Bridal Bargains

She could not see how voluptuously alluring she looked, with her new maternal shape moulding the front of her body while the rest of her remained incredibly slender in every other way.

In fact, the one and only plus point she could find to all of this was that she loved her baby already. Although she might not like what he was doing to the shape of her body, she did not resent him doing it.

‘You grow, my darling,’ she whispered softly one morning, as she stood in front of the full-length mirror, ruefully viewing the physical changes while her fingers ran a gentle caress over her swollen abdomen. ‘You take whatever you want from your mama to become the strong little man I want you to be.’

And he did take a lot, she had to admit. Took enough to see her safely tucked up in bed before ten each evening and resting several times throughout the day.

Then, on a Wednesday afternoon, two weeks into her fifth month of pregnancy, she was lying on her bed, resting, when she received a telephone call that put the energy back into her with a vengeance. Sofia had answered the call, then came running to get her.

‘A Mrs Leyton?’ She said the name with difficulty. ‘She say it is urgent.’

Mrs Leyton—Cissy, her father’s housekeeper—ringing here? Alarm shot through Mia, the kind of alarm that sent her legs to the floor and had her rushing down the stairs to the nearest telephone.

There were only two reasons why her father’s housekeeper would be calling here—either something had happened to her father or something had happened to Suzanna.

Pray to God it isn’t Suzanna, she begged as she lifted the receiver to her ear with a trembling hand.

It was Suzanna.

Ten minutes after that she was rushing around her bedroom, packing a small case, in a state of high turmoil.

‘Listen, Elena,’ she snapped at the hovering housekeeper for the very first time since she had arrived here. ‘I have to go to England. I don’t care how I get there, even if I have to swim! But I do have to go!’

‘But the master says you are not to leave the island without him.’

‘I don’t damn well care what the master has said!’ she bit back, lifting a flushed face and wild eyes from what she was doing. ‘You must have some way you can contact him in case of an emergency! So contact him!’ she commanded.

‘Contact me for what?’ a cool voice enquired from the open doorway to her bedroom.

Mia straightened from what she was doing and spun around to face him. ‘Oh, Alex!’ she sighed in relief. ‘Thank goodness …’

‘Prosehe!’ she heard him shout as sudden dizziness overcame her.

She landed in an ungainly huddle on the bed beside her open suitcase, not unconscious but sickeningly close to it. Beyond the dizziness she could hear him still cursing, and was vaguely aware of him pushing the housekeeper out of the way in his urgency to reach her.

‘You stupid, thoughtless female!’ he growled at her angrily as he came to stand over her. ‘When are you going to learn that you cannot exert yourself like this?’

‘I’m all right now,’ she whispered, through lips gone strangely numb.

‘Oh, you look it,’ he mocked grimly, watching the struggle it cost her to sit up again. ‘Go any whiter and I won’t be able to tell you from the sheet!’

‘Just listen!’ she cut across him, impatiently ignoring the lingering dizziness, the cloying sense of sickness disturbing her stomach. ‘Suzanna, my s-sister, has been taken ill with acute appendicitis. I have to go to England,’ she told him. ‘She needs me.’

‘She needs her father,’ Alexander inserted coolly. ‘You need to rest and take care of yourself.’

Was that a refusal? Mia glanced up at him and saw that his face was wearing that familiar closed expression. She felt her heart sink when she realised she had a battle on her hands. Elena, she noticed, had disappeared out of the firing line.

‘She needs me,’ Mia insisted.

Alex walked off towards the bathroom as if she hadn’t spoken.

Mia got up, panic beginning to join all the other fears that were flurrying through her. ‘Alex …’ She met him at the bathroom door, her limbs still shaking and her head still whirling so dizzily that she had to clutch at the doorframe to steady herself. ‘Please …’ she pleaded with him. ‘She’s only seven years old! She’s in pain and frightened! She needs me there to reassure her! I’ve always been there for her when she’s needed someone!’

‘Well, this time it will have to be someone else,’ he declared, ‘because you are not going. Here …’ He offered her the glass of water he had gone into the bathroom to collect.

‘I don’t want that,’ she snapped, and tried to spin away from him, but he stopped her, his free hand closing around her wrist.

‘You are amazing, do you know that?’ he bit out angrily. ‘You walk around this place as if you live on a different planet to the rest of us! You rarely show emotion. You rarely raise your voice or make a move that has not been carefully thought out beforehand! You drift through each day as though you are not really living it. Then some stupid damned phone call comes, and you are suddenly so out of control that you are actually a danger to yourself!’