Overseas (44 page)

“For God’s
sake
, Kate!” he burst out. “You
what
?”

“I forgot, all right? I’m sorry. It was right after Newport. I didn’t even realize it until a couple of weeks ago. I know I should have said something, but you had enough going on, I didn’t want to worry you.” I sat up and met his eyes. “I was just praying…”

I don’t know what I’d been expecting from him. A bit of shock, of course. Disbelief. And then rueful acceptance, perhaps. Sorting through it all, figuring it out together. A part of me had even been thinking he might be glad, that he’d been secretly hoping for this so I’d push the wedding forward. I certainly wasn’t prepared for the expression of undiluted horror on his face.

“Oh my God,” I said.

He ran both hands through his hair, looking wild. “You
can’t
be pregnant! How the devil can you be pregnant? You
told
me, Kate, you
promised
me!”

“I’m
sorry
! I screwed up, okay?”

“You screwed
up
? That’s
all
?”

“Don’t be an ass, Julian! I said I’m sorry! Don’t you think I’m a little more devastated than you are? I mean, it’s
my
body. It’s my
life
that’s being turned upside down here!”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He sprang off the bed and paced sinuously to the window. “For God’s
sake
, Kate! I thought we were
safe
!”

“Well, if you were so goddamn worried about it, you could have bought yourself a box of freaking condoms, you know!” I scrabbled for my robe, down on the floor next to the bed, and wrapped it around me.

“If I’d known you were simply going to forget about something so bloody important, I would have! My God! I’d never even have touched you to begin with!” he exploded, into the windowpane.

“How dare you! How
dare
you!” I tried to shout, but my larynx was so paralyzed with rage, it came out little better than a hiss.

He wrenched around.

I went on, forcing the words from my dry throat. “Do you think I
wanted
this to happen? For God’s
sake
! I am
pregnant
with your
baby
and all you can think about is your own damned
convenience
? You can just go to
hell
, Julian Ashford!”

In the next instant, he stood before me; his arms crushed me into his chest. I tried for an instant to struggle, but it was like pushing against a stone wall. A stone wall during an earthquake, that is: he was trembling violently. “Forgive me, Kate,” he said hoarsely. “Good God. I should be horsewhipped. Forgive me. It’s all right. It’s just the shock. Forgive me, darling, please.”

“Julian, don’t.” My voice muffled against his skin. “I saw your
face
! You were horrified!”

“Just…” He drew breath. “Just at
myself
, Kate!”

“Whatever.” I pushed off again, and this time his arms gave way and I went to curl up in the armchair in the corner. The fight in me had vaporized; I’d argued with him so much tonight. I was exhausted, my nerves blunted. “Look,” I said, tucking my feet up, “I didn’t mean to freak you
out so much. I just always figured
you
would be the one pushing for kids, and
I
would be the one wanting to wait, and you would be… well, maybe even
happy
about it.”

“Kate
.” The word whispered through the air. I felt his footsteps approach me, saw his pale skin blur along the line of my vision as he knelt before me. “Beloved. I don’t know how I could say such things, blame you for something so patently my fault.” He reached out and drew my hands into his own and bent his face into them. “You
must
forgive me, Kate, because I can’t forgive myself.”

“Please stop shaking. You’re scaring me.”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” He looked up at my face; the nightlight in the corner glowed behind him, so I couldn’t read his expression. “Are you sure, darling? You’re quite sure? There’s no possibility of mistake? Have you seen a doctor?”

“Julian,” I said, “you don’t need a doctor for that anymore.” I slid from the chair and went to the bathroom and took the wand out of the drawer.

Still blue.

I came back into the bedroom. He was sitting on the edge of the bed now, staring thoughtfully at his hands. I leaned over the nightstand to turn on the lamp and handed the evidence to him. “See that blue line?” I pointed to the screen, which shook in his hands, and sighed. “Our baby.”

“Our baby,” he repeated, staring at it for a long time, without blinking. I sat down next to him and let the silence fill in around us, the reality of it absorb into our pores, easing from shock into acceptance.

“That was probably why I was such a nut earlier,” I said. “Hormones. Just think, only seven or eight more months of that.”

At last he took a deep breath and turned to me. “I’m sorry, Kate. I’ve failed you, haven’t I? I’m so terribly sorry.”

“You’ve failed
me
? Julian, I forgot to take the stupid pills! It was
my
fault.” I paused. “Well, that, and on top of everything else you probably
have a sperm count in the gazillions or something. That would just be
like
you.”

He looked up at the ceiling, scarlet.

“But the point is,” I continued, “I took it on. You trusted me, and I screwed up. That’s why I was so mad when you called me on it. Because you were right.”

His arms went around me. “Don’t talk rubbish. I was wrong, entirely wrong. You’re blameless, darling. I left it all on your shoulders, went on my merry way, never gave it another thought, never so much as reminded you. It was unforgivable.”

I leaned into him, craving the warmth of his body. “So we’ll deal with this? We’ll figure it out together? Because I have to say, right up front, I can’t give it up.”

“Give it
up
?” His body stiffened.

“I thought about it for just a split second, and… well, it’s
your
baby, Julian,
ours
, and I… how can I not love a baby of yours? We
created
it. It’s
us
.”

“Kate, Kate! I’d never ask… I’d never even
think
it. Oh, Kate.” His hands ran in rapid strokes along my back.

I went on huskily. “And now that it’s here, I… when I think about
that
, about a baby,
our
baby, I’m filled with such… I just want to
keep
it, this little piece of you. Is that okay? Can you live with that? Becoming a father so soon?”

“Live with it?” I was hauled up against him again, even more tightly than before. “What I can’t live with,” he said in my ear, “is that I’ve done this to you, made you the mother of my child, without having insisted,
insisted
, on making you my wife first. I’ve been living in a dream, thinking the mere promise of marriage, of feeling it in my heart, was enough. Tomorrow,” he said, with conviction. “Tomorrow. We go down to City Hall tomorrow.”

“Oh, God!” I jumped back. “Julian, you don’t need to do
that
! You don’t have to marry me out of
duty
!”

“Duty?” He looked astounded. “
Duty?
Sweetheart, how
long
have I been begging you to marry me? For months!”

“Only a
few
months.”

“For months,” he said, gathering my face between his hands. “I
want
children with you, Kate. I want
this
child with you. Did you think I didn’t?”

“But your face, when I told you…”

He bent forward and kissed me, tender little kisses, all around my face. “Beloved, it’s the most precious gift you could offer me. Only I wasn’t daring to hope for it yet, before I’d properly married you, and with all the other worries so foremost in my mind.”

“You and your buttery tongue. Telling me what I want to hear.”

He smiled dimly. “And I was just thinking, a while ago”—he cupped my breast—“I was imagining things. That perhaps it was the lighting…”

I looked down. “Oh my God. Are they getting bigger?”

“Only to a minute observer,” he said, kissing each one. “Are you feeling ill yet?”

“Well, I thought I was feeling kind of sick in the car, on the way to the opera tonight, but I think that was just nerves.”

“You will soon.”

I looked at him quizzically. “What do you know about it?”

“Trust me. Now come to bed, darling. It’s frightfully late; you’re exhausted.” He pulled me backward, into the pillows, and drew the thick down comforter over us both. “Don’t worry about anything. I’ll sort it all out. I’ll take such care of you, I promise.”

I yawned. “Listen to you. You’d probably have the baby for me, if you could. What am I going to do with you?” His arms closed around me, snug and secure, and I felt a fleeting desire to rebel against the protectiveness of the gesture.

Then I laughed.

“What is it?”

“Just thinking. You at Lamaze class.”

“Christ.”

“Oh, lighten up. It’ll be good for you. Helping me breathe. Cutting the cord. I’ll bet you fifty bucks you’re one of those dads who faints on the delivery room floor.”

I thought he’d laugh at that, but he didn’t. Instead he sighed, a deep heave of his chest, and said quietly, “Kate, that’s the least of my worries.”

“D
AMN IT
,” I said, pounding my fist into my pillow. “What does it
take
, Ashford?”

Julian came out of the bathroom in a white undershirt and boxer briefs, brushing his teeth. “Whah?” he said, frowning through his toothbrush.

“I tell you I’m having our
baby
, and you
still
can’t be there in the bed when I wake up? I mean, what do I have to
do
?”

He laughed and disappeared back into the bathroom. I heard the brief hiss of the faucet, and then he returned and climbed atop the covers and drew me into his arms, smelling sweetly of toothpaste and shaving cream. “Better?” he asked.

“Better,” I said, “but not exactly what I had in mind. What time is it?”

“Nine o’clock. I waited as long as I could. We have to get downtown to the Marriage Bureau.”

“But it’s Sunday.”

“I made a few calls.”

I laid my head on his shoulder. “Of course you did.”

“Kate,” he said, “there’s a twenty-four-hour waiting period. We’ll get the license today, and be married tomorrow by a city clerk, if that’s all right. I can put in a call to the mayor, if you’d like something more splashy, but I insist on its taking place tomorrow. If you’ll have me.”

“Oh please. If I’ll have you.”

“You’re remarkably acquiescent.”

“Julian,” I said, “I’m pregnant. I’m at your mercy. My parents would
die
.”

He groaned into my hair. “Oh, Lord, Kate. Your parents. I hadn’t even
thought… Christ. I’ll make it right, sweetheart. I shan’t
rest
until…” His voice seemed to trip over itself; he stroked my arm for a moment, and went on. “I want to apologize again for the way I behaved last night. To have given you even an instant’s distress, at such a moment…” He shook his head. “I can’t think about it without shame.”

“For goodness’ sake, Julian. You’re so hard on yourself. It wasn’t my shining hour either, after all.”

“Rubbish. You were quite right to bite my head off. I deserved it. In any case,” he said, leaning over to kiss my temple with determined cheerfulness, “now the shock’s worn off, I’m as pleased as Punch. You can’t string me along any longer. I shall have you as my wedded wife at last, and by the end of spring, my dearest Mrs. Ashford, we’ll have our own little family. You don’t suppose it might be twins, do you?”

“Bite your tongue.”

He didn’t answer, only shifted around me, settling himself lower, and put his hand with great delicacy on my belly.

“Go ahead,” I said. “It’s probably only about the size of a thumbnail.”

He lay there for a moment, watching his hand.

“You’re going to be a wonderful father, you know. The best ever.” I stroked his tawny hair, letting the images form at last. “I can picture it.”

“Can you?” He bent over and kissed the hollow of my stomach, and turned his cheek to rest tenderly against me.

“You know,” I said, swirling the fine hair around his temple, “the deadline still holds, wedding or not. One week.”

“Don’t worry,” he whispered. “Everything will be cleared up before that.”

I
T WAS ALL SURPRISINGLY EASY
. Once I’d showered and dressed, Julian drove us to the Marriage Bureau downtown, leaving Eric behind so as not to draw undue attention that might land us in the gossip columns tomorrow morning. Nothing says celebrity like a dark-suited bodyguard shadowing your footsteps.

“I want to know what your papers say,” I said, grabbing the manila file folder as we curved around the FDR.

He smiled. “Go ahead. You’ve a right to know whom you’re marrying.”

“Julian Laurence—you’ve gone with no middle name all this time?”

He shrugged.

“Date of birth, March thirtieth, 1975. And are you actually thirty-three?”

“Yes. Well, technically I’m a hundred and thirteen, I suppose. I was born in 1895.” He laughed ruefully. “Truly robbing the cradle, aren’t I?”

“Letch. I’m sorry I missed your birthday, though,” I said.

“My fault, chasing you off like a damned fool. At least I haven’t missed yours.”

“Don’t worry about it. I hate my birthday. How would you like to have been born on Halloween? It’s just creepy.” I looked back down at the passport in my lap. “Place of birth, London. Well, that’s good. Supposedly the best lies are the ones that stick close to the truth.” I started laughing. “Oh my God. Is that your passport photo?”

“Give me that.” He snatched it back.

“Well, now I feel better. If the photo booth can mess up
your
face, then there’s some excuse for this horror show.” I held up my own passport.

He glanced over and smiled.

“You see? That’s what you’re marrying. Are you sure you want to go through with this?”

We parked the car in a garage a block away from the Marriage Bureau. I handed him a Yankees cap as he came around the other side to help me out. “You’d better go incognito, Goldilocks,” I said, “unless you want another call from that Page Six reporter.”