Excerpt A Proposal
and never be alone again.
Again and again I felt the powerful waves rise up and subside until I felt him shudder beneath me, his breath caught in his throat and I collapsed shaking beside him, at once exhausted and renewed.
Gurrrrgle. My rumbling belly brought time back to normal.
"You stay put. 'Tis my turn to take care of you. I'll be right back with some bread and tea." Tijer was up and out of bed and with a brief kiss out of the room before I could form a protest.
I lay abed, quite unaccustomed to being waited upon. I traced patterns in the sweat still glistening on my belly. "Well bambino, looks like 'tis not just you and me anymore. Your father loves us both and he is going to take good care of us. I cannot believe how blessed we are. Let us hope your nonna takes the news well..."
I looked up to see Tijer standing in the doorway, holding some bread and an apple. "There were a few left in the cellar, but some are going to go bad, you had best make a pie for desert tonight." He crossed the room to hand me the apple and bread.
"'Twill be alright - tonight, I mean. The worst that could be is she gets upset and leaves, which would be sad for the child to have no grandmother. Anything else will be better. She is a reasonable woman, an' she does like me - though I wasn't her first choice for you - I think she will accept it. Especially once she sees that there is nothing she can do about it, and when she sees how happy you are. You are happy, aren't you 'Chite?"
"If after last night and this morning you still need to ask, I would have to say that you were soft in the head for not knowing!" I had a huge smile on my face and took a bite of my apple.
Tijer climed abed and lay atop my legs, his arms at either side of me and his chin resting gently on my belly. "Well, so long as there's no confusion about that."
"Well then, for the sake of avoiding confusion - si, amore del mio cuore, specchio della mia anima, padre del mio bambino, e compagno della mia vita, si! Yes I am happy! And I'll not let anything that comes to pass tonight change that." Love of my heart, mirror of my soul, father of my babe, my life's companion. I stroked his left cheek with my right index finger, tracing his dimples and then across his silky soft lips, down to the deep divet n his scruffy chin. I squeezed his chin between my
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