Gallant Match (32 page)

“H
ere you are,” Sonia said as she neared Kerr. A little of her glad assurance faded as she surveyed the grim look on his face. “I was afraid you had gone.”

“I wouldn't do that.” Folding his arms over his chest, he put his back to the gallery post. “You made things up with your papa?”

“He seems all right now with whatever I do.” She gave a small shake of her head. “He isn't a bad man or even an unreasonable one, really. It's only that he isn't used to thinking of how others may feel, and he turns stubborn when he knows he's in the wrong.”

“A lot of us are like that,” Kerr answered at his most laconic. “I waited because there are things that need to be said between us.”

Hope, so very new inside her, faltered along with her smile. “Yes, I…I owe you an apology. I should have told you about the baby.”

“You should,” he agreed evenly.

“I was afraid you would feel responsible.”

“And why not? I am responsible.”

She looked down at her clasped hands. “You see? I knew how it would be.”

“Some things a man has to own up to if he wants to call himself a man.”

His voice had softened a fraction. It gave her the courage to at least try to explain. “But I didn't want you to feel caught by it like another shackle holding you. I still don't. Despite what you said to my father, you are not obligated to marry me.”

“What if I want to be caught, if I can't wait to be obligated?”

She looked up, her eyes widening. “You really mean…”

He gave a hard nod, speaking with such precision every syllable seemed etched in stone. “More than anything on God's green earth, I want it. I want to hold and protect you all your days, Sonia Bonneval, to take you and our babe back to Kentucky with me and make a home there you'll never want to leave. I want to lie with you warm and safe in our bed while the rain falls on the roof and the winter winds howl. I want to stand with you on the porch while we watch our cotton bloom and our children grow as tall and strong as the mountains. I want—”

“You want to turn me into a
Kaintuck
woman,” she said while tenuous joy unfurled inside her. His declaration was a tribute beyond price for such a man of few words.

“It's a fine thing to be, I promise.
Kaintuck
women are proud and free. They speak their minds and make
people listen. They love hard and they love long, they latch on to what they want and never let go. They stand by their men and fight for what's right—and they teach their children to be just like them.”

“They love?”

“Something desperate,” he answered at once, “especially when they have a man who adores them from the topmost hair on their head to the smallest scar on their heel. I do adore you, Sonia, with every breath I take and every last beat of my heart.”

She closed her eyes because not being able to see his face was the only way to say what she must. “Particularly since I'm going to have your child.”

“You don't believe me. You think it's duty talking. I would have spoken during our days at sea, but thought you didn't need me, that there was no place for me in your life.”

“You thought our agreement was at an end, and your position as my escort along with it.”

“You could put it that way. Dear God, Sonia, to be near and not touch you was impossible, yet any hint of a tie between us on board ship would have been fodder for the gossips by the time we docked in New Orleans. The best thing I could do for you was to keep well away.”

“So you may have thought,” she said as she lifted her lashes, meeting his eyes with all the anguish she had felt during the long weeks at sea, “but you didn't ask me.”

He opened his mouth as if he would demand to know how she would have answered, then closed it tightly again. Reaching into his frock-coat pocket, he drew
out a parcel wrapped in ivory silk brocade. He stood for a moment, gazing down at it. Abruptly, he thrust it toward her.

“What is this?” she asked, taking it carefully in her hands.

“Open it.” The words were gruff, determined.

She did so with care, folding back the silk wrapping, pulling the edges aside. When she was done, she held a confection of lace-edged white silk attached to carved ivory sticks and decorated with a silk tassel. A low sound, part sigh, part sob, left her throat.

“I took your fan while we were on the
Lime Rock
. You could call this a replacement, if you like.”

She lifted her gaze to his, her eyes wet with unshed tears. “But it's a wedding fan.”

“So the old gentleman said who sold it to me. It came all the way from Spain where it was made by the nuns. He said it would make a good beginning for a wedding basket, the
corbeille de noce
a man gives his bride in places like New Orleans. That's if I was so minded.”

The strain in his voice, and the pain, reached her through the distress in her mind. She searched his face, seeing in it lines of sleeplessness that matched her own, also the ache of uncertainty.

She thought the love and compassion inside her would cause her heart to burst.

“Were you?” she whispered. “Were you so minded, that is?”

“I was. Then I remembered how one morning on deck I watched that fan of yours fluttering in the wind
while I held it in my hands. Seemed it was trying to get away from me, just like you had been doing.”

“You kept it safe regardless.” The point was important, at least to her.

“Until I lost it when I stripped off my coat after the ship sank.” He shook his head. “The thing is, you're still being held. It's not me that's trapped here.”

“You think I'm trapped because I'm going to have a baby?” She lifted the fan from its silk wrappings before draping them over the nearby railing. Carefully, then, she spread the sticks so the strong yet delicate beauty of the lace was displayed. It was a lovely thing, but lovelier still was the thought behind it, and the implied vow.

Kerr Wallace did not take such things lightly. He never would. Nor would she.

“Aren't you? Your papa, your friends, your people will all expect you to marry. I'd be proud and honored to stand beside you, but don't know that you want me for a husband any more than you wanted Rouillard.”

“Oh, Kerr,” she said, her lips forming a tremulous smile. “We are all trapped in our fates. Whether they are mean and evil or good and joyous depends on the choices we make. Being truly trapped means never having a choice, or never making one. I have alternatives, really, I do. Hippolyte Ducolet would probably marry me if asked, and would be an amiable and un-demanding husband. I could travel abroad a few years and return with a tale of being widowed. Or I could give birth at a French convent and allow the baby to be adopted. All these things would mean a return to
boring respectability. I don't want that, I never did. I made my choice in a jungle temple in Mexico. Oh, yes, I gave you careful reasons, but never the one that mattered most. The truth is, I wanted you then and I want you now. I choose you as my husband, Kerr Wallace. Though I would like to return to New Orleans now and again to see my papa and Tante Lily, I want to live with you in Kentucky, to be with you for all the things you described. I want, so very much, to be a
Kaintuck
's woman.”

The gladness that rose in his face was like a shout. Still, his gray gaze remained shadowed, as if he was not entirely convinced. Stepping closer, he waded into her skirts, setting his hands at her waist to draw her against him. “You're sure?”

“Quite sure.”

“Atrocious French accent and all?”

“I've grown quite fond of the way you speak, particularly when you say…” She whispered the words against his ear as she flowed against him, clasping the precious betrothal fan in one hand as she slid the other behind his head.

He groaned and pulled her closer, taking her mouth as if dying for the taste of her, the contact, the merging. She clung to him, sliding her arms around his neck and returning kiss for kiss, pressing against him as she had longed to for these many weeks, unable to get close enough. The pain of it was very nearly equal to the glory, even as it threatened to escalate beyond what might be respectable even for a newly engaged pair.

“God, Sonia,” he whispered in entreaty as he released her lips, “when can we have the wedding?”

Drawing away a fraction, she swept her fan back and forth between them, cooling the searing flush that mantled her cheeks as well as the heat she could feel across the back of his neck. “Soon,
mon cher Kaintuck,
” she murmured, her smile bright, the words glorious with promise. “Soon.”