Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds. Sandra Marton
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of her eyes, thought Regan enviously.
‘You should eat something. Perhaps it might make you feel better…’
‘Nothing can make me feel better!’ was the vehement declaration.
‘Maybe I could slip down to the kitchen and bring you up a piece of toast, and perhaps a cup of tea—’
Carolyn looked at her suspiciously. ‘Why should you?’
Regan offered her a friendly smile. ‘Well, if you’re feeling nauseous, it might help to settle your stomach…’
Carolyn’s lightly tanned face had gone from pale and wan to glowing pink in the space of a few seconds. ‘What makes you think I’m feeling sick?’
‘Uh…last night—you said you might be.’
Carolyn swore: a very unattractive, unladylike phrase. ‘He told you, didn’t he?’ She thumped an angry fist against the bedclothes. ‘It was supposed to be a secret and he told you!’
‘No—’
‘Oh, don’t bother to lie!’ she cried shrilly. ‘I saw you two huddling together. He told you! And he has the nerve to call me immature and vindictive! He gave away an intimate detail of my life to someone he doesn’t know from Adam!’
Her emphasis gave Regan a nasty jolt. ‘Honestly, Carolyn, he didn’t give away anything—I guessed. In the circumstances…and after the way you were talking about feeling sick for half the day…I just jumped to the obvious conclusion. Joshua didn’t tell me anything I hadn’t already guessed.’
‘Joshua?’ Carolyn looked disconcerted, the flags of temper in her cheeks fading.
‘Yes, who did you think I meant? I didn’t think anyone else knew…’
Carolyn smoothed her manicured nails over her rumpled covers. ‘No one does…that is, only Chris—’
‘Oh, is he your doctor?’
‘No, of course not!’ Carolyn looked horrified at the idea.
‘He’s still doing his residency. He wants to be a cardiac surgeon.’
‘Nothing as lowly as wanting to specialise in caring for the mothers of our species, huh?’ joked Regan.
Carolyn’s reluctant laugh was tinged with bitterness.
‘You’re not kidding!’
‘So, is your own doctor up here or in Auckland?’
Carolyn picked at the batiste ruffle on the scooped neck of her nightgown. ‘I’m not sure yet who I want to use…’
Regan was shocked. She sat down on the side of the bed.
‘You mean you haven’t been seeing a doctor?’
Carolyn’s eyes flashed. ‘There’s no need to yet. I know I can’t be more than three months along—’
‘But you must have had a pregnancy test?’
Her lips tightened. ‘The test was positive; I’m going to have a baby. There’s nothing any doctor can do about that!’
They both knew that there was. ‘So you—you never contemplated not going ahead with the baby…?’
‘Of course not!’ said Carolyn fiercely, her hand going to her stomach. ‘Why do you think I’m in this mess? If I’d gone quietly along and got rid of it I suppose everyone would have been much happier…’
By ‘everyone’ Regan assumed that she meant Joshua, and by ‘mess’ she meant her precipitous marriage.
‘I don’t believe that, and I’m sure neither do you,’ she said firmly. ‘You only have to look at Joshua with his son to know that he doesn’t think of fatherhood as a chore. He strikes me as a man who deeply values his family. How do you get on with Ryan?’
‘He’s OK.’ Carolyn’s shrug was as off-hand as her tone. ‘A bit of a know-it-all sometimes, but most of the time he’s pretty mature for his age. He has a genius IQ, you know—three years ahead of himself at his school, and Jay says he’ll probably be going to university next year…’
‘It sounds as if he’d make a pretty good big brother.’
‘I guess.’ Carolyn didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
Regan took a deep breath. ‘As long as you and Joshua love each other,’ she said steadily, ‘surely that’s all that really matters…?’
Her little fishing expedition failed. Carolyn looked broodingly out of the window. ‘Jay has been great,’ she sighed. Her lips compressed. ‘Do you know that he married his first wife because she was pregnant?’
Regan’s hands clenched in the folds of her red skirt. ‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘She did it deliberately. Chris was only ten and the twins were eleven, and she knew that Jay didn’t want to get involved in any heavy relationships until they were older, so she got pregnant, knowing that his over-developed sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow his baby to be born illegitimately. According to Chris she was a stupid bitch who began pushing for the kids to be sent to boarding school as soon as she got the wedding ring on her finger, and when Jay argued with her about all the money she was spending she let it slip that if he hadn’t been rich she wouldn’t have wanted his brat. Jay didn’t say anything, but the day after Ryan was born he had Clare served with divorce papers right there in the hospital.’
‘My God!’ For sheer ruthlessness that took some beating. ’She must have been shattered.’
‘I don’t think so. Chris says she split for the States a few weeks later and never raised a squawk about custody, so I guess Jay must have bought himself out of a fight.’
It was precisely what he had done, on his own admission, but Regan wondered if there had not also been an element of threat involved. Even at twenty Joshua Wade would have been a formidable force, with the tragedy and hardship that had shaped and toughened his character already behind him.
‘But that’s nothing like your situation, is it?’ she said delicately. ‘I mean, it’s not as if you deliberately fell pregnant…’
‘No, it’s not!’ Carolyn looked fierce. ‘It’s not my fault, and I don’t see why I should be expected to act as if it is!’
Regan frowned. ‘You’re not being coerced into anything, are you? Joshua might have had strong views on illegitimacy back when Ryan was born, but social attitudes have changed quite a bit since then. You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. I’m sure your grandmother would understand—’
Carolyn’s golden eyes flared with alarm. ‘You’re not going to tell her!’
‘No, of course not. But I think you should…before the wedding.’
‘I was just hoping things might all sort themselves out,’ Carolyn said moodily. ‘She’ll be hurt when she finds out what I’ve done—that I might besmirch the Harriman name…’
‘Rubbish!’ said Regan, who already knew that Hazel wasn’t a snob. ‘I think in the long run she’s more likely to be hurt if she thinks that you were afraid to tell her the truth. It’s not your marriage, it’s your happiness that’s important to her…’
Carolyn heaved another great sigh. ‘I thought you were here to help with the wedding, not to try and sabotage it!’ she joked morosely.
Regan recoiled. ‘I would never do that!’ But she uneasily acknowledged that she wasn’t exactly an objective bystander.
‘No—I suppose you’d have no reason to, would you?’ said Carolyn, in all innocence.
God, what if she casually mentioned this little