The Bridgertons Happily Ever After - By Julia Quinn Page 0,47

He Was Wicked:

The 2nd Epilogue

She was counting again.

Counting, always counting.

Seven days since her last menses.

Six until she might be fertile.

Twenty-four to thirty-one until she might expect to bleed again, provided she didn’t conceive.

Which she probably wouldn’t.

It had been three years since she’d married Michael. Three years. She’d suffered through her courses thirty-three times. She’d counted them, of course; made depressing little hatch marks on a piece of paper she kept tucked away in her desk, in the far back corner of the middle drawer, where Michael wouldn’t see.

It would pain him. Not because he wanted a child, which he did, but rather because she wanted one so desperately.

And he wanted it for her. Maybe even more than he wanted one himself.

She tried to hide her sorrow. She tried to smile at the breakfast table and pretend that it didn’t matter that she’d a wad of cloth between her legs, but Michael always saw it in her eyes, and he seemed to hold her closer through the day, kiss her brow more often.

She tried to tell herself that she should count her blessings. And she did. Oh, how she did. Every day. She was Francesca Bridgerton Stirling, Countess of Kilmartin, blessed with two loving families—the one she’d been born into, and the one she’d acquired—twice—through marriage.

She had a husband most women only dreamed of. Handsome, funny, intelligent, and as desperately in love with her as she was with him. Michael made her laugh. He made her days a joy and her nights an adventure. She loved to talk with him, to walk with him, to simply sit in the same room with him and steal glances while they were each pretending to read a book.

She was happy. Truly, she was. And if she never had a baby, at least she had this man—this wonderful, marvelous, miraculous man who understood her in a way that left her breathless.

He knew her. He knew every inch of her, and still, he never ceased to amaze and challenge her.

She loved him. With every breath in her body, she loved him.

And most of the time, it was enough. Most of the time, it was more than enough.

But late at night, after he’d fallen asleep, and she still lay awake, curled up against him, she felt an emptiness that she feared neither of them could ever fill. She would touch her abdomen, and there it was, flat as always, mocking her with its refusal to do the one thing she wanted more than anything else.

And that was when she cried.

There had to be a name for it, Michael thought as he stood at his window, watching Francesca disappear over the hillside toward the Kilmartin family plot. There had to be a name for this particular brand of pain, of torture, really. All he wanted in the world was to make her happy. Oh, for certain there were other things—peace, health, prosperity for his tenants, right-minded men in the seat of prime minister for the next hundred years. But when all was said and done, what he wanted was Francesca’s happiness.

He loved her. He always had. It was, or at least it should have been, the most uncomplicated thing in the world. He loved her. Period. And he would have moved heaven and earth, if it were only in his power, to make her happy.

Except the one thing she wanted most of all, the one thing she craved so desperately and fought so valiantly to hide her pain about, he could not seem to give her.

A child.

And the funny thing was, he was beginning to feel the same pain.

At first, he had felt it just for her. She wanted a child, and therefore he wanted one as well. She wanted to be a mother, and therefore he wanted her to be one. He wanted to see her holding a child, not because it would be his child, but because it would be hers.

He wanted her to have what she desired. And selfishly, he wanted to be the man to give it to her.

But lately, he’d felt the pangs himself. They would visit one of her many brothers or sisters and be immediately surrounded by the next generation of offspring. They would tug on his leg, shriek, “Uncle Michael!” and howl with laughter when he would toss them in the air, always begging for one more minute, one more twirl, one more secret peppermint candy.

The Bridgertons were marvelously fertile. They all seemed to produce exactly the number of offspring