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CHAPTER ONE
‘HOW LONG HAS the kid been on the oxytocin drip, Oti?’
‘Two hours,’ Octavia Hendlington murmured softly. ‘Six drops per minute.’
Not turning around as her colleague joined her, Oti continued to eye the young woman perched uncomfortably on the end of the bed and being cared for by her sister. The labour ward—or what passed for the labour ward in this end of the large hospital tent in her medical camp in South Sudan—was tiny.
But they had worked so many miracles in this place over the past four years, she could only hope tonight—her last night—would be a good one.
‘Dilation?’ Amelia queried.
‘She’s been at six centimetres for the past ten hours. Her name is Kahsha; she’s eighteen, primigravida.’
‘And the baby’s head still shows no sign of descending?’ Amelia frowned.
Oti’s teeth worried at her lower lip, and she stopped herself abruptly. In a matter of days she would be back in the UK, and her father would not accept such unattractive, unladylike habits.
Five more days of being herself, and then she would be back to playing a role again.
Would her new husband be just as irritated by her as her father had always been? Oti shoved the thought from her head and focused on her colleague.
‘No sign of the baby descending at all,’ she told Amelia.
She cast her gaze around the tent and tried to swallow down the thick lump of emotion that lodged itself so uncomfortably in her throat. If it hadn’t been for the fact that it looked as if it was going to be a complicated labour, Oti might have been grateful for the distraction from her own thoughts tonight.
She had been volunteering with the medical charity HOP—Health Overseas Project—for four years, ever since her brother’s accident, and this was the only place where she’d ever felt herself. Possibly the only time in her life—certainly in the last fifteen years.
Dr Oti.
It was simple and clean, and she thought that was perhaps what she loved the most. Out here, far away from the clamour of home, it was just about helping people and making a difference.
She had value.
Surely that was as uncomplicated as it got?
But soon that would all be over. And it didn’t matter which mask she would be donning this time—Oti the socialite, the It-girl, or Lady Octavia Hendlington, daughter of the Earl of Sedeshire and soon-to-be Lady Octavia Woods—it would still suffocate her, just the same.
What would Amelia and the other volunteers think if they knew she was about to marry the much-lusted-after billionaire, Lukas Woods? Or Sir Lukas Woods—given the knighthood he had received in the previous year’s New Year’s Honours list. Not the youngest recipient, but certainly one of the youngest.
Busying herself with the oxytocin drip, as though occupying her hands could also occupy her wayward mind, Oti tried to pretend that her stomach hadn’t just flip-flopped at the thought.
The man was one of the most eligible bachelors in the world right now—certainly one of the most eligible in the country—and in five days she would be marrying him. The thought was terrifying.
Lukas Woods wasn’t merely good-looking...he was practically elemental. As though there was fire, earth, wind and water...and then there was him. And that beautifully muscled exterior was rivalled only by his inner core of pure steel. Ruthless business magnate, media personality and self-made billionaire. How many other kids had written an app at the age of fifteen, and made their first million by the age of eighteen?
She might have
met him on only that one intimidating occasion five months earlier, but it had been enough to leave her with the impression that he might as well have been honed from the very magma of the planet itself.
How was she ever to endure a marriage to this man? This stranger? What if she couldn’t even stand him?
Her body prickled in protest, and she ignored the tiny voice inside taunting her that she already knew the answer to that question.
Then again, the alternative had been a forced marriage to Louis Rockman, son of the Sixth Earl of Highmount, vicious, dictatorial and cruel. Even now, fifteen years on, she could still feel the grip of his fingers biting into her arms, his weight pinning her down...
‘You’re thinking a C-section?’
Amelia’s voice dragged her mercifully back to the present.
‘Yes. But now Kahsha wants to return to her own village to seek out help from a traditional healer.’
‘Right.’ Amelia nodded grimly. ‘It’s her choice, Oti.’
Oti dipped her head. They both knew that they couldn’t stop the young girl from seeking traditional help if that was what she chose to do. HOP had long drilled it into their volunteers that they were there to offer medical advice and options, but not dictate. Some of the women they encountered had little enough autonomy over their own lives as it was. They didn’t need a group of foreigners swooping in and taking away their choices on how they wanted to give birth.
It was enough that the charity’s volunteers showed respect for the decisions the Sudanese women made about their own deliveries and their own health.
‘It just doesn’t help when it isn’t what’s medically best for them.’ Oti folded her arms over her chest, making her friend frown at her.
‘You okay? I’ve never seen you quite this on edge.’
