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When he finally released her, it took her several seconds to realise where they were and why. Tears glittered brightly in her eyes as she started to turn away from him, her face hot with shame. Why was it that she responded so immediately and so physically to him? Why...?
‘Poppy,’ she heard him saying when she made to walk away. The sound of his voice halted her and she turned automatically to face him. ‘We’ve also got this,’ he reminded her, one hand on her arm, the other, fingers spread, placed against her stomach.
She could feel the warmth of his touch through her clothes—male and somehow oddly possessive—and even though she knew it was impossible Poppy could have sworn that the new life within her responded somehow to his touch, knew it almost.
Head bowed, she stood there unresisting as the tears again filled her eyes like liquid crystals. She could feel James moving towards her, closing the gap between them. She could feel the warmth of his breath as he bent his head towards her, and the fear that he might kiss her again, might bring back the wretched, treacherous surge of desire that he seemed to summon up within her so effortlessly lent her the impetus to push away from him and half run towards the sanctuary of the house.
‘I’m afraid that I’m really the one to blame.’ James’s hand reached out and took hold of Poppy’s. His grip felt oddly comforting, warming the icy chill of her own nervously tense fingers.
James had just finished telling her parents that they intended to marry as soon as they could—and why. The silence which had followed his announcement had caused Poppy to hang her head in shame as she’d waited for the blow to fall and for her parents to demand to know how she came to be carrying James’s child when they both knew how much she loved Chris, but to her astonishment neither of them made any such comment. Instead, they hugged her lovingly whilst her father cleared his throat.
‘Oh, darling, I always knew that eventually you and James would sort out your differences, although I must admit, I didn’t expect it to happen quite so—’
‘It’s my fault,’ James repeated, gently tugging Poppy towards him so that she had no alternative but to allow him to draw her into the protection of his body.
And he told her parents with an apparent sincerity that had Poppy holding her breath and staring up at him in wide-eyed disbelief, ‘Having waited for so long, having loved and wanted her for so long, once Poppy... Well, let’s just say that I let my feelings get the better of me without fully thinking through the potential consequences. And, wrongly or not, I can’t pretend that the end result isn’t one that fills me with great joy, even though for the sake of conformity I should have taken steps...
‘My main concern in all of this is that Poppy isn’t upset and that you’ll forgive me for depriving you of the opportunity to spend the next twelve months organising our wedding,’ he told Poppy’s mother wryly.
‘Well, I must admit that you have rather surprised us,’ Poppy’s mother confessed, ‘although... Don’t look like that, darling,’ she reassured Poppy. ‘I do remember how it feels to be so very much in love, you know,’ she said gently. ‘Your father and I...’
Poppy’s father coughed again, making her mother laugh.
‘It will have to be a quiet family wedding, of course; have you made any plans? Poppy will need a dress, of course, and then there’ll be the wedding breakfast...’
‘No,’ Poppy protested. ‘I...’ She flushed as both her parents looked at her. ‘I won’t need a dress,’ she told them huskily. ‘Not for a register office wedding. I—’
‘It won’t be a register office wedding,’ James interrupted her curtly. ‘We’ll be getting married in church,’ he told her mother, to Poppy’s shock.
And then, before Poppy could say anything, he cupped her face in one hand and there, in full view of her parents, turned it up towards his own, kissing her lightly on the tip of her nose and then far more lingeringly on her mouth before saying softly, ‘I don’t want anyone thinking that either of us regrets what’s happened or that our child isn’t welcome and a wanted addition to our lives. And I certainly don’t want them thinking that our marriage is anything other than a celebration of the love we feel for one another and for him or her.’
It wasn’t until he kissed the moisture from the corners of her eyes that Poppy realised she was crying. As James released her she saw that her mother’s eyes looked suspiciously damp as well.
‘I can’t wear a white dress,’ she told her mother shakily. ‘It will have to be—’
‘Ivory or cream,’ her mother agreed, apparently totally misunderstanding her. ‘White has never been a good colour for you. I remember when I was buying your christening robe...
‘If it’s just going to be a family affair, James, I think we should have the wedding breakfast here. We’ll have it catered, of course. Have you told your own mother yet?’
‘No, Poppy and I are going to see her later.’
This was news to Poppy but she had no energy left to argue. She was still shaken by James’s ability to lie so convincingly. If she hadn’t known better, even she would have been taken in by the little performance he had just put on for her parents.
And she couldn’t help thinking how much, if she had genuinely loved James, those words, that confirmation of his commitment to her and to their child would have meant to her. It struck Poppy all at once how little she actually thought about Chris these days, but then she had hardly had the luxury of having the time to think about him, had she? Before, when there had been no James in her life, no plans to make for the future, no other matters to concern her, she had had the leisure to indulge in as many daydreams about Chris and how it would be if he loved her as she wished.
And besides, it seemed wrong somehow, unfair to her unborn child to indulge in the immaturity of daydreaming about a man she could never have—a man who was not that child’s father.
It shocked her a little bit that her parents should so easily accept the supposed transfer of her love from Chris to James:
She had loved Chris.
Had loved him?
For some reason Poppy felt as though she was suddenly standing on the edge of a very deep and dangerous chasm which had totally unexpectedly opened virtually beneath her unsuspecting feet.
‘Ready?’ she heard James asking her.
She swallowed nervously. Ready for what? For the future—their future? How could she be when it wasn’t a future she would have chosen for herself?
Six weeks after, they were married in church with her wearing an ivory lace and silk wedding dress which had originally been made for James’s Italian great-grandmother. The dress had been a gift from James’s aunt, who had travelled from her home in Rome especially to bring it and, Poppy suspected, to congratulate her on her good taste and good fortune in, marrying her favourite relative.
It had only had to be let out a little bit at the waist. Her pregnancy might not be showing physically in her body as yet, Poppy acknowledged as she stood mutely at James’s side after the ceremony, his wife now and no longer just his cousin, but she suspected that the time she had had off work with the debilitating bouts of sickness which had accompanied the early weeks of pregnancy had alerted most people to the reality of the situation.
However, no one had actually said anything, apart from Sally, who had commented rather enviously earlier in the day as she’d helped Poppy to dress for her wedding, ‘Chris and I said that we would wait a few years before we started a family. I thought that was what I wanted but now... I suppose there’s something about conceiving a child by the man you love that adds a special depth to your relationship... a special closeness. You only have to look at how happy Claire and Brad are,’ she said wistfully, ‘now that they’re married and expecting a baby...’
Poppy hadn’t known what to say. How could she tell Sally of all people the truth? And now it was too late to tell anyone anything. Now she and James were married, husband and wife, a
couple, a pair...parents-in-waiting.
Poppy shivered, closing her eyes as she remembered the moment when James had lifted the heavy antique veil from her face to look at her in absolute silence, before raising his hands to cup her face.
Her whole body had trembled so much that it had even felt as though his hands were trembling as he’d bent his head and then slowly kissed her, not with sensual passion, not with any emotion she could put a name to or recognise, but with something else—something in the way he’d looked at her, something in the solemnity of the vows they had just taken that had brought a lump to her throat and made her lips quiver beneath his.
Had anyone other than she noticed the way his fingers had gently brushed her stomach as he’d released her face, his touch as much a wordless, secret promise to their child as his vows had been a public one to her?
Poppy doubted it; that gesture had not been for public view; that gesture, that vow had been something private between James and his son... or daughter—something which she’d felt at that moment had actually excluded her. It had also made her acutely conscious of the reason why they were marrying and of the fiction of James’s public display of love for her.
Chris came up to them now, to envelop his brother in a bear-hug of emotion and to give Poppy a wide, beaming grin. His hair needed cutting and the way it flopped into his eyes made him look both boyish and slightly bashful.
As she listened to Sally scolding him lovingly for unfastening the top button of his shirt and removing his tie, Poppy wondered what would have happened if it had been Chris’s child she was carrying and not James’s; how would Chris have reacted in such circumstances? She tried to envisage him calmly taking control as James had done, seeing her parents, explaining what had happened to them, taking the blame and the responsibility, and she was forced to acknowledge that if Chris had been the father it would have been more likely that she would have been the one to take charge, to do the explaining... to take the blame.
