If You Deceive

Chapter Thirty-eight

When men like us change, it's profoundly….

Hugh had been right, Ethan thought as he lay in bed, holding Maddy as she slept. Rain poured outside in a black winter's night, but they were warm in their bed in front of a fire.

The peculiar thing was that Ethan didn't feel like he was changing so much as reverting to normal—even though he'd never been considerate or amiable. He just found it easy with her.

When Ethan was with her, hefelt like a husband. Maybe even…maybe even agood one.

After their wedding, Maddy had asked him if they could postpone journeying to the Highlands until the spring. She'd told him she liked it at Carillon and wanted to stay for the winter. Easy enough.

For the last two months here, she'd filled his life with excitement, zest. He still didn't understand how those traits hadn't been trampled from her, beaten down by years of hardship, but he was thankful they hadn't. She truly seemed to have shucked off the mantle of La Marais, and rarely had nightmares any longer.

Each night, she slept in his arms, and oftentimes she would stretch out her little body over him and fall asleepon him. Which he especially liked because he could hold her in place and enter her so easily.

Whenever he had to leave for an afternoon to work on the estate, she always ran out to greet him when he returned, flying into his arms, hitting his chest hard, her face beaming. "I missed you," she would breathe against his neck as he caught her to him, even if he'd only been gone a few hours.

Last week, he'd said, "Maddy, do you know what it's like, seeing you run to me?"

She'd drawn back and given him a wry half grin. "Do you know what it's like not being able to wait for you to finish the short walk to the door…?"

Ethan was always thought to be bitter and cold—so why did he find himself chasing his wee wife around the house at least once a day as she squealed with laughter?

In fact, their home was filled with laughter. She'd made it inviting. She'd even made friends with all the neighbors. It seemed as if invitations arrived every day.

She was like a bridge for him to others. He figured people assumed he was like her—affable and fun-loving. He had no doubt that when he brought her to his clan, she'd affect how he was viewed there as well.

Maddy especially liked a widow named Agnes Hallee, who lived down the coast with a brood of six mischievous bairns. Maddy enjoyed playing with the children—flying kites, taming and collecting stray pets, outrunning the most ornery peacock—reminding Ethan of how her own childhood had been cut short….

Sometimes he doubted his decision to hide the past from her and was plagued with the need to confess. But she was so damned happy, telling him daily how much. Why ruin this?

Sometimes, he fooled himself, forgetting that all this could end.

When he forgot, he was happier than he'd ever been in his entire life. There'd been another time he'd done this. The week before his father died, his da had promised Ethan he'd take him hunting in the Hebrides for his fourteenth birthday, just two weeks away.

Even after he'd seen his father's body, Ethan had kept forgetting. For days, he'd awakened each morning, bounding out of bed with a grin on his face, because it was one day closer to their trip. Then everything would return in a rush, and he'd be shamed to have forgotten it, to have felt happiness in the wake of such a tragic loss.

Now Ethan stared at the ceiling, squeezing Maddy closer to him. Those were the last times he'd ever been content before now.

But he couldn't imagine any way that she might find out. All the people involved that night were either long gone from England or dead. As an extra precaution, Ethan had fired the land agent at Iveley—who, predictably, wasn't enterprising or particularly hardworking. Then Ethan had instructed his attorney to deed Iveley to Maddy and do whatever he could to obscure the chain of ownership. Only after the new deed was in place had Ethan hired another steward—a young man with limited experience, but who was by all accounts exceptionally dedicated and hardworking.

In any case, no one with any connection to his past knew where he and Maddy were. Few knew at all. Corrine did, but only because Maddy had sent her and Bea money. He'd insisted on that. If Maddy hadn't had Corrine to look out for her in the beginning, she could have…died. The two were her family, and he was ready to support them as he would a wife's blood kin.

Now that Madeleine was his, he was determined that he would spoil her so terribly he might begin to make up for all he'd done to her in the past. He bought her delicacies, constantly plying her with food, and every day here she grew even more stunning, gaining flesh in all the right places. She'd beamed with pride once her ring finally fit.

When he allowed himself to think that his wife had been starving in a slum because of him, he took the rage that clawed at him—rage at himself—and suffered it as his penance. Then he would redouble his efforts to make her content.

"You know what I miss?" she'd told him a few weeks ago. "My horse at Iveley. She was so striking with her sorrel coat and expressive eyes. I swear she loved me as much as I did her."

So, naturally, he'd bought Maddy a sorrel mare, because he was like all those other besotted bastards out there, ready to slay dragons for their wives for even a hint of a smile. He took her riding every day.

His new horse, bought from the same stable as hers, was yet another stalwart gelding—which had taken a strong and unwavering dislike to Ethan. As ever, animals either loved him or hated him. Though Maddy had avowed, "I think all animals hate you—except cats." At his expression, she'd hastily added, "but feline approval is important."

At every opportunity, that sodding gelding strove to throw him, buck him, or scrape him from the saddle by slicing against a tree. Which made Maddy howl with laughter so hard, she had to hang onto her horse's mane to keep from falling out of her saddle. She laughed until even he would crack a grin.

Though he feared he was buying Maddytoo much, he couldn't seem to stop. He could easily afford it, and there were so many things that she'd needed and had been forced to go without. She should own such a collection of clothing and jewels that he would have to wait for her to get ready as she chose among them. If there was one thing Ethan knew husbands did, it was to wait on wives to get ready.

When he'd bought her a pearl choker a couple of weeks earlier, she'd said, "Ethan, this is all a tad…overwhelming." Her smile had been wan.

"I thought you wanted a rich husband," he'd said. "This is what rich husbands do."

"I didn't particularly want a man with money to get jewelry and trappings of wealth. I only wanted security and stability. For myself, and, well, for the children I want to have…."

Bairns.What if I canna give them to her? he thought yet again, tensing beside her.

Ethan had had that bloody curse hanging over him for so long that he'd begun to worry that he hadn't gotten Madeleine pregnant yet. And Ethan was somewhat annoyed by the fact that Court had been able to accomplish something in three weeks that Ethan hadn't managed in months.

Not that Ethan had ever expected to have bairns before. He hadn't—but for some reason, he'd begun tofeel that he would with her. Some thought would flash in his mind as though this were a foregone conclusion.

While Maddy still slept, he eased her to her back. Tugging the cover from her, he studied her naked body. He rubbed her flat belly and pictured her big with his child, lush and full, andlooked forward to it.

Ethan grew hard as rock at that image of her his mind conjured up. It was so primal—so stirring—that he felt possessive to a killing degree and aroused to an undeniable one.

The idea of planting his seed in her, then protecting her, keeping her happy and nurturing her as she grew it…

She woke to him pinning her wrists above her, entering her as she gasped. She moaned as he took her harder and harder, until he was plunging into her in a frenzy,trying .