The Unexpected Child

‘I think I, more than most, can understand how you feel. After all, growing up without a father, never even knowing who he was, has always made me feel incomplete somehow—as if some important piece of my own personal jigsaw puzzle is missing, one that would help me see the complete picture.’

‘Your mother never said anything, even at the end?’

‘She wasn’t capable of saying anything,’ Natalie sighed, her eyes clouding at the painful memory of her mother’s last illness, three years before, while she had been in her final year at college. ‘At least, not coherently, though there was one point when she kept saying a name over and over—Hilton—I think it was that. I’ve let myself believe that it was my father’s surname, and that, at the end, she forgave him for abandoning her.’

Her voice had no strength to it, her thoughts swinging to the irony in the way that, while in full health her mother had been so determined to keep the two of them apart, her illness had in fact brought her and Pierce closer together, if only briefly.

Because if she hadn’t already fallen head over heels in love with Pierce, then she would have done so on that bleak March morning when he had arrived out of the blue with the appalling news of Nora Brennan’s collapse. If he hadn’t already had possession of it, she would have given him her heart as a result of the unfailing kindness and consideration he had shown her then and throughout the dark days that had followed. Certainly, it had been the time when her love had matured, becoming that of a woman instead of the girl Pierce had known.

‘It would mean so much to you?’

‘It would help me feel I know who I really am—if you know what I mean. If I could just know who my father was, even if he’s dead, at least then I’d have a name to put on my birth certificate instead of that empty space. It’d go a little way to make up for not having a real family. So, you see, I can appreciate how important your family name must be to you and that you’d want that line to continue. And, of course, I expect your mother would want grandchildren.’

‘My mother—’ Pierce’s face darkened, his mouth twisting in the firelight. ‘There’s going to be hell to pay there—she’s already bought a particularly spectacular hat in anticipation of the wedding that isn’t going to be.’

The wry humour didn’t convince; Natalie was still very much aware of the bitterness underneath.

‘She doesn’t know?’

‘No one knows except for Phillippa and myself—and now you.’

‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Natalie put in hastily, and was surprised by his dismissive shrug.

‘People will have to know some time. It might as well be sooner rather than later.’

‘Your mother won’t be the only one who’ll be disappointed. Everyone in the village was looking forward to a summer wedding—’

‘Hell and damnation, Nat!’ Pierce’s furious roar was matched by a violent movement that brought him swiftly to his feet, so that he towered over her, the ominous threat of his dark scowl making her nerves twist in fearful apprehension. ‘My marriage wasn’t planned to please the bloody village!’

Too late, Natalie realised the tactlessness of her words. Pierce had always hated the almost possessive way in which the inhabitants of Ellerby regarded the Donellans. The family were still seen very much as the local nobility, their lives and activities commented on with almost as much interest as the royal family was nationally.

‘Of course not—I’m sorry, I didn’t think.’

Her shaken words seemed to pull him back from wherever his savage thoughts had taken him, leaving him looking troubled and, just for a moment, strangely confused. At last his eyes focused on her again, taking in the way she had shrunk back from him, her wide, dark eyes.

‘Oh, hell, Nat—I’m sorry.’ Roughly he raked both hands through his black hair, disturbing its shining sleekness. ‘I should never have come—never have inflicted myself on you like this. I’m not fit company for anyone.’

‘That’s hardly surprising in the circumstances.’ Natalie switched on a smile that she hoped looked genuine. ‘And you didn’t inflict yourself.’

‘Nevertheless, I ought to go.’

He was looking around him for his jacket and something about the way he moved, the angle at which he held his head alerted her, sounding warning bells in her thoughts.

‘Pierce...’

‘Mmm?’

The heavy lids hooding the over-bright eyes he turned confirmed her suspicions, as did a faint slowness in his reaction. It was tiny, almost imperceptible, and only someone as sensitive to everything about him as she was would have noticed it.

‘How much have you had to drink?’

‘Too much to remember clearly, but not enough to make me forget,’ he returned with a sudden harshness that she had to ignore as she moved to catch hold of his arm.

‘You had something before you came here, didn’t you? And then the sherry—Pierce, you shouldn’t have been driving in that state!’

‘My dear Natalie—my eminently sensible little friend—how very moral and controlled you are about everything.’

Those sapphire eyes danced in unholy amusement as Pierce lifted one hand and rested it lightly against her cheek. But a moment later his mood changed again, sobering abruptly as he shrugged off her protest.

‘I know I would have done better not to drive, but I wasn’t over the limit, and I had to talk to someone or go out of my mind.’

‘Yes—but all the same...’ Natalie struggled to ignore the warmth that had flooded through her veins at his touch, and the double-edged effect of that ‘little friend’. ‘You can’t drive any further tonight.’

‘I have to, sweetheart—unless you have some alternative to suggest.’

Sweetheart! If anything convinced her that he was not completely sober, it was that. Pierce had never called her anything even remotely so affectionate before. In the past he had labelled her only by the shortened form of her name, refusing to use its full version because ‘Natalie’s far too elegant for a little scrap like you’. Such uncharacteristic behaviour was more revealing than anything that had gone before.

There was only one possibility. ‘You’ll have to stay here.’

‘Here?’

Black eyebrows lifted in an exaggerated expression of amazement, and the gleam of wicked humour lit up those blue eyes once again.

‘That’s a highly improper suggestion, Miss Brennan.’ The sardonic mockery did nothing to hide the cutting edge to his words. ‘Whatever will the neighbours think?’

‘They needn’t know anything about it.’ Natalie refused to rise to his taunt. ‘After all, you said that you parked the car some distance away, and if you leave latish tomorrow when everyone’s gone to work—’ She broke off on a stab of pain as Pierce shook his head in adamant rejection.

‘I think not,’ he said curtly. ‘My coat—’

‘No, Pierce.’

Moving swiftly, she reached the jacket before him, snatching it up and holding it behind her back, out of his reach.

‘I won’t let you—you’re not fit to drive.’

‘Then I’ll walk.’ His tone was positively dangerous now, his eyes almost black with anger, resistance and denial of her arguments stamped into every line of his body. ‘I can’t be found drunk in charge of my feet!’

‘It’s pouring with rain! You’ll get soaked!’

‘I won’t melt. Natalie, I can’t stay—I can’t share your—’

‘You won’t have to share anything!’

Concentrating hard on getting him to listen to reason, she knew she shouldn’t pause to consider how his words made her feel. She couldn’t cope with the ambiguous feelings that assailed her at the thought that he actually believed she was offering him a place in her own bed, the realisation that this was the only possibility that had crossed his mind. In her thoughts she could hear her mother’s voice, cynical conviction in every word.

‘There’s only one thing a man like that wants from a girl like you, and I don’t have to tell you what that is.’

And of course she could have no doubt as to what was meant when she herself was the living proof of that ‘one thing’ a man might want, and even more evidence of the fact that when it became plain that that pleasure would result in consequences then the man responsible wouldn’t be seen for dust.