Carrie looked at me with her innocent eyes. "Momma when are you and Daddy getting married?" Our little family was winding down for the night. Corrine had not visited in over three months, the twins have all but forgotten her. For almost three years Chris and I have been acting parents to our younger twin siblings. And for about four months my older brother and I have acted as husband and wife but yet had no ceremony fake or not to make it official at least in our eyes. At seventeen and fifteen we were young of body but not of mind or spirit.

I smiled. "If Daddy asks me then we will"

"Well then I guess there's no time like the present." Chris got out of the chair he was occupying and knelt before me a pair of rings in his hand. "I found these in the attic, we can hide them easily when Grandmother comes. So Catherine...my lady will you marry me?"

I stared into his deep blue eyes, so in love and hopeful. "Yes."

He kissed me soft and slow while the twins jumped up and down happy for us. "Oh, Cathy doll I love you so much. Our marriage will be perfect you'll see. We'll be happy raising our twins, and who knows maybe a few more." He stroked my stomach. "I'll be a doctor, you'll have you're own ballet school, the twins will have everything they'll ever want or need,. I can see you with a baby in your arms another in mine. We're siting on the porch, the twins are running around, we are so happy."

I could see everything he described. It was time to tell him.

"We may already be starting."

"What?"

"I'm pregnant."

Shock crossed his face, worry, then passionate unbridled joy. He spun me around laughing and crying. "Oh my lady that's wonderful, wonderful news!"

I laughed along. But all too soon the reality of our situation sunk in Grandmother...Corrine. "We have to get out of here before I start showing."

"How long do we have?"

"A month maybe two."
"We have over seven-hundred saved up only a few hundred more before we can run. We'll go to Florida stay in a hotel while I get a job."

"While I sit around and get fat?"

"Pregnant my love not fat." He turned to the twins. "Right now it's time for our little ones to go to sleep. We don't want them to be sleepy at Momma and Daddy's wedding do we?"

They shook their heads.

We bathed them, dressed them, tucked them in and read them a story.

As soon as they were asleep Chris started kissing my neck. "Let's go to bed my love." He picked me up and took us to the old mattress in the attic we crowned as our "Marital bed". I had cleaned it up and covered it with old white sheets that I had washed in the tub and a quilt made from the clothes we no longer used. Chris has promised me a bed more luxurious than Corrine's once we're out of here.

I strip him of his shirt and trace his chest muscles. Leaning up so my lips graze his ear I whisper"My Sir Christopher, make love to me."

My nightgown is pulled down by his hands."As you wish my lady Catherine."