Lynne Connolly Read Online Free

suspicions as much as I could. He would only worry, and it would do no good.
    Richard’s hands swept over my back and I sighed in pleasure.
    “Backache?” His movements grew more purposeful, and he smoothed warmth over my skin, moving down to the small of my back where it tended to ache the most.
    “Oh that feels so good.”
    Slipping his hands from me, he urged me to turn over to face away from him, and he began to rub and knead. He had a facility for this, the soothing away of pain by touch. The knot of incipient pain eased. Such bliss! In place of the pain grew warmth and a longing for him to touch other parts, bring them more than ease.
    “Better?”
    “Oh yes, thank you.”
    He stopped rubbing and curled behind me instead, curving his body around mine in a deliciously protective gesture. His skin touched mine from my upper back to my heels, where his feet cradled mine. He cupped one of my breasts and his shaft hardened against my bottom.
    I pushed back into his heat. “You want?”
    “No,” he said firmly. “Well, at least, yes, but not tonight. You’re tired, and you ache. What kind of beast do you take me for? Go to sleep, sweetheart, you need your rest.”
    Every day I loved him more.
     
    Warm, held close and safe, I opened my eyes. Sunlight streamed through the windows in our bedroom, sending a shaft of pure light across the patterned carpet. Morning already. I could tell without turning over that Richard was still asleep. His breath heated the space between my shoulder blades and one arm lay heavily around my waist. The baby, or babies, moved sluggishly inside me and then quieted down once more. For now, and to avoid complications, I thought of the child in the singular. For all I knew and despite my suspicions that I harboured more than one child, my larger size could simply be a larger baby.
    I liked to feel the gentle movements. It reassured me my child was safe and well. It must be so tiny. My belly was swollen, but not greatly so, and much of that was the water he swam in, keeping him safe. I refused to think of the baby as “it”, and tended to apply a sex to the child arbitrarily, one day deciding on “he”, another on “she”.
    I lay content, still dreamy, happy to count my blessings. Soon I would get up and visit my daughter upstairs in her nursery before going out shopping and socialising, while Richard visited the coffeehouses and the clubs, both of us collecting gossip, being seen, doing our jobs.
    Sometimes I wished we could forget everything and spend the whole day in each other’s company, as we did sometimes in the country. I loved him now as much as I had when I met him, and I had full proof of his devotion to me. I accepted it now. He could have had anyone for his wife. He was the scion of one of the greatest houses of England, leader of fashion, accomplished, sophisticated but he chose me, shy, ordinary Rose Golightly, and helped me to gain all the confidence and assurance I needed to prove myself worthy of him and the position I’d married into. Underneath his sophisticated exterior he was all man, warm, loving, with as many self-doubts as anyone else, and he loved me.
    I’d woken up this morning dreamily content. I wanted to stretch, but Richard was still asleep, and I would wake him if I did that. I could wait.
    It was broad daylight, but early yet. The birds in the garden outside hadn’t yet subsided, the excitement of spring filling their tiny bones, urging them to go about their business. There were two large double windows in my bedroom, framed by the same dark gold silk that hung at the corners of the bed. Knowing Richard would spend more time here than in his own room, I’d chosen the colour to be flattering, but not too feminine. I wanted him to be comfortable in here. My husband might wear lilac, but he wore it over decisively male anatomy.
    I thought of the heavy, stately furniture in Southwood House and sighed. So depressing to live in that mausoleum, as one day