tightened round hers. ‘You don’t.’
She was relieved that he realised that. ‘Was the—was the baby all right?’
‘Yes. I moved out and the other guy moved in—but from what I hear it didn’t last.’
And then a really horrible thought hit her. Was Oliver still in love with Justine? Was that why he couldn’t move on? She didn’t want to ask him, because she was too scared that the answer might be ‘yes’.
As if he’d guessed at her thoughts, he said, ‘You’re not Justine, and I don’t have a shred of doubt that this baby’s mine. I’m just sorry I haven’t been able to get my head round things properly and support you the way I should’ve done.’
Relief made her sag back against the bed. ‘Now you’ve told me what happened to you before, I can understand why you reacted the way you did.’
‘Though I did wonder if you were lying to me,’ he said, ‘when you said it was safe and I assumed you were on the Pill.’
‘I thought it was safe,’ Ella said. ‘I honestly never thought I’d ever get pregnant.’
‘That’s what I don’t understand. I haven’t found the right way to ask you because…’ He grimaced. ‘Ella, I didn’t want to fight with you over it. But, once you’d told me you were pregnant, I couldn’t work out why you were so sure that I didn’t need contraception and yet you weren’t on the Pill. I knew there was something, but asking you straight out felt intrusive and as if I was accusing you of something, and I didn’t want that.’
He’d been honest with her, so now she needed to be honest with him. At least she wouldn’t have to explain the medical side too much because it was Oliver’s speciality and he understood it. ‘I have endometriosis. It caused a lot of scarring on my Fallopian tubes over the years, and then I had an ovarian cyst that ruptured during my training. The doctors in London told me that I was infertile.’
‘So that’s why you said I didn’t…’
‘…need a condom,’ she finished. ‘Yes.’
‘I’m sorry. Endometriosis is pretty debilitating, and to get news like that when you’re so young…’
‘Yes.’ She’d cried herself to sleep for weeks afterwards. ‘Worse was that it disrupted my studies.’
‘Didn’t you tell your tutors? They would’ve understood.’
She grimaced. ‘You’ve read my file, so you know I’m dyslexic.’
He nodded.
‘I wasn’t diagnosed with dyslexia until I was fifteen. Everyone just thought I was a bit slow because I had trouble reading and I’m clumsy. I was always the last to be picked for the netball team in PE lessons, because I could never catch a ball, and you really don’t want to see me trying to throw one.’ She shrugged. ‘Anyway, the September I turned fifteen we all knew I wasn’t going to do well over the next two years, so I wasn’t going to get good grades in my exams. But I was good with people and had the gift of the gab, so everyone thought I ought to go and work in the local pub, at first in the kitchen and then in the bar when I was old enough.’
‘Right.’
‘Except I had a new science teacher that year, and she took me to one side after the first week and asked me all kinds of questions. She was the first teacher ever at school who seemed to think I wasn’t slow.’ And it had been so liberating. Suddenly it had been possible to dream. ‘She said she thought I had dyslexia, because I was fine at answering questions on stuff we’d talked about in class but when she looked at my written work it wasn’t anywhere near the same standard, and my writing was terrible. Nobody had ever tested me for dyslexia—they’d never even considered it. So my teacher talked to my parents and the Special Needs department at school and they got me tested.’
‘And it turned out she was right?’
She nodded. ‘They gave me coloured glasses and got my test papers printed on pastel colours instead of bright white, and suddenly bookwork wasn’t quite so much of a struggle any more.’ She smiled. ‘I’d always wanted to be a midwife like my Aunty Bridget, but nobody ever thought I was clever enough to do it. But I got through my exams, I stayed on at sixth form and I actually got accepted at uni. I was already getting help for my dyslexia, because they let me record all my lectures to help me revise, so I didn’t feel I could go to my tutors and say there was another problem as well. It felt like one excuse too many.’
Now Oliver began to understand why Ella was so independent. She’d had to fight hard to get where she was, and she’d no doubt been wrapped in cotton wool as the child who always underachieved—as well as being told that she was stupid by people who should never have judged her in the first place.
‘And I guess,’ she said, ‘there was a part of me that didn’t want to admit it because then I’d have to admit I wasn’t a real woman—that I’d never be able to give my partner a child of his own.’
‘Ella, being infertile doesn’t make you any less of a woman,’ Oliver said.
‘That’s easy for you to say, being a man,’ she said softly. ‘I knew my parents were desperate for grandchildren and I’d let them down, too.’
‘That’s seriously what they believe?’
‘No, of course not! They said it didn’t matter if I didn’t have children,’ Ella said, ‘but I’ve seen my mum’s face whenever she talks about her great-nieces and great-nephews. Just for a second there’s this wistfulness. She couldn’t have any more children after me, so me not being able to have children meant that she’d never have grandchildren. So she and Da were thrilled to bits when I told them about the baby.’
Oliver was shocked. Hadn’t they agreed to wait to tell their family until she’d got through the first trimester? ‘You’ve told them already?’
‘I’m sorry. I just couldn’t wait,’ she said simply. ‘I know things are tricky for you with your parents, but mine aren’t like that—they’re so pleased.’
She’d thought she was infertile but, because of him, she was having a baby. It was almost like the Justine situation again except there wasn’t any cheating, this time. Justine had wanted the lifestyle and not him. Did Ella want the baby and not him?
He shook himself. But he wanted this baby, too. And, before the Hallowe’en Masquerade Ball, he and Ella had been friends. So maybe they could make this work, the way it hadn’t with Justine.
‘My parents are dying to meet you,’ Ella said.
‘So do I need to ask your father officially for your hand in marriage?’ Oliver asked.
She blinked at him. ‘What?’
‘It’s the practical solution,’ Oliver said. ‘We both want this baby. We get along well, for the most part. So we’ll get married and give the baby a stable home.’
We both want this baby… Get married… A stable home.
But Oliver hadn’t said a word about love. Or actually asked her to marry him.
And all Ella could think of was what Sienna had said about it being better for a baby to have one parent who loved it to bits than two parents who fought all the time. Given the situation with Oliver’s parents, there was a good chance that she and Oliver would fight. A lot.
Marrying her meant he’d get custody of the baby: exactly what his mother wanted.
Even though Ella understood now what might have driven the Countess to take that view, she also didn’t want her life taken over by