A Devil's Touch (The Devil DeVere #4.5)(16)

"May I see him now?" Diana asked.

"Please." He handed the babe off as briskly as he dared, watching in pure amazement as Diana silenced the cries with her breast. "He's a greedy one, like his father." She grinned.

He perched on the bed beside mother and child while the maids and midwife went about cleaning up the much soiled chamber. "Please," he addressed the servants, "will you give us a moment alone?"

"Aye, my lord," said Mrs. Abbott.

"Of course, my lord," Sally echoed, adding, "What a lovely Valentine's gift my lady has given ye."

"Valentine's gift?" he repeated.

"Aye." Sally grinned. "It be the fourteenth now, my lord. Sweetheart's Day."

"Is that so? Then I would be a most shabby creature had I not also a gift for my sweetheart." He disappeared into his dressing room and re-emerged a moment later with an elongated velvet-covered box.

"Open it for me?" Diana asked.

Ludovic flipped open the box and his wife gasped at her first vision of the fifty-carat heart-shaped Burmese ruby pendant, encircled by as many carats in diamonds. "I thought of you the moment I saw it, Diana."

"My God!" she exclaimed. "This must be worth a king's ransom!"

"Closer to a royal duke's ransom." He grinned.

"Whatever the cost, it's priceless to me," she said, her eyes gleaming. She then glanced down at her sleeping son. "It appears he has already exhausted himself."

"Let us hope, for his future wife, that his stamina for that activity improves with age."

"You are incorrigible!"

"Is that a complaint?"

"Never." She paused with a frown. "Although I wouldn't mind if we waited a few weeks… at the least."

Ludovic sighed. "Ford warned me. He said you might never let me touch you again after this ordeal."

"And have you seek your comfort elsewhere? I think not!"

Noticing her gaze drifting back to half mast, he quietly rose quietly, but then they snapped open again. "Darling, what will we call him?"

"Whatever you like, Diana. Just not Ludovic. I despise the name."

Her face fell. "But he is your heir."

"And may have his pick of any other name."

"Valentine."

"Gad, no!" He groaned. "You can't mean it!"

"You said any other name." Her gaze narrowed. "I take you at your word."

"But, Diana, consider the taunting—"

"Very well then. Ludovic Valentine Montford DeVere. That's my final decision."

He heaved a sigh and raised his hands in surrender. "Pray let us shorten it to Val then. Val DeVere isn't quite so horrific."

His heart squeezed in his chest when Diana smiled a besotted smile at her babe in arms, murmuring, "Val DeVere… the devil's heir."





End





Excerpt: A WILD NIGHT'S BRIDE

St. James, Westminster – 1783

"Ned, you must wake up." The frantic whisper and tickle of silky hair pleasantly penetrated the periphery of Sir Edward Chambers' drink-induced, sexually sated and fog-enshrouded consciousness. "Come Neddie," the soft voice implored. "You must wake or, there will be the devil to pay."

He groaned, rolling onto his side to the simultaneous awareness of a pounding head and the soft, warm presence beside him. He groped blindly, defining a shapely feminine backside that tauntingly wriggled against his groin, stirring quite another part of him to a wakeful and throbbing state. With a moan, he nuzzled her neck while his burgeoning erection sought the warmth betwixt her thighs. "Annalee, my sweet Annalee," he murmured into her hair.

The warm, welcoming body became cold stone. "Phoebe," the voice intoned.

Ned's bleary eyes popped open, his attention immediately riveted to the massive bed, the heavy velvet curtains of rich crimson and gold, and the towering hand-carved posts of mahogany. He jerked upright as if doused with ice water, his gaze settling on the voluptuous blue-eyed blonde lying amidst the tangle of luxurious linens. "Kitty?"

"No. Phoebe," she answered. "My name. It's Pheo-be."

"Phoebe?" He frowned in puzzlement. His vision darted from his thoroughly tumbled bedfellow to the opulent room. He frantically scrubbed his face and looked wildly about the room, eager to light upon something, anything, to assure himself he wasn't going mad. The vision of his surroundings sent him scrambling to his knees, entangling him in the bed sheets, and tumbling him to the floor. Lying stunned on the thick Turkish carpet, his confused conscience absorbed the soaring twenty-foot shadow-boxed ceiling depicting classical heroes.

"Kitty, Phoebe, or whoever-the-devil-you-are," he hissed through his teeth, "This isn't Carleton House, is it?"

"No," she answered.

His heart beating apace, Ned willed himself first to breathe and then to modulate a tone verging on panic. "I was with DeVere last night. Where is DeVere?"

"DeVere is locked safely in the linen closet." She hugged her breasts, her expression suddenly wary. "Don't you remember anything?"

He vigorously shook his pounding head only to bring forth a chaotic kaleidoscope of last night's events, and the impossible truth persisted to push its way to the surface.