by Penny Jordan
Why? Why hadn’t he stopped to tell her the truth? Why the hell had he gone off like that, leaving her alone and vulnerable?
She believed him to be guilty of the worst kind of disloyalty, to her and to her father. And there were other issues at stake, such as the way he had treated her, the things he had said to her—and the things he hadn’t said.
CHAPTER NINE
IMOGEN felt her heart starting to thump nervously as her taxi pulled into the drive. It was one in the morning, but all the house lights were on and Dracco’s car was parked outside.
He had come back. He wasn’t spending the night in London with Lisa!
As she got out of the taxi she had to fight against the feeling of dizziness filling her.
She was becoming used now to that disconcerting feeling of giddiness she sometimes experienced, especially when she first got up. But at least she wasn’t actually being sick.
‘You’re a very good baby,’ she whispered unsteadily to her stomach as she paid off the taxi and fought to hold on to her courage, ‘a very good baby, and your mummy and your daddy are going to love you so very much.’
Had she been a fool to come back? From her own point of view, probably, she acknowledged as she opened the front door. But if Dracco dared to think that he could supplant her in her baby’s life with Lisa then she was going to make sure he soon learned otherwise. She and the baby came as a package…a twosome, and if he wanted to make that a three-some then he had to take the pair of them together.
It was amazing, the strength and determination that being a mother could give you, she acknowledged wryly as she came to an unsteady halt in the hallway, her heart pounding.
The study door started to open and Dracco came out. He looked as though he had undergone the most soul-destroying trauma. Dracco, whom she had never seen looking less than totally in control. His shirt was crumpled, and he needed a shave. His eyes were even slightly bloodshot!
Refusing to give in to the longing weakening her body, Imogen reminded herself of the decision she had just made and, drawing herself up, she fixed him with a look of angry distaste before demanding accusingly, ‘I don’t suppose I need to ask who you went to London to see?’
Dracco was looking at her with the kind of blank-eyed shock more appropriate, surely, to a man who had seen a ghost than one who had returned home from a rendezvous with his lover.
‘Imo! You’ve come back. Oh, thank God, thank God!’
His voice sounded cracked, hoarse, and the look in his eyes as he strode towards her suddenly made her heart flip over inside her chest. Instinctively she backed away from him.
‘I’m tired, Dracco,’ she told him. ‘I want to go to bed.’
‘We need to talk.’ He was insistent but Imogen shook her head. She knew she was far closer to emotional exhaustion than she dared to admit. If they started to talk now, to argue, she knew she wouldn’t have the strength to say the things she wanted to say.
‘No, not now,’ she refused sharply. ‘Not now, Dracco. Tomorrow.’
As much as he ached to beg her to listen to him, to find out where she had gone and why she had returned, to tell her how much he loved her and plead with her never, ever to leave him again, Dracco could see how vulnerable she was, and he wanted to protect her, to put her needs before his own.
‘Very well,’ he agreed heavily. ‘But,’ he told her, and, even though he gave her a wry smile, Imogen sensed that he meant it, ‘I shall be locking all the doors and keeping the keys, Imo. So no more running away. I want you to promise me that.’
‘I promise,’ Imogen conceded tiredly as she headed for the stairs, praying that Dracco wouldn’t make any attempt to follow her.
When he didn’t, and when she finally closed the door of her old childhood bedroom behind her a part of her was weakly disappointed that he hadn’t followed her. That he hadn’t taken her in his arms and…and what? Face facts, she told herself wearily as she prepared for bed. Grow up, Imo. He doesn’t love you. He loves Lisa.
‘Can you answer that?’ Imogen asked Dracco. ’I’m going to put the kettle on.’
Imogen had just arrived downstairs in the kitchen, having overslept, to find Dracco already there.
As he had said himself, they needed to talk, and the most important thing they had to talk about was the fact that she was carrying his child. Their baby!
Did she have the strength to concentrate on that all-important fact and to negotiate an acknowledgement from Dracco that their child had to come first—with both of them?
As he answered the phone Dracco kept on looking at Imogen, greedily, hungrily, absorbing the reality of her presence. He loved her so much!
What had happened? Why had she come back? Absorbed in his own thoughts, he took several seconds to realise what the caller on the other end of the telephone line was saying to him.
‘Yes, I’ll pass that message on to her,’ he agreed quietly, his gaze still fixed on Imogen, who had turned away from the kettle to look at him.
He was watching her as though he had never seen her before, as though he was… Dizzy with the implausibility, the impossibility, surely, of what she seemed to be seeing in his eyes, Imogen stood still.
Silently Dracco replaced the receiver.
‘What is it?’ Imogen asked him uncertainly.
‘That was the doctor’s surgery,’ Dracco announced with heavy quietness. ‘They wanted to tell you that they’ve made an appointment for you at the hospital for your first antenatal clinic. You’re pregnant with my child, and you didn’t tell me!’
For the first time in her life Imogen did something she didn’t think women did except in novels—she fainted!
When she came round she was lying on the sofa in the study, with Dracco leaning over her.
In the few seconds it had taken him to assimilate the information that Imogen was pregnant he had come from hope to despair as he recognised the reason why she had decided not to leave him. Imogen had her father’s old-fashioned morals. She would not be able to leave him and take from him the child he had bargained with her to have. He had known that all along, and believed too that it would be impossible for her to leave her child either, which would mean that she would have to stay with him.
But now suddenly the realisation that she was here because she had conceived his child, rather than because she wanted to be, left a sour taste in his mouth.
Imogen shivered slightly, nervously aware of the way that Dracco was watching her and of the brooding, almost despairing look in his eyes. Because he had changed his mind? He didn’t want a child by her any more?
‘You’re pregnant.’ Dracco’s voice was flat and empty of any expression for her to read.
‘Yes,’ she acknowledged. Please, God, don’t let her cry, but this wasn’t how such news should be broken—or received. So what had she expected, she challenged herself as her senses started to clear, a fanfare of trumpets proclaiming an ode to joy? Dracco gathering her up in his arms, his eyes full of tender worship and adoration?
Maybe that was unrealistic, but some expression of pleasure wouldn’t have gone amiss, for their baby’s sake if not for her own.
‘Is that why you didn’t leave—why you came back?’
‘Yes,’ she conceded as she swung her feet to the floor and then stood up. There was no way she intended to have this discussion with Dracco whilst in the disadvantageous position of lying down as he stood over her.
She intended to ensure that from now on whenever they met in the arena of conflict that she suspected wearily was going to be their marriage it was going to be on equal terms.
‘I wanted to leave you, Dracco. You’re having an affair with…with Lisa.’ She stopped, her voice unsteady. ‘But there was this little girl with her father, and suddenly I couldn’t!’
Imogen turned away, but not before Dracco had seen the sheen of her tears in her eyes.
‘Imo.’
Imogen tensed as Dracco grasped her hands in his, refusing to let her go, even
though she tried desperately to pull away from him. She could feel his thumbs caressing the vulnerable undersides of her wrists in a way that sent hot shivers of pleasure racing up her arms.
‘I don’t know where you’ve got the idea that I’m having an affair with Lisa, but I can assure you that nothing could be further from the truth.’
That he could lie to her so uncaringly infuriated Imogen. Did he really think she was that much of a fool?
‘No?’ she challenged him. ‘Then why did you go to London last night?’
Dracco shook his head, mentally cursing beneath his breath. Until everything was finally legalised, every ‘i’ dotted, every ‘t’crossed, he didn’t want to tell her what had been going on, just in case something should go wrong.
‘I can’t tell you that, I’m afraid, Imo, but I can promise you that it wasn’t to see Lisa.’
Imogen curled her lip in acid contempt as she pulled herself free of him.
‘I don’t believe you. Lisa told me on the morning of our wedding that you loved her. She challenged me to ask you about it. And she’s confirmed her relationship with you to me since. I don’t know which of you I despise the most. I suppose it must be you, if only because I never liked Lisa, whilst you…’
Imogen paused and then swallowed. What did it matter what she admitted to Dracco now about her past feelings for him? After all, she was pretty sure he must have known all about her foolish teenage crush on him.
Determinedly she looked up into his eyes and told him as calmly as she could, ‘I adored you, Dracco. I put you up on a pedestal. I believed in you and I…’ She stopped, appalled to discover how emotional she was becoming. ‘After losing my parents, discovering how wrong I was about you was the most hurtful and traumatic thing I have ever experienced.’
She wasn’t being totally honest with him, Imogen acknowledged as she looked away from him. The deaths of her mother and father had hurt, but after the immediacy of her shock and loss had worn off she had been left with the comforting knowledge that they had loved her.
In recognising Dracco’s treachery she had been left with no such comfort whatsoever!
Dracco surveyed Imogen’s downbent head for several seconds whilst he struggled to control the urgency of his longing to take her in his arms and hold her there until he had convinced her just how wrong she was.
‘Do you really think I would have betrayed your father’s trust like that?’ he asked Imogen quietly.
‘When love is involved other loyalties can sometimes cease to matter,’ Imogen responded emptily.
Talking like this was stirring up so many painful memories inside her; too many.
‘What I can’t understand or forgive, Dracco, is that you were willing to marry me just for the sake of the business, even though you loved Lisa. And the way you lied to me about it… You did lie to me, didn’t you?’ she challenged him.
Dracco turned to stare out of the study window.
‘Yes,’ he admitted. ‘I did. But not in the way that you think, Imo.’ He heard her gasp and turned round just in time to see her almost running out of the room.
Oh, she was such a fool, Imogen derided herself as she hurried into the garden. She had to be to allow herself to still feel so much hurt over Dracco’s behaviour towards her.
Instinctively she headed for her mother’s rose garden, seeking its solace and comfort.
How could she possibly love a man who could so easily lie, and not just to her? Look at the way he had denied Lisa! Her hand stilled on the rose she had been touching.
What did she mean, love? She did not love Dracco.
Liar, a knowing inner voice taunted her. Of course you do; you’ve never stopped loving him and you never will!
‘No!’ A sharp pain slid through her heart. No, it couldn’t be true. But of course she knew that it was.
Dracco frowned. Should he go after Imogen, make her listen whilst he tried to explain just how wrong she was and why? If he did, would she listen? He might have got what he had wanted for so long, Dracco acknowledged, but there was no real satisfaction in knowing that he was forcing Imogen to stay with him. Her presence in his life through force was not what he wanted; not in his life, or his bed. No, what he wanted was for her to be with him because she wanted to be, because she loved him.
His telephone rang and he went automatically to answer it, forcing himself to concentrate on what the client on the other end of the line was saying to him.
An unfamiliar car was coming up the drive, and Imogen shaded her eyes from the sun as it stopped and the driver got out. She smiled as she recognised David Bryant, Dracco’s solicitor.
He was smiling back at her.
‘How is your wife?’ she asked him.
‘Very pregnant and very hot.’ He laughed. ‘She hasn’t got very long to go now, though. She wants Dracco to be one of the baby’s godparents: she thinks the story of his love for you is very romantic.’
Imogen looked at him.
‘I hope you don’t mind me telling her,’ he added uncertainly. ‘My mother told me about it; she had heard it from my uncle. He thought a lot of Dracco, and of course Dracco consulted him after your father’s death about what he should do. My uncle knew that your father made Dracco promise not to tell you about his feelings for you until you were over twenty-one. But he could see that your father’s untimely death had changed things, and that you desperately needed someone in your life to protect you. According to my mother, my uncle fully endorsed Dracco’s decision to ask you to marry him so that he could protect you and your inheritance.’
He avoided looking at Imogen as he continued, looking embarrassed, ‘Of course, I don’t know the whole situation—my mother has always maintained that you ran away because you were young and afraid, and suffering from young girl’s wedding nerves—but it must have been hard for Dracco to lose you like that when he loved you so much.’
There was just the faintest hint of a gentle accusation in his voice.
‘Still, at least it’s all worked out well for you both now. My mother claims that she always knew that you’d be reconciled. Is Dracco in, by the way? I’ve got some papers for him to sign.’ He was looking a bit self-conscious now, as though aware he’d said too much.
Her head was spinning with the shock of his revelations. Automatically she nodded and then watched as he walked towards the house. Then, very slowly and thoughtfully, she followed him.
Wearily Dracco got up from behind his desk. The house felt still and silent. Dracco had spent the hours since David Bryant had left thinking about the past—and the future—and questioning the role he had played in Imogen’s life. Meanwhile he had mentally drawn up two tables, one listing the reasons why they should stay married and the other listing those why they shouldn’t.
And from Imogen’s point of view that list weighed heavily in favour of him setting her free, giving back to her the right to make her own decisions and choices.
He and Imogen needed to talk and there was no point in putting off what had to be said.
He found her upstairs in her old bedroom. She was sitting on the window seat with her knees drawn up into her body and her arms wrapped around them, a pose he remembered from her childhood.
Silently Imogen watched as Dracco came into her bedroom. She had come here after she had left the rose garden, moving like someone in a dream, needing somewhere safe to retreat to, somewhere she could examine and analyse her chaotic thoughts in peace.
David Bryant’s comments had given her a tantalising glimpse into a situation she had never known existed; a situation, moreover, which totally changed her own interpretation of past events.
It wasn’t hard for her to accept that her father would have guessed how she had felt about Dracco; after all, she had never tried to keep it a secret. But David’s inference that Dracco had loved her and that her father had made him promise to keep that love a secret…
Ask him if there is a woman whom he loves, Lisa had challenged her on her wedding
day, and she had done just that, and Dracco…
Could she have got it wrong, made a huge misjudgement and been encouraged to make it by Lisa? What if she had? What if the someone Dracco had loved had been not Lisa but her?
Her heart somersaulted and thudded so heavily against her chest wall that her whole body shook with the agitation of her emotions.
‘Imogen.’
The sound of her full name on Dracco’s lips when he nearly always called her ’Imo’ seemed somehow portentous.
She took a deep breath, her gaze searching his face, looking for some clue as to what he might be feeling, something to guide her, show her, but there was nothing. She would have to rely on her own intuition, her own need.
‘Why did you marry me, Dracco?’
She could see that it wasn’t the question he had been expecting. Even so, she noticed how he turned slightly away from her before he answered it, almost as though he didn’t want her to be able to see his expression.
‘You know why,’ was his careful response.
‘I certainly thought I knew why,’ Imogen agreed quietly, getting off the window seat and coming to stand in front of him so that she could see his face. ‘I was in the garden when David Bryant arrived. He told me…’ She paused, wondering if she had the courage to go on. And then she thought of her baby, their baby, and knew that what she was doing wasn’t just for herself, that it wasn’t just her own future that was at stake, or her own happiness.
‘Is it true that my father made you promise not to tell me you loved me until I was over twenty-one?’ she challenged him.
At first she thought that he wasn’t going to reply, and that alone was enough to make her heart start to hammer with fierce pleasure. After all, if what David had told her wasn’t true then Dracco would have denied it immediately, wouldn’t he?
‘Is it, Dracco?’ she persisted.
‘Yes,’ Dracco admitted tersely.
Dracco had loved her… Joy sang through her whole body, a glorious, empowering surge of deep female wonderment.