Sophie Pembroke - Pregnant On The Earl's Doorstep

‘June,’ she said softly, and bit down on her lip. ‘It must have been just after I—’ She broke off and shook her head, copper curls rustling.

‘Miss Thomas. Tragic though my brother’s passing is...’ Cal swallowed hard at the memory, hearing Mrs Peterson’s panicked voice all over again ‘...I really think we should get back to the matter in hand. Your position as nanny to my niece and nephew.’

She looked up, her green eyes bright. ‘And I think, Mr Bryce, that we need to start over. You see, I’m not Miss Thomas from the agency, and I’m not here for the nanny position. I’m here about your brother.’

And suddenly Cal knew that his faith in his perfect older brother was about to take another hit.

One it might not be able to recover from.

THE YOUNGER, EVEN more handsome Bryce brother stared at her across the desk—some sort of family heirloom, Heather supposed, given the weight and colour of it. The rubber duck clashed horribly with the surroundings, bringing a sense of surrealism to the whole scene.

As if it wasn’t absurd enough already.

Don’t get distracted by the desk. Or the duck. Focus on what you’re here to do.

Except mentally debating the provenance of furniture was far easier than telling the man sitting behind it that she’d had a one-night stand with his dead brother. Before he was dead. Obviously.

Oh, this was going to go badly.

‘You’re not from the agency?’ Mr Bryce repeated. ‘Then who exactly are you? And, more importantly, who were you to my brother?’

Did he already know? Maybe Ross had done this sort of thing all the time. Maybe she was just the latest in a line of women his brother had taken ‘meetings’ with over the last couple of months.

Heather took a deep breath, and began. ‘My name is Heather Reid,’ she said, forcing herself to meet his gaze. ‘About two months ago I met your brother, Ross, in a nightclub in London and spent the night with him. And now I’m pregnant with his child.’

A child who would never know their father. Heather clutched at the arm of the chair as reality hit home now the words were out in the open. Ross was dead. The vibrant, laughing, charming man she’d spent the night with was gone. More importantly, her child’s father was dead.

He might have been an adulterous liar, but she wouldn’t wish death on anybody . Especially since it meant she was all alone in this now.

Even if Ross had thrown her out of the castle she’d have always known that her child had a father he or she could go to later, if they needed to. That there was someone else in the world that they belonged to.

And now there was only her. And her baby’s uncle, sitting on the other side of that damn desk, staring at the rubber duck she’d placed between them.

His expression had hardly changed, she realised. Whatever he was feeling about her revelation, it wasn’t shock. Which told her a lot more about Ross’s general behaviour than she liked.

‘Mr Bryce?’ she said, when he didn’t answer.

‘Cal,’ he said tiredly, rubbing a hand over his forehead. ‘My name is Cal Bryce.’

‘Right. Um... Cal, then.’ She waited. Still no response. ‘Do you want to... I don’t know...see some ID or something?’

Cal’s eyebrows rose slowly as he turned his gaze back on her. ‘For you or for the baby?’

Heat flushed to her cheeks. ‘Right. Obviously you’ll want some sort of DNA test at some point—which is fine. I mean, for all you know I’m some random woman who read about your brother’s death and came here to try it on and get some money out of you. Except I’m not.’

Cal was looking at her as if that was exactly what he thought she was, now she came to mention it. Heather couldn’t really blame him. She was not good at this.

‘Oh! I have one thing that might help...’ She pulled her phone from the pocket of her dress and scrolled back through the photos to find the one she wanted before holding it out over the desk to show him.

His eyes darkened as he stared at the photo of her and Ross, surrounded by the dim lights and noise of that London bar, both grinning into the lens as he’d held the phone out to snap the picture. Something to remember him by, he’d said.

Turned out she really didn’t need the photo.

Cal sat back, looking up again, over her shoulder, and Heather took the phone back. This couldn’t be pleasant for him, either.

Although, he wasn’t the one who might throw up the sandwich she’d eaten on the train any second now, because of a load of stupid hormones, so her sympathy only went so far.

‘Do you believe me?’ she asked quietly, when he still said nothing.

‘Yes,’ Cal replied. ‘The lawyers will want the test, of course, but, yes. I believe you. I’m just trying to figure out what to do next.’

Heather gave him a small, lopsided smile. ‘You and me both.’

He wasn’t that much like Ross, now she’d got past the looks, Heather decided. Ross hadn’t stopped talking the whole time they were together—about himself, about her, about places he’d been or wanted to go—yet he still hadn’t managed to say any of the things that really mattered.

Cal, after his initial pitch for the nanny job, had been practically silent ever since she’d broken the news.

But he believed her. That was a big thing. She was clinging on to that.

‘What did you hope to get from coming here today?’ Cal asked finally.

Heather shrugged one shoulder. ‘I’m not sure. Mostly I just wanted to tell Ross about the baby. I knew...’ She swallowed. ‘After I took the test, and he didn’t answer his phone, I looked up the castle he’d talked about online. I saw the photos of him and his family on the website. He didn’t... When we met he wasn’t wearing a wedding ring, and he didn’t say anything to lead me to believe he was in a relationship, let alone married with kids.’

Cal’s eyes fluttered shut for a second. ‘No. I suppose he wouldn’t have.’

‘So I wasn’t coming here for a happy-ever-after, or to demand that he marry me, or anything. I was sort of expecting him to throw me out, to be honest, so in some ways this is already going better than that.’

Apart from the bit where his brother was dead, of course. Oh, she was really screwing this up.

‘Basically, I knew the right thing to do would be to tell Ross that he was going to be a father. Again. That’s all I wanted. After that... Well, it would have been up to him. I just wanted to do the right thing.’

Because that mattered. She needed to be able to look her reflection in the eye when she caught sight of it in the mornings. She needed to know she’d done the right thing for her child.

The way her own mother hadn’t.

And now she’d done that.

Which meant she had to figure out what the hell happened next on her own.

* * *

‘The right thing?’ Cal repeated the words with an ironic smile. As if there was such a thing in a woeful situation like this one.

He pitied that baby, being born into the Bryce family, with its legacy of screw-ups, scandals and sadness. What chance did it have?

Or perhaps he or she would be luckier than the rest of them. After all, this baby wouldn’t have to grow up in Lengroth Castle, surrounded by reminders of the expectations the world placed upon it and knowing that if he or she didn’t want to meet them, they’d have to learn how to hide the truth.

And, most of all, this baby would have Heather Reid, which was more than Ross’s other two kids had. They were stuck with Uncle Cal, screwing them up for the rest of their childhoods.

Cal knew what Ross had been thinking when he’d named him as guardian—he’d been assuming it would never be needed. And who else was there, really? Who else would be able to understand the legacy of the Bryce family well enough to try and fix things for them all—or at least hide the truth a little longer?