A Delicious Deception (21 page)

The following morning brought a letter from Mitch, back in his own home in the Loire, full of regret that she had left Monaco in the way she had before he had returned from the clinic and—in a rather roundabout way—for what had happened in the past between him and her father. The letter then went on to express his surprise at hearing that she would be tying the knot with, as he put it,
his only son
, although he sounded thrilled that King would be giving him an heir, and equally thrilled that it was going to be with her.

His letter continued on a rather self-congratulatory note.

That last bit was gratifying but, contrarily, it lowered her spirits a little too.

The way he had addressed her reminded her of being young and optimistic about love and romance and life in general, and of those days she’d spent in her father’s office, hungry for any chance meeting with King. She’d ached for him then, but not as she ached for him now—with a woman’s passion. It was a lonely, desolate aching for him now, even though she was carrying his child, because she knew that he wasn’t marrying her for the right reasons. Such as love and mutual trust and respect. Such as the fact that he couldn’t live without her. How could he be, when they had known each other for such a short space of time? No, he probably felt guilty and as though he owed her something for what his family had done to hers, and so he couldn’t just abandon her with his child on top of that.

With that less than flattering thought, she took the train out to her future home, walking from the village because the day was so beautifully warm and mellow, although she felt all-in by the time she had let herself into the magnificent house.

King was still away on business in Edinburgh and, as Cynthia Hardwicke was feeling well enough to accompany her friend to see a West End show and had decided to spend the night in town, Rayne felt it was a good opportunity to do some measuring up in what she had chosen to be their baby’s room, and then stay at the house until King returned the following afternoon.

He had given her carte blanche to do whatever she wanted in terms of redecorating or refurnishing the house, but when
she’d taken a leisurely appraisal of his home she realised with surprise that his taste suited her perfectly.

It was dark by the time she finished her measuring up.

Pleased at finding that the little pieces of white furniture she’d picked out for the nursery would fit the spaces she had designated for them perfectly, she decided, as she was feeling extraordinarily tired tonight, to run herself a warm bath in the luxuriously appointed master bathroom at the top of the house, then take herself off to bed.

Its gargantuan proportions and its abundance of dark scattered satin cushions and pillows made the bed look sensuously inviting.

Too inviting, Rayne decided when the memory of making love there with King and the thought of how many times he would make love to her again between those billowing sheets had her aching for him with a need that darkened her eyes and put a pink tinge across her cheeks.

Having soaked in a long, luxurious bath, she stepped out and wound a huge white fluffy towel around herself.

She felt heavy and aching, and wished that King was there. And suddenly, glancing absently at the towel with which she had been drying herself, she froze, shock ripping through her with the trembling realisation of what was happening.

‘Y
OU
have to tell King,’ Cynthia Hardwicke advised, already in a taxi on her way over. ‘If you’re losing the baby he has a right to know—and now!’

‘I can’t. Not yet,’ Rayne told her, fighting back tears.

How could she tell her mother that she couldn’t bear to drag him back from Edinburgh? That, on top of all her fear and misery about starting a miscarriage, she wouldn’t be able to bear hearing him saying all the things he thought he should say to her when she guessed that, deep down, he would probably be nursing a huge sense of relief?

Because what man would be crazy enough to tie himself down to a woman he didn’t love—and after so short an acquaintance? Particularly a man in King’s position, unless he felt he had to—which he clearly did.

She hadn’t even wanted to tell her mother, not only because she hated having to worry her. But also because, ridiculously, she’d felt that until she did tell someone, it might not be happening.

But it was, and so finally she had rung her friend Joanne in France because she had felt so frightened.

‘You must tell your mother,’ her friend had urged when she’d found out King was away. ‘You can’t stay there on your own.’

So she had, and shortly afterwards Cynthia Hardwicke
arrived, not long after the doctor who Rayne had called to ask for advice.

‘If there’s no pain and you’re not haemorrhaging, then I won’t rush you off to hospital,’ the out-of-hours locum told Rayne briskly. ‘At this early stage of a pregnancy there will be nothing anyone can do to prevent a miscarriage happening once it’s already started,’ the woman informed her a little more sympathetically. ‘But if there are any problems—’ she reeled off a few ‘—don’t hesitate to call A & E.’

So that was that, Rayne thought numbly, hearing the woman’s car pulling away, thinking about what she’d advised if things got any worse.

Later, with her mother having taken herself off to bed in one of the guest rooms at Rayne’s insistence, she tried to get some sleep, but her thoughts wouldn’t let her. Because what could be worse than losing the baby she already had so much feeling for? Unless it was to be told what she already knew deep down inside—that she was going to lose King as well?

Unable to rest, she got up and, slipping on the long ivory silk robe she had brought with her over her short matching nightdress, she stole quietly downstairs to the kitchen.

The fridge was well-stocked by the woman King employed to come in twice a week to clean and, pouring herself some juice, Rayne moved into the sitting room, where a full harvest moon was throwing a shaft of amazingly bright light over the white and ebony keys of the piano.

After losing her father—and then with her mother being ill—life had suddenly become so precious to her. And now …

She dropped down onto the piano stool, her fingers tense around her glass. She had desperately wanted this baby, she thought achingly. After getting over the initial shock of finding out that she was pregnant, she had welcomed the baby as part of them, but especially as part of King—a man she had been in love with since she was eighteen. But he wouldn’t have wanted her as his wife if he hadn’t unintentionally—and
probably very regrettably, she decided with an acute ache in her chest—made her pregnant in the first place. She’d welcomed it as a symbol of her newly rekindled love for him—the love she knew she would always feel for him—even if that love was never reciprocated—and she had wondered over and over again during the past two and a half months when exactly it was she had conceived.

Was it that night he had come back to the house looking so devilishly dishevelled and yet devastated, too? The night when her intuition alone had told her that he was every bit the man she had always hoped he was? Or the next day on his yacht, when she had glimpsed the loneliness in him and when, rediscovering her love she had ached to fill the void she had sensed deep down inside him?

The day he had surprised her by playing her favourite music …

Setting her glass aside, with one finger she absently picked out the first few bars of the poignant theme until, tortured beyond belief, she threw the piano lid closed and collapsed, sobbing, over it, pouring out her grief with the pain of her loss and the agony of even more loss to come.

Why would he still want to marry her when he discovered that she was having a miscarriage? What was there to keep him with her when there was no other reason for him to stay?

She must have fallen asleep like that—a pale figure slumped over the piano with her head resting on her arms—because that was how King found her an hour or so later when he came quickly and silently across the room.

She hadn’t been upstairs when he’d come in, making straight for the bedroom, having driven back from Edinburgh like a madman, though the bedclothes were rumpled and the lamp on the cabinet on her side of the bed was on, as though she’d only just got up.

‘Rayne?’ He wanted to reach out and touch the pale slope of her shoulder but was afraid that if he did he would startle
her, and he wanted to avoid that. ‘Rayne,’ he repeated in a tone that was soft and deep.

She made a soft sound like a whimper as she lifted her head, and anxiously he wondered if she was in pain.

‘You’re home,’ she murmured weakly, with a surge of relief and then sadness washing over her as everything came back to her. She couldn’t believe he was standing there right beside the piano. She’d thought he was coming back tomorrow.

‘Cynthia rang me.’ The moonlight had shifted since she’d first come in here, slashing across the wooden floor behind him so that his face was in shadow. ‘Why didn’t you?’

So her mother had telephoned him after all! He sounded so pained that she looked up at him questioningly as she angled herself around towards him on the stool, absently remembering that she’d given Cynthia his cellphone number in case her mother couldn’t reach her at any time.

‘I couldn’t,’ she sighed, unable to tell him the reason why. ‘I didn’t want you dashing home.’ As he evidently had. ‘I thought it would be best to wait until the morning to tell you.’

‘That you were losing our baby?’

There was incredulity in his voice. But the way he bracketed the two of them together brought emotion welling up in her again, and it took every ounce of willpower she possessed to restrain it.

‘Shouldn’t you be in bed?’ As he laid a gentle hand on her shoulder he heard her catch her breath as though she didn’t welcome the contact and was recoiling from it, although she gave no physical indication of doing so. ‘You’re cold,’ he observed, horrified, touching his hand to her cheek. He couldn’t believe how cold. ‘Here.’

Rayne heard rather than saw him shrugging out of his jacket.

She sucked in a breath as the warmth of it came around her back and shoulders. His body warmth, she thought achingly, drowning in the familiar scent of him that clung to it,
sitting there like a limp doll while he pulled it around her as though she were a small child.

He dropped to his haunches in front of her.

‘Are you sure?’ he whispered, holding on to her, his eyes almost level with hers.

He meant about the baby and she nodded. ‘The doctor seemed to think so and I … I don’t feel pregnant any more.’

She heard him draw in a breath and saw, in the dim light, his lashes come down as he nodded his head. Accepting it, she thought. Before she could. Without any problem.

Even so, as his arms came around her, offering her the comfort she guessed he thought she would need, she couldn’t stop herself from straining towards him, clinging to him, breathing in the scent of him first-hand this time, and wondering how many more times he would hold her like this before he finally released her from their commitment.

‘You know what this means, don’t you?’ she said, making herself deal with it—say it—before he could. ‘It means we don’t have to get married any more.’

Whatever it was King had been expecting, it wasn’t that, and coming as it did so soon after being told that the child he had anticipated wasn’t going to be, felt like a double slap in the face. Like the one she’d given him when they were in Monaco, only harder and more incisively targeted. He wondered how much duress she must have felt under to have agreed to marry him in the first place.

‘We’ll talk about that later,’ he said thickly, getting to his feet, ‘but first of all I think we should get you back to bed.’

She didn’t protest as he lifted her up as effortlessly as if she were the child she had envisioned herself as a few moments ago. She wanted these last moments with him. To memorize how it felt to have her arms around his neck, his warmth, his latent strength, to be this close to him when there would be so many cold and lonely days to follow that would find her forever
wondering what might have been, and what being King’s wife and the mother of his children would have been like.

Perhaps it couldn’t cling on because it knew you didn’t love me,
she thought, torturing herself, and drew no consolation from the knowledge that pregnancies of women who were happily settled with their partners could often end in miscarriage. Especially with a first pregnancy, the doctor had said when she had been trying to reassure her, but she hadn’t been listening, concerned only with what was happening to
her
baby, the little life she had been nurturing inside her.

King bore her up the four flights of stairs without bothering to switch on the lights. The moon shining in the long and wide windows on each landing put a silvery wash over the stairs, throwing their shadows onto the side wall that ran up from the lowest storey.

They looked like tragic lovers, he thought with unrestrained cynicism, aware of the straining bulk that was his own body and the slender arms wrapped around him, of the way the feminine head was angled so that it looked to be almost touching his.

He was mourning this child, he realised in that moment, and found himself acknowledging that he
had
wanted it—and more than he could ever have imagined possible. He had wanted the responsibility of another human being to care for. Part of himself. Someone he could always be there for in the way that neither of his own parents had ever been there for him. It had felt like a chance to redress the balance. A chance to put things right. And it had seemed like a good enough reason for accepting its existence when he’d given Rayne little option about marrying him and had hustled her through the arrangements for the wedding day after day.