New Year Wedding For The Crown Prince

She might have to feed him for a day or two, but that was okay. Right from the day she’d taken the decision to act as a surrogate she’d realised she had to stay focused on the pregnancy as a job, something she was undertaking for someone else, so although her hormones had gone all weird on her, she’d always been totally aware that this baby wasn’t hers, and feeding him wouldn’t change that.

Although she’d hardly have been human if she didn’t feel a thrill to hold the little fellow to her breast, and she smiled up at Charles, thanking him, pleased he’d been here to help her through it all, calm and efficient—a perfect prince of a man, in fact!

She smiled again at the silly thought and, looking up, caught him smiling back, a look of such pride on his face she knew the miracle of birth had affected him as well.

* * *

Charles looked down at the mother and child, full of a feeling of pride that he’d pulled off a successful delivery, mixed with a kind of wondrous pleasure about the miracle of birth.

He saw serenity under the tiredness in Jo’s face, but something else that puzzled him.

Distance?

A lack of pride?

Some kind of pain?

Because the baby wasn’t hers?

Or because of something that had happened in the past?

The dread thought of rape crossed his mind, but he knew that women didn’t have to proceed with an unwanted pregnancy these days.

He studied Jo again—yes, she was tired, but...detached too. That was the word he sought.

Was it not affecting her at all?

Or was she fighting whatever her hormones were telling her to stay detached from this child she had to give away?

But why were his emotions in such an uproar?

Was it being here in his mother’s house that had made him susceptible to this sudden attraction?

Probably!

He looked around the room. Dottie had disappeared, and the phone she’d been using was ringing.

‘Could you answer that?’ Jo asked, gesturing to where it lay on a side table. ‘It will be Chris and Alice—they’ll want to see him.’

He had picked up the phone when Dottie returned to the room with a basin of water—warm, he hoped—more towels, and a hefty pair of scissors dangling from one finger.

‘You’re way ahead of me,’ he told her, as he lifted the phone and pressed the button to answer it.

‘Can we see her?’

Two excited voices rumbled in his ear and he switched the phone back to video chat mode and held it out to show the baby lying on Jo’s chest.

Jo gestured for the phone.

‘He’s fine, although he’s not a Lulu but a Louis. I’m fine, we’ll see you as soon as the water goes down, but right now there’s stuff we have to do, and we all need a sleep.’

She shut down the phone.

‘We’ll have to turn it off, they’ll be ringing every ten minutes.’

‘Damn silly idea, I said so all along,’ Dottie was muttering as she carefully lifted the baby boy and set him on the bed to dry him off.

‘Take these,’ she said to Charles, producing two large stainless-steel pegs from a pocket of her Chinese robe. ‘I’ve poured bleach over them so they should be sterile.’

Charles thought back to training days and knew exactly what was required. He clamped the cord at both ends then cut between the clamps. And with a quick twist of his fingers, the cord on the baby’s end was tied, a little nub still sticking out, to dry, and fall off later.

There, baby boy, he thought as he worked, you’ll have something to remember me for ever, your neat little belly button.

And as Dottie wasn’t watching, he touched the baby’s cheek, smiling when he opened huge eyes to check out who was near him. And the lump in his throat was probably from tiredness.

Jo had turned on her side to watch Dottie ministering to the baby, and although he guessed she’d have been happy doing that herself, she didn’t want to take the fun away from her old friend.

Once satisfied he was dry and comfortable, Dottie swaddled him in a square of sheet, and handed him back to Jo.

‘Try to keep him suckling, it will help with this last stage,’ she said firmly, although Charles fancied he could see the glassiness of tears in her eyes.

She was as affected as he was by the birth...

By the time the placenta was delivered, Jo had drifted off to sleep, and as he helped Dottie clean up he realised that the wind had lessened and the rain no longer thundered down on the damaged roof.

‘It’ll be gone by tomorrow,’ Dottie told him, peering out the window, a bundle of towels in her arms.

‘And the road to the village?’

‘It’ll go down at low tide. Might flood a little more when the tide comes in again but not enough to cut us off.’

‘And Jo and the baby?’

He had to ask.

Would the parents just turn up and take the infant?

How would Jo feel about that?

Surely it had to affect her—she’d carried the baby for nine months after all.

‘Hmph!’ Dottie said. ‘Damn fool idea right from the start. Would you believe they’d phone poor Jo at all hours of the day and night and she’d have to put the phone on her belly while they talked to Lulu. And they sent music she had to play to her. As if a developing foetus would hear all that going on, let alone understand it.’

‘They took the surrogacy thing that far?’ Charles asked, wondering just how much of a trial this pregnancy must have been for Jo.

‘Oh, she’s told you, has she? Dottie said. ‘Come down to the laundry while I get rid of this lot and I’ll explain,’ Dottie told him, and, sensing a slight weakening towards him on the part of his grandmother, Charles was only too willing to go along.

‘Alice couldn’t carry children and they longed for a baby of their own, so Jo offered to be a surrogate. Stupid idea! Worse timing! She had a perfectly good man who wanted to marry her then suddenly she’s off having someone else’s baby—well, he couldn’t hang around nine months, could he?’