Midnight Eyes by Brophy, Sarah (well read books .TXT) 📕

love had produced another life. And it was all a gift from the woman who loved him. He didn’t know how he was ever going to repay her.

Somehow, Imogen had managed to give him everything he had never dared ask for.

His heart swelled to bursting as his eyes found Imogen again and lovingly followed the contours of her slender body. He couldn’t help but admire the way she now moved with both grace and confidence, though sometimes that very confidence terrified him.

She seemed to have no understanding that there may be limits to her new strength and refused to let him lock her away so that he could keep her safe. Not that he hadn’t tried.

After she had regained consciousness, he had been prepared to tie her to the bed if that was what it took to keep her unharmed; but, of course, eventually Imogen had balked at the idea. Even when he had, rather graciously he felt, conceded that he might let her sit in a chair for an hour each day after the baby was born. She had only smiled at him very sweetly, told him that he was a dear man and that she loved him, but he was insane if he thought she was going to play an invalid all her life just to stop him from worrying.

It seemed to Robert that in no time she was out of her bed and throwing herself into life with a will. There had been no stopping her. All he had been able to do was to follow helplessly in her wake, trying to protect her from anything that might cause her harm. He had resigned himself to the fact that the only way to keep her safe was to be with her constantly—and that hadn’t been without its consolations, he remembered with a grin—but she had tolerated it only for a little while.

She had turned on him one evening and told him in no uncertain terms that it was time for him to go about his own business so that she could get on with hers. She had insisted she could no longer abide him as an overbearing nursemaid.

He had tried to tell her, calmly, that he was only being sensible, that while she seemed to be healthy, she shouldn’t forget that it wasn’t so long ago she had had a near-fatal fall and that she was pregnant. She needed to be looked after and he wanted to do it.

She had laughed, waved aside his concern, tweaked his nose and gone on her merry way, leaving him no choice but to do likewise.

Despite her condition and his fears, she had set a relentless pace, much to Robert’s horror. It was a sign of just how bad things had become that he had actually been relieved when he was called in from the fields with the news that Imogen had gone into labor. His frazzled mind had foolishly thought that at least it would slow her down a bit and give him some peace from his near-permanent state of worry.

That relief had quickly evaporated as a night and another day passed with Imogen struggling to bring their child into the world. It had been as bad as waiting for her to awake from her ordeal at Roger’s hands and, to make it worse, he had once more been banished from her side while she fought for her life, the healer already very wary of him after their previous encounter.

As time had ticked by without end, he had suffered all the shades of fear and guilt it was possible to suffer. Every time her screams reached him, he had listened with the grim knowledge that she suffered only because he had followed his animal lust and got her pregnant.

When the sound of a baby’s lusty cry broke into an unnatural silence, Robert hadn’t felt any ease in his dark guilt. It had almost brought him to his knees. The healer was wiping her bloody hands on her dress when she came and told him that all was well. He had run from the room before she had finished speaking, only reassured that Imogen was safe when he was able to brush her sweat-soaked hair from her forehead with a shaky hand and rain kisses over her exhausted but jubilant face.

“I’ll never touch you again,” he had vowed fervently between kisses. “I will live like a monk before I ever put you in jeopardy again. I promise.”

She had smiled serenely and raised a hand to his cheek. “And here was me already trying to decide what we could call Kathryn’s brother or sister.” She had let out a tired, husky laugh at the horrified look on his face.

“Not just yet, perhaps,” she murmured soothingly. “Not till I have a little rest at least.”

“Not ever!” he had roared at her, and considered that the end of the matter, contenting himself with watching over her and Kathryn through the long nights.

The days that followed had been hell for Robert as he watched Imogen struggle to do everything at once. Although she denied it, the birth had drained her already stretched resources, but she still refused a wet nurse and ignored the nursery maid he had appointed, stubbornly determined to look after Kathryn herself. Robert had been bewildered as to what he should do. He couldn’t just stand by and watch helplessly as Imogen struggled to balance the child’s needs with her own body’s need to rest and heal, and had soon found himself having to try and deal with Kathryn as he was the only one Imogen would let care for her baby.

He would have done anything if it meant Imogen could get the rest she so clearly needed, but he was a most reluctant nursery maid. The tiny, helpless scrap of humanity terrified him. He had never been around babies before, and scarcely knew where to start with his own. His hands seemed too large and clumsy to deal with such tiny