A Fall from Grace, Maggie Ford [best english novels to read txt] 📗

like a black cloud, ever descending to obliterate her world. She seethed with uncertainty so that even the thought of spending two weeks alone with Anthony suddenly bore no excitement for her.

She gave James as bright a smile as she could muster and said, ‘I’ll think about it, love.’

What she would do was tell Anthony what James had suggested, and if he agreed, tell him about herself when they were away together, when she thought the time was right. But after that, what then? That prospect she couldn’t bring herself to face, much less name. Not yet.

Things seemed to be going her way. James had almost ordered her to spend a short time away from him. When she told Anthony he immediately leapt at the idea.

‘I’m virtually little more than a figurehead at the bank. I’ve a capable and trustworthy staff and Robert my assistant manager could run the place single-handed if I let him!’

He had laughed and held her to him as they lay together snuggled and satisfied beneath the warm bedclothes.

‘It’s just a shame it’s not high summer and we could lie on the beach together. But beggars can’t be choosers, any port in a storm, and we’ll just have to make do and mend…’

‘Oh, do shut up!’ she laughed gaily at his playful, almost tortured string of clichés.

The following week they drove off to Brighton, trusting that the February weather might be more clement on the south coast. It wasn’t. But despite the cold, the continuous rain, the high winds practically confining them to their hotel most of the day, other than dinner at the best restaurants, dancing at the Pavilion, going to a cinema or attending a theatre, the entertainments up with any London West End could provide – life was wonderful.

Each night and most afternoons they made frantic love as though it was their last time, she pushing him to almost insane lengths, leaving them both gasping; at the back of her mind she thought such rough, almost rape-like handling, making her cry out like one in pain, might shock the – as yet – minuscule thing inside her to abort.

Each time, cleansing herself in the bathroom, she would look for signs, but there was nothing, not one drop of blood that might have set her heart soaring. By the end of their stay, she was at her wits’ end. She was going to have to tell him. Better him than James. He would know how to handle his uncle. And who knows, he might be excited to find himself a prospective father, for all his talk about not wanting a child. But even that would raise complications – James having to be told and he so ill at the moment. How would it all be solved? No matter how, it would be James who would suffer. That prospect made her feel sick as she and Anthony lay in each other’s arms that last night of freedom.

What made her say it, she didn’t know, but suddenly it burst out of her. ‘Anthony, I have to tell you, darling. I’m pregnant.’

It seemed to her he had stopped breathing. The moment seemed to go on and on. Then he suddenly shot up as if propelled from his pillow to stare down at her.

‘You’re what?’

She sat up slowly, feeling a little sick, caught by the tone of his voice. ‘It must have been one of those times when we were too carried away to use something. It has happened on a few occasions…’

‘… because you were too eager to wait for me to take the necessary precautions first.’

His voice seemed to grate so that all she could think of to say was. ‘I’m sorry, darling.’

For a moment he didn’t reply. Then in a husky, flat-toned voice, he said, ‘Are you sure you’re pregnant? You could be imagining it. You could be mistaken.’

‘I am sure,’ she whispered. ‘It’s been nearly three months since I last saw my monthlies and I’ve always been so regular. So I saw a doctor and he confirmed it.’

‘Then you’re going to have to get rid of it.’ His voice sounded almost matter of fact – the voice of one pronouncing the death sentence upon a criminal in the dock, no inflection, no feeling, completely insensitive.

‘What do you mean?’ she asked stupidly.

He gave her a look then got slowly out of bed, his strong, naked body lithe and pale in the thin glow of the hotel’s lights – the body she never stopped loving to look at.

‘You know what I mean?’ he echoed, now staring out of the window. ‘You can’t have it.’

‘How can you say that?’ she burst out. ‘It’s yours! Your baby!’

‘And what about James – he’ll ask questions when he finally sees you bloating up.’ That suddenly sounded so coarse to her ears. ‘You’ve told me you’ve never had relations with him. And when he realizes that you and I… What then? It stands to reason he’s going to have to divorce you. The pain that’s going to cause him, and him being sick…’

He broke off, still gazing from the window, his outline beautiful to her eyes – now so clouded with tears as to make his shape indistinct.

‘And what if he refuses to divorce you?’

She remained silent, her mind filled with that dread. ‘What if he claims to the world that it is his? What then?’

‘But it’s your baby!’ she cried out. She saw him turn abruptly from the window to face her, his silhouette now a dark outline.

‘What if I say it isn’t mine?’

Madeleine could hardly believe what she’d heard. ‘How can you say that, Anthony? This is your baby!’

‘But I don’t want it.’

‘What?’

‘I – don’t want – it.’

‘But it’s yours…’

‘Don’t keep saying that! You know how I feel about us. We certainly can’t have a child when we’re not married and I’m not prepared to face the world in that situation and neither should you be. And even when the time comes if it comes – when