‘No. No, I don’t want to listen to any of this,’ Sylvie cried out frantically as the full reality of her situation hit her.
Last night she and Ran had made love...last night she had ignored all the rules, all the laws of dignity and common sense and self-preservation which she had sworn she would adhere to, and...
And last night, lost in the fathomless deep waters of love and longing, she had prayed that she might conceive Ran’s child, had prayed for it and ached for it. A deep shudder racked through her. Logic told her that it was far too soon for her, for anyone, to know that she had done so, but somehow she did; somehow she sensed that already the seed that would be Ran’s child was growing there, implanted deep within her.
Immediately tears filled her eyes, tears of love for the child she knew would be her whole life, and tears also for the fact that he would never know the love of his father, for already she had decided that this child must be her child, her responsibility, that Ran must never know of its existence, that her child must not be a child whose father only acknowledged him out of duty, a child who knew that its mother was not and never had been loved by its father.
‘You’re crying.’ She could hear the accusation in Ran’s voice and immediately tried to blink away her tears. ‘I’m sorry about last night,’ she heard Ran telling her gruffly. ‘I do understand... It must be hard for you loving a man who doesn’t...’
‘Love me back,’ Sylvie supplied chokily for him. If, in the past, she had thought that his anger and contempt were hard to bear, they were nothing now that she was faced with his pity and compassion. ‘Yes. It is,’ she agreed. ‘But I’m a woman now, Ran, not a child, and if I choose to love the wrong person, then that is my choice and my right. The last thing I want or need is your pity,’ she told him sharply, pride making her hold up her head.
‘Last night shouldn’t have happened,’ Ran told her quietly, ‘but I...’
‘Couldn’t help yourself,’ Sylvie finished lightly. ‘Yes, so you said at the time. It’s obviously something we should both...forget...’
Sylvie looked away as she spoke, knowing quite well that she was lying, that she would have the most important reason there could be for not forgetting it, for not being able to forget it, but that wasn’t a piece of information she had any intention of sharing with Ran.
‘I...I should like to go back to my own room to get dressed before Mrs Elliott arrives,’ she told him with formal dignity, adding, when he continued to look at her, ‘I want you to turn your back, Ran, so that I can get out of this bed...’
The look he gave her made her face burn.
‘Yes, I know that you’ve already seen...that... But that was last night,’ she snapped self-consciously. ‘That was then...this...this is now; this is different...’
‘Yes, it is, isn’t it?’ Ran agreed heavily, and then, to her relief, he turned away so that she could slip out of the bed and snatch up her nightdress which she pulled on before heading for the door, opening it without pausing to look back because she knew that if she did look back— Last night had been the most perfect, the most wonderful night of her life, but now it was over and soon, too, with Lloyd’s agreement, her time here would be over, and only she would know that when she left Haverton Hall, when she left Ran, she would be carrying a small and very precious piece of him with her.
CHAPTER TEN
‘I’M SORRY to disturb you but Ran said that he thought you might like coffee.’