Shameful Secret, Shotgun Wedding

And then he heard it. A terrible, blood-curdling scream which clutched at his heart with an emotion which was pretty much unknown to Giancarlo.

Fear.

He leapt out of bed—for there it was again. Cassandra calling out his name. Screaming out his name.

In an instant he crossed the room and tried to open the door of the spare room when, to his astonishment and fury, he discovered that it was locked.

Locked.

‘Cassandra!’ he thundered as he smashed his fist against the solid wood. ‘For God’s sake, will you open this door?’

But to his consternation he heard nothing but a helpless whimper from inside the room and, scarcely knowing what he was doing, he dashed downstairs to fetch the ornate brass coal scuttle which adorned the fireplace in the morning room. Scarcely noticing its weight, he ran back upstairs with it.

‘Stand back!’ he yelled. ‘Stand well away from the door!’ And he smashed the heavy scuttle hard against the panel.

It took him three attempts before he had splintered a hole big enough to be able to snake his hand through and unlock the door from the inside—and when he had snapped on the light he flinched at the sight which greeted him. Cassandra, all curled up in a foetal position, her eyes wide with terror as she looked up at him, her face deathly pale.

He was over to her in an instant, his hand touching her clammy cheek. ‘What’s happening?’

‘I’m…bleeding.’

With a wrench of his heart, he looked down to see the crimson flowering on her fingertips and pain shafted through him. ‘We need to get you to hospital.’

‘I’m losing the baby!’

‘We need to get you to hospital,’ he repeated grimly and, picking her up, he began to carry her downstairs.

‘Giancarlo—an ambulance,’ she breathed.

‘I can get you there quicker myself. Shh, Cassie. Shh. Don’t cry, cara mia. Please don’t cry.’

But Cassie could do nothing to prevent the tears which slid down her cold cheeks. She clung to him as he carried her out to the car, placing her inside it as carefully as if she had been made of porcelain.

A new sob erupted from her throat as he soothed her before climbing into the driving seat and setting out for the hospital and then everything became a blur of people asking her questions and her being wheeled into some sort of X-ray room where she was to wait for the radiographer to scan her.

And through it all she had that terrible aching feeling in her stomach and the sense of awful foreboding at what this was all going to mean.

‘Hold onto me.’ Giancarlo reached out his hand and she gripped it.

‘I’m losing our baby,’ she whispered.

He flinched. It was that little ‘our’ which cut him to the quick. The suggestion of togetherness which he didn’t deserve—because he had been too much of an emotional coward to reach out for her. ‘There will be more babies, Cassie.’

Brokenly, she shook her head. ‘But not with you,’ she whispered. She had offered him his freedom earlier because it had felt the right thing to do—never dreaming that he would be liberated by nature itself, rather than by the simpler act of her letting him go. ‘Not with you.’

‘No.’ He knew what she was saying—for why would she ever consider trying to have another baby with a callous brute like him? And yet the realisation hit him like a juggernaut—leaving him feeling far worse than he could ever have imagined. A terrible pain tore at him as if someone had ripped his heart out with jagged fingernails. It was over. He and Cassandra were over. And mixed in with all this pain was the thought that his child had never had the chance to exist—and now never would. He remembered the online photos of the developing foetus he’d studied—and tried to picture at what stage his own little boy or girl would be at. But it hurt too much to try.

He looked at his wife. Her eyes were closed, her lashes like two feathery arcs brushing her snow-pale cheeks, and he brought his fisted hand to his lips and bit hard into the knuckles as if afraid that some primitive sound of sorrow might issue from his lips.

Yet he knew that there were words he had to say—and to say now, in case he never got another chance. He moved his hand from his lips and let it lie over her motionless fingers.

‘But you’ll find someone else some day,’ he said unevenly. ‘Some man who is worthy of you. Who can give you all the babies you want—and the love you deserve.’

Her eyelids fluttered open so that all he could see was the shimmer of wet violets—like dewy-fresh flowers which had been rained on.

‘The love you never had for me,’ she said brokenly.

Bizarrely, he thought of the Christmas wreath she’d made—the one which he had left on his door long after she’d gone back from Cornwall. He remembered the way she made him smile—the eagerness of her love-making and her sweet generosity. Not just generosity to him, but to his young niece—the child of the woman whose tongue had attempted to wound her. She had so many qualities, which he had simply taken for granted and had squandered—as if they weren’t important.