Page 40 of Cinderella's One-Night Baby

‘Because I was her protector and she trusted me more than anyone. Our mother took our father’s death very badly and when Eloise fell apart over it too, it was me and Romeo who got her the help she needed because our mother couldn’t even get out of bed.’

Andrés felt sick. Hadn’t Gabrielle said her father died when she was ten? What a burden for a child of that age to endure. When he’d been that age and terrified of his parents’ divorcing, he’d never had to fear losing one of them let alone both of them.

‘So you agreed to pass the baby as yours.’

‘I had to. No one outside the immediate family knew Eloise was pregnant. We told a few reliable gossips that I’d got pregnant after a fling with a tourist and they reliably spread the word. I started stuffing cushions under my clothes to mimic pregnancy... Honestly, I look back and wonder how I could have done it but it felt vitally necessary at the time, and my agreement calmed her. She stopped self-harming and started eating. Started showering again. When she was eight months gone, we did a moonlight flit to France so none of the neighbours saw that the wrong sister was pregnant, and rented a house close to a maternity hospital. When Eloise gave her details, she gave my name. We looked enough alike that my passport was accepted as identification.’

With fresh tears welling, Gabrielle took a moment to compose herself, only to jolt as warm fingers pressed lightly on her hand, an unspoken gesture of comfort that made her aching heart swell and gave her the strength to continue.

Turning her hand so their fingers threaded together, she took a deep breath and said, ‘The birth went reasonably well. There were complications but she coped better than I could have hoped, and, Andrés, I swear to you she was happy, really happy, and completely smitten with him. She chose Lucas’s name, changed his first nappy and when we returned to the house two days later to continue her recovery, she gave him to me. By then I was comfortable with the idea of being named as his mother but I fully expected we would all go home together and raise the baby between the three of us.’

‘What happened?’ The gentle squeeze of his fingers told her he’d already guessed what came next.

‘She developed an infection.’ Unthinkingly, Gabrielle rested her head against his arm, and dropped her voice. ‘She didn’t tell us that she was feeling unwell, just said that she was tired. She hid it so well and by the time we realised there was something wrong it was too late. We called for an ambulance and she was admitted to hospital but there was nothing they could do for her.’

The fingers threaded through hers tightened but he didn’t speak.

‘She slipped away from us.’ A tear fell down her cheek. ‘And the thing I remember most clearly is how peaceful she looked. Eloise suppressed her worst instincts for months to get Lucas safely into this world and then she let go.’

And with that, Gabrielle let go too, the tears she’d hardly been aware of holding back unleashing in a flood as the coil holding all her emotions tightly in place snapped.

Wiping her face frantically was futile, the blinding waterfall pouring down her cheeks an impossible force, but still she tried to stem the flow, right until strong arms wrapped around her and she found herself crying into Andrés’s rock hard chest.

Oh, that wonderful familiar scent...

It only made her cry harder.

How could it be so familiar when all they’d spent was one night together? How could it be socomforting?

He held her tightly, mouth pressed into the top of her head, hands stroking her back, whispering words of comfort that she couldn’t hear through the sound of her own blubbing but which acted like salve to her wounded heart.

Andrés had dealt with many feminine tears throughout the years but this was the first time each sob had landed like a blow to his own heart.

The burden of release, he guessed. Gabrielle had been carrying her secret and the pain of her sister’s death for a very long time.

It took a long time for the tears to run dry and for Gabrielle to rub her cheek into his sodden chest and sigh. Making no effort to let go of him, her voice stronger, she said, ‘Lucas was six months old when we ran into his father on the promenade. He was outside dining with a woman and saw us out walking. He came over, looking to all the world like he was admiring the sleeping baby in the pram, and he said with a great big smile on his face that he’d heard my “retard sister” had died.’

Andrés flinched.

‘He used that cruel, nasty,foullanguage against a woman whose only crime had been to love him,’ Gabrielle continued, angrily impassioned, ‘and then he looked at Lucas, his own flesh and blood, and said that my son looked very peaceful and that it would be a real shame if someone opened their fat mouth and had him taken away.’

Knowing there was a real chance he was going to erupt with the fury her words had triggered in him, Andrés snatched at one part of her sentence to focus his attention on. ‘When he said, “my son”, who was he referring to? You or him?’

‘Me. He must have been keeping tabs on us because he knew I was passing myself as Lucas’s mother.’

He had to grit his teeth to ask the next question. ‘Have you seen him since?’

‘No, but since then I’ve kept tabs onhim, and I get the feeling he’s been avoiding Monte Cleure since Catalina came to the throne, probably because of all the changes she’s making. He couldn’t have been invited to her party as he was hosting a shooting weekend at his English estate that weekend. That’s how I knew it was safe to go with you.’

‘So he’s English?’

‘I never said that.’

‘But he has an English estate that he holds shooting weekends at so will be easy to find.’

‘Don’t youdare,’ she said, lifting her face from his chest to look up at him with horror.

‘I can deal with this for you,’ he said tightly, holding onto his temper by a thread,onlyholding onto it because even amidst the rage flowing through his veins he knew the person he wanted to direct all the rage at wasn’t the beautiful woman imploring him with her eyes. ‘Give me his name.’

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