Louisa George - Her Doctor's Christmas Proposal

The light in her eyes had dimmed. It had been hard on her, he thought. A burden, living with the memory. ‘I spent many years thinking the same thing, berating myself for maybe doing something wrong. I pored over books, looked at research, but no one could have saved him, Sean. He was too premature. You, of all people, know how it is. We see it. In our jobs.’

‘He?’ His gut lurched. ‘I had a son?’

She finally stopped pacing, wrapped her arms around her thin frame, like a hug. Like a barrier. But her gaze clashed with his. ‘Yes. A son. He was beautiful, Sean. Perfect. So tiny. Isla said—’

‘So Isla was there?’ Her sister was allowed to be there, but he wasn’t?

‘Yes. It all happened so fast. I was in my bathroom at my parents’ house and suddenly there was so much blood, and I must have screamed. Then Isla was there, she delivered him …’ Her head shook at the memory. ‘God love her, at twelve years of age she delivered my child onto our bathroom floor, got help and made sure I was okay. No wonder she ended up being a midwife—it’s what she was born to do.’

He wasn’t sure he wanted any more details. He had enough to get his head around, but he couldn’t help asking the questions. ‘So who else helped you? There must have been someone else? An adult? Surely?’

‘Evie, our housekeeper.’

‘The one who turned me away when I came round that time? Not your parents?’ He could see from Isabel’s closed-off reaction that she hadn’t involved them, just as she hadn’t involved him. He didn’t know whether that made him feel any better or just … just lost. Cut off from her life. After everything he’d believed, he really hadn’t known her at all. ‘They still don’t know? Even now?’

‘No. Evie took me to a hospital across town and they sorted me out. Because I was sixteen the doctors didn’t have to tell my parents. I never did. They were away at the time, they wouldn’t have understood. It would have distressed them. The scandal—’

‘Of course. We always have to be careful about what our Melbourne royalty think.’ He didn’t care a jot about them now and he hadn’t back then. They’d cosseted their daughters and he’d struggled to get much time alone with her despite his best efforts; over-protective, she’d called them. Of course, he knew better now. But even so, Isabel had been nothing more than a pawn in their celebrity status paraded at every available opportunity, the golden girl. The darling Delamere daughter who couldn’t do any wrong.

No … that wasn’t what he’d believed at the time, only the intervening years had made him rethink his young and foolish impression of her. When they were together he’d come to love a deep, sensitive girl, not a materialistic, shallow Delamere. But then she’d cut him off and he’d been gutted to find out she was the same as her parents after all. But this news … and to keep it to herself all that time. Who the hell was she? ‘And that’s why you broke off our relationship? That’s why you sent my ring back to me? No explanation.’

She fiddled with her left ring finger as if that ring were still there. ‘I didn’t know what else to do, to be honest, I was stressed out, grieving. I’d lost my baby. It felt like a punishment, you see. I hadn’t wanted him, but then, when I lost him I wanted him so badly. And seeing you, telling you, would have brought back all that pain. I wasn’t strong enough to relive it again.’ She’d walked towards him, her hand now on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Sean. I should have told you.’

‘Yes, you should have.’ He shook his arm free from her touch. He couldn’t bear to feel her, to smell her intoxicating scent. To see those beautiful, sad eyes. And to know that she’d let him live all those years without telling him the truth.

He forced himself to look at her. To imagine what must have been going through her head at that time. The fear, the pain, the confusion. The grief. It must have been so terrifying for a young girl. But still he couldn’t fathom why all of that had been a reason to shut herself off from him. To keep all this from him.

She looked right back at him, not a young girl any longer. She was a beautiful, successful woman with tears swimming in her eyes—tears that did not fall. She wiped them away. It was the first time he’d seen any emotion from her in the months that he’d been here. Now, and when she’d kissed him back in Melbourne. There had been a few emotions skittering across her face back then: fear mainly, and a raw need. ‘Please, Sean. Please say something.’

He didn’t know what to say. How to feel. Right now, he was just angry. Empty. No … just angry. It was as if a huge chunk of his past had been a lie. He should have known about this. He should have been allowed to know this. ‘I’ve spent all these years wondering what turned you from being such a happy, loving girlfriend to a cold and distant one literally overnight. I thought it was something I’d done and I went over and over everything until I was lost. Or that you’d had a nervous breakdown. Or that I wasn’t good enough for you. I tried to see you but had the door closed in my face so many times I gave up. You refused to answer my calls. I tried hard to understand what was happening. In the end I just presumed your parents had somehow found out and banned you from seeing me.’

‘They wouldn’t have done that.’

‘Wouldn’t they? You weren’t exactly thrilled at the prospect of telling them we were an item. Let’s keep it a secret, you said. Our secret love. It seems you had a lot of secrets back then, Isabel.’

She flinched, so she must have remembered saying words he’d believed at the time were heartfelt. ‘I didn’t want to cause you any pain. There wasn’t anything you could do. I thought it would be for the best, for both of us. Just put it all behind us.’

‘I could have grieved, Isabel, I could have helped you with that.’ He held her gaze. ‘So was it? For the best?’

She shook her head. ‘No. Not for me, anyway.’

‘And not for me, either. I’m sorry, Isabel. I’m sorry you had to go through that, I know how hard it must have been. But …’ And it was a hell of a big but … what was he supposed to do now? Why hadn’t she told him? Even though she’d lost their baby, did that mean she’d had to throw their love aside too? He couldn’t think straight. Just looking at her brought back hurt, and more, stacked alongside the fact that he’d been a dad. He’d had a son. And he hadn’t even known.

Words failed him. ‘I can’t imagine your state of mind, you’re right. But one thing is for sure. If I’d known something like that that deeply involved someone else, someone I’d professed to care about—to love, even—I’d have mentioned it.’

She hung her head. ‘It was a long time ago. We have to move on, Sean.’

‘Easy for you to say, Isabel.’ He was loud now, he knew his anger was spilling into his voice, his face, but he didn’t much care. ‘You’ve had many years to get over this. It’s in your past. But this, this is my present right now. So you’ll excuse me if I take a little time to come to terms with it all. I had a son? Wow. It would have been nice to know that.’

‘Oh, yes? Well, it was horrible. I was distraught, traumatised. I was a young girl, for God’s sake.’ Her voice was shaky now, like her hands. ‘You know what makes it all so much worse? You. Seeing you brings it all back, and I don’t want to think about it any more. It hurts. Okay? It hurts, so I wish you’d never found me.’

You have no idea what she’s been through, Isla had said when she’d encouraged him to come all this way to confront Isabel. Don’t hurt her. No? He didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to make her relive that pain.