‘Race….’ There was a dark violence in his eyes that shocked her, leaving her feeling helplessly unable to withstand him. ‘Race… without love…’ she protested, silenced when he said harshly, ‘Oh, but there will be love, won’t there, Heather? Love for our child,’ and then he bent his head slowly and placed his hand gently on the swollen mound of her stomach, his lips warm against her skin through the thin cotton of her dress.
A strangely unfamiliar emotion rose up inside her, a yearning desire to hold him close and cradle him in her arms as though he were as vulnerable and helpless as their child. She lifted her hand, her fingers stroking softly through the thick darkness of his hair.
‘Heather, say yes.’ His voice was muffled against her skin, and she knew that she was lost and had been from the moment she opened her eyes and saw him looking down at her.
‘Yes,’ she said dryly, ‘for the….’
‘Heather!’ She looked up to see Neil striding across the lawn towards them, his face tight with anger and jealousy. ‘Heather, what….’
Race got up with one swiftly lithe movement, but Heather couldn’t help flushing as she thought how they must have looked to Neil, Race practically cradled in her arms, his head against her breast.
‘You must be Neil,’ Race said affably before Neil could speak. ‘Race Williams… your cousin-to-be, and…’ he glanced down at Heather and smiled mockingly, ‘father-to-be, apparently, as well.’
‘You… bastard!’
The bitterness behind the harsh expletive shattered the warm peace of the afternoon and Heather got up clumsily, hating herself for causing Neil pain and intending to go after him and explain, but Race’s fingers on her wrist stopped her, his expression tightly angry as he said, ‘Let him go, Heather. Sooner or later he’s going to have to come to terms with the fact that you and the baby are both mine….’
Which was a rather strange thing to say, Heather thought afterwards, because while Race undoubtedly wanted his child, he surely did not want her. Or had his comment been motivated by pure male sexual jealousy?
Race remained until her aunt and uncle got home, and Heather could tell by the anxious way in which her aunt looked at her that she was worried about Heather’s reaction.
‘I told your aunt and uncle I intended to marry you,’ Race told her as he stood by her side. ‘Why did you let them think I wouldn’t want my child, Heather?’
‘Because I thought that to want a child one must first intend to conceive it,’ Heather said dryly. ‘Many men in your position wouldn’t have wanted it.’
‘But you didn’t even give me the chance to find out, did you? I suppose that’s why Jen was so cagey every time I asked about you, although I admit it took me a few weeks to discover that you’d actually left London and given up modelling.’
And if he had really wanted her he would have come looking for her the moment he came back from Scotland, Heather thought bitterly. But then hadn’t she known that all along?
Once Race had got her consent to their wedding he lost no time in making the arrangements. They were to be married by special licence at the local church. Less than a week was hardly adequate time to arrange a wedding in normal circumstances, but in their case there was scant need for any of the normal fuss. Jennifer and Terry were coming down from London. Jennifer had confirmed to Heather that Race had asked her about her, ‘but I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want to upset you.’
‘You did the right thing,’ Heather assured her.
‘Just as you are doing now,’ Jennifer commented. They were both in the room they had shared as girls, Jennifer had arrived just before lunch, and at three o’clock Heather was going to become Mrs Race Williams. ‘Mum told me she felt guilty because she let Race see you,’ Jennifer continued. ‘She’s worried that you might be marrying him against your will.’
‘Not against my will: rather against my better judgment,’ Heather said wryly, adding inconsequentially, ‘Neil’s taking it very badly.’
‘He’ll get over it,’ Jennifer assured her cheerfully, with sisterly hard-heartedness, ‘and it’s better this way. I honestly believe he’d practically convinced himself that the baby was his. I gather he and Race didn’t hit it off too well?’
‘Not really,’ Heather admitted. ‘Neil’s going away almost immediately after the wedding—to Switzerland, to do some photography. A group of them are going.’ She thought of Sue Reynolds from the camera shop; she was going too. Perhaps Neil would find solace with her. She hoped so.
Heather had chosen to wear a simple cream dress for the ceremony. Nothing could hide her pregnancy, and she didn’t intend to try. The baby was due in just over three months, and she prayed as she walked down the aisle on her uncle’s arm that she was doing the right thing. Race was waiting for her, tall and dark, virtually a stranger; and fear coiled round her heart as she thought of how arid her life could turn out to be. Race could and would seek consolation elsewhere if need be, but what about her? Knowing how much she loved him, Heather knew it was impossible for her to find love with anyone else.
She would just have to gamble on the child she carried bringing them closer together. After all, as Race had told her only last night,’ they were sexually compatible and he had no intention of their marriage being merely a paper one.
‘But what about love?’ she had said huskily, and just for a moment a spasm of pain had crossed his face as though he too were putting aside old dreams.
Then he said, mockingly, ‘We shall have to make do with our love for our child, won’t we?’
They were going away for a brief ‘honeymoon’. Heather hadn’t wanted to, but Race had insisted. He needed a holiday, he had told her coolly, and this was the time of year when he always visited his villa in the Cayman Islands. ‘We’ll cut it short this time—stay a fortnight instead of a month.’ He had also insisted on accompanying her on her hospital check-up, something she had always refused to let Neil do, and had questioned the doctor closely about any dangers there might be in her flying.
He had spent three days with her before the wedding, taking her out, talking to her about his plans for the future, and she had learned that he only intended to stay with the television company for a year. ‘I want to concentrate more on my writing,’ he had told her as they drove along the narrow Cotswold roads, ‘but you needn’t worry that we might be facing penury; I have several other directorships.’
It had been on that drive that Heather had seen the house. She had been map-reading and they had lost their way, taking a wrong turning and finding themselves on a winding country road, bordered by stone walls over which they could see glimpses of fields. The house was slightly set back from the road, Elizabethan and neglected, a battered ‘For Sale’ board outside. Perhaps it had something to do with her pregnancy, Heather didn’t know, but she had been consumed with a desire to restore it to what it had once been, to lavis
h love and care on it and bring it back to life. Her aunt had been right when she had said that she was born to be a wife and mother. She didn’t miss her London life in the slightest. Some women needed the challenge of a career, some had a creative urge they needed to fulfil, but Heather knew her desires would always be rooted in her home and family.
She had found herself thinking about the house when they returned to her aunt and uncle’s, wondering if she hadn’t married Race whether she could have afforded to buy it. Probably not. But London wasn’t the place to bring up a child, not to her. She wanted her child to experience the same country childhood she had loved.
The cold presence of Race’s ring as he slid it over her finger brought her back to the present. Her heart thudded. It was over, they were man and wife. The church bells pealed, music filling and swelling inside the small church. Heather noticed that her aunt was crying as she walked back down the aisle on Race’s arm. She felt the baby kick and wanted to laugh.
‘That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile properly all week.’ She glanced at Race, surprised to see how grim he looked—but then it couldn’t have been easy for him either. At least she loved him; he had nothing apart from his sense of responsibility towards their child. As they stepped out into the sunshine a shiver of fear went through her. Had she done the right thing? Only time would tell.
CHAPTER NINE
AS there was no direct flight from London to the Cayman Islands they were flying from Heathrow to the Caribbean and then taking the inter-island flight to the island where Race had his villa. The island was one of the smaller ones, he told her as they boarded their flight at Terminal 3, St James’s, and one of the delights of the Caymans was that because of their relative inaccessibility they were still largely unspoiled.