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As a consequence, she’d been sitting on the clinic bed for the last twenty minutes trying to control the tangle of increasingly terrifying scenarios running through her head.
Capturing her hand, Zane sat beside her and slung an arm around her shoulders to pull her close to his side. His thumb ran across her knuckles, easing the trembling in her fingers. He nudged her hair with his chin, then placed a kiss on her cheek. ‘It appears you are going to have my heir, Catherine.’
She let out a staggered breath, the panic releasing in a rush—washed away by the huge swell of emotion at his show of tenderness.
‘You’re not angry?’ she said, unable to hold back the hiccup as tears stung her eyes.
‘No. Are you?’
She shook her head, brushing a tear away with her fist. ‘No, I’m...’ What was she? Shocked? Overawed? Amazed? Joyful? Scared? All of those things and more. ‘I’m not angry. It feels like a positive thing,’ she added. ‘Even if it’s going to be challenging. What...? What will we do now?’ she asked, feeling desperately unsure.
He’d said the baby would be his heir. But what did that mean? Would he ask her to stay in Narabia?
Giving up her life in Cambridge wouldn’t be hard. She’d discovered an adventurous side to her nature in the last month and a half that would make it next to impossible to return to the cloistered, academic existence she’d lived there. Kasia was already a closer friend and confidante than any of the colleagues she had shared coffees and lunches and dinner and theatre dates with over the years. And as far as her academic studies went, she would relish the chance to spend years here, discovering all the secrets of this fascinating country.
But what would her life be like in Narabia as the mother of Zane’s child? Would she be expected to live in the palace? How could she live here, so close to Zane, and not yearn to be with him? But what right did she have to ask for more? This was an accidental pregnancy and he’d already made it clear he had no desire to continue their brief sexual liaison. And even if he offered her more, how could she accept it, knowing that it was only being offered because she carried his child?
The thoughts rattled through her tired brain, starting to make her head hurt.
Taking her shoulders in firm hands, he nudged her round to face him, forcing her to meet the intense blue gaze that seemed able to see all of her weaknesses.
‘So you want to have this child?’ he asked.
She shuddered, his eyes stark with an emotion so intense it took her breath away.
She nodded, because at least the answer to that question was easy. ‘Yes.’
He brushed his thumb across her cheek, gathering another tear. ‘Then there’s only one answer to your question. We will be married and you will become my Queen.’
‘What?’ His confident, pragmatic tone shocked her almost as much as the proposal.
His sensual lips tipped up into a smile that had her heart thundering against her ribs.
‘You must marry me, Catherine,’ he said again, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world.
Cat scrambled back, sure she must be dreaming now. Or in some strange fugue state brought on by the emotional overload of the last few days. ‘But... I... I can’t,’ she said.
‘Why can’t you?’
‘Because...’ So many objections swirled in her head she couldn’t cling to one. ‘I’m not Narabian, for starters,’ she managed. ‘How could I possibly be your Queen? Surely your people would object to—’
‘Shhh.’ He touched a thumb to her lips, silencing the onslaught. ‘I am half-American. M
y mother was American. The people embraced me and her because that was my father’s choice. If I choose you, that is all the legitimacy we need.’
‘But why would you choose me?’ she murmured, the question striking at her greatest insecurity.
She’d watched her own parents’ marriage disintegrate all those years ago, and she could still remember the words her father had spoken as her mother had left that night.
Please stay, Mary. Don’t leave us. I love you. Cat needs you and we can work this out.
Her mother’s reply still haunted her.
The problem is, Henry, I’m not sure I ever loved you. And I’m sure Cat will be fine without me. She’s always been more loyal to you than me.
Her mother’s departure had broken her father in so many ways. But it was those words—so flippant and callous and final—that had destroyed him. He’d been a good man, a dedicated father, but ever since that day something had gone out of him. He’d never smiled the way he had when her mother had been there, he’d never laughed with the same abandon.
On some level, Cat could see clearly now, she had tried to fill the hole her mother had left behind, because she’d felt responsible for her departure—but she’d never been able to. Because she had lacked her mother’s spirit, her mother’s charisma, her mother’s charm.
