Count Toussaint’s Pregnant Mistress by Kate Hewitt Page A

were miserable failures, making her sound like some horrible, mechanical pull-toy. Grace wasn’t fooled for a minute.
    ‘Abby,’ she said, and then crossed the room in a few quick steps to pull her into a hug. ‘I’m sorry, that was callous of me. I just didn’t think you were seeing anyone.’
    ‘I’m not,’ Abby replied bleakly, and Grace’s arms tightened around her.
    ‘And that was callous as well. Good Lord, I’m not used to this.’ She stepped back, surveying Abby’s pale, drained face with maternal anxiety. ‘What are you going to do? There’s obviously a chance.’
    ‘I suppose there is,’ Abby agreed numbly. Luc had used a condom, but accidents happened. Mistakes happened. Her hands crept instinctively to her middle, as if the tiny life—if there even was one—might hear those horrible words: mistake; accident.
    No.
    ‘We’ll buy a pregnancy test. They’re so quick these days, and reliable too.’
    ‘Yes, they are, aren’t they?’ What an inane conversation, Abby thought, her mind still numb, frozen. They both sounded like they were starring in an advert for modern pregnancy tests. What did it matter how quick or reliable a pregnancy test was? Her mind and body were already screaming the truth: the nausea, the fatigue, the tightness of her jeans’ waistband. She hadn’t put it all together because it had never occurred to her, not even for one moment, that she might actually be pregnant. Yet, now that the possibility had been presented to her, it was all too glaringly obvious. Anyone with a rudimentary knowledge of biology, or who’d been in a highschool health class, could have confirmed her symptoms and offered the correct diagnosis.
    Pregnant. With Luc’s child.
    She looked up at Grace, who was gazing at her in obvious concern, and summoned a smile. ‘Yes. Right. Well, I think I’ll go the chemist’s, then.’
    ‘Do you want me to come?’
    ‘No. No, thank you. I’ll do it alone.’
    And so she did, driving to the chemist’s in Helston, the tenminute trip a blur. Her mind felt permanently stuck in one gear, one loop—pregnant. Pregnant. Pregnant.
    The clerk at the till was a pimply teenaged boy, but he didn’t even bat an eyelid as Abby pushed the pregnancy test with its glaring pink writing across to him.
    ‘That’ll be ten pounds,’ he told her in a bored voice.
    Inanely Abby found herself saying, ‘That’s quite expensive, isn’t it?’
    He stared at her. ‘That’s ten quid.’
    ‘Right.’ She handed him the note.
    She ducked into a local café’s toilet to take the test. Somehow she couldn’t bear the thought of bringing it back to Grace’s and having her hover while Abby did what was necessary.
    It only took a few minutes. A few minutes, and then a lifetime of accepting the reality. Two lines on the little plastic stick; she really was pregnant.
    Abby let herself out of the bathroom and drove back to Grace’s, the trip just as much a blur as it had been before. As soon as Grace saw her face—Abby couldn’t fathom what her own expression was, for she didn’t even know how she was feeling—she wrapped her in a hug.
    ‘Oh, love.’ They were both silent, and then Grace pulled away. ‘You know I’ll support you one-hundred percent, no matter what you do?’
    Abby nodded, although even now she knew she had no choice, not really. Already that little life inside her had taken root, begun to grow. He—or she—was part of her, part of Luc. She would keep the child. She would have Luc’s baby.
    Lingering over breakfast in his hotel suite in Paris, Luc turned to the arts pages of the newspaper without thinking. It waswhat he always did, scanning the headlines and bylines with a distracted air, unable to voice even to himself what, or who, he was looking for.
    Then he saw it.
    Piano Prodigy—pregnant?
    The photo was a blurry shot of Abby walking down a street in London. The newspaper had helpfully added a red circle to highlight the slight swell of her