The Bride In Blue Read online

  Her eyes jerked up to his, alarmed at the thought she might have caused trouble for Maud and Ivy. 'Oh, please don't say anything to them,' she begged. 'It wasn't their fault. Truly. They didn't even know what I was doing. Maud was busy in the kitchen and your mother was lying down.'

  His expression was disbelieving. 'You mean you sneak around this house, cleaning things while no one is looking? What is it with you? Is cleaning some sort of secret addiction of yours? Are you one of those maniacally house-proud females who can't walk past a surface without running their finger along to check for dust?'

  'No, of course not! But I do like to see a job done properly. Maud had the whole house professionally spring-cleaned while you were away, and I was thinking how great everything looked. When I noticed all the dust on the ceiling fans, I just had to do them.'

  'She just had to do them,' he repeated drily.

  Sophia's chin lifted in defiance of his sarcasm. 'Yes,' she shot back waspishly. 'My passion for cleaning got the better of me!'

  'Well well,' he drawled, one eyebrow lifting in sur­prise at her counter-attack. 'Not such a frightened little kitten after all, are you? I've noticed you've also finally got over that infernal stammer, thank God. Can I hope it's permanent?'

  Sophia glared at him, thinking again that he was as far removed from Godfrey as night was from day.

  'I certainly hope so,' she bit out.

  He folded his arms and leant back against the desk behind him, a drily amused smile tugging at his lips. 'So, have you decided I'm not such a monster after all?'

  Sophia couldn't help staring at him. Not once, in all the time she'd known Jonathon had he smiled at her in any way, shape or form. It quite transformed his face, bringing some warmth to his coldly handsome features, his cruel mouth softening to a sensual curve, his icy blue eyes actually glittering with a surprising degree of humanity and humour.

  It threw her to be suddenly confronted with the Jonathon Godfrey had once described to her, but which she had never seen for herself, the Jonathon who wouldn't have to work too hard to have women throwing themselves at his head. Or was it his feet?

  For a few disarming seconds, she felt the pull of his physical appeal before a bitter resentment sur­faced, totally obliterating any vulnerability to such a superficial and strictly God-given charm. Godfrey had been worth ten of this man!

  'I've never thought of you as an actual monster, Jonathon,' Sophia said stiffly.

  'You could have fooled me,' he said, his smile widening.

  Sophia's heart fluttered anew under its impact, her stomach immediately clenching down hard in dismay. Surely she couldn't be attracted to Godfrey's brother. She just couldn't!

  But it seemed she was…

  'Some people bring out the best in a person,' she snapped in self-disgust. 'Others the worst.'

  The smile faded. And so did the charm. It was like a light being switched off, and Sophia was flooded with relief. It had been a momentary aberration, that was all. How could she possibly feel anything for Jonathon like that?

  He straightened abruptly, his arms falling to his sides, his large chest rising and falling with a ragged sigh. Suddenly he looked and sounded very tired, his bleakness dredging up some of Sophia's earlier sym­pathetic feelings for him.

  'Yes,' he admitted grudgingly. 'Godfrey had that talent. I'll give him that. He made people love him, despite his obvious failings. I have no idea how he managed it,' he added, shaking his head.

  The word 'failings' evoked a fierce, maternal-style protectiveness in Sophia. 'You're always implying Godfrey was a failure and a loser,' she accused. 'But he wasn't. If success is measured by how much a person is truly valued by others, then he was the greatest success of all time.'

  Jonathon stared straight at her, yet right through her, his eyes oddly dead. 'You could be right, Sophia. You could be right.' He turned and walked around behind the desk, flopping down into the large leather chair and briefly leaning back with his eyes closed before opening them again and glancing over at her.

  'Go and tell Maud I'm home, will you?' he asked rather wearily. 'Dinner at seven, if possible. I have a lot of paperwork to catch up on tonight.'

  'Would… would you like me to bring you a cup of coffee?' she offered hesitantly as a type of apology. The last thing she wanted was to be at odds with Jonathon all the time.

  'Right now, you mean?'

  'Yes.'

  'No, thanks. I need something a little stronger than that. I'll get myself a proper drink in a minute. Oh, for God's sake, don't go picking up that damned ladder!' he suddenly roared, snapping forward on his chair. 'And for pity's sake take off that ghastly scarf. You look like Sadie the cleaning lady.'

  Sophia coloured as she realised she had forgotten all about the scarf. She whipped a hand up to drag off the offending scrap of tartan, feeling mortified at having looked silly in front of Jonathon, who was always the picture of sartorial splendour, his ex­pensive business suits never creased, his shirt as dazzlingly white as his teeth, his black wavy hair never out of place.

  'There's no need to yell,' she said unhappily. 'And there's no need to make me feel awful.'

  His sigh carried self-irritation. 'I wasn't trying to make you feel awful. If anyone feels awful around here, it's me.'

  'I don't know why,' she muttered. 'You're the one who's been away, living it up on the Gold Coast.'

  'Hardly living it up, Sophia. I was there on business.'

  'Oh, yeah, sure.'

  They stared at each other, Sophia with obvious cynicism in her eyes and Jonathon with shock.

  But he wasn't shocked for long, his face growing hard and resentful as cold blue eyes raked over her. Sophia gulped, already regretting her foolhardiness at revealing she knew the purpose of his little trip away.

  'I don't understand your attitude,' he bit out. 'All I ever promised you was that I would be discreet. I was. Very. And I will continue to be till we're di­vorced. Meanwhile, don't you ever sit in judgement of me. I won't stand for it!' He thumped the desk with his balled fist and glowered at her. 'I certainly won't be made to feel guilty when I have done nothing to feel bloody guilty over! So I spent a couple of nights with a woman? Big deal. What did you expect me to do in these conditions? Satisfy myself like some schoolboy? God, girl, grow up! This is real life here and in real life, real men go to bed with real women. Comprends?'

  She shivered under the force of his quite terrifying fury. 'Y-yes,' she said in a small, quavering voice. 'I… I… understand.'

  His face twisted into a grimace at the sound of her stammering again. 'Go,' he ordered with a groan, waving an impatient hand as he slumped back in the chair, his eyes closing. 'Just go…'

  She went.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Dinner that evening was a strain. Sophia sat down at the table in fear that Jonathon would say some­thing to Ivy or Maud about finding her up a ladder, dusting.

  But he didn't.

  Frankly, he hardly said a word all through the meal, eating his food in a darkly brooding silence, his mind obviously a million miles away. Whenever his mother or Maud spoke to him, he seemed to have to drag his thoughts back to the present with a real effort. His answers to their innocent questions about his trip away were curt and largely uninformative.

  Sophia knew why. There hadn't been any business conducted. Jonathon had gone to the Gold Coast for one reason and one reason only.

  Her appetite for the food in front of her dwindled as she contemplated that reason, wondering how long it would be before he took himself off again. Once, she glanced sideways down the table at him, and their eyes met. He looked right through her, then back down at his dessert.

  Sophia was glad when Jonathon took his coffee into the study.

  'Couldn't have been a very successful trip,' Maud muttered as she and Sophia cleared the plates away. Ivy had already scuttled off to her bedroom to read.

  Sophia didn't know what to say to that, knowing it was the altercation with her that had put him
in such a bad mood. His trip to the Gold Coast had undoubtedly been very successful. 'Maybe he's just tired,' she muttered, hating the disturbingly explicit images that kept popping into her mind.

  'Then he should stop burning the candle at both ends,' Maud said sharply. 'The man doesn't get enough sleep. And he drinks too much. I checked the liquor stocks in his study while he was away, and there was hardly a drop of whisky left, not to mention brandy, vodka and cognac. I hope he's not going the way of his father. Henry drank too much in the years preceding his death. Put on too much weight too. Sixty was far too young to die in my opinion.'

  'My father was only thirty-nine when he died of a heart attack,' Sophia said, gulping down the lump that formed in her throat whenever she thought of her father.

  'Yes, I remember you telling me that,' Maud mused. 'That was young, Sophia. And your mother was how old when she died?'

  'Thirty-eight.'

  'How sad for you.'

  Sophia scooped in a deep breath and let it out slowly. 'Yes, it was,' she agreed, then busied herself, stacking up the rest of the dishes.

  That night, once again, Sophia had trouble falling asleep. There was a dull throbbing behind her eyes and she had a slight tummy upset. On top of that, she was also still perturbed over the run-in she'd had with Jonathon.

  He was right, of course, she'd begun to appreciate. She had no right to judge him over the private and personal side of his life. What in heaven's name did she expect him to do? He was a man in his prime. Only thirty-four, for pity's sake. Healthy. Handsome. Full of energy and drive and hormones.

  A man of Godfrey's nature might have been able to embrace celibacy without it disturbing his equilib­rium too much—clearly he had!—but his younger brother was a different kettle of fish entirely. Jonathon had obviously always been a big winner where the op­posite sex was concerned, with a strong libido to match. He wouldn't be used to doing without in the bedroom.

  When Sophia finally began to drift off to sleep, she was wondering exactly what kind of woman Jonathon was attracted to. Did she have to be tall, blonde, shapely, sophisticated?

  He was sure to like tall women, she decided with a yawn.

  Sophia's last fuzzy thought was a resolve to ask Maud in the morning exactly what Charmaine had looked like, even though an image was already forming in her mind, that of a tall, sexy creature with come-hither blue eyes, a mane of exquisitely styled blonde hair, a model-perfect figure and long, long legs that went on forever, nothing like a five-foot-two half-Italian brunette with big brown doe-eyes, long wavy unstyled hair, and a figure far too lush and curvy for her height.

  Sophia woke with the pain.

  For a few seconds she was disoriented, not sure what was wrong till another cramp twisted at her insides. Her groan echoed her horror, and disbelief. No, no, it couldn't be. It just couldn't.

  She lay there in denial for another minute or two, till more cramps forced her to crawl out of bed and into the bathroom where her worst nightmare was re­vealed. Her underwear was spotted with blood.

  'Dear God, no,' she cried, her hands shaking as she stuffed a few tissues into her pants then made her way slowly back into the bedroom, hunching over with the pain. The bedside clock showed two-fifteen. Everyone would be in bed, sound asleep, at this late hour.

  Sophia began to panic. What was she to do? She would have to wake someone. She needed help.

  It would have to be Maud. Ivy took sleeping tablets every night and was impossible to rouse once they'd taken effect. Jonathon she refused to consider. She could not bear to see the accusing look in his eyes when she told him what was happening. He would think it was her fault somehow. She just knew he would.

  No, it would have to be Maud.

  The trouble was that Maud slept in her own granny flat behind the garages, quite some distance away.

  Another pain ripped through Sophia, stronger, sharper. It propelled her across the room and out into the upstairs hallways. Arms crossed and hugging her stomach, she made her way slowly to the top of the stairs, her discomfort increasing. She had occasion­ally had painful periods, but this was sheer torture, the physical discomfort made worse by her emotional distress.

  She was going to lose Godfrey's baby.

  As she started to creep down the stairs—each step an agony—total despair was kept at bay with some straw-grasping thoughts. Maybe there was still some hope. Maybe she wouldn't really miscarry. Maybe a doctor could give her an injection or something to stop what was happening.

  When Sophia reached the bottom of the stairs, she was surprised to see that the light was on under the study door. Jonathon was still up. Suddenly, another cramping pain struck. It felt like a hot dagger being plunged into her belly and she couldn't stop crying out loud.

  The study door was wrenched open and a be­draggled, bleary-eyed Jonathon stood there, staring at her. If she'd been capable of noticing the appalling physical state he was in, she might have stared at him in return. But pain was dulling her mind and tears blurring her eyes. It was taking all of Sophia's strength to remain standing upright. The urge to simply sink down on to the floor was intense.

  Jonathon's eyes widened on her pale, pain-filled face and he took a hesitant step out into the hallway. 'What is it, Sophia?' he demanded hoarsely. 'What's wrong? Are you ill?'

  'I'm bleeding,' she said, her words coming out in a shaky whisper.

  'Bleeding?' he repeated rather blankly.

  'Yes,' she said, and a moan of pain punched from her throat. The tears which had been threatening sud­denly spilled over and started running down her cheeks. 'Oh, Jonathon,' she cried, her voice raw with emotion. 'I think I'm losing Godfrey's baby!'

  For a second he seemed struck dumb, but then Sophia began to double up with the pain and he raced forward, scooping her up high into his arms, then en­folding her hard against him.

  'No you're not,' he ground out. 'Not if I can help it.' And he began carrying her back up the stairs.

  With a sob she wrapped her arms tightly around him and pressed her wet cheeks against the warm ex­panse of his chest. 'Don't be angry with me,' she choked out as he angled her through the doorway of her bedroom. 'I didn't do anything silly. Truly I didn't.'

  'No, of course you didn't,' he agreed thickly, throwing her an anguished look as he laid her gently on the bed and pulled the quilt over her. 'Is the bleeding very bad?'

  'Not too bad,' she said, trying not to thresh about. But the pain was getting worse, if that was possible.

  'I'm going to ring your doctor,' Jonathon told her. 'I don't suppose you know his number.'

  She shook her head. 'Not off by heart,' she bit out, clenching her teeth hard. 'But I… I wrote it down in the telephone book on the hall table… under H for Henderson.'

  'I'll go and call.'

  Sophia didn't want him to leave her, but she knew he had to. The next five minutes were interminable. Her eyes were glued to the opened doorway, her pain-racked body relaxing a little when Jonathon returned. He came to her across the carpet with brisk, efficient strides, sitting down and taking her hands soothingly in his. How strong he was, she realised somewhat dazedly. And how kind. She'd been so wrong about him. So very wrong.

  'Please don't be alarmed,' he began gently, 'but Dr Henderson wants you in hospital. He's sending an ambulance straight away and will meet you there. They'll be here shortly. I've woken Maud. She's getting dressed. She's going to go with you.'

  'Can't you come with me?' she asked tremulously.

  He seemed taken aback by her request. 'You want me to come with you?'

  Her eyes swam. 'Yes. I think I'd be braver with you. Please promise me you'll come. Promise me you won't leave me. Promise.'

  His hands tightened around hers. 'I promise.'

  Sophia closed her eyes with a shuddering sigh. 'Thank you,' she whispered.

  She lost the baby. And Jonathon did have to leave her eventually, when she was taken away into Theatre for a precautionary curette.

  But he was sitt
ing there in her hospital room when she was brought back in from Recovery a couple of hours later, rising to his feet as she was wheeled in, watching in grim silence as she was lifted into her bed and made comfortable before the wardsman and the sister left the room.

  'You should have gone home, Jonathon,' were her first quavering words once they were alone. 'You must be awfully tired.'

  'Tired I can live with, Sophia,' he said. 'But a promise is a promise.' He dragged a chair up to the side of the bed and sat down. 'I wouldn't have been able to sleep if I'd gone home, anyway. How are you feeling?'

  Her shoulders lifted in a resigned shrug. 'All right, I guess.'

  'Don't keep on trying to be brave, sweetheart. If you want to cry, cry. I won't mind. I feel like crying myself.'

  Surprised eyes slid over to his. 'You, Jonathon?'

  He did, indeed, look very bleak. Not only bleak but dishevelled, she realised. Her gaze travelled slowly over him, from his creased clothes to his stubbly chin to his bloodshot eyes.

  'I know,' he said wearily, and ran a hand back through his messy hair. 'I look terrible.'

  'You look exhausted. You really should go home.'

  'No,' he said firmly. 'I'm staying.'

  A short silence fell between them and Sophia closed her eyes, swamped by depression. The overwhelming feeling that she had somehow let Godfrey down would not leave her. Perhaps she should have warned the doctor about her mother's medical history. Maybe if she had, this could have been prevented. The fear that she might have inherited her mother's inability to carry a child full-term brought a low whimper of distress.

  'I hope you're not blaming yourself for this.'

  Sophia's eyes fluttered open at Jonathon's stern words. She shrugged again, unable to deny or confirm what she was feeling. Was it guilt? Or despair?

  'I spoke to the doctor earlier,' Jonathon went on, 'and he said this is nature's way when there's some­thing wrong with the development of the foetus. He said he'd had a niggling concern during your last visit that something was wrong, which is why he ordered an ultrasound. But he didn't say anything for fear of worrying you.'