Page 50 of His Wedding Day Revenge

The older woman, shaken despite herself by the dark implacability in his eyes, took an involuntary step back.

Draco folded his arms across his chest. ‘What do you want?’

‘Oh, I’ll get around to that, darling, but first tell your little playmate that I have remembered where I saw her... I never forget a face.’

‘Leave Jane out of this. You will not go near her. I do not want to hear anything you have to say.’

‘Oh, you will want to hear this. She has a baby, I hear—’

‘Christina...’ he said, a warning in his voice, a nerve clenching and unclenching in his lean cheek.

‘Did I ever tell you about...? Well, probably not. But what was it—four years ago? I forget, but I had a little accident. I think Spiros was quite pleased to know he was still man enough, but thank God we were both on the same page.

‘I went to a clinic in London. Mind you, if I’d known they had started taking NHS patients,’ she said with a little moue of distaste, ‘I would have gone elsewhere, but, still, it was sorted.’

The dismissiveness of how she said ‘it’ made him feel sick, especially when he thought about how for many women this was a decision that they did not make lightly, that they wept over. ‘You had an abortion.’

‘That’s what I just said,’ she replied with a bored sigh. ‘I am a young woman, Draco.’

‘Why would you think this would interest me?’

‘Ah, yes, well, as I was being wheeled to the theatre I passed someone else on their way out...red hair, white face.’

His lean face froze, the skin pulled tight across his sharp cheekbones as her meaning hit home. ‘Liar!’

‘Ask her yourself if you don’t believe me.’

‘I won’t, I don’t need to,’ he said, even though they both knew he would.

And when he did?

Having delivered her malice-laden bomb, his darling stepmother vanished, leaving just the stink of her choking perfume behind, where to and with whom he frankly didn’t give a damn!

Draco didn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that her poisonous darts had found fertile ground. He pulled it together and went back into the party or—as his inner voice said—did a Draco Andreas.

Next thing he knew he’d be referring to himself in the third person.

It was a good two hours later when he finally left and made his way through the grounds to the palazzo.

Four years...four years...he tried not to connect the dots but by the time he entered the hallway they were a solid directional line.

He remembered the small scars on her smooth belly and the way she had dismissed them, not quite meeting his eyes when he mentioned them. Could they be connected to...?

An image of her holding the baby floated into his head. She was the perfect mother to another man’s child.

Had she aborted his child?

He prided himself on not being judgmental when it came to the choices women made about their own bodies, but this was not impersonal, this was as personal as it got—his child. Grief of something lost to him tightened like a fist in his belly. His hands clenched at his sides. This was not something he could consider with cool neutrality.

He had to know.

She owed him some sort of explanation.

Would she be waiting for him to climb into bed beside her? He pushed away the image that floated into his head of her warm and soft, sweet-smelling body as she smiled a sleepy smile and reached for him.

As he entered the nursery corridor he slowed slightly, a frown puckering his brow. His housekeeper, wearing a dressing gown, and a member of her team were standing there deep in conversation.

‘Livia... What is happening?’

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