by Penny Jordan
'You're not going to like this.'
'There isn't anything you could do I couldn't like,'
David told her truthfully. 'You've given me so much, Honor. First and most importantly your sweet, delicious, wonderful self, but as well as that you've given me back my self-respect by accepting me, loving me as I am.... You've helped me grow, too, into a new better self. Because of you I've begun to build bridges between myself and my family. You've given me two wonderful stepdaughters...'
'Ah...' Honor intervened, her voice trembling slightly, 'Not just two stepdaughters, David.' She paused whilst he waited, puzzled.
'I think I'm pregnant,' she told him shakily. 'Well, not so much think,' she amended, talking quickly and slightly nervously. 'The symptoms are exactly the same as those I had when I was carrying both girls and I've done a test. I know how shocked you must be. I was myself and...'
'Not shocked,' David denied, walking over to her and taking her in his arms. His voice was muffled as he held her against his body. Honor wasn't sure which of them was trembling most—David or herself.
'Are you annoyed with me?' he asked her gruffly.
'You have every right to be, I know. I should have taken more care.'
'Me—cross with you?' Honor checked him. 'You mean you don't mind?'
'Mind...? I can only think of one thing that could make me happier than I feel right now,' David told her emotionally.
As she looked at him Honor knew that he was thinking of Olivia, but before she could say anything David was wrapping his arms gently around her and holding her tenderly as he told her softly, 'For you to have my child is surely far, far more than I could possibly deserve. He or she may not have been planned,' he continued as he raised one hand and gently stroked her face, 'But I can assure you that he or she will be very much loved. Oh, Honor...' His control broke and tears filled his eyes. 'For you to give me a child when you have already given me so much...'
'I still can't properly take it in myself,' Honor admitted, happy tears of her own filling her eyes. 'I thought I'd be too old and I know that the girls will certainly think so! We're going to have to make some sort of an official announcement, I suppose. Perhaps the best thing to do would be to invite everyone round.... I just wish...' She stopped, not wanting to upset David by saying that she was concerned that Olivia's refusal to have anything to do with them was going to make it difficult for them to give her any advance warning of what was going to happen. By rights, as David's daughter, she should be one of the first people to know, Honor believed.
She stopped speaking as David started to kiss her with passionate tenderness.
'I love you so much,' he whispered huskily to her, but as his eyes started to cloud a little Honor guessed what he was thinking.
'This is going to be very difficult for Olivia, isn't it?'
'I hate knowing how much she's hurting and not being able to do anything to help her,' David admitted as he released her. 'I can't blame her for feeling the way she does and I don't, but I just wish she'd let me talk to her.
'Just thinking about how much I want this baby, our baby, makes me feel like hell knowing how little either Tiggy or I wanted Olivia. Her conception was an accident and then somehow or other I convinced myself that she was going to be a boy. Dad wanted her to be a boy, of course, and...
'I can remember taking her to Dad's once. She wasn't feeling very well. She was screaming and feverish. I suppose she'd have been about ten months old. Tiggy and I had had a fight about who would go to her and whilst we were arguing Jon went and picked her up and took her over to Jenny. The moment Jenny held her she stopped crying.... I've never forgotten the look Jon gave me—a look I thoroughly deserved. Poor Livvy.'
'Yes,' Honor agreed. She hadn't expected to conceive and the timing couldn't have been worse but she could see in David's eyes that already, like her, he loved the child they had both created, even though their shared joy was shadowed by their knowledge of Olivia's pain.
'No, DON'T you dare move,' Max warned Maddy as he brought the car to a halt outside the front door to Queensmead. He had picked her up from the hospital half an hour earlier and of the two of them, the doctor had remarked sardonically that Max looked more trau-matised by the experience they had just been through than Maddy.
'You know what the doctor said,' Max reminded her as he opened the passenger door of his car for her.
'Totally, absolutely, no way are you to do anything other than rest....'
'That doesn't mean that I can't walk,' Maddy protested laughing as Max insisted on lifting her out of the car and carrying her into the house.
She had never seen him so emotionally affected by anything, not even when they had both thought their marriage had to end and it made her ache with love for him to know how much he cared.
The children and Jenny were waiting to welcome her home and tears filled Maddy's eyes as she saw the way her sitting room had been rearranged to provide room for a pretty day bed.
'From now until the baby arrives I'm going to be working quite a lot from home,' Max informed her firmly after Jenny had swept the children back to the kitchen for something to eat. 'Ma will be on hand as well if we should need her. Between us we'll sort out the school runs and everything else. All you have to do is to make sure that you follow the doctor's instructions and rest!'
Maddy waited until he had finished before saying softly, 'Max, I'm not so fragile that you can't kiss me, you know.'
Emotionally she could see how much he loved her but physically he had been oddly and unfamiliarly distant with her and she had noticed, too, how much he was avoiding even looking at, never mind touching the bump that was their child.
She had wanted to ask him if anything was wrong but the journey home had tired her more than she wanted to admit. For their baby's sake she had to do as the consultant had instructed.
As he watched her and listened to her Max knew that their lives together could never be the same. The burden of the guilt he felt lay too heavily against him for that. Maddy would hate him if she were ever to know what he had thought, wished for, when he had feared that he might lose her.
Anxiously Maddy studied him. She had never known him so remote and withdrawn. Even in the early years of their marriage when she had felt he hated her, his reactions had still been blazingly passionate. Was he perhaps angry about the disruption her condition was causing? Things had not been entirely easy for him since David had returned. Did he perhaps secretly wish that this fourth child had not been conceived?
'Max,' she began huskily.
But he shook his head telling her firmly, 'You stay here and rest. I've got to go and help Ma get the kids ready for bed.'
JACK TRIED to focus on what his uncle Jon was saying to him. They were eating supper together, just the two of them because Aunt Jenny was still at Queensmead and Jack was heavy-heartedly aware of just how little progress he had made with his plans during the day.
Annalise had insisted on going to school. He had met her afterwards, not from school but on the river path because she didn't want anyone to see them together.
'Annalise, we can't keep what's happening a secret for much longer,' he had warned her gently, hating himself when she had burst into tears. It seemed unbelievable that they were going to be parents.
Sympathetically Jon watched Jack. It was obvious that the lad had his mind on other things. Teenage love could be traumatically painful, especially when it went wrong.
THE PAIN WAS SO strong that it brought Annalise out of her deep sleep of emotional exhaustion. At first her mind blurred; she simply lay in her bed suffering the waves of sharp cramping discomfort then, as the fog-giness of her sleep cleared she realised what they were and what was happening.
Hardly daring to believe what her body was telling her, she hurried to the bathroom. The proof that she was right and that her period had started made her feel giddy with joyous relief. She wasn't pregnant...she wasn't going to have a baby.
Automatically she did the things that
were necessary whilst all the time the relief inside her expanded like a bubble. Once she was back in bed she didn't want to sleep. Hugging her arms around her body she savoured the pain washing through her, welcoming it.
She had prayed so desperately for this to happen and now that it had... Now that it had, she was never, ever going to have sex again she told herself fervently.
At least not unless she was one hundred percent sure that she was properly protected from any risk of pregnancy. A cold shudder ran through her as she allowed herself to acknowledge properly for the first time just what it would have meant if she had been pregnant.
Jack might have said that they would get married and that everything would be all right, but she knew it wouldn't have been so easy.
Jack... She would telephone him first thing in the morning to give him their good news, she decided tiredly as the painful cramps slowly started to ease and she drifted back to sleep.
JACK HAD JUST woken up when his mobile rang.
Reaching for it he answered the call, his heart pounding heavily as he heard Annalise's voice.
'What is it? What's wrong?' he demanded anxiously.
'Nothing,' Annalise responded, the happiness bubbling through her voice as she told him, 'nothing's wrong at all. In fact, everything is wonderfully, fab-ulously all right. I'm not going to have a baby, Jack...I'm not pregnant...we're safe....'
It took several seconds for her excited words to reach his brain.
'What?' he demanded. 'When...? How...?'
Quickly Annalise explained.
'Look, I've got to go,' she told him.
'I'll meet you after school,' Jack began. 'We can talk properly then....'
'I've got to go,' Annalise repeated. 'Jack...you won't tell anyone about any of this will you?' she begged him. 'I couldn't bear anyone else to know.'
Jack frowned. His first thought when he realised what Annalise was telling him had been one of relief that he could now honestly explain to his aunt and uncle just why he had come home, why he had no option other than to come home.
'Promise me, Jack,' Annalise was insisting. Jack could hear the tension in her voice and the anxiety.
Reluctantly he gave in.
'I promise,' he told her.
Annalise's hand shook as she put down her own mobile. All she wanted to do now was to forget how frightened she had been and why and for her life to go back to normal.
THE MOMENT Jenny saw Jack's face when he walked into the kitchen she could see how much happier he was. She knew that he had seen Annalise the previous day and she guessed that they had made up their quarrel. Even so...
'You look a lot happier this morning,' she commented.
'I am,' Jack agreed, going over to her and giving her a fierce hug as he told her in a muffled voice, 'I'm sorry, Aunt Jen, but I had to come home and see Annalise.... Please don't worry, though, everything's fine now and I'll be going back to uni tomorrow.'
'Everything's fine now,' Jenny repeated wryly. 'But what happens the next time you have a falling-out, Jack? This mustn't happen again,' she insisted firmly.
Jack released her, his eyes unhappy. He ached to be able to explain to her that it was no mere quarrel that had brought him home but something far more serious, but he had given his word to Annalise and he could not break it.
'It won't,' he assured her.
Jenny wished she could be as sure.
'How's Maddy?' Jack asked her.
'Improving,' Jenny replied.
Max had told her that he could manage without her help today, which meant that she could have a much needed day in her own home and the first thing she intended to do just as soon as she had stripped the beds and filled the washing machine was to go for a supermarket shop for both herself and Queensmead.
'DAVID,' Jon exclaimed in pleasure as his brother walked into his office. 'I wasn't expecting to see you today.'
'No,' David agreed. 'I was up at Fitzburgh Place earlier and Frederick asked me if I would drop some papers off with you.'
'Got time for a coffee?' Jon asked as he took the papers from him.
'Mmm...I wouldn't mind.'
'You look rather distracted. Is anything wrong?' Jon asked.
'Not wrong exactly,' David told him, taking a deep breath before saying hesitantly, 'The fact is—' a rueful almost boyish smile of pride and pleasure curled his mouth '—Honor's pregnant.'
Outside Jon's half-open office door Tullah, who had just been on her way into Jon's office to ask him something, came to an abrupt halt.
'Pregnant... You mean with a baby?' Jon demanded in bemusement.
'Pregnant...with a baby,' David confirmed straight-faced. 'It wasn't something we'd planned,' he confessed, 'but I have to say that as accidents go, this one is pretty wonderful. We're going to organise a family get-together to make an official announcement.'
A new love, a second family, a whole new role and purpose in life. Jon couldn't help but be pleased for his twin, whose happiness he now felt was set fair to match his own.
Embracing him warmly he told him, 'Congratula-tions.'
But then he frowned. 'I take it that neither Livvy nor Jack know as yet?'
'No,' David confirmed soberly. 'God, Jon, I hope I make a better father this time around than I did for them. I've tried to talk to Jack about it, to explain to him. He listened to me like an adult listening to a child, politely but unconvinced. But then, why should either he or Livvy care about my guilt? From their point of view, I haven't done much caring about them.'
Outside Jon's office door Tullah suddenly realised that she was eavesdropping. Quickly she hurried away.
She felt as shocked as Jon had sounded by David's news.
'How is Livvy?' David asked Jon anxiously. 'I wish there was something I could do to help her.'
'Well, she's obviously very unhappy,' Jon acknowledged. 'Although what with Maddy being so ill and Jack coming home unexpectedly from university, there hasn't been the opportunity to talk in any depth to Livvy about anything.'
'Jack's home?' David questioned sharply.
'Yes, but he's going back tomorrow,' Jon reassured him. 'He and Annalise had a falling-out apparently but everything's okay now.'
As David listened to him, his feeling of guilt increased. His daughter was battling on her own with the trauma of her broken marriage. His son had had a row, serious enough, with his girlfriend, to bring him home from university and yet neither of them had made any attempt to turn to him for help or comfort.
But then, when had he ever indicated to them that they could do, when had he ever made time for them or their problems? When had he ever let them see that he cared...that he loved them?
Heavy-hearted, David acknowledged the extent of his own failings. He ached to make amends, to build a closer relationship with Jack and Olivia, to be a proper grandfather to Olivia's girls and to Jack's children when he should have them, but he couldn't blame Jack and Olivia for holding him at a distance.
He had changed so much since his cowardly flight from Haslewich, grown so much, but proving that to himself was not enough where his children were concerned. They needed, especially Olivia, to have it proved to them. But how could he do that, he wondered in wry frustration, when Olivia wouldn't allow him anywhere near her?
'What about Maddy? How is she?' he asked Jon, momentarily putting his anxiety for Olivia to one side.
'Getting better—slowly,' Jon told him. The news that Honor and David were expecting a child had brought a problem to the forefront of his mind that needed to be addressed.
'Dad is giving Max and Maddy a hard time at the moment,' he confided. 'We're all anxious about Maddy with this pre-eclampsia problem. She's home now but only on the strict understanding that she doesn't overdo things, but the fact that Dad keeps threatening to leave Queensmead to someone else isn't exactly helping.'
'To me, you mean,' David responded. 'Look, Jon, I've already told you, so far as I'm concerned I have no right whatsoever to Queensmead...I don't e
ven want the place.'
'Mmm...I know that, but Dad...'
'Do you want me to have a word with him?' David offered.
'Well, you could try but once he knows that you and Honor are having a child it will probably make him worse than ever. Jenny is furious with him. No one could have looked after him better than Maddy.'
'No, Honor was saying that he's lucky to be in the position he is in,' David agreed.
OLIVIA LOOKED at the baguette she had just bought.
She wasn't really hungry even though she hadn't had a proper breakfast and the small quiet garden overlooking Haslewich's churchyard was hardly the place to sit and eat at this time of year. Huddling deeper into her coat she started to re-wrap her unwanted lunch.
She could have taken it back to her office to eat, of course, but she had felt in need of some fresh air—
and an escape from the distracting and unwanted images of Caspar that had been coming between her and her work all morning.
It had been spotting his fishing basket that had done it, made her remember and see them as a loving couple again through the surely far-too-rosy-tinted lenses of the early days of their relationship.
Jenny was crossing the church's small garden on her way back from visiting the grave of her first child.
The sharp sadness of his long-ago death was gone now and she found it comforting to sit and talk to him, updating him with their family news as she tidied his grave. Then she saw Olivia, seated on one of the benches, apparently staring sightlessly into space.
Immediately she started to hurry towards her.
'Jenny!' Olivia couldn't keep the shock or the guilt out of her voice when she felt her aunt's hand on her shoulder. 'I didn't see you coming.'
'No. You were miles away,' Jenny agreed.
Olivia bit her lip as Jenny sat down next to her.
'I feel dreadful about the way I behaved...and what I said,' Olivia confessed. 'I had no idea about Maddy, but that doesn't...' She stopped and shook her head, her voice suddenly thickening with tears.
'Livvy, it's all right,' Jenny reassured her. 'I can imagine how you must have been feeling. I felt dreadful myself that I didn't explain properly.'