Making Amends - Sex Stories

Making Amends

... own the blonde's voice was positively quivering and she gave a subtle gulp before carrying on. “...anticipated his return.”

“Oh? You have?” Genuinely astonished, the baron couldn't help but raise one eyebrow and cock his head slightly as he stared back at the young noblewoman.

“It is true.” As Hyacin looked on, Sienna closed her eyes and took a deep breath. There could be no mistaking how excruciating their current conversation must be for the girl, but after a brief moment her eyes opened once more and she carried on in a steadier voice even as her cheeks grew darker. “I had hoped that once he knew of my... condition... he might... seek my hand.”

At that confession Hyacin's carefully maintained facade of detached curiosity finally cracked, his own eyes going wide even as one of his hands instinctively rose to stroke at his close-trimmed beard. “Truly?” he asked, scarcely able to believe what he had just heard “It is your intention to seek a marriage with this man?”

“It... it is.” Everything about the disgraced maiden, from her blushing cheeks and reluctance to meet his eyes to how much she struggled in getting the words out, told Hyacin that she was anything but eager to be his wife. Yet, at the same time there was a subtle strength lurking just beneath the surface which told him she had made her decision. “No decent man would have me as I am now,” she continued on, “but the father of my child would not be shamed for... formalizing our union. Were he to agree ...

... to such an arrangement, that might restore to me some semblance of dignity.”

“I see,” Hyacin mused, continuing to stroke his beard as he mulled over Sienna's words. She wasn't wrong about the merits of such an arrangement. Marriages of that sort were hardly unheard of, though typically they took place between illicit lovers who actively sought to be together rather than a predator and his prey. While hardly sufficient to eradicate her shame entirely, a wedding would reduce the stigma of her condition to a simple scandal which soon enough would be rendered stale news. Perhaps even more importantly, becoming his wife would also allow for her child to be legitimized and thus spared the indignity of living as a bastard in the eyes of mortals and eternals alike.

As much as he found himself respecting the young Lady Terracroix all the more for having the courage to make such a difficult choice, be it for her own sake or that of her child, Baron Hyacin couldn't really say he was in the market for a new wife. After all, he had already fulfilled his familial responsibilities once as a younger man. Many years before he had inherited his family's estate the then-untitled aristocrat's parents had arranged for him to wed a suitable maiden by the name of Phierri Gessa. It had been a loveless marriage, more a business arrangement than an affair of passion, but there was hardly anything unusual in that.

Prior to the ceremony the couple had only met a handful of times, mostly at some ...