The Unexpected Child. Kate Walker

looked that way!’ Natalie couldn’t help retorting, recalling the seemingly endless stream of girlfriends that had blighted her adolescence.

      ‘Oh, damn it, Nat! Don’t look so sceptical! What’s wrong with playing the field until you find the right person—the one you want to settle down with?’

      ‘Nothing,’ she was forced to mutter, incapable of injecting any enthusiasm into the word, being only too painfully aware of the fact that Pierce believed he had found ‘the right person’ in Phillippa. ‘But I don’t know about field—it was more like fields—acres of them,’ she added in an attempt to conceal her private pain.

      ‘But I never led anyone on, let them think it was serious when it was nothing of the sort. Every girl I ever dated knew exactly where she stood—that there was no commitment—just a lot of fun. They all had a good time, and so did I—you know how it is.’

      Natalie managed an inarticulate murmur that she hoped he would take as agreement. She wished she did know how it was. She had tried dating for fun, both at school and, later, at college, and she had enjoyed the company of the men she’d gone out with—some more than others—but that was all, and in the end it had all been ultimately disappointing.

      ‘No?’ She hadn’t convinced him.

      ‘I have to admit that I find no-commitment relationships rather like just treading water—not going anywhere and so frustratingly unproductive. I’m afraid I’m an all or nothing sort of person.’

      And Pierce was all she wanted, but she couldn’t have him and so would she have to settle for nothing?

      ‘You always were far too serious for your own good. It was never like that for me—until my father died.’

      Pierce stared down into the coffee in his mug, a frown drawing his dark, straight brows together.

      ‘Then I came up hard against a terrible realisation of my own mortality—one that was enhanced by a strong sense of responsibility.’

      ‘Responsibility?’

      ‘Like my dad, I’d always wanted children, but suddenly that need was overlaid by the realisation that the Donellan line depended on me. The Manor has been in our family for centuries and I know Dad wanted it to continue that way—I want it too. I suppose that sounds positively feudal to you.’

      ‘Not really.’

      Natalie chose her words with care, painfully aware of the flatness of his voice on that ‘I’d always wanted children’. He’d wanted a family and now, because of Phillippa’s decision, he would be denied that. He sounded as if he had lost sight of all his dreams.

      ‘I think I, more than most, can understand how you feel. After all, growing up without a father, never even knowing who he was, has always made me feel incomplete somehow—as if some important piece of my own personal jigsaw puzzle is missing, one that would help me see the complete picture.’

      ‘Your mother never said anything, even at the end?’

      ‘She wasn’t capable of saying anything,’ Natalie sighed, her eyes clouding at the painful memory of her mother’s last illness, three years before, while she had been in her final year at college. ‘At least, not coherently, though there was one point when she kept saying a name over and over—Hilton—I think it was that. I’ve let myself believe that it was my father’s surname, and that, at the end, she forgave him for abandoning her.’

      Her voice had no strength to it, her thoughts swinging to the irony in the way that, while in full health her mother had been so determined to keep the two of them apart, her illness had in fact brought her and Pierce closer together, if only briefly.

      Because if she hadn’t already fallen head over heels in love with Pierce, then she would have done so on that bleak March morning when he had arrived out of the blue with the appalling news of Nora Brennan’s collapse. If he hadn’t already had possession of it, she would have given him her heart as a result of the unfailing kindness and consideration he had shown her then and throughout the dark days that had followed. Certainly, it had been the time when her love had matured, becoming that of a woman instead of the girl Pierce had known.

      ‘It would mean so much to you?’

      ‘It would help me feel I know who I really am—if you know what I mean. If I could just know who my father was, even if he’s dead, at least then I’d have a name to put on my birth certificate instead of that empty space. It’d go a little way to make up for not having a real family. So, you see, I can appreciate how important your family name must be to you and that you’d want that line to continue. And, of course, I expect your mother would want grandchildren.’

      ‘My mother—’ Pierce’s face darkened, his mouth twisting in the firelight. ‘There’s going to be hell to pay there—she’s already bought a particularly spectacular hat in anticipation of the wedding that isn’t going to be.’

      The wry humour didn’t convince; Natalie was still very much aware of the bitterness underneath.

      ‘She doesn’t know?’

      ‘No one knows except for Phillippa and myself—and now you.’

      ‘I won’t tell anyone,’ Natalie put in hastily, and was surprised by his dismissive shrug.

      ‘People will have to know some time. It might as well be sooner rather than later.’

      ‘Your mother won’t be the only one who’ll be disappointed. Everyone in the village was looking forward to a summer wedding—’

      ‘Hell and damnation, Nat!’ Pierce’s furious roar was matched by a violent movement that brought him swiftly to his feet, so that he towered over her, the ominous threat of his dark scowl making her nerves twist in fearful apprehension. ‘My marriage wasn’t planned to please the bloody village!’

      Too late, Natalie realised the tactlessness of her words. Pierce had always hated the almost possessive way in which the inhabitants of Ellerby regarded the Donellans. The family were still seen very much as the local nobility, their lives and activities commented on with almost as much interest as the royal family was nationally.

      ‘Of course not—I’m sorry, I didn’t think.’

      Her shaken words seemed to pull him back from wherever his savage thoughts had taken him, leaving him looking troubled and, just for a moment, strangely confused. At last his eyes focused on her again, taking in the way she had shrunk back from him, her wide, dark eyes.

      ‘Oh, hell, Nat—I’m sorry.’ Roughly he raked both hands through his black hair, disturbing its shining sleekness. ‘I should never have come—never have inflicted myself on you like this. I’m not fit company for anyone.’

      ‘That’s hardly surprising in the circumstances.’ Natalie switched on a smile that she hoped looked genuine. ‘And you didn’t inflict yourself.’

      ‘Nevertheless, I ought to go.’

      He was looking around him for his jacket and something about the way he moved, the angle at which he held his head alerted her, sounding warning bells in her thoughts.

      ‘Pierce...’

      ‘Mmm?’

      The heavy lids hooding the over-bright eyes he turned confirmed her suspicions, as did a faint slowness in his reaction. It was tiny, almost imperceptible, and only someone as sensitive to everything about him as she was would have noticed it.

      ‘How much have you had to drink?’

      ‘Too much to remember clearly, but not enough to make me forget,’ he returned with a sudden harshness that she had to ignore as she moved to catch hold of his arm.

      ‘You had something before you came here, didn’t you? And then the sherry—Pierce, you shouldn’t have been driving in that state!’

      ‘My dear Natalie—my eminently sensible little