Written on the Wind (The Blackstone Legacy #2)(38)

She folded her hands over his forearms and squeezed. “Better.”

Her head fit just below his chin, and he liked her there. They fit together perfectly. He lowered his head to whisper in her ear. “Now that we have met in person, am I as you expected?”

He could feel her smile against the side of his face. “You are better.”

He drew her closer. “Tell me how. I can never hear enough of such things.”

“You’re a lot tougher than I realized,” she said with an embarrassed laugh. “I’m sorry I teased you over that mosquito bite. Your incessant moaning over such tiny things gave me the wrong impression.”

“It was an exceptionally painful mosquito bite.”

She rotated in his arms, still nestled within his coat, and looked up at him. “Where was it?”

He pointed to the corner of his mouth, and she touched the spot with the tip of her finger. The intimacy sent a shiver through him, and he turned to kiss her fingertip, never breaking eye contact with her.

Now would be the perfect moment to kiss her properly. She looked as if she would welcome it . . . but there were things she did not yet know about him. It would not be fair to mislead her.

He strove for a lighthearted tone. “My life has been plagued with illness and misery. I suffer when there is not enough sunlight, but I can get sun poisoning too. I get clobbered with the flu every winter. It is a problem.”

Her eyes danced as she battled laughter, which was always the best remedy for sad subjects. He held both her hands and smiled down into her eyes as if this discussion didn’t hurt.

“Then there are the mumps,” he said. “I contracted a near-fatal case when I was nineteen. For weeks I was a swollen bag of human misery. My mother had the nuns at three different convents praying around the clock for me. I recovered, but things were never quite the same.”

He held her gaze, his heart hammering so hard it threatened to burst. Olga had rejected him after his crisis with the mumps.

Mumps rarely had lingering complications if caught in childhood, but if it struck after puberty, the disease could make it impossible for a man to father children. Although the damage was rarely permanent, Dimitri was not so lucky. For two years he consulted physicians to learn if the fever had rendered him sterile. Specialists from Moscow, Berlin, and Saint Petersburg were all in agreement. Although Dimitri could enjoy normal marital relations, there would never be children as a result of them.

“You were nineteen when it happened?” Natalia asked cautiously, apparently aware of the dangers for men who caught this disease.

He nodded. “It was a bad case. I can see by your expression that you understand what that means. I had been engaged to a woman named Olga since childhood. We waited to see if my condition would improve, but over time it became obvious that it would not. There could never be any children, so I could not blame her.”

Olga’s father and a series of lawyers extricated her from the engagement. There were legal agreements to terminate, rings to be returned, wounded hearts to mend. Dimitri never blamed Olga. They were still friendly. He had even attended Olga’s wedding to an upstanding baron from Moscow and always wished her well.

Olga was a widow now, with two children from her first husband. Had Dimitri not been forced into exile, he could have returned to Mirosa, married Olga, and adopted her children as his own. Their life could have been exactly as they always planned.

It could never happen now. Russia was his past, and there was no going back. Now that Natalia knew everything, could she accept him as he was? Although he would never stop mourning Russia, the prospect of staying in America with Natalia had an exciting allure.

He had been attracted to Natalia before they ever met. Now the air fairly crackled with electricity whenever they were together, but he needed to be patient with her. It would be hard for any woman to accept him with this terrible flaw. She needed time, but he could not resist pulling her forward to kiss her forehead. She did not pull away, but after a few moments, she swiveled in his arms to continue looking out over the darkened fields, still nestled within his coat but somehow a little further away.

“Most women want children,” she said softly.

“And are you like most women?”

“I am.”

It was as he expected, but he ignored the familiar shaft of pain that came from acknowledging the truth. He looked up, where the moonlight cast a curious glow across the wispy clouds and illuminated the wheatfield with silvery light and shadow. Darkness and light. It felt suitable for this fleeting moment of pain and honesty.

“Maybe we should go back inside,” she whispered, regret heavy in her voice.

He tightened his embrace. “Maybe. But I have never seen the moon light up a field of winter wheat in Illinois before. It would be a shame to waste it.”

Again, she burrowed against him and gave a contented sigh. “Oh yes. I think you are entirely correct.”

He wrapped the flaps of his coat closer around her. This might be the last time she would ever permit him to hold her. Tomorrow they would go back to their old friendship. It would be fun. Intellectually stimulating and exciting because they shared a common mission.

Maybe in time Natalia would come to a different decision about him, but he would never pressure her. This was not a trivial topic he could badger her about like the merits of War and Peace over Little Women. This was something that would be entirely in Natalia’s hands to decide.