Duarte's Child

Duarte laughed with vibrant amusement, tugged her down on to his lap and started to read. Then he gently and firmly lifted her off him again. ‘I work no more than eight hours a day, the only exception being an emergency? That’s not possible—’

‘You could try it.’

‘If I go abroad, you come too?’

‘You could try going less often—’

“‘For every day you spend away from me, I will spend a day away from you,’” Duarte read out loud in disbelief. ‘That’s blackmail. We would never see each other!’

‘I need a life too—’

‘Do homemes a praça, da mulheres a casa,’ Duarte quoted that well-known Portuguese proverb with gravity. Men out and about, women at home.

‘The rescue bid is off—’

He paled. ‘OK. You win but have you ever heard of the art of compromise?’

‘I did nothing but compromise the first time around and I was miserable and lonely.’

Looking grim, Duarte made it on to the second sheet and then he smiled at her with that sudden flashing charisma that could make her heart sing. ‘Truthfully—you don’t really want me out of your sight for longer than eight hours at a time?’

‘If you want to think that, that’s fine by me.’

His smile vanished. He skimmed through all the minor requests, even chuckled a few times and then, without any warning, he suddenly slung the last sheet aside and sprang upright. ‘You don’t want any more children with me? What kind of a condition is that?’

He looked so hurt, so full of reproach and incomprehension.

‘You made me feel that I had to give you a baby when we first married and the truth is, I felt too young and I wasn’t ready to be a mother then,’ Emily admitted awkwardly.

‘I never ever demanded that you give me a baby—’

‘No but you took if for granted that I would.’

‘If that is how you feel…didn’t you want him?’ Duarte shot at her in sudden emotive appeal.

‘I adore Jamie but if ever I have another baby, it has to be because I want another baby.’

‘All I can say is that I believed you felt the same way as me about having a family…’

She saw the sincerity in his eyes as he made that claim and felt terrible.

‘Obviously I won’t make the same mistake again,’ Duarte drawled flatly. ‘No wonder you were so miserable when you were pregnant—’

Emily’s eyes shimmered. ‘I was unhappy because after I became pregnant you just…well, I mean, you never touched me again—’

‘Did you expect me to disregard the doctor’s advice?’ Duarte demanded in astonishment.

‘What advice?’ Emily frowned.

‘Emily, you were present when the doctor advised us to desist from marital relations for the first few months!’

‘I never heard him say that…’ She sank down in the chair behind her. Thinking back, she remembered that during the first antenatal examination she had had, she had refused to have Duarte present and the nurse had translated the doctor’s comments because the older man had not spoken English. When Duarte had been called back in the nurse had gone out and the doctor had talked at length to them both, but Emily hadn’t paid much heed for she had trusted Duarte to translate anything of any further importance.

‘You honestly didn’t know?’ Duarte raked an impatient hand through his black hair and stared at her. ‘If you didn’t understand, why didn’t you ask me to explain afterwards, if not at the time?’

‘I couldn’t wait to get out of there! The whole time the doctor was examining me he was telling me off for being so thin and underweight and he was upsetting me. You never even mentioned it to me,’ she condemned in turn.

‘What was there to mention? Who wants to discuss a blanket ban on sex?’

‘I misjudged you. I’m sorry. I wouldn’t have locked the bedroom door if I’d known we were supposed to be desisting, or whatever he called it,’ she lamented, feeling foolish. ‘I felt so rejected.’

‘I wasn’t exactly celebrating either.’ Reaching down, Duarte tugged her upright, his lean, strong face taut. ‘We were like strangers when we first got married. I believed I could take a wife and that we could be content without being very close—’

‘You chose the wrong woman—’

‘I deserved a gold-digger.’ He gazed down at her with rueful, dark-as-midnight eyes. ‘I made you very unhappy.’

‘I need closeness…’

‘I’m working on it—but I’m really good at the physical end of the scale…’ Duarte cupped her cheekbones, spread his fingers and drew her mouth under his with a hot, hungry urgency that nonetheless contained a vein of tenderness she had never felt from him before.