Hurt.
He walked all the way to the Alcazar Gardens, behind Seville’s ancient Moorish palace. He strode past pavilions and fountains, oblivious to their beauty and history. Finally he sat on a stone bench and stared blindly in front of him. He realised, distantly, that he must have been gone for half an hour or more. Freya might be waiting for him, wondering where he was. Stranded. Still he didn’t move.
His body and mind ached with this new knowledge. He understood, at least in part, that this wasn’t even about Freya—not completely. Her admission had brought all his own painful memories to the fore. His mother’s deceit. His father’s rejection. His wife’s betrayal.
‘You should have taken care of it rather than live with the shame.’
His father’s hissed voice, in an argument with his mother, burst into his brain. He hadn’t even realised he’d remembered it. Only later had he understood what his father meant—that he’d been talking about Rafe. The unwanted child.
And Rosalia’s lies—over and over again. ‘I don’t know why I can’t fall pregnant. I don’t want to see a doctor.’ And finally, before she’d left, ‘I never wanted your baby, Rafe.’ And she’d been pregnant at the time. What burning need for vengeance had driven her to deceive him so terribly, for so long?
And what of Freya? He thought of her pale, stricken face in the doctor’s office. Ten years ago she’d been no more than a teenager. What had happened? Had she loved the father? Jealousy twined around his heart, his lungs, stealing his breath. He had never felt it so fiercely before, for a man who was no longer in Freya’s life. The realisation was shaming. Yet that man had been the father of her unborn child.
He stood up suddenly, needing to move. The thought of Freya loving someone, losing him, losing her baby, filled him with an unreasonable fury. It had happened ten years ago, and yet the knowledge was fresh. It hurt him, and he did not like to think why. Her past actions surely shouldn’t affect his feelings now. Their marriage was to be a business arrangement, not a love-match. It had to be.
Freya sat hunched on one of the chairs in the waiting room, looking at no one, feeling nothing. Or trying to. When she’d come out of the exam room Rafe had been nowhere in sight. She’d realised she wasn’t even surprised. She wondered if he’d left her here for good, cut her out completely. Her unexpected news would not have been received well by a traditional, family-centred man like Rafe. And of course he would have expected her to tell him yesterday, when he’d demanded to know her secrets. Well, now he knew. The question was, what was he going to do about it?
She’d wait an hour, she decided. And then she’d take a taxi back to his villa. After that, she couldn’t think what she’d do. What Rafe would demand.
Things really didn’t change, she thought grimly. Ten years ago she’d been hunched in an office like this one, the knowledge of her pregnancy like a stone inside her, with nowhere to go, no hope at all.
‘We don’t want to see you again. Don’t attempt to contact us.’
She forced it back—all of it. At least she was older, wiser, and she was keeping this baby…if Rafe let her.#p#分页标题#e#
‘Are you all right?’
Freya looked up to see Rafe standing there, his hands shoved in his pockets, his face pale and grim. She nodded, then stood. She felt as fragile as glass, as insubstantial as a breath of wind, but she would not let him know. He held out his hand, and after a second’s hesitation Freya took it. The contact surprised her; she hadn’t expected Rafe to reach out to her at all. She hadn’t expected to take his hand. Yet the feel of it encasing hers was like being thrown an anchor in a drowning sea. She clung to it.
Silently they walked to the car. Rafe opened the passenger door and Freya slid in with murmured thanks; she sounded normal. She sounded fine. It amazed her, because she felt as if she were falling apart, as if she were nothing but fragments.
Rafe got in the driver’s side. He sat there for a moment, silent, unmoving, his hands resting lightly on the steering wheel. ‘The pregnancy?’ he finally asked. ‘Is everything…?’
‘Fine.’ Freya turned her face to the window. ‘Everything’s fine.’
They didn’t speak all the way back to the villa.
Freya went directly to Max as soon as they returned; Damita had been looking after him, but he threw himself happily into her arms and asked if they could go swimming.
‘Of course we can,’ Freya said, hugging him back, grateful for his easy joy and childish warmth. She needed that respite now.