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He watched her carefully. Brief astonishment flickered on her face, but she controlled it quickly. “I suppose I can do that,” she said with a smile.

“But,” he added, “if a child is something you wished for…we could discuss it as a possibility. I want to give you the life you want. That’s the goal here. I had thought, since you had a child to care for already, that it would mean you didn’t wish for anything further. But in that respect, I suppose I should have talked to you. I should have asked you what you wanted. We can make an arrangement if you would like to try to have a child.”

She stared at him. “Is it really that simple?” she asked. “You’d give me a child if I asked?”

“That was my promise.”

“I’m sure that wasn’t your promise,” she countered. “If George didn’t ask you explicitly to marry me, he certainly didn’t ask you to give me a child.”

“Well, no,” Sampson agreed, smiling faintly. “Not as such. But he spoke about it. He said you two didn’t have one, and that if anything were to happen to him, he worried you would be robbed of becoming a mother. He thought you would be a good mother.”

“Did he? I never knew that.” She looked down at her hands, folded in her lap. “We never had the chance to speak about that.”

“He said that you were kind and warm and quick to adapt to new roles in life,” he told her. “He thought you would make a fine wife, once you got the chance to really step into that role. And he said you would be a good mother as well.”

She blinked several times rapidly. Her lips whitened, and he realized that she was trying her best not to cry.

He pretended he hadn’t noticed. He hadn’t intended to make her cry, and he wasn’t sure what to do about it. Maybe he ought to comfort her, but how did one do that? What should he say? Better to leave her alone until she had mastered her emotions, he decided.

And it happened quickly enough. She took a deep breath, and when she released it, it was steady. “Thank you for telling me that,” she said quietly. “I never realized he felt that way about me, and I’m grateful to know it.”

He nodded. “I’m glad I was able to pass it on.”

“I don’t need a child.” Her cheeks were pink as she said it. “It’s not something I thought about. You’re right. Rose is all I need. I just assumed…I thought it was something you would expect from me. That’s all. Isn’t that what every husband expects, after all? An heir?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “Was that something George expected? The way he spoke, it sounded as though his primary concern lay in giving you the chance to be a mother, not in having a child for himself. But perhaps he told you differently?”

“We hardly had a chance to talk about it,” Amanda said. “We didn’t spend that much time together before he went off to war, but I did assume that was something he was going to want. Not that he—I mean, not that we ever…” She broke off, blushing furiously.

Sampson waited for her to continue, but she seemed unable even to meet his eyes all of a sudden. It occurred to him all at once what she must be talking about…but no, surely not. George had never told him that.

“What was your wedding night like?” he asked her. “The first one, I mean. You needn’t give me any details, of course, but was it to your liking?”

“I…well…” She couldn’t seem to look up. “The truth is that…well, nothing ever happened. He was too drunk, and fell asleep before…well, anyway, that’s the reason we didn’t have a child.”

“I didn’t know that,” he said pensively. “George never mentioned that.”

She looked nervous. “Does it matter?” she asked him. “I mean…does that change things between you and me?”

Of course, it changed things. It changed everything, because a moment ago he had casually offered to have a child with her as though there was nothing particularly significant about the offer. After all, she had a child in her custody already, so it wouldn’t be as though it was her first time caring for someone else. He had been able to ask the question casually, and to suppose that she would consider it casually. The decision itself could never have been casual, but the conversation could.

Now that didn’t feel true. Because now he knew something new about her.

He lowered his voice, doing his best to be gentle. She was still beet red. And as awkward as this was for him, he was sure that it must be worse for her. “Amanda,” he said gently. “When you speak of a wedding night…do you understand what that entails? Do you know what would be involved?”

She bit her lip and shook her head minutely. “It’s to do with having an heir,” she said. “I know that. Which means that…the lady would be with child at the end of the evening. But I don’t know exactly how that comes to pass. I was counting on George to be the one to instruct me in all that, but…” She trailed off.

He nodded slowly. “Of course,” he murmured. “That is what a husband would do.”

And George never had.

She had no idea whether she wanted to ask him for that aspect of life between a man and a woman, in other words, because she didn’t know what it was. She didn’t know what she was missing out on.

What was he supposed to do?

Such tender, intimate things were better demonstrated in the heat of passion than clinically over a desk. If he were to tell her all about it now, she would likely be horrified.

And that was all right, of course; at least, it was all right in a sense. He had no expectations of her. If their marriage was never consummated, he would not be disappointed. It would be nothing more or less than he had anticipated when he’d married her.