LITMIR.BIZ

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to discuss anything. Gianferro had been so dogmatic and dominant and all-powerful, and she had had to fight for her part in his world.

      Now she had made her own space there—true, it wasn’t a very big one, but at least she had a foothold, and surely it could only get better.

      She unzipped her make-up bag and looked down at the foil strip with some of the little circles punched out, which lay underneath a clutch of lipsticks. She knew that she ought to tell him. But something stopped her—and it was not just the fact that she now felt ashamed of what she had done. Wouldn’t Gianferro feel a tremendous sense of hurt that she had excluded him from such a big decision—and wouldn’t that have a detrimental effect on their growing relationship?

      If only she had had the courage at the time—to stand up for what she believed in. But she had been barely twenty—thrown into a strange new world and struggling to find her own feet.

      She stared at herself in the mirror, aware that her face looked older and more serious. As far as she could see she had two choices. Either she went in there and told him everything, or she simply stopped taking it. Gianferro would never know and would never need to feel hurt that she hadn’t told him—and she might become pregnant straight away.

      But something about doing that troubled her. Her deepening relationship with her husband would be much healthier if she was upfront and honest. If she told him and he was furious with her—well, he would be furious, and she would deserve it, but he would get over it.

      The sense of knowing that this was somehow the right thing was enough to make her act decisively, and her fingers curled round the packet of Pills.

      A movement distracted her, and she glanced up into the mirror, her heart leaping with something very close to fear when she saw Gianferro reflected there. He was standing in the doorway, as still and as watchful as a dark and brooding statue.

      Now her heart began to race. ‘Gianferro!’ she cried. ‘You startled me!’

      ‘So I see.’ He reached up and snapped on the light-switch. The room was flooded with bright fluorescent light, like a stage-set. ‘What are you doing, Millie?’

      But his voice didn’t sound like his voice, and his question was spoken like an actor saying a line. Asking it because he knew it must be said, but knowing the answer because he had already read the script.

      ‘I was just…just getting something out of my make-up bag.’

      ‘And what something is that?’

      With a cold feeling of dread Millie realised that he knew. Her mouth felt so dry that it felt as if it was cracking inside. ‘My P-pills,’ she stumbled. She looked into his eyes and almost recoiled from the stony look she saw there. ‘You saw?’

      ‘Of course I saw,’ he said icily.

      ‘I know what it must look like,’ she said quickly, ‘but I was going to stop taking them. Tonight. I was just going to bring them into the sitting room to show you before I threw them away!’

      ‘What an extraordinary coincidence!’ he drawled sarcastically.

      ‘I know what it must sound like, but it’s true.’

      ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said coldly.

      She saw the light go out in his eyes, and something inside her began to scream with pain. And panic. ‘It is. Honestly—’

      ‘Honestly?’ His mouth hardened into a look of utter disdain. ‘How dare you use that word?’ he raged. ‘How dare you use it to me?’

      ‘Gianferro—I realise how it must seem—’

      ‘Oh, please, Millie.’ The breath he sucked in felt as though it had been fired into his lungs by a flamethrower. He had not known that it was possible to feel such a hot sense of injustice. ‘I have had my suspicions—so please don’t heap insult onto injury by attempting some kind of false apology.’

      She stared at him. ‘Your…suspicions?’ she breathed. ‘You mean you suspected?’

      His eyes were like black ice. ‘Of course I suspected—what kind of fool do you take me for?’ he snapped. The kind of fool who had not wanted to frighten or to hurt her with his nebulous fears—when all the time it seemed he had been right to harbour them. Now he wanted to lash out. He wanted to hurt her back, as she had hurt him—and to salvage something of his pride, too, to show her that he was not a fool, and that she had badly underestimated him.

      Oh, so very badly…

      But he had let her, hadn’t he? When questions had drifted into his mind he had chosen to ignore them…because he’d wanted to believe that his young wife was pure and sweet and true. Because the alternative had been unthinkable.

      He had blithely ignored all the dangers of letting a woman get close and he had misjudged her. Just because a woman was a virgin that didn’t mean that she couldn’t also be a liar and a cheat. He had forgiven her for the understandable lapse with the Italian teacher, and yet all the time there had been this far greater sin of deception waiting in the wings.

      ‘In some corner of my mind I have suspected for some time,’ he said furiously, but part of his rage was directed at himself. For letting her innocence blind him to what was crashingly obvious. Well, more fool you, he told himself bitterly.

      Millie’s heart was breaking as she saw the look of contempt on his face—but worse than that was the fact that she had been deluding herself. She had thought that their relationship was deepening, that they were growing closer all the time. She had allowed herself to bask in the confidence that what they had between them would soon be strong enough to provide a secure base for a baby. But it seemed she had been wrong. How wrong?

      She screwed up her eyes. ‘But…but how? How on earth could you know?’

      ‘Oh, come on, Millie! A woman who shares her husband’s desire to have a baby usually exhibits some kind of disappointment each month when it does not happen. But not you.’ His eyes gleamed coldly as the stealthy poison of betrayal began to seep in. ‘Oh, no. You used to answer my questions with the air of someone who had always known what the answer would be…because of course you damned well did! You had already made certain what the answer would be.’

      Her lips trembled. ‘Won’t you please let me explain?’

      ‘What’s to explain? That you deceived me?’ he bit out, and he saw her flinch but didn’t care. He didn’t care. For the first time in his life he had been guilty of brushing a suspicion aside because he hadn’t wanted to believe it. And the fact that his judgement had failed him wounded his ego and his pride as much as anything else. ‘Because, no matter how much you try to dress it up, that is the truth of it,’ he bit out.

      But her words rushed out anyway, tumbling over themselves in an effort to explain. To try and get him to understand—even though deep down she feared that it was too late for understanding. Oh, why had she done it—and then, having done it, left it so long? Because that was what happened sometimes. You were troubled by a nagging fear and it just seemed easier to brush it aside. Well, she was about to pay for it.

      With her marriage?

      ‘I just felt that we were rushing into parenthood. That it was too soon to have a child between us when we didn’t really know each other as people. Gianferro—you wondered out loud on our honeymoon whether you had made me pregnant!’

      ‘And how you must have laughed,’ he said softly. ‘Because presumably you were already on the Pill.’

      ‘Yes! But I didn’t laugh—of course I didn’t. I was scared. And mixed-up, if you must know—because I had been to see my doctor and he had prescribed me the Pill as a matter of course. I understood that was what all brides-to-be did.’

      ‘You didn’t think of discussing it with me first?’ he demanded.

      ‘How could I—when the subject was so clearly off-limits? You married me because I fulfilled

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