Best Man to wed

Chapter Seven

"Dany, I need to talk to you." Dany shivered as she listened to the curt tones of Jon's voice relaying the terse message to her over the answering machine.
Mercifully, atleast as far as she was concerned, he had been away on business for the past three days ai today she wasn't going into office since she was taking three days holiday.  Later in the day she was due to have lunch with Margaery's grandmother and her fellow bridesmaid....and arrangement which had been made at Jeyne's suggestion three months ago, on the day of Robb and Margaery's wedding.
As she remembered the certainty and vehemence with which she had insisted then that there was no way she would ever marry, Dany could feel her stomach starting to churn nauseouly with a now familiar mixture of panic and misery.
She supposed if she were a different sort of person, she could defy Jon, refuse to marry him and bring up her child.... their child...on her own; there had certainly been times since her visit to the doctor had confirmed what she had already secretly known in her heart.....that she was carrying Jon's child......when she had toyed unrealistically with the idea of simply running away...... disappearing..... avoiding all the misery and anguish that she knew lay ahead of her.
But how could she? How could she hurt her parents by doing something like that? And besides, no matter where she ran to she could never escape from herself or from the knowledge of what she had done.
However, she could not face Jon yet, even though she was acutely concious of the thoughtful looks her mother had been giving her and suspected that it wouldn't be long before she questioned her increasingly hard to conceal bouts of sickness and put two at two together.
There were alternatives, ofcourse, she acknowledged tiredly as she prepared for her lunch date, but they were simply not options she could ever choose to take. Little though she had wanted or planned to have a baby.....any baby, never mind Jon's.....now that she knew that she actually had conceived...Dany placed her hand protectively over her stomach. No, she couldn't do that, couldn't take away the life that she and Jon had created.
She knew why Jon had left that message on her private line, ofcourse; she knew perfectly well what he wanted to ask her.....The unexpected business commitment which had taken him abroad had meant that he had had to leave before he could question her about the outcome of her visit to the doctor and she knew she would have little alternative but to tell him.
The last thing she felt like doing today was going to lunch. What would the other two think if they knew that soon she would be breaking the vow that they had all made to remain unmarried? Would they, like her parents and family, assume that she was actually in love with Jon? That all the years she had spent loving Robb had simply been a youthful infactuation which had really meant nothing?
It had shocked Dany to discover that her parents, and especially her mother, seemed to think that Jon was so right for her....that they were so right for one another. Even Robb had told her how pleased he was for both of them. It seemed to Dany that the only people who weren't pleased or happy about the fact that she and Jon had supposedly fallen in love with one another was she and Jon themselves.
Oddly enough, Instead if feeling hurt by Robb's comment, by his inability to see the truth, what Dany had experienced had been a totally unexpected and disconcerting sense of irritation and exasperation...

The restaurant was quite, the conservatory where they were lunching pleasantly cool,but Dany still felt queasy and uncomfortably warm as she sat down.
She could see the faintly concerned looks that Olena, Margaery's grandmother was giving her as she toyed with her food and made monosyllabic responses to her conversation, but the smell of food was making her head swim and her stomach churn.....was it the fact that just being there was bringing home to her the enormity of what she had done at the way her life was bound to change?
Panic filled her as she realised how unprepared for change she really was. Unable to face another mouthful of food, she pushed away her plate and stood up.
Once she reached the sanctuary of the ladies cloakroom she discovered that her nausea had subsided, and by the time Olena came in search of her she felt sufficiently in control of herself to apologise for her sudden exit, evey if her voice did shake a little as she said the words.
What would they think once they discovered the truth? No matter how quickly she and Jon got married, once the baby arrived people were bound to guess the truth. Her face burned hotly. There were no onus on couples these days to marry before having children, and had she and Jon genuinely been in love she knew that her prime emotion on learning that she had conceived his child would have been one of intense joy and delight.
But they were not in love and she had conceived his child while believing..... while wanting another man, and that was the source of her shame and anguish, of her dread at the prospect of her marriage to him.
She was relieved when the lunch was finally over. Having said goodbye to Jeyne outside the restaurant, she and Olena were left alone together. As Olena turned to her clearly about to say something, Dany saw Jon's familiar Jaguar driving towards them, Jon himself at the wheel, and she froze, torn between the need to turn and flee and her knowledge that physically she felt incapable of moving so much as a muscle. The Jaguar stopped abruptly infront of them and Jon got out and strode towards them.
Dany winced when she felt Jon's fingers curl around her arm, locking on it in a grip she couldn't break. "Jon what are you doing here? How did you know where to find me?"
"I looked in your diary," he told her witheringly, "get in the car."
"Jon.....I....."
I don't want to go with you, she had been about to say, but he shook his head, telling her grimly, "Not now Dany, I'm not in the mood for it. Where the hell have you been?" he demanded as he propelled her towards the car. "Why the hey haven't you been intouch with me?"
As she turned towards him he warned her, "no games Dany, you know what I mean, you know what it is I want to know."
Just for a heartbeat Dany contemplated lying to him, telling him that she wasn't pregnant after all, but the impulse soon died, shriveled by the hot dry blast of his anger.
"I was right, wasn't I?" Jon continued, after he had bundled her into the car, slid into the drivers seat and set the car in motion. "You have conceived my child."
"Yes." Dany admitted softly. Why, when she knew how little emotion there was between them, how lacking in tender, loving feelings their relationship was, did she have this urge to cry, to turn to Jon and beg him to stop the car and put his arms around her, hold her, make her feel safe.....make her feel protected....make her feel loved?
She tensed her body, expecting his anger to accelerate at her confirmation of her pregnancy with the same velocity with which the car had increased speed, but Instead he remained oddly quiet....so quiet infact that Dany felt impelled to turn her head and look at him....the first time she had looked at him since he had stopped the car and come striding so angrily towards her.
Jon wasn't paying any attention to her; his gaze, his concentration appeared to be fixed on the empty road ahead of them.
"I.....I....I won't.....I can't not have my baby," she told him softly, and the look in his eyes made her wince slightly as he told her starkly, "If I thought for one moment that you might.....this baby is mine as well as yours, Dany, and if I thought that you'd do anything.......and I do meat anything to harm it....."
Dany's body shook as she listened to him. That he would insist on them both 'doing the right thing' she had never doubted.....he was that sort of man......but the emotion she had heard in his voice as he told her that the baby.....her baby.....was his child as well had left her lost for words, grappling with the shock of suddenly discovering a side to him that she had never imagined existed.
She knew, of course , how protective he could be towards his close family, but it had never occurred to her that those feelings might extend to a child he had never intended might be conceived.
"We'll need to talk to your parents," she heard him warning her, "and then my mother......"
"Do we....are we... They'll have to know the truth," she told him , unaware of how haunted and unhappy she looked as she whispered rather than stated the words.
"Yes," he agreed quietly. "Or atleast part of it. I warn you Dany, that not just for your own sake but for the baby's sake as well there is one truth that it is advisable that no one should ever know."
Dany's heart started to thump heavily as he turned his head to look at her.
"What...... what do you mean?" She asked him, her mouth drying with foreboding.
"They must never......no one must ever have any reason to think that our child......our relationship.....is the result of anything other than love."
"Love?" Dany swallowed hard, as she stared at him aghast. "But no one will really believe that. They all know the way I feel about Robb....."
"They all know you had an adolescent crush on my brother," Jon corrected her coldly.
"I can't pretend that I've fallen in love with you," Dany told him. "No one would ever believe me."
"No? Then you'll just have to find a way of making them believe you," Jon informed her. "Unless, ofcourse, you actually want people to guess the truth."
"No," Dany denied sharply, her face burning with hot colour.
"No," Jon said sardonically. "You're caught between two unpalatable choices. I'm afraid Dany. You either pretend you love me or you take the risk of people questioning why, if you don't, you and I concieved a child.  It's a question of the lesser of two evils."
"Robb will never believe that I have fallen in love with you," Dany protested feverishly.
"He is far too busy with his own life and new wife to have any time to spare questioning what is going on in yours. Face it, Dany, what you choose to do or not to do with your life isn't of much interest to Robb, other than as a friend, if anything......"
"He'll be only too relieved nit to have the embarrassment of me loving him anymore," Dany broke in shakily. "Yes, so you've already told me."
"Are both your parents home this evening?"
"Yes.... Yes I think so," Dany confirmed as she tried to grapple with the confusion of her thoughts. Part of her ached to turn the clock back and to have things as they were, but if that were possible that would mean....
Her hand moved automatically towards her stomach. The discovery of his emotionally attached she had become to the thought of her child in such a short space of time shocked her.
"Good, well need to talk to them as quickly as possible. I think so far as the general public is concerned the fact that the family has barely got over one big wedding should serve as a reasonable excuse for the haste of ours...."
"But people are bound to guess, especially once the baby...."
"So let them guess," Jon shrugged as he shot back his cuff to glance at his watch. "I'll come around about eight," he told her as he brought the car to a halt  outside her parents house.
Dany reached numbly for the door handle. She felt tired and drained, alone and even afraid. This wasn't how she would imagine things would be..... how her life, her marriage would be.......And never, ever, evey in her darkest nightmares had she envisaged a scenario so starkly devoid of love and emotion.
Jon had got out and was now standing on the pavement beside her. As the panic flared inside her she turned towards him.
"We can't marry one another, Jon," she protested. "We don't love each other. We have nothing in common, nothing to keep us together, nothing to make our marriage real."
All her fears and her pent up sense of loss and anguish were contained in her voice and her expression as she turned pleadingly towards him, but Jon ignored them, taking a hold of her right there in her parents drive, jus hands firm and compelling as he gripped her upper arms and told her savagely, "No! We've got this much, Dany."
And then he was kissing her, his mouth hard and warm on hers, burning the numb immobility of her lips into fierce, painful life as they softened and they clung to his, his touch conjuring up inside her a sharp, whirlwind sensation and taut, aching need.
Their surroundings, their situation, everything else faded into insignificance as Dany clung helplessly to him while her body responded to his touch, his kiss.
When he finally released her, it took her several seconds to realise where they were and why. Tears glittered brightly in her eyes as she started to turn away from him, her face hot with shame. Why was it that she responded so immediately and so physically to him? Why...?
"Dany" she heard him saying when she went to walk away. The sound of his voice halted her and she turned automatically to face him. "We've also got this," he reminded her, one hand on her arm, the other, fingers spread, placed against her stomach.
She could feel the warmth of his touch through her clothes..... male and somewhat oddly possessive..... and even though she knew it was impossible Dany could have sworn that the new life within her responded somehow to his touch, knew it almost.
Head bowed, she stood there unresisting as the tears again filled her eyes like liquid crystals. She could feel Jon moving towards her, closing the gap between them. She could feel the warmth of his breath as he bent his head towards her, and the fear that he might kiss her again, might bring back the wretched, treacherous surge of desire that he seemed to summon up within her do effortlessly lent her the strength to push away from him and half run towards the sanctuary of her house.