“Her what?” he shouted into the phone. “Cancel it! She won’t be there.” He called his office then, cancelled the rest of his afternoon, and waited for her. She came back at four, and she was in no way prepared for his fury when she walked back into the apartment.
“Your doctor called,” he explained, and she looked at him, wondering if he knew, but only for an instant. After that, there was no doubt at all as to what he knew or how he felt about it. He was livid. “Why didn’t you tell me you were pregnant?”
“Because it’s too soon … we’re not ready for it … and …” She looked at him and wondered if he’d believe her. “The doctor said it was too soon after the abortion Klaus forced me to have.”
He almost bought it for an instant and then he remembered. “That was last year.”
“I haven’t fully recovered yet.” She started to cry. “I want our baby, Julian, but not yet.”
“Sometimes these choices aren’t ours to make, and we have to make the best of it. I don’t want you to have an abortion.”
“Well, I do.” She looked at him stubbornly. She wasn’t going to let him talk her out of it. Besides, this was no time for her to be pregnant. Phillip was coming over to see her and she didn’t want a big belly now, or a baby at the end of it, or any of it. She wanted it out of her body, now, or at the very least by the next morning.
“I’m not going to let you do this.” They fought about it all night, and he refused to go to work the next day, for fear that she’d go to her doctor, and then when she realized how serious he was, she really got nasty. She was fighting for her life, or she thought she was, and she cut him to the quick as he listened.
“Listen, dammit, I’m going to get rid of it no matter what you do … it probably isn’t even your baby.” Her words stunned him, like a knife to his heart, and he backed away from her as though he’d been shot, unable to believe her.
“Are you telling me this is someone else’s child?” He stared at her in horror and amazement.
“It could be,” she said, without expression or feeling.
“Do you mind if I ask whose? Has that little Greek shit been back again?” He had seen him twice before they were married and he knew Yvonne thought he was very sexy. But suddenly she thought it was all a big joke. His baby was probably actually the next Duke of Whitfield, not the son of the second son at all, but the son of His Grace, the Duke of Whitfield. She started laughing until she couldn’t stop, she was hysterical, and then, beside himself, he slapped her “What’s happening to you? What have you been doing?” But she had given up by then, she knew that she had lost with Julian the moment she refused to have his baby. There was nothing more to get from him now. The game was over. It was time to concentrate on Phillip.
“Actually”—she grinned evilly at him—“I’ve been sleeping with your brother. The baby is probably his, so you don’t need to worry about it anymore.” But as Julian stared at her in horror and grief, he sat down on the bed and started to laugh at the same time he started to cry, as she watched him.
“That’s really very funny.” He wiped his eyes, but he was no longer laughing.
“Isn’t it? Your mother thought so too.” She decided to tell him everything now. She didn’t care. She had never loved him. It had been good for a while, but now they both knew it was over. “She found us in the stables at the château. Fucking.” He reeled at the word she used and the image it conjured.
“My mother knows about this?” He looked horrified. “Who else knows? Does Phillip’s wife?”
“I don’t know.” She shrugged. “I suppose we should tell her if I’m going to have his baby.” She was taunting him with that, because she wasn’t going to have anyone’s child, unless, of course, Phillip agreed to divorce Cecily and marry her, then she might agree to have his baby. It was called marrying up, and as an incentive, she might agree to have the baby.
But Julian was looking at her with broken eyes. “My brother had a vasectomy years ago, because his wife didn’t want any more children,” he said tonelessly. “Did he tell you that? Or didn’t he bother?” Julian knew just when it had happened and that it was his child. It had happened the night she had forgotten to take the pill and he had forced her. But then something else occurred to him, and he looked up at her with anger and hatred. “I don’t understand how you could do this to me, or why. I would never have done something like this to you.” He wouldn’t have because he was a decent person. “But I’ll tell you one thing now and you’d better believe me. If you married me for my money, you will not get one red cent from me unless you have this baby. If you get rid of it, I’ll see that you never get a penny from me, or my family, and don’t fool yourself, my brother won’t help you. That child inside you is a person, a real life … and it’s mine. And I want it. You can leave after that. You can go to Phillip if you want. He’ll never marry you. He hasn’t got the guts to leave his wife. But you can do anything you want, and I’ll give you a decent settlement. Maybe even a big one. But kill my baby, Yvonne, and it’s all over. You’ll never see a penny from me. And I mean that.”
“Are you threatening me?” She looked at him with such hatred that it was hard to believe he had ever thought she loved him.
“Yes, I am. I’m telling you that if you don’t have that baby, if you even accidentally lose it, I’m not giving you one cent. Keep it, have it, give it to me, and you can have a divorce from me, and a settlement … with honors. … Is that a deal?”
“I’ll have to think about it.” He walked across the room toward her, feeling violent about a woman for the first time in his life, grabbed her long blond hair, and pulled it. “You’d better think fast, and if you kill my baby, I swear I’ll kill you.”
He threw her away from him, then, and left the house. He was gone for hours, and he drank and cried, and when he came back he was so drunk he had almost forgotten what he was upset about, but not quite. And in the morning, she told him that she would go through with it, and have the baby. But she wanted a settlement from him first. He told her he’d call his lawyers as soon as he got to the office. But he made it clear to her that he wanted her living with him, she could move into the guest room, but he wanted to know that she was taking care of herself, and he wanted to be there when she had the baby.
She looked at him venomously and spoke in a hard, vicious tone that left no doubt in anyone’s mind how she felt about him, or his baby.
“I hate you.”
And she hated every single moment of being pregnant. Phillip came over to visit her for the first few months, but eventually after Christmas it just got too awkward. She was no fun for him then anymore, and the situation was too complicated. He didn’t mind Julian knowing what he was about, in fact he rather liked it. But he knew his mother did as well, and he didn’t want to run into her. He told Yvonne they’d go for a holiday in June after she had the baby. And she hated Julian even more after that. As far as she could see, he had ruined everything, and was costing her everything she wanted. She wanted Phillip more than anything in life, and she wanted to be his duchess. He had said he might leave his wife eventually, but just then it wasn’t the right time as her mother was very ill, and she was deeply upset, and with the baby. … He urged her to wait and stay calm, and hearing that only made her more hysterical and angrier at Julian. And then she began calling Phillip every day, taunting him, teasing him on the phone, in the office, at home, at all the most awkward moments possible, reminding him of the things they’d done, and suddenly he was begging for her again, throbbing, pounding, aching, and he could hardly wait till June. She had made him crazy for her again, and now the wait till June didn’t seem quite as painful. They spoke on the phone every day, usually several times, and always sexually, as she told him the things she was going to do to him when they went away after she had the baby. It was what Phillip wanted from her, and he loved it.