The Blood of a Baron - K.J. Jackson Page 0,73
that one, boy. Note the disgust on my face.”
Laney’s fingers went to her lips as she stifled a laugh next to him. At least she was feeling well enough to manage a chuckle at his pea-sized grandmother taking a man five times her size to task.
Wes glanced at his cousin. “You’d bring her into this mayhem at the docks? I almost lost a foot back there.”
Lance shrugged his shoulders. “I couldn’t convince her otherwise. I tried.”
Her hand slapped onto Lance’s knee. “I’ve been running through these streets since I was five, Lancey, and you very well know it.” Her hand swung about in a circle in front of her. “Nothing could keep me from this—from meeting my new granddaughter and my new great-grandchild she is carrying. Get to the business of introducing your wife, Weston. The scowl that refused to leave your face years ago is gone and I can only attribute that to this delightful creature.”
All of his grandmother’s attention swung to Laney, her wrinkled grey eyes assessing his wife.
“Grandmother, Lance, this is my wife, Helena.”
Laney produced a smile, the first real one he’d seen in weeks for how miserable she’d been. “But please, Laney is what I’m most accustomed to.”
His grandmother’s fingers twitched toward the hard mound of Laney’s belly. “The seas did not take well to your belly? You’re a pretty one, but the color of your skin is unnatural right now, child.”
Laney shook her head. “It was a long journey, and I haven’t been able to keep much food in, but Wes was an admirable nurse to me.”
The wrinkles across his grandmother’s forehead deepened. “The babe is still fine in your belly?”
Laney’s hand went down to her belly, rubbing it as she smiled. “Kicking more than ever today. Probably because I am upright for a change. Land is already doing me well.”
“Good. Then you won’t be getting ideas of getting back on a ship and going anywhere until my newest great-grandchild is born. Henrietta was my youngest and I missed her so after she married her baron. Missed her mightily. So I would very much like to meet this babe.” She nodded to herself, her hand settling in her lap. “Very much indeed.”
~~~
Laney closed the wide white double doors to their chamber and collapsed back against it. “You didn’t tell me.”
Wes dropped the latest pile of knitted blankets and toys and clothes that he had balanced in his arms onto the settee that sat next to the fireplace in their sitting room, then turned back to his wife.
She was stuck against the door in a pale violet dress, her head tilted back, her eyes closed, her hands wrapped just under her protruding belly.
She’d never been more beautiful.
He stalked over to her and set his palms on the door on either side of her head, capturing her for the first time today. He’d barely had time to say ten words to her in the last nine hours, so quickly had they been swept up in the tidal wave of his mother’s family.
His lips went onto her forehead. Two full days on land and the color was back in her cheeks, plus she’d eaten today. Real food, real bites that didn’t decide to reappear. For how far away from him she’d been set the whole day, he’d kept careful watch for panic in her eyes just in case he needed to swoop her away before her stomach decided it was back on the ship.
His lips trailed down to the tip of her nose. “I didn’t know either. I had only met Lance, Rebecca and grandmother the one time I visited the city. It was a short visit and it was at her city residence. I was in port and wanted to meet her for my mother’s sake, but I had cut the visit short, even though she insisted I stay longer.”
She opened her eyes to him. “Why did you leave?”
He shrugged. “I was angry, as always. Didn’t want her or Lance or Rebecca to mistake the visit—to think I was there to ask anything of them. I wasn’t and I thought they looked at me with suspicion, so pride made me leave.”
“So you never got around to discussing this place?” Laney’s hand motioned in a circle at her side.
Wes chuckled. “No, I had no idea she owned this place outside the city and on the bay. And I certainly had no idea I had twenty-three cousins, each with families of their own.”
Laney laughed, her head shaking. “Twenty-three.”
“I know.