Читать книгу Her Secret, His Child: A Night, A Secret...A Child / One-Night Love-Child / The French Aristocrat's Baby - Miranda Lee, Anne McAllister - Страница 20

THE after-concert party was in full swing, with Nicolas being bombarded with both finger food and conversation. People kept coming up to him to congratulate him on a job well done and to say thank you, the girls from Serina’s office included—though not Serina, he noted ruefully. She kept her distance, even when her own mother and Mrs Johnson were chatting to him.

Felicity brought along her paternal grandparents, Franny and Bert Harmon, whom he’d never met before. They looked like they were in their late seventies and rather an odd couple: Bert was tall and thin whilst Franny was very short and plump. But both of them had grey hair and dark, gentle eyes.

‘Nanna and Pop bought your old house, you know,’ Felicity said after she’d introduced them.

‘Really?’

‘And your old piano. That’s what I first learned to play on.’

Nicolas was quite startled by this news. He’d imagined that her having piano lessons had been Serina’s doing, that Felicity would have learned to play on her mother’s piano. Serina had had her own instrument long before Nicolas acquired his, courtesy of a competition he’d won. Till then he’d always practised on Mrs Johnson’s piano.

‘Whenever I went to stay at Nanna and Pop’s,’ Felicity went on, ‘I could hear the kids having lessons next door at Mrs Johnson’s. Her music room was just over the fence from my bedroom window. I used to love to lie in bed and listen.’

Nicolas could hardly believe what he was hearing. Talk about coincidence!

‘Then, one day, when I was about three,’ Felicity continued, ‘I can’t actually remember this… but Pop tells me he came downstairs and I was trying to play. He decided then and there I should have lessons. To tell the truth, Mum wasn’t all that keen but Dad was, even though he wasn’t musical at all.’

‘Tone deaf Greg was,’ Franny said with a nod. ‘But he was so proud of you, love. I’m sure he would have been very proud of you tonight. The way you played. Nicolas was right. You were quite magnificent.’

‘If you moved to Sydney to attend the conservatorium of music,’ Nicolas said to her, ‘you would become an even better pianist. In a few years, you could be giving concerts all over the world.’

Felicity looked very taken aback. ‘But I would hate that,’ she said very forthrightly. ‘I love playing the piano, Nicolas, but I don’t want to do it for a living. Good heavens, no! I’m going to become a vet.’

‘A vet,’ he echoed blankly.

‘Golly, yes. Who’d want to be a concert pianist?’ she went on with the tactlessness of youth. ‘I can’t think of anything more boring. Playing the piano is fun, but not all the time. Oh, sorry, Nicolas,’ she added, suddenly realising what she’d just said. ‘I forgot for a moment. Still, I’ll bet you enjoy yourself a lot more doing what you’re doing now than thumping away on the keys for hours and hours every day. Which is what I’d have to do if I wanted to become a concert pianist. I know because Mrs Johnson said so. “If you want to make a career of the piano, Felicity,”’ she pronounced in a perfect imitation of Mrs Johnson’s somewhat haughty voice, ‘“you have to practise, practise, practise.” Well I practised like mad for weeks for tonight’s performance and I can tell you I’ve had more than enough of that piano for a while. I’m not going to touch a key over the Christmas holidays. Now, I really do have to go help the others with the food and stuff, or they’d think I’m slacking. Thank you again, Nicolas,’ she said as she gave him a peck on the cheek. ‘Don’t go without saying goodbye.’

‘A vet,’ Nicolas muttered drily as he watched Felicity hurry away to join her friends. What a horrible waste of talent!

‘She’s animal mad, is our Felicity,’ Bert piped up. ‘Not domestic animals so much. Wildlife. She and Kirsty—who’s her very best friend, the one who did the hip-hop dance—they’re always hunting around in the bush looking for injured animals and birds. Kirsty’s folks have an acreage just out of town.’

‘I see,’ Nicolas said politely. Though he didn’t at all. All he could see was that she was wasting a musical talent that was beyond exceptional.

‘To tell the truth, Mr Dupre,’ Bert went on, ‘Mother and I are glad Felicity wants to be a vet. That way, even if she goes away to study for a while after leaving school, she’ll eventually come back to live in this area. She’s all we have now that our son has gone. Greg was an only child, you see. We always hoped that he and Serina would have more kiddies, but that wasn’t to be.’

‘His having had the mumps as a young lad had something to do with that,’ Franny added. ‘He had some tests done when Serina didn’t fall for a baby again and they said he had a low sperm count. So we’re lucky to have one grandchild. We’d be totally lost without Felicity, wouldn’t we, Bert? She brings us such joy. Do you remember the day she was born? She was amazing from the word go. Didn’t look like a newborn. Why, she could have passed for three months old. And she was so beautiful. Nothing like Greg when he was born. He looked like a wizened-up monkey for weeks. Of course she’s taken after Serina with her looks and her musical talent. Not so much in nature though. Felicity’s a real little goer, as I’m sure you’ve gathered, but extremely stubborn. It’s thankful she has a good heart to temper her ambitions. But I know Serina has trouble with her sometimes. We help as much as we can. And Serina’s mother does, too, of course. The girl really needs a father figure. Greg was wonderful with her, not too indulgent. He recognised she needed direction. Felicity adored him. Oh dear,’ Franny said suddenly, her eyes suddenly filling with tears. ‘Sorry. I thought I was over doing this.’

Somehow, Nicolas managed to murmur something sympathetic. But his mind was whirling with the things Felicity’s grandmother had just told him.

If she was Felicity’s grandmother, Nicolas began thinking with a sick, hollow feeling forming in the pit of his stomach… Surely Serina wouldn’t have done that? Surely not? But the evidence he’d just heard suggested differently.

His eyes started to scan the room, searching for her.

‘Come on, Mother,’ Bert said gently as he took his weeping wife’s arm. ‘Let’s go get you a nice cup of tea. Lovely talking to you, Mr Dupre. And thanks once again for donating that terrific sum of money. You’ve made Felicity one extremely happy girl tonight.’

Serina knew, the moment her eyes met Nicolas’s across the crowded hall, that what she’d feared would happen ever since she heard Nicolas was returning to Rocky Creek had just happened.

Never had she seen Nicolas look at her like that. There wasn’t just anger in his eyes, or disbelief… There was sheer unadulterated horror.

‘God help me,’ she muttered under her breath as he came striding towards her, where she was thankfully standing by herself behind the drinks table.

‘We need to talk, Serina,’ he growled. ‘Now!’

‘What about?’ she asked with feigned innocence whilst her heart was thudding wildly behind her ribs and nausea swirled in her stomach.

His eyes narrowed on her, his expression uncompromising in the extreme. ‘I think you know what about.’

‘Not unless you tell me.’

‘You really want me to say it here? To shout out to all and sundry that Felicity is not your husband’s daughter, but mine,’ he hissed. ‘Because I will if you don’t make some excuse and come with me right here and now.’

Serina thought she was going to faint as she saw her whole world crashing around her. Not just her world, but her daughter’s as well. And lots of other people’s.

But he can’t know, came the saving thought as she gripped the edge of the table, steadying her body as well as her mind. He just suspects. You can bluff this out, girl. You have to bluff it out.

‘I can’t imagine what Franny and Bert said to you to make you think such an outrageous thing,’ she said with superb calm. ‘But you’re dead wrong. Felicity is Greg’s daughter. Not yours.’ Which she was, in every way but biologically.

‘I don’t believe you, Serina,’ he challenged. ‘Now are we going to argue about this here, or are you going to come with me?’

‘Come where?’ Not his apartment. No way was she going to go there again!

‘Somewhere private,’ he spluttered.

Felicity’s bouncing up to her mother right at that moment with Kirsty by her side was both a blessing and a curse.

‘Kirsty wants me to go to her place for a sleepover,’ she said. ‘Can I, Mum? Can I, please?’

‘Felicity, I… ’

‘Oh, please, Mrs Harmon,’ Kirsty begged. ‘Mum says it’s okay. Then we could spend tomorrow together.’

Serina knew there would be no dissuading them, not once they ganged up on her. On top of that, it provided her with the perfect solution over where to take Nicolas. She would feel much safer facing him in her own home; safer, and stronger.

‘All right, then,’ she said, relenting. ‘What about clothes?’

‘She can borrow some of mine, Mrs Harmon,’ Kirsty said. ‘We’re exactly the same size.’

‘Fine. Just don’t go doing anything silly.’

‘Like what?’

‘Like going too far into the bush looking for more sick koalas. The weather forecast for tomorrow is very hot, even hotter than today, and windy—perfect bushfire weather. Promise me you’ll stay close to Kirsty’s place.’

‘We promise,’ the two girls chorused.

‘You could go out with Nicolas again tonight, if you wanted to,’ Felicity added, and Kirsty giggled.

It didn’t surprise Serina that her daughter was still trying to matchmake her with Nicolas. That girl never let up, once she got a bee in her bonnet. If only she knew!

‘What a good idea,’ Nicolas said immediately with a coldly cryptic smile. ‘I enjoyed the time I spent with your mother today very much. We’ve always been great mates. We could go the movies, Serina, like we used to.’

Serina felt all the blood drain from her face. Because of course they never went to the movies in the past. They just told their parents that was where they were going. They always spent the time making love.

If he thought he could somehow coerce her into having more sex with him, then he was sadly mistaken. But then an appalling thought popped into her head. What if he said he’d tell everyone in Rocky Creek he was Felicity’s father if she didn’t do just that?

Surely he wouldn’t do a wicked thing like that. Surely not!

Nicolas saw her moment of realisation. Saw, also, the way her chin rose, her eyes spearing his with tigerish fury.

‘I’m way too tired to go to the movies,’ she returned coolly. ‘But you can come back to my place for some coffee, if you like.’

He didn’t like. He didn’t want to go where she’d played happy family with Greg Harmon with his daughter. But he could hardly make a fuss in front of Felicity and her friend.

Frankly, Nicolas wasn’t sure what he was going to do as yet. Except make Serina suffer for a while.

She deserved to suffer, if what he suspected was true.

‘An excellent idea,’ he said crisply.

‘I can’t leave straight away,’ Serina said once Felicity and Kirsty ran off together. ‘I have to help clean up here. As you can see, the party’s coming to a close and there’s lots of mess. All the plastic chairs have to be stacked up and put away as well.’

Nicolas controlled himself with difficulty. He was used to getting his own way with things, used to people jumping to do his bidding.

Serina was clearly past doing his bidding. It came to him suddenly that she’d only appeared to do so this afternoon because she had a secret agenda. To get him out of Rocky Creek as soon as possible.As much as she might have seemed to enjoy his lovemaking, she was probably faking it, the same way she’d faked her mad passion that night at the Opera House. All to get him to have sex with her without protection. All to conceive the child that she knew Greg Harmon couldn’t give her.

A dark fury—and even darker desires—filled his soul as he thought about that night. What a fool he’d been! A blind besotted fool! But he would have her again—tonight.And she’d let him. Because that would be his bargain. One more night of sex in exchange for his silence, plus his departure tomorrow…