gentleman in mind?”

She shook her head. “Not yet. I imagine someone will pop to the forefront once I start looking, though.” She was trying to sound jolly about it, but the truth was, her voice was dropping in both tone and volume. “I’m sure my brothers have friends,” she finally mumbled.

He looked at her, then slumped back slightly and stared at the water.

“I’ve shocked you,” she said.

“Well . . . yes.”

“Normally, I’d take great pleasure in that,” she said, her lips twisting ironically.

He didn’t reply, but he did roll his eyes slightly.

“I can’t mourn John forever,” she said. “I mean, I can, and I will, but . . .” She stopped, hating that she was near tears. “And the worst part of it is, maybe I can’t even have children. It took me two years to conceive with John, and look how I mucked that up.”

“Francesca,” he said fiercely, “you mustn’t blame yourself for the miscarriage.”

She let out a bitter laugh. “Can you imagine? Marrying someone just so I could have a baby and then not having one?”

“It happens to people all the time,” he said softly.

It was true, but it didn’t make her feel any better. She had a choice. She didn’t have to marry; she would be quite well provided for—and blessedly independent—if she remained a widow. If she married—no, when she married—she had to mentally commit to the idea—it wouldn’t be for love. She wasn’t going to have a marriage like the one she’d shared with John; a woman simply didn’t find love like that twice in a lifetime.

She was going to marry for a baby, and there was no guarantee that she would get one.

“Francesca?”

She didn’t look at him, just sat there and blinked, desperately trying to ignore the tears burning at the corners of her eyes.

Michael held out a handkerchief, but she didn’t want to acknowledge the gesture. If she took the cloth, then she’d have to cry. There would be nothing stopping her.

“I must move on,” she said defiantly. “I must. John is gone, and I—”

And then the strangest thing happened. Except strange wasn’t really the right word. Shocking, perhaps, or altering, or maybe there wasn’t a word for the type of surprise that stole the pulse from one’s body, leaving one immobile, unable to breathe.

She turned to him. It should have been a simple thing. She’d certainly turned to Michael before, hundreds . . . no, thousands of times. He might have spent the last four years in India, but she knew his face, and she knew his smile. In truth, she knew everything about him—

Except this time was different. She turned to him, but she hadn’t expected him to have already turned to her. And she hadn’t expected him to be so close that she’d see the charcoal flecks in his eyes.

But most of all, she hadn’t expected her gaze to drop to his lips. They were full, and lush, and finely molded, and she knew the shape as well as the shape of her own, except never before had she really looked at them, noticed the way they weren’t quite uniform in color, or how the curve of his lower lip was really quite sensual, and—

She stood. So quickly that she nearly lost her balance. “I have to go,” she said, stunned that her voice sounded like her own and not some freakish demon. “I have an appointment. I’d forgotten.”

“Of course,” he said, standing beside her.

“With the dressmaker,” she added, as if details would make her lie more convincing. “All my clothes are in half-mourning colors.”

He nodded. “They don’t suit you.”