The Unexpected Baby

CHAPTER NINE

RELUCTANTLY, Elena left the rustic seat at the far end of the garden, the one with the view over miles of open countryside, and began to amble slowly back towards the house.

She treasured these early-morning walks and the solitude she found; it was her way of escaping for just a little while. During the three days of Jed’s absence his mother had done nothing but chatter. She’d wanted to know every last detail of the ceremony, had clipped out every newspaper report she could find and was proudly sticking them in a scrapbook. And when that subject was temporarily exhausted she chattered excitedly about the cottage, the changes she and Susan would make after they moved in.

It was perfectly understandable. Talking non-stop about everything and anything took her mind off the recent loss of her son, and Elena was more than happy to listen, but she did need a few quiet times of her own in which to do some thinking.

Jed had phoned each evening. Until last night they’d been duty calls, largely made, Elena suspected, for his mother’s benefit, nothing personal.

But that had changed last night, when he’d said, ‘I’ve thought a lot about what you told me and there’s more I want to ask. But I’m beginning to think we can work this out—if you want that. I’ll be home tomorrow evening, hopefully around dinner time? Perhaps we should go back to Las Rocas. What do you think? We need to talk some more, and we can do it more easily on our own.’

Hope had lapped her body with warmth as she’d agreed shakily, a little breathlessly. ‘That sounds fine.’ And it had. It couldn’t get much finer. At least now he was willing to talk, perhaps to believe her and begin to understand the desperate, gnawing need that had driven her to accept Sam’s offer. ‘Shall I book the flights?’

‘No, leave it to me. I’ll arrange it for Friday, if I can.’

She had said, because it had been bothering her, ‘I really do think Catherine should be told about the baby before we leave. I couldn’t fasten my jeans this morning, so by the time we come back from Spain—’ fingers crossed they would be coming back together ‘—it might be obvious. I’ve no idea how quickly these things happen.’

His ensuing silence had alarmed her. Had it been too soon, taking too much for granted, to talk about her pregnancy with such apparent ease? It was a subject he couldn’t be happy with, and she could understand that. But the need to tell Catherine the truth had been

playing on her mind.

‘You’re quite right,’ he’d agreed at last. ‘Whatever happens, she has to know the truth. Would you prefer to break the news on your own, or would you rather wait until I can be there?’

‘On my own, I think.’ The way he’d said ‘whatever happens’ meant he wasn’t sure about their future at all, she’d recognised dispiritedly. She didn’t want any bad vibes coming from him to spoil whatever pleasure Catherine could take in knowing her beloved Sam had left a child.

And now she was going back to the house to find Catherine and have that talk. Elena’s mouth went dry at the prospect. Unconsciously she straightened her shoulders, and tucked her workmanlike blue and white striped shirt more firmly beneath the waistband of her loosely styled white cotton chinos.

She ran Catherine to earth in the morning room, making designs for her new garden on graph paper. ‘Darling! You were quick—did you get everything you needed?’

‘I haven’t been to the village yet.’ Elena wandered over to the window seat where Catherine was working. ‘I’ve been having a lazy walk around the garden.’ And thinking about what I have to tell you, and how I’ll tell it, and wondering how you’re going to take it, she added silently.

‘Oh—if I’d known!’ Catherine transferred the block of graph paper from her knees to a small coffee table at her side. ‘When he phoned I couldn’t find you, and Edith said she hadn’t seen you, so we thought you’d already gone to the village.’

‘Who phoned?’ Elena sat on the other end of the window seat, trying not to let her sudden panic show.

Jed? Had he changed his mind about coming home this evening? About Spain? Had he decided they had nothing to talk about after all?

‘A journalist from one of the women’s magazines—I quite forget which one. They want to do an interview with you,’ Catherine answered excitedly. ‘About your books, and the award, and whether you’ll be making your home here or dividing your time between here and Las Rocas. He seemed really keen for information. If I’d known you were only in the garden I would have come to fetch you. Anyway, he said he’d phone back later on to arrange an appointment, so I’m sure he will—as I said, he seemed very keen—so many questions!’

Elena’s smile was one of relief. Her panic attack had been for nothing, except, of course, to show her how very much she was hoping she and Jed could find a way through this mess.

She dismissed the journalist and his interview easily from her mind. She supposed she should be flattered, or interested, but she wasn’t. There were far more important things in life. ‘Catherine,’ she said gently. ‘I have something to tell you.’

Choosing her words with care, she began at the beginning, watching Catherine’s eyes grow wider with every word she said, then filming with tears as she whispered, ‘Sam’s baby—I can’t tell you how much that means to me. To hold a child of his in my arms, a living part of him. And I can understand why you agreed to it at that time. I don’t think men can properly understand the primeval instinct to mother—I guess you felt your biological clock ticking away and panicked.

‘And typical of Sam, too, bless him! He always said life was too short to miss out on the things you really wanted, and if the opportunity arose you upped and grabbed it. Much as I loved him, I’m afraid that the words “duty” and “responsibility” were a foreign language to him. Though what he lacked in that department, Jed more than made up for. And—’ Her teeth worried at her lower lip. ‘What was Jed’s reaction?’

‘He wasn’t exactly ecstatic,’ Elena understated. ‘But I promise you, he’s working on it.’ It was as much as she could offer. It would be cruel to paint a rosy picture when everything could still go badly wrong.

‘Yes,’ Catherine remarked softly. ‘Jed would work hard to accept it. He’s such a strong character and I know how very much he loves you. He told me he found the missing half of himself when he found you.’ She put her fingertips to her suddenly trembling mouth. ‘I do hope the poor boy doesn’t feel he’s lost out to Sam again. That would be unbearable for him.’

‘Lost out again?’ Elena questioned gently, her pulses quickening. Was Catherine about to confirm what she already suspected—that for some unfathomable reason Jed felt he came a poor second-best to his matinée-idol-handsome younger brother? ‘How could that possibly be?’

‘It’s entirely my fault; I know that.’ Catherine answered the question in her inimitable, round-about-thehouses way, her eyes anxious. ‘I feel so guilty when I think about it all. At the time we thought we were doing the right thing. Park House is such an excellent prep school, and it had been arranged that Jed should go there when he was eight.

‘Sam was just a tiny baby then—a sickly baby, demanding all my attention. I absolutely refused to hire a nanny; I needed to care for him myself. From one or two things Jed let slip when he was in his early teens I’m sure, with hindsight, he must have felt he’d been pushed out—especially when Sam wasn’t sent away to school but was tutored privately at home. He was still a frail little boy, and wayward and wilful, too. We knew he wouldn’t fit in with school discipline.’

She was twisting her fingers together so frenziedly that Elena thought her mother-in-law’s hands might fall apart at any moment. She took one of them in hers and held it gently. She couldn’t believe this warm and loving woman would ever knowingly hurt anyone. ‘I’m sure you did what you thought best.’