Page 63 of Expecting the Earl's Baby

‘We’ve always said that.’ Daisy stared at the room perfectly set up for the perfect wedding. For her perfect wedding.

This was what she had always wanted—she had just never known who would be standing by her side. She had certainly never imagined a tall, slightly scruffy academic with penetrating green eyes, too-long dark hair and a title dating back four centuries.

Could she imagine it now? Standing up there making promises to Seb? Images swirled round and round, memories of the last three weeks: tender moments, passionate moments—and that remote, curt aloofness of his. Nausea rose as a stabbing pain shot through her temples; she swayed and he leapt forward, one arm around her shoulders, guiding her to a chair.

Daisy rubbed her head, willing the pain away. ‘I’m okay. I forgot to eat breakfast.’

‘Come with me, there’s some croissants in the kitchen. And there’s something I want to show you.’

The knot in her stomach was too big, too tight, food an impossibility until she spoke to him. But would a few more minutes of pretending that all this could be hers hurt?

‘I told you I had been doing a lot of thinking,’ he said as they stepped back into the courtyard. The wind was still sharp but the sun had come out, slanting through the grey clouds, shining onto the golden stone of the main house. Seb had a glimpse of a future, of children running in and out of the door, games in the courtyard, dens in the wood.

If he could just convince her to stay.

‘I’ve resigned from the university.’

She came to an abrupt stop. ‘You’ve what?’

‘Resigned. I’ll still write, of course. In fact, without my academic commitments I’ll have more time to write, more time to explore other periods, other stories.’

‘Why?’

‘I’m needed here.’ But that wasn’t all of it. ‘I love delving into the past, you know that. And I loved academia too. Because it was safe, there were rules. When I was a boy—’ he inhaled, steady against the rush of memories ‘—I just wanted to keep my head down, to do the right thing. At school, as long as you worked hard, played hard and didn’t tell tales then life was easy. I liked that. It was safe compared to the turbulence of my parents’ existence. In a way I guess I never left school. Straight to university and then on an academic path. Everything was clear, easy. I knew exactly what I had to do, what was expected of me—until I inherited Hawksley.

‘Until I met you.’

A quiver passed through her but she didn’t speak as they walked around the house and in through the main door, towards the library, their steps in harmony. He pushed the library door open and stood there, in the entrance.

‘I’ve made some other decisions too. I’ve spoken to my agent and asked her to investigate TV work, I’ve got an agency looking for suitable candidates to take over the estate management and kick-start an events programme and I’ve asked three architects to submit plans for converting the outbuildings.’

She did speak then, her voice soft. ‘You’ve been very busy.’

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve been at a standstill. You were the one who was busy, busy looking into the future. I’ve just taken your ideas and made the next step. But I don’t want to do it alone.’

She shook her head, tears swimming in her eyes. Tears were good, right? They meant she felt something. Meant she cared.

He needed to throw everything he had at her. Strip away the diffidence and fear and lay it all out. No matter how much it cost him to do it, the alternative was much worse.

‘Daisy, I do need you. Not just physically, although my bed has been so empty the last two nights I couldn’t sleep. But I need you to challenge me, to push me, to make me take my head out of the sand and face the future.’

‘You’d have got there on your own, eventually.’

Would he? He doubted it.

‘Seb, I can’t live in fear. I don’t like being in the papers but I accept it may happen. I can’t hide just in case some bored person snaps me. And I can’t not say what I think because you don’t like emotional outbursts. Life isn’t that tidy.’

‘I thought it could be,’ he admitted. ‘I didn’t see a middle way between the hysterical ups and downs of my parents’ life and the formality of my grandparents. If it was a choice between sitting at opposite sides of a fifteen-foot table and making polite conversation or throwing plates and screaming then give me cold soup and a hoarse voice any day.’

‘Most families aren’t so extreme...’

‘No. No, they’re not. And I don’t want either of those for the baby. I want it to grow up like you did, part of a happy, stable family. With two parents who love each other.’

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