The Duke's Baby. Rebecca Winters

      The Duke’s Baby

      Rebecca Winters

      

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      EPILOGUE

      CHAPTER ONE

      …LANCELOT possesses all he wants, when the queen voluntarily seeks his company and love, and when he holds her in his arms, and she holds him in hers. Their sport is so agreeable and sweet, as they kiss and fondle each other, that in truth such a marvelous joy comes over them as was never heard or known.

      With an aching groan, Andrea Fallon closed the book she was reading, unable to see any more words in the fading light. It was just as well since she couldn’t bear to go on reading the hauntingly beautiful story.

      Maybe never again.

      Though the French poet Chrétien de Troyes might have written the story of Lancelot in 1171, his description of the famous knight’s love for Guinevere was as stirring now as then.

      What woman wasn’t envious of the queen who inspired such love in the first Knight of the Round Table?

      Wouldn’t any woman wish to be loved with a love so all-consuming and powerful.

      Cross at herself over her preoccupation with the greatest Knight in Christendom, Andrea’s thoughts returned to Richard, the husband she’d buried three months ago.

      “Would you have loved me more if I’d been able to give you a child?” her heart cried.

      Since the funeral she’d gone over and over their troubled marriage in her mind, wondering if her unexpected barren condition had been so painful for him, some of his feelings for her had simply turned off.

      Only twenty-one to his thirty-one when they’d exchanged vows, who would have dreamed she would develop a child-bearing problem so early in their married life?

      Her aunt’s cousin hadn’t been able to have children, but that didn’t seem to have affected the love between her and her husband. They went on to adopt two children. But Richard refused to talk about adoption. He wanted a child from his own body, not someone else’s.

      Knowing he felt that way, Andrea hadn’t pressed him about it. But from then on their relationship underwent subtle changes. He grew more distant and threw himself into his work, either unaware of Andrea’s pain, or unwilling to deal with it because his own was too great.

      Their lovemaking seemed to have become an afterthought for him. In the last year he’d behaved more like a friend than a lover with only an occasional coming together she’d been forced to initiate.

      She’d hoped they would get past their sorrow, that it was temporary. Surely in time he would ache for a child and be willing to consider adoption.

      Andrea was convinced that if they’d taken the steps to start adoption proceedings right away, the anticipation of becoming parents would have brought joy and helped the physical side of their marriage get back on track. But that time never came. Now it was too late.

      Oh, Richard…

      Hot tears formed rivulets down her cheeks.

      Her aunt had promised her this period of mourning would pass. “One day you’ll meet that special someone who will want to marry you and adopt children.”

      Andrea didn’t believe it, not when she remembered the other things in their marriage that hadn’t happened. With ten years difference between them, she suffered over the possibility that she simply hadn’t measured up.

      Richard’s academic world had been filled with brilliant men and women. What had she been able to offer if she couldn’t give him a child they both wanted?

      Why had he even married her?

      The second she asked the question she realized grief was causing her to lose her perspective. She’d lost her appetite weeks ago.

      Thirty-seven years of age was too young for him to die. Devastated by his early passing, which cut off all hope of their making a family, Andrea got up wearily from her resting place against a tree trunk.

      A good night’s sleep was what she needed to restore her long enough to finish her husband’s latest project on Arthurian legend. Another couple of days to capture a stag or a wild boar on film—the kind you saw woven in tapestries—and her collection of pictures would be complete. Unfortunately she would have to return to New Haven without any sightings of the damsel of the lake.

      Andrea had been in Brittany close to a week. Already she’d discovered that the Forêt de Broceliande became an enchanted world after the sun went down. In awe of the forest’s almost seven-hundred-foot high canopy, she found the place secretive and quiet except for the forest creatures ambling among birch and chestnut trees.

      Any minute now she expected the characters from Camelot to steal from their hiding places in this magical setting and whisper their stories.

      As Andrea put the strap of her camera case over her shoulder, she thought she heard the rustle of underbrush caused by the breeze. Or possibly it was a forest creature, but her imagination had been playing overtime for the last few hours.

      A little spooked she looked around, causing her hair to swish around her face.

      “Oh—” she cried out.

      From behind the fir trees at the end of the pear-shaped lake, simply called Le Lac, a lean, solitary figure in military camouflage emerged. He almost startled her out of her skin with his raw male, twenty-first century presence.

      Every inch of this modern man’s rip cord strong body radiated an animal-like energy. It wouldn’t surprise her if he carried a knife and a gun, but she sensed his tall body was a lethal weapon. No doubt when he slept, one eye remained open.

      If he’d been tracking her, he moved with a built-in radar. Andrea shivered. His enemy wouldn’t be aware of him until it was too late.

      The skin stretched over his hard-boned aquiline features had been burnished to teak by an equatorial sun you didn’t feel in France. In the twilight she made out burning-blue eyes. They were scrutinizing her beneath black brows and a head of short-cropped black hair.

      She’d never met a more fiercely handsome man.

      For an insane moment she could visualize him in shining armor as he knelt before Guinevere with the heavens shining down on him. Then he spoke in a deep, grating voice, shattering the illusion into a thousand pieces.

      “You’re trespassing,” he said, first in French then in heavily accented English.

      His underlying note of hostility caught Andrea off guard. This was no young disguised prince who’d mastered the art of chivalry. There was no “Bonsoir,” or “Je m’excuse,” or “Je regrette,” that he’d frightened her.

      This dangerous man, probably in his mid-thirties and aggressively male, glared at her as if he had something personal against her.

      Unless he’d been able to make out the title on the front of her book, she couldn’t understand how he knew to speak English to her. She gripped it tighter. “Actually I have permission to be here,” she