Page 106 of Their Master

You are in love with a man who killed your father!

Yes. I am.

It was a relief to admit it—if only in her head—and it seemed to banish her mother’s shade.

“Moira?”

She wrenched her gaze up.

“You have been cleansing to prevent conception.”

Moira could no longer work up any surprise that he knew. How he must have laughed at her puny efforts to deceive him.

“Yes.”

“What would you have done if you’d become pregnant? Would you have aborted the child?”

“I—” she broke off, unable to finish what she needed to say.

“Yes?” He looked distant and reserved, like a stranger.

Only now did she realize just how warmly he’d always looked at her.

Only now did she understand how fortunate she’d been to have earned his regard.

Only to have thrown it away.

As she stared into his cool brown gaze she knew, without a doubt, that fury raged beneath his calm veneer.

“I’m pregnant.”

He raised one eyebrow.

“It must have happened right after my last courses. I knew Luke had told you the last time—when I bled on the bedding, so I bought some blood from a butchers.”

He didn’t so much as blink.

“Did you already know?” she asked.

“No. So, you are pregnant. I repeat my question, what are you going to do about it?”

“I want to have it.”

“Why? What has changed?

Say it, Moira! Now is your chance. Probably your only chance.

She forced herself to meet his gaze. “Because I love you, Smith.”

His face remained immobile and unreadable.

Moira wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor and disappear. But she had to dosomething,anything, to make him understand.

“You don’t believe me.”

He didn’t disagree.

“I wasn’t even sure myself what I felt. I—well, I was so caught up in doing what I came to England to do that anything else seemed”—Moira stopped and searched his face for even a trace of understanding.

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