He grinned. “Of course, I’m removing all poisons from the house. I think all heavy objects will have to go, too. My wife has a fierce temper. And”—he whispered against her lips—“I’m terrified that our children might inherit it.” He shifted his weight, bearing her backward against the pillows.

“Quill! Let me go! I have to get out of bed.”

“I want you to stay here with me.” His voice had a devilishly sensuous lilt.

“I can’t,” Gabby said.

“I don’t think I’ll ever let you out of my sight again. We’re going to live in bed.”

“Quill!”

“Why not?” He wrestled her flat on her back and lavished kisses on her nose and eyelids as she twisted under him, trying to get free. Dimly, he could hear her protesting, but he was too joyfully intoxicated to listen.

It took a howl to get through to him. “Quill, you must let me go! I’m having a very peculiar reaction to Sudhakar’s medicine—I feel as if I swallowed a large lake, and I must get to the water closet!”

Quill started hopelessly chuckling into his wife’s neck.

It was only when her struggling limbs endangered his future children’s lives that he rolled to the side and let her go.

But it didn’t change his plans for the day—nay, for the week. He was a well man with a beautiful wife and a passel of children to create. Pleasant work, indeed.

And they had the whole of life ahead of them in which to do it.

Chapter 25

KAMATH THE FRUIT SELLER noticed with some amusement the two lovers lying on the banks of the Ganges River. Likely they thought they couldn’t be seen. He paused in his hard climb up the mountain. The woman had the pearly white skin of an Englishwoman. He’d heard that hail fell as large as mango fruit over in England. Struck people on the head, which explained why Englishmen were so foolish. His eyes widened. The hail didn’t seem to injure their other faculties.

With a sigh of appreciation and remembrance, the old man continued up the tiny, winding path leading to his house. Good thing the crazed old Englishman Jerningham died a few months ago, he thought. He was miffy about things like that. Tried to exile Kamath’s own daughter, Sarita, from the village. Kamath snorted to himself. Of course, Sarita and her husband had returned just a few weeks later, calling themselves a different name. He was as blind as a toad, old Jerningham. Couldn’t see farther than the tip of his nose.

DOWN ON THE BANKS of the Ganges River, the Englishman, whose skin was not nearly as pearly white as that of his wife, had rolled over on his back and was looking up at the clouds far above them.

“What do you see?” his wife asked, tucking her head into his shoulder.