way. But most particularly with regard to their sexual prowess.
“I wish you and Carlo well tonight,” Jane said, her voice lit with affection. As they said their good-byes, Nicholas awaited her on the front path, conversing with Raine and Jordan. Lyon and Juliette had already gone.
“I’m suddenly nervous,” Emma confided, clasping her sister’s hands.
Jane gave her fingers an encouraging squeeze. “I’m a mother three times over now, and one of those births triplets,” she reassured. “So you may credit what I say on this issue. No matter how vigorous your engagements with your husband tonight, none of it will damage your child. Have no fear on that score. This will be a Moonful Calling like any other between the two of you.”
“Except for the birthing at its finish,” Emma put in.
“Yes, but any unpleasantness related to that will be brief and won’t occur until dawn. Don’t waste the hours between now and then with worry. All will be as I’ve told you previously. Now I must be off.” With a final hug, she made to go. “I’ll come tomorrow to welcome your newborn child into our family as soon as I can get away.”
When her sister rejoined Nicholas, he enfolded her in his protective embrace, and his dark head bent to her blond one. Watching them depart, Emma sighed wistfully.
For though Carlo would certainly bed her tonight, it would not be the true lovemaking her sister would enjoy. And though it was necessary—compulsive, in fact—the act would not bring her the bliss her sister imagined it might. Not the sort of soul-deep rapture she knew Jane would find in the coming hours with her own husband.
Upon her return to the house, Emma entered the green salotto where Carlo had retired with his guest. It was his domain when he was in residence, and she rarely ventured inside.
Knocking lightly, she then slipped inside where she found the two men in conversation. Noting that Carlo held another glass of spirits in his hand, she looked askance at it and opened her mouth to scold him.
Preempting her, he defiantly downed the goblet’s contents in one long gulp. Then, straightening one leg, he reached deep into his trouser pocket and withdrew something small from inside.
Tossing the object in the air, he caught it and opened his palm to reveal that it was a large gold coin.
Emma stared, blanching as she recognized what he held.
“Tell me, Dominic,” he mused in a wine-slurred voice, studying her instead of his companion as he spoke. “What would you think of a wife who intentionally sought to block her husband’s seed from implanting itself within her?”
She felt Dominic’s eyes sharpen on her in speculation but didn’t look his way.
“Carlo, perhaps you shouldn’t—” she began, moving to take his goblet.
When her fingers were within inches of it, he grabbed her wrist and held her in a painful grip. With his other hand, he flipped the coin high again, and once more he caught it. Still restraining her, he began to toy with it, weaving it in and out of his fingers with the skill of a sleight-of-hand trickster.
“Would you call her a murderess?” he went on to his friend. “This woman who condemned her husband’s seed to shrivel and die on its journey toward her womb? This woman who knew her husband greatly desired heirs. Yet who intentionally deceived him. For on the rare nights that he was able to come to her bed, doing his best to breed her, she intentionally thwarted his diligent efforts—”
Dominic raised his goblet. Though it was obviously only half empty, he said, “Permesso, Carlo, my glass needs attention.”
“Oh, of course. See to it, Emma.” Her wrist was instantly relinquished, and she took Dominic’s drink, giving him a grateful, tremulous smile. However, his expression was lost to her, for her eyes were brimming with tears of pain and humiliation.
Taking his glass to the wine cart, she lifted the carafe and prepared to refill it. Behind her, the coin flipped high, winking in the candlelight, and then landed with a plunk in Carlo’s hand.
“Last Moonful I came late to her bed and managed to catch her unawares,” he went on, refusing to let the matter go. “She was engaged in an evil pastime. Inserting this into her cunt.”
The carafe Emma held hit the cart with a crack. Though she was frozen in place, she saw from the corner of her eye that he now held the offending coin on edge between his thumb and forefinger, extending it toward Dominic as if submitting it for evidence in a courtroom proceeding.
“Regardless, it appears you succeeded in your pursuit of paternity,” Dominic interjected grimly, cutting short the verbal attack. “I suggest you cease belaboring the past.”
Soft, dewy brown tangled with hard silver in a quick exchange of glances. Gratitude swelled in her yet again, but it was tempered by the knowledge that what Carlo accused her of was true. Last month, when he’d come to her bed unexpectedly and awakened her from slumber, she had begged for a moment to ready herself and had slipped behind her privacy screen to do so.
She was an informed woman, having thrice read Charles Knowlton’s volume, The Fruits of Philosophy: or The Private Companion of Young Married People, which offered advice for couples who wished to limit the number of their offspring. Recently published in New York, it had described the use of female preventives, including “womb veils,” and she’d secretly been employing them since the beginning of her marriage.
On the night of which he spoke, her husband had emptied his pockets on the bedside table before coming to her bed. Out of desperation, she’d surreptitiously and randomly selected one of the coins from the pile he’d left before retiring behind the screen. Crouching there in an undignified manner, she’d reached a hand under her nightgown, intending to insert the disk high within her feminine channel.
It had been thick and heavy, and she’d feared he might detect it when his organ deeply breeched her. The other type of “veil” she’d previously utilized had been less obvious—a pliable hoop covered with oiled silk that was more suited to such a use and which he hadn’t noticed.
As she’d struggled with the insertion of the coin, he’d come behind the screen and caught her at it, forcing from her an admission that she’d been deceiving him in a similar way throughout the past year. Furious, he had flung the coin away and had used her roughly that night. Had hurt her with his hands, his body, and his words.
Leaving Dominic’s goblet unfilled on the cart, Emma fled to the door. Without glancing toward either man, she spoke to them in a voice rife with suppressed emotion. “I’ll have the guest chamber prepared for you in the west end of the house, Signore Janus. Carlo will show you there when you’re ready to retire. Now I’ll leave you both to your conversation.”
“Await me in my room,” Carlo muttered into his glass. “A son should be born in his father’s bed.”
With a curt nod, she stepped into the hall and shut the paneled door soundlessly, though she wished to slam it. Inside her husband continued on his tirade.
“I’m certain she learned this whore’s trick from her books,” she heard him say.
Dominic’s rumbled reply was indecipherable through the door.
“But some of her reading borders on the heretical,” Carlo blustered, “even
