His Wedding Day Revenge

Chapter Twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE

‘Y OU KNEW YOU were pregnant at the wedding.’ It sounded so calm, so civilised, so careful. It was only careful to preserve the illusion that what he was feeling could be considered logically.

She felt utter confusion when he raked her with a cold stare.

‘P-pregnant?’ she stuttered out. ‘What are you talking about...?’ She suddenly realised to her horror that they were talking at cross purposes. ‘No, that’s not right...’ She lifted her hands in silent appeal but saw her words had no effect on him. ‘That wasn’t how it was, Draco, just calm down and listen to me. I can explain.’ Explain that she had wanted to guard her secret. She’d fooled herself that it had been to protect him but wasn’t his anger justified? She had been protecting herself, like a wounded animal seeking a quiet corner to lick her wounds.

‘It is a bit too late to lie now. My stepmother was at the same abortion clinic as you. She remembers you well. So don’t try and deny it!’

Never forget a face .

The woman’s comment came back to Jane.

Like cracking a safe, the clicks in her head continued until the truth of what he was thinking, of what he thought of her, was revealed.

The irony of what he imagined the truth to be was not lost on her as her horrified despair became fury at the flick of a switch.

‘I’m not going to try and deny it,’ she told him, all cold disdain and hot flashing eyes.

‘So you admit it?’ he condemned, past the point of taking prisoners. For the past twenty-four hours he had imagined she would deny it and they would laugh together, because how could the woman he knew was willing to sacrifice everything for her child be capable of that? But no, that wasn’t happening. This was the reality that he had to accept.

‘You know something? I think you want to think the worst of me.’

‘Do not try and deflect.’

‘Yes, I was at that clinic. I was an emergency admission.’

His anger faltered for a split second, but then he remembered her saying that she had known at the wedding and she had hidden the truth from him.

‘You had a miscarriage?’ Alone, hurting, afraid. He took a deep breath. ‘Talk to me. I will listen.’

It was the fact he thought he was being the big man that really got to her. ‘Oh, wow, that is so good of you,’ she drawled, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

‘I just want to know why,’ he blasted out, finding her anger and aggression bizarre. ‘Do you not think I am owed that much? It was my child.’

‘No, Draco, it wasn’t your child. There was no child,’ she told him bleakly. ‘I did not have a miscarriage. I couldn’t have a miscarriage because I can’t have a child.’

‘You are talking...?’

‘I saw a doctor two days before our wedding. He told me that I had severe endometriosis. Look it up,’ she added in response to his blank look. ‘It was,’ she admitted with a slightly hysterical laugh, ‘a relief. I had a name for the debilitating pain and the symptoms. The relief didn’t last,’ she added, turning her haunted green eyes to his face. ‘Then he delivered the double triple-whammy—that I would never likely be able to have children.’

‘But you have Mattie.’

Her glimmering smile now held sadness. ‘I do, I have Mattie,’ she said, her chin lifting. ‘But only because his parents died. You remember Carrie? Mattie is her son.’

‘Why on earth didn’t you say so right at the beginning? You let me think...’

‘Everyone in the village knows. I suppose I just assumed that you’d find out and it was quite nice to pretend...no!’ she self-corrected with a fierce little shake of her head. ‘Mattie is my son.’

He had wanted answers and he was getting them but not the ones he had anticipated. ‘What were you doing in that clinic, then?’ he growled, finding it disorientating to have things no longer slotting into place in his head.

‘I was there because my endometriosis had caused internal issues, bleeding.’ She couldn’t bring herself to say life-threatening but the situation had been. ‘And I needed emergency intervention.’

‘Surgery...? The scars...?’

She nodded. ‘From the laparoscopy.’ She cleared her throat and struggled to organise her thoughts when all she wanted to do was wail. ‘I was spared a major incision.’

She spoke so quietly, without any emphasis, but her words cut into him as brutally as the suggestion—a knife-blade.

‘The operation was a success, they tell me.’ She was aware she should have felt more grateful than she had at the time. ‘And I have to say it changed my life, the pain, not just monthly...but I know you are not interested.’

There was no condemnation, just a bleak acceptance in her words that made guilt rush into his head.

‘Your stepmother is a bitch, and I am only quoting,’ she concluded with a bitter laugh. ‘But when this person you so despise—no, loathe—when she spilled her poison you were very happy to believe her.

‘You know something, Draco, I think you wanted to see the worst in me, and yes, I know I should have been brave enough to tell you before the wedding, but I was in denial.’ She pushed her fingers through her curls and they spilled out like fire against her pale face. ‘And, you see, I always knew that you wanted a family more than you wanted me. I was just meant to be... What do they call it? The silent partner, and I loved you so very much that it didn’t matter.

‘But I am not that person any longer and it does matter. It matters that you believe I am...’ As her voice became blurred by tears that she desperately blinked away, she shook her head. ‘I would have been happy to be the silent partner but not now. The least I would expect of a partner or even a lover is that they believe in me.

‘I apologise for not telling you the truth for that terrible wedding debacle. I should have been braver, but it is hard to know you can’t give the man you love the only thing he wants.’

‘Don’t, Jane!’ Draco breathed, holding up his hands as if to physically fend off her words.

‘What? Don’t tell you that I loved you? That I wanted to give you what you wanted more than anything?’

She saw his twisted tortured expression and said with a bitter laugh, ‘Oh, I know that you didn’t love me, even then I knew that and I... I felt inadequate... I felt...’ She swiped a hand across her face and sniffed, adopting a tough expression that she was a million miles from feeling. ‘Less than a woman.’

Jane was so caught up in her emotions that she barely registered the stricken expression on his face.

‘I loved you and I wanted...’ She inhaled, her chest lifting. ‘But I believe, I know, that I deserve more than you are able, or willing, to give me. But all that is irrelevant. I can’t give you babies, Draco, no beautiful babies, no heirs. So let’s just say goodnight because this is getting so very, very tiring.’

With perfect timing the baby’s bereft cries filled the room.

Jane looked at Draco one more time, drinking in the fabulous features, the man that she loved and always would, and turned away. The heart couldn’t always have what it wanted. Sometimes reality got in the way.

It took her a good half an hour to settle Mattie and when she returned to the book-lined living area she knew without calling out that she was alone.