The Dutiful Wife

by Penny Jordan

  ‘It’s for your own sake—to help you.’

  ‘Help me? And what happens if this professor says that he thinks I will be like my mother? Do you really think that knowing that will help me?’

  ‘I don’t think he will say that. Because I don’t think you will be like her.’

  ‘You can’t know that, Saul. Perhaps you’re even hoping that he will say that I’ll be like her. You don’t want children, after all.’

  ‘How can you say that? Trust me, please, Giselle. I love you, and I’m trying to help you. Just talk to him. That’s all I’m asking you to do. Make an appointment to see him and hear what he has to say.’

  ‘Very well,’ Giselle agreed reluctantly. Maybe it was only fair to hear what this professor had to say.

  The words seemed to hang between them. Giselle’s heart was pounding, her emotions whirling, as she recognised exactly what those words really meant. With every day that passed—every hour, every minute—the baby she was carrying was more precious to her. She had thought about things until her head ached from thinking, until she was so confused that she was unable to think any more. It had been simple before she had known she was pregnant to tell herself there could never be a child—for its own sake. Now that a child was a growing reality inside her all the logic in the world could not compete with the fierce determination and strength of her maternal instincts. She wanted this baby. She wanted it with a yearning, aching intensity that was far too strong for her to fight or resist.

  ‘Do you want me to make the appointment?’ Saul offered.

  Giselle shook her head.

  ‘No. No, I’ll do it myself.’

  ‘Here are the details,’ Saul told her, handing over the information he had printed out from his computer search. ‘Why don’t you make the appointment now, whilst I go and do some work?’

  Giselle nodded her head.

  As soon as she was on her own Giselle looked at the papers Saul had given her. She felt sick at the very thought of seeing this professor she knew nothing about. What if he confirmed that there was still not a lot they could do? That this rare form of psychosis could still happen to her? She didn’t know what to do. She felt sick with fear and panic. But she had promised Saul. She reached for her mobile and started to dial the number on the printout and then stopped. It was no good. She could not do it. She couldn’t bear to hear in cold stark words what she already feared. Crumpling up the paper, she threw it in the wastepaper bin.

  ‘Have you made the appointment with the professor yet?’ Saul asked a couple of hours later. They were in the kitchen, where Saul was making them both a hot drink—tea for Giselle, now that she could no longer tolerate the strong coffee she adored.

  ‘No, not yet—it’s getting a bit late now. I’ll do it tomorrow,’ Giselle told him. The truth was that she hadn’t even tried to make an appointment, because she felt so afraid of what it might reveal.

  Over twenty-four hours later, with the appointment still not made and Giselle refusing to give him a straight answer every time he asked her why she hadn’t made it, Saul was beginning to worry even more about her. All he wanted to do was help her, but she seemed determined not to accept that help. It was almost as though she had already convinced herself that nothing and no one could help, but Saul refused to believe that. In his own mind he was sure that she would be a wonderful mother. How could she not be when she was such a wonderful person? He firmly believed that the professor would be able to reassure her and calm her fears. But how could that happen if she refused to see him?

  It was past midnight, and Giselle was in bed and asleep. Saul had gone to look at her ten minutes ago, and in the moonlight coming into the room he had seen the traces of tears on her skin.

  He loved her so much.

  And the child she was carrying? His child?

  A sensation he had not expected and was not prepared for tightened its fingers on his heart.

  They had to see the professor—so that they could seek his professional opinion and then be guided by the advice he gave them. The situation was far too important for them to try to make any decision on their own and without proper advice.

  Somehow he had to find a way of persuading Giselle to agree to see him. For both their sakes. No, Saul corrected himself mentally, for all their sakes. There was nothing else for it. He was going to go ahead and make an appointment for them to see him. He would find a way to convince Giselle that it was the right thing to do.

  It was time for him to take matters into his own hands, Saul decided.

  By morning Saul had made his decision and acted upon it. He re-read the e-mail he had just received from the professor’s PA, confirming the urgent appointment he had requested. The only day she had been able to fit them in was the same day as Giselle’s appointment at the clinic, two hours before her appointment there. Printing off the e-mail, Saul left his study to go upstairs, where Giselle was still sleeping. He was loath to wake her, feeling that she needed her rest, but he did want her to know about the appointment. He hesitated, torn between letting her sleep on knowing how exhausted she had been the previous evening, and waking her up so that he could tell her about the appointment in person. He decided that it was best to let her sleep. Quickly he wrote her a note, explaining what he had done, and pinned the printed-off e-mail to it.

  When Giselle woke up the first thing she saw was the note Saul left on his own pillow.

  My darling Giselle,

  You’ll see from the attached e-mail that I’ve gone ahead and made an appointment for us to see the professor. I really do feel that this is the right thing for us to do, and something we must do. I know the thought of seeing him makes you afraid, and I understand why, but seeing him will be for the best. I think in your heart you know that.

  No matter what he says, nothing can change my love for you. You will always have that.

  I love you, my darling—Saul.

  The note ended with three kisses.

  Saul had gone ahead and made the appointment. Because he didn’t trust her to do it? He was justified in thinking that after she had said she would do so and then hadn’t, Giselle knew, but his actions still hurt her.

  By the time she had read the note three more times she was starting to panic.

  She knew every word of Saul’s note off by heart now, and her heart was thudding frantically in response to them. Saul was going to force her to see the professor. Saul had told her that he did not believe she could ever be like her mother, but what if the professor disagreed? What if he told them both that after she had given birth she would be a risk, a threat to her baby? What then? Was Saul’s insistence on them seeing the professor because really he hoped that the professor would say there was too much of a risk for her to be a mother? She wasn’t sure what Saul felt about the pregnancy…she’d been too afraid to ask.

  Her head was pounding with anxiety and with the adrenalin rush produced by her body to protect her—the instinctive fight or flight mechanism. Fight? Wasn’t flight a better option for her? Flight to somewhere, someone, with whom she would be safe—just as she had been safe with that person during the years she had been growing up? Her great-aunt might be elderly now, but she was still feisty and fiercely protective of those she loved.

  Giselle didn’t hesitate. Within seconds of making up her mind she was packing a small case. She was going to flee to Yorkshire.

  His second meeting with Hans de Kyper might have produced the kind of result Saul would normally have been celebrating—with Giselle—but right now celebrating anything was the last thing on Saul’s mind. It was half an hour since the Dutchman had left, and despite his repeated attempts to ring her he had been unable to make contact with Giselle.

  He’d rung, and then texted her on her mobile, and then, when he’d discovered that her mobile phone was switched off, he’d phoned their landline.

  Now, when he hadn’t been able to get any response from either, he texted Giselle on her Blackberry yet again, asking her to call him
, and then he told Moira that he was going home.

  Initially when he stepped into the Chelsea house there was nothing to arouse his concern. The cleaners from the concierge service they used had been in. Fresh flowers had been placed in the vases in the hallway and the drawing room, and their bedroom smelled faintly of Giselle’s scent—the one he’d had specially blended for her on her birthday. Her laptop was in their shared office, but Giselle herself wasn’t. Saul was concerned. It was completely unlike Giselle not to have her phone switched on. He was all too aware of how distressed she was, and now he was beginning to wish that he hadn’t left the note for her about the appointment. He had intended his note to be reassuring, but what if Giselle had not interpreted it that way? What if in her current state of mind she had seen it as a threat instead?

  Cursing himself under his breath for his earlier lack of awareness, he felt the nagging feeling of concern that had been with him all day flare into urgent and anxious life.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  The kindly female voice pierced through the fog of confusion that had closed Giselle in a wall, distancing her from her surroundings.

  ‘Yes. Yes. Thank you.’ She thanked the woman whilst inside a voice screamed like a prisoner battering on a locked and bolted door. No, no…I am not all right. Please help me.

  Help her? She must help herself. There was no one else to do it. She placed her hand on her flat stomach, nausea making her gag. She was so afraid, so desperately afraid, and so weak. All she wanted was to be with her great-aunt and to seek her advice.

  York Station. Giselle felt in the pocket of her luxuriously soft off-white cashmere coat to check that the ticket for the small market town where her great-aunt lived was still there. Just thinking about her great-aunt and her wisdom was helping to calm her. Her great-aunt would understand, she knew.

  She wasn’t hungry, but she was thirsty, so she bought a bottle of water from one of the station’s outlets, thanking the man who served her before huddling deeper into her coat. It was colder up here than it had been in London—or maybe it was just that she was colder.

  She made her way back to the platform for the Settle train, and took her seat.

  It was evening before her taxi finally dropped her off outside the entrance to her great-aunt’s retirement home. She’d gone from the station to a hotel and checked in there first, then come straight there. She paused only to exchange a few words with the warden to explain that she had come to see her great-aunt.

  The first words her great-aunt said to her once she had greeted her and hugged her were, ‘Saul’s desperately anxious about you, Giselle. He wants you to get in touch with him.’

  ‘Has he told you about—?’ Giselle began.

  ‘About the baby?’ her great-aunt interrupted her. ‘Yes.’ She reached for Giselle’s hand and held it tightly between her own. Her skin was paper-thin with age, but her grip was still firm and comforting—just as it had comforted her all those years ago, when she had first gone to live with her. ‘We must tell him that you’re here. He’s very worried.’

  Giselle wanted to refuse, but somehow she couldn’t find the energy to resist. Just hearing Saul’s name on her great-aunt’s lips had filled her with such a great need to see him and be held by him, and with it came the deepest kind of sorrow—because she knew she must deny her love for him.

  ‘Very well,’ she agreed, nodding her head, her mouth dry as she reached inside her handbag for her Blackberry. She switched it on, and her heart started racing and then aching as she saw all the calls and texts Saul had sent her. She wasn’t strong enough to speak personally to him. She knew that she would break down if she did, and beg him for what he would not want to give her. Instead she texted him, telling him that she was with her great-aunt and that he was not to worry any more, before quickly switching off the phone again. She hoped that Saul would not take it into his head to come up here after her. But even if he did it would be morning before he could get here, and by then hopefully she would be feeling more composed and would have her arguments all in place.

  ‘Saul wants me to see this professor,’ she told her great-aunt. ‘He is an expert on the subject of postnatal depression. Saul feels that the professor should be the one to advise us about…about what decision we should make, but I’ve already made up my mind. I love my baby so much already.’

  Was that sympathy or sadness she could see in her great-aunt’s eyes? Was her great-aunt going to let her down after all and side with Saul? Tension gripped Giselle’s muscles.

  ‘Giselle my dear, there is something I must say to you,’ her great-aunt announced firmly. “And that is that whilst I understand how you feel with regard to your mother’s mental illness, it does not necessarily follow that you will be the same. I tried to tell you this whilst you were growing up, but the effects of the trauma you experienced were such that I never felt you were able to hear what I was saying. The truth is,’ she told Giselle bracingly, ‘I have always felt that you are very much more like the Freeman side of the family—like my mother and your great-grandmother on your father’s side. I see so much of my own mother in you, Giselle. I always have done. You have her looks, her colouring, and her courage.’

  Relief and gratitude flooded through Giselle. Her great-aunt was trying to make her feel better, but it was true that in looks Giselle was nothing like her own mother, who had been dark-haired and brown-eyed. Even the shape of Giselle’s face and the features on it very different from her mother’s. Her mannerisms and tone of voice were much more in line with those of her great-aunt, Giselle knew, but then it was her great-aunt who had brought her up and nurtured her.

  Much as she wanted to believe what her great-aunt said, Giselle still shook her head and told her, ‘It doesn’t matter what I say. Saul is determined that I have to see this professor. I don’t want to, though.’

  ‘Giselle, my dear, I do understand how you feel. But don’t you think that you might be being unfair to Saul?’

  ‘Because I don’t want to see the professor? But I’m so frightened of what he might tell me.’ Giselle spread her hands in a gesture of defeat and a plea for understanding.

  It was gone nine o’clock so, knowing that the residents of the retirement home tended to go to bed early, Giselle told her great-aunt that she would ask the warden to ring for a taxi for her.

  ‘You can’t go yet,’ her great-aunt protested, looking unusually agitated as she glanced towards the entrance door of her small bedsit. ‘Why don’t you stay a bit longer and have supper with me? You must be hungry.’

  Hungry? Was she? Food was the last thing she had thought about today, but her great-aunt was insisting, and becoming even more agitated at the thought of Giselle leaving without having something to eat, so Giselle felt obliged to give in and agree that, yes, some supper would be lovely.

  Although the retirement home provided round-the-clock, twenty-four-hour service for those who lived there, Giselle was struggling to stifle her yawns by the time a young girl arrived, pushing a trolley on which was a pot of tea and some sandwiches. The sight of them unexpectedly set her tummy rumbling.

  Half an hour later, encouraged by her great-aunt to eat the last of the sandwiches and have a second cup of tea, she was protesting that she couldn’t possibly keep her elderly relative up any longer when the sound of a helicopter close at hand reverberated through the late evening silence.

  ‘What on earth—?’ Giselle began, but her great-aunt interrupted her immediately.

  ‘Oh, that will be Sir John Haycroft. It’s his new toy, and he’s forever flying all over the place in it.’

  Giselle nodded her head, stifling another yawn, oblivious to her great-aunt’s anxious glances towards the door of her small apartment. The sudden ring on the bell made Giselle jump a little, and then tell her aunt ruefully, ‘That will be the warden, coming to say that I’ve outstayed my welcome. I’ll go and tell her that I’m leaving.’

  Only when Giselle opened the door it wasn’t the
warden standing there, it was Saul—and Saul as she had never seen him before. Saul looked as though he had aged a decade. He was in need of a shave and, ridiculously, looked not only as though he had aged during the twenty four hours since she had last see him but also as though he had grown thinner.

  As she stepped back into the room Giselle cast a look at her great-aunt, who was looking flushed but determined as she told Saul triumphantly, ‘I did what you asked, Saul, and kept her here. Although it was touch and go.’

  Watching her husband hug her great-aunt, and seeing the genuine affection between them, Giselle felt her heart ache anew. When a relationship ended it wasn’t just the two people most intimately concerned who were affected. The ripples from the break-up spread and affected others as well.

  ‘I’ve come to take you home,’ was all Saul said to her, but he was looking at her in a way that made her heart turn over in a mixture of intense love and raw agony. ‘We need to talk—about everything.’

  Her aunt broke in unexpectedly to ask Giselle directly, ‘You want this baby, don’t you, Giselle?’

  The directness of the question undermined Giselle’s defences.

  ‘Yes,’ she admitted. ‘I do. The creation of a new life is such a special thing.’ Her voice dropped to a whisper. ‘A gift, a privilege. My baby—our baby—has the right to live.’ She took a deep breath and lifted her head to look at them both, but especially Saul. ‘I will see the professor, but I’ve decided that…that I want our child to be born—even if it means that for its own safety and happiness another woman has to bring it up. I’d rather that than risk hurting it.’

  Giselle wasn’t sure how she had come to this painful decision, she only knew that having come to it she now felt an overwhelming sense of peace, a sense of having given her baby safety and security by the best means she could.