Just One Taste by Maggie Robinson

dead. How had his letter not reached her? The poor girl had been alone, raising his child and fending for herself with only his aunt and cousin to help her, and then, not even them.
    He had a son . Those awkward, fumbling minutes of their wedding night had produced an heir. It was a miracle, was it not?
    He’d do better this time. Two years ago he’d been terrified that he would terrify her . She’d been whiter than her monogrammed bridal sheets, and stiffer than the bedposts. His throat had dried, preventing him from uttering the usual nonsense as he moved over her. She was so lovely it almost hurt to look at her.
    Delia was different from his other conquests. A virgin. An innocent. And she’d inflamed him as if he were a fourteen-year-old schoolboy. It was not his proudest moment, but he’d been powerless to stop his desire from spilling all too quickly.
    He was almost as desperate for her now as he’d been then. But first he’d have to tidy himself up and try eating dinner in the dining room instead of on a tray in his bedchamber.
    Delia hadn’t changed anything in the house, hadn’t made her mark, except in her own rooms, which he was anxious to see for himself again tonight. She had been careful with money, she told him, which was absurd, as both of them had more than they knew what to do with. Jack supposed there hadn’t been much time between the baby and Aunt Elizabeth’s sudden death.
    He was relieved to see the house had not been made over to be a shrine to him. The one thing she had moved was a portrait he’d posed for when he’d first taken colours. It used to hang in the parlor, but it was now over the mantel in his bedroom.
    Lord, he looked like a cocky, smug bastard. All of nineteen. Knew everything then, Jack did. Had to unlearn most of it.
    He’d come into the viscountancy at the tender age of four, and his widowed Aunt Elizabeth had moved in to raise him. She’d been just as indulgent with him as she’d been with her own son, his cousin Arthur, and the two of them had been spoiled rotten. Jack liked to think that this past two years had changed that, at least for him. He had no idea if Arthur had seen the error of his ways.
    Jack had written to Arthur Kemp once he was invalided and on his way home, asking him to tell Delia personally to soften the awkward surprise of his sudden reincarnation. He’d enclosed a letter to Delia, too. The letters were probably blowing across the African veld or at the bottom of a snake-infested river.
    It had been awful to shock Delia so. He’d never seen a woman faint before. Jack had been perilously close to fainting himself. He’d been too weak to pick her crumpled body up from the tiled floor and had to leave it to the footman he didn’t recognize.
    Delia had not been overjoyed to see him . Oh, she’d made up for it in the past few days, being overly solicitous, fussing around him like a black butterfly. She only relaxed when she was showing him the baby, John, named for him. Jack had missed the child’s first birthday, something he vowed he’d never do again.
    His son had the fair Marbury looks, but Delia’s eyes. One day he’d break hearts, but hopefully not his mother’s.
    Delia had gotten used to running the show without his aunt. Even Arthur had moved out for propriety’s sake. She wasn’t the shy girl Jack married, though she was still incredibly young. He would have to be careful. He was, after all, a stranger to her.
    Jack didn’t have a valet yet, so after his bath he rang for a footman to help him dress. His old jacket hung on him—he’d probably lost two stone. But at least he’d started his war nourished—there were so many soldiers who were barely fit to serve. It was a disgrace, a blot upon the Empire that there were people hungry and ill in the service of His Majesty. He had half a mind to say so when he spoke to the reporters tomorrow. What could the government do? Arrest him again?
    He supposed they could. The brass were not