Best Man to wed

Chapter Eight

"It won't be long now."
Dany had balked at the idea of a honeymoon but Jon had insisted, pointing out that it would look odd if they didn't go away and in the end she had to give in, although she had wished she hadn't when he had told her where they were going.
"Kingslanding!" She had protested. "No, I can't, not Kingslanding ; it will remind me of your Meereenese friend......the one you spent the night with at the hotel," she had begun,  childishly driven in to panicky reaction by her own misery.
But Jon had stopped her telling her firmly, "The only person I spent the night with at the hotel was you."
"One night you didn't come back to the room," Dany accused him challengingly.
"Yes, but not because I was with someone else. If you must know, I stayed up all night working."
Dany hadn't quite been able to bring herself to look at him. "I still don't want to go back to Kingslanding."
"We don't have much choice," Jon has told her coolly. "My mother is insisting on giving us the Villa as a wedding gift and it would look churlish to refuse."
Dany had knot he was right. Jon's mother had not used the Villa since Jon's father's death, preferring she said, to keep her happy memories of the holidays they had spent there intact.
Now she had told Jon and Dany it was time that other members of the family enjoyed it, and since Jon has always been far more closer to his father than Robb, she had decided that Jon and Dany should have it.
Dany had been there once with her parents, as a child, and she vaguely remembered it.
One unexpected side effect of her pregnancy had been that her body temperature seemed to have risen by several degrees, and the air conditioning in the car that Jon had hired for them was a welcome antidote to the heat of a Kingslanding summer.
The Villa, their villa now, was relatively small and isolated and had originally been a wedding gift from Jon's father to his mother.
"Jon was conceived here," she had told Dany several days ago, "and I've often wondered if that is why he is so much more in tune with his heritage than Robb."
"You do love him, don't you Dany?" She had asked quietly. "Because I know how much he loves you, how much he has always loved you." And Dany had bowed her head
She had no idea why, when Jon could have so obviously and eaisly lie to his mother, she seemed unable to do the same, but perhaps her aunt had taken the tears in her eyes as a sign of her love for Jon rather than the reverse, Dany decided, because she had not pressed the matter, simply touching Dany's bent head gently.
The small town several miles away from the Villa was just as Dany remembered it. A couple of dark eyed children watched them from an open doorway as they drove past and Dany's heart turned over, seized by the quick, melting surge of emotions she had become familiar with in the last couple of weeks.
"What is it? What's wrong?" Jon asked her, but she did not feel able to tell him, to explain, did all women feel like this when they were carrying a child? she wondered. Did they all experience this.....this emotional awareness of the vulnerability of all young things, this need to protect and cherish? The strength of her love for a child she had never intended to conceive, the bond she felt with it already, constantly amazed her. She might not love Jon, or he her, but she would...... she did even now.... love their child.
And so did Jon she acknowledged, moving her head to look at him as he turned off the main road and into the narrow dirt track that led to the Villa.
Time and the hot Kingslanding sun had turned the original deep terracotta of the building, into a soft faded colour, somewhere between pink and brown. The shutters closed now against the afternoon sun, were painted white. The local farmer who Jon's mother paid to maintain the property for her had obviously repainted them recently, Dany decided as she noticed their dazzling brilliance.
Jon stopped the car and got out and Dany went to join him.
"Paolo should have been down with some supplies for us," he told her, referring to the farmer. "If not, I'll leave you to get settled in and drive back to the village to get some. Is there anything in particular that you would like?"
"Only water," Dany told him, grimacing a little. Her mouth, like her body, felt dry and dusty from the journey. The heat coupled with her own inner tension, had also made her feel slightly light headed. As she blinked dizzily in the sun, she saw that Jon was frowning.
"You better get inside, out of the heat," he told her.
"I'm pregnant Jon, that's all," she responded irritably. "There's no need to fuss. Not that you are fussing..... fussing on my account," she added bitterly. "You don't give a damn what happens to me."
"Would you want me to?"
Dany stiffened as she heard the challenge in his voice.
"We both know what's really bugging you Dany," Jon added grimly, "and it isn't my so called "fussing" is it? For godsakes!" He exclaimed, "I know I'm not Robb but just when the hell are you going to grow up and realise......?" He stopped, rubbing the back of his neck with his hand and frowning as he narrowed his eyes against the sun.
"Let's get inside," he told her, turning towards the front door of the Villa.
Silently Dany followed him, deliberately keeping her distance as he unlocked the weathered wooden door. Inside the villa it felt blissfully cool. Whilst Jon opened the shutters Dany made her way to the kitchen. Paolo had obviously been, because there was a box of groceries in the kitchen table. As she looked through it Dany sniffed appreciatively at the locally cured ham and the freshly picked tomatoes, suddenly feeling unexpectedly hungry.
"Aha, you like that, do you?" she teased the baby, speaking her thoughts out aloud as her mouth watered at the sight and smell of the fresh and locally baked bread.
"You're going to be like your papa, are you, and favour your northern heritage?" she laughed as her tiredness faded away, her body relaxing now that it was released from the tension of Jon's constant presence. It was something new that she had started recently, this verbal communication with their child.
"Well don't expect me to be a doting northern mamma and spoil you," she lied with very obvious untruth. Then spinning around, her face flushing, she realised that Jon was standing in the doorway. How long had he been there? Long enough to overhear her silliness, she guessed, and quickly defended herself.
"All the books say it's important to communicate with the baby even before it's born, to let it know that you're there, that you care, that you love it."
"And do you love it....him or her?"
"He or she is my child.....how could I not do?"Dany demanded huskily.
"Your child is also mine," Jon reminded her. "Mine, Dany," he reiterated. "And let me warn you now, if you ever, ever attempt to pretend that my child has my brother for its father, in the same way you pretended he was your lover....."
"Paolo doesn't seem to have bought us any milk," Dany told him, quickly turning away, not wanting him to see the flush burning her face.
"Dany," Jon warned.
"No.....no I shall never try to pretend Robb is my.....our baby's father," she said. "Not to myself, or to anyone else."
"Jon, how are we going to endure this?" she demanded starkly, turning back to face him, her eyes betraying her misery. "We don't love each other." Her voice quickened with panic. "We don't evey like one another."
"We'll endure it because we have to, because of him or her," Jon told her grimly, his glance resting tellingly on her stomach before he picket up the car keys which he had dropped on the table. "I'll take the cases upstairs and then I'll go down to the village for some water. I'll put your luggage in the main bedroom.... I'll sleep in the other one...."
The Villa had only two bedrooms, both of them very spacious, and one bathroom to get to it. Jon's mother had always said that one day she would add a second bathroom, but she had never got around to it.
Without waiting for her to answer Jon walked towards the door. Tiredly she went upstairs.
Paolo:s wife had made up both the beds on Jon's instructions. How had he explained the fact that a honeymooning couple required two double beds? Dany wondered dully as she striped off her clothes and showered off the dirt of their drive before pulling on clean underwear and crawling beneath the lavender scented linen sheets.
Dany smiled contentedly to herself as she slipped on her soft lawn cotton dress and glanced out of the bedroom window. The sky was a perfect clear blue, promising another sunny day.
It was just as she let the loose folds of her dress fall round her hips and started to straighten up she felt it....no more than a briefest flutter of sensation...a movement as delicate  as the touch of a flower petal falling against her skin. She recognised it straight away, instinctively, calling out automatically, without thinking, "Jon, quick...."
"What is it? What's wrong?" he demanded as he responded to her summons, pushing open her bedroom door and standing watching her.
She had dreaded this time.... being isolated from everyone else, being alone with Jon, knowing that it was bound to reveal all the flaws in their relationship, all the reasons why they should not have married, and yet astonishingly the days had actually passed very quickly.
Her body perhaps exhausted by the trauma of the weeks leading upto the wedding, had wanted only to relax and absorb the heat of the sun. Her instincts had caused her to focus not on the antipathy which existed between her and Jon but on the need to protect the life growing within her, and yes, there had been times, moments when she had been heart wrenchingly concious of all that she had forfeited, all that she would never have.....all that both of them had forfeited, ahe acknowledged, in committing themselves to a marriage without love.... and then she had ached with pain and an intense but nebulous sense of loss and despair.
And yet oddly it had not been Robb whom she'd thought of at such times.....his image, the memories of him cherished all through the years of her adolescence seemed to have lost their old power to give her succour.
"What is it?" Jon repeated frowning.
As she looked back at him, noticing how very masculine he looked in a pair of soft, natural coloured linen shorts and white t-shirt, his legs bare and tanned, his forearms suprisingly strongly muscled for a man who spent so much of his time seated at a desk, Dany felt a sharp pang of unexpected emotion, an unexpected and devastating awareness of how intensely male Jon actually was.
It was, she felt, as though she was suddenly seeing him in a different way, as though she had walked into a room in which all the familiar objects had been moved around so that she saw them with fresh eyes.....saw them any found that she had allowed habit to conceal the true depth of their appeal from her.
Her heat suddenly seemed to beat a little faster and she knew that she had flushed slightly.
"Don't you feel very well?" Jon was asking her. For the first few days of their stay he had insisted that she remain in bed in the morning until he had brought her a cup of tea any some plain biscuits.
Initially she had been irritated by such coddling, telling him curtly that she knew it was for the baby's sake and not hers, but these last couple of mornings she had actually found that she was quite enjoying being spoiled.....a feeling which had sneaked up on her, catching her unawares.
"No. No....I feel fine...."
Now that he was here,  frowning at her obviously irritated at being interrupted, she was beginning to regret the impulse which had led her to calling him, and besides....
"It was nothing," she told him, starting to turn away from him. "I was just wondering if you still intended to go into town later on."
"Yes, we need petrol and food and...."
He broke off as Dany suddenly gave a small startled gasp, hurrying to her side, his frown deepening as he touched her on one slim arm and said, "Dany if you're not feeling well....."
"No, it isn't that," she denied, her flush deepening to a happy glow of pleasure as she told him breathlessly, "It's the baby..... it's moving.....feel..." She added impetuously, taking hold of her hand and placing it in her body.
When she felt his resistance she immediately let go of him, snatching her fingers away from his as though the contact had burned her, quick emotional tears she couldn't conceal filling her eyes as she tried to move back from him. Only Jon wouldn't let her, and,  despite his initial withdrawal, his hand was now lying against her body, firm and warm and somehow oddly comforting and reassuring.
The baby must have thought so too, she decided hazily, because it suddenly shifted much more vigorously then it had before, causing Dany to laugh out loud in maternal pride as dge saw the look of mingled disbelief and awe in Jon's eyes.
An unfamiliar tinge of colour was darkening his face, making him look somehow different and vulnerable. He had lowered his head slightly, his gaze fixed on where his hand lay against her, and Dany had an odd and devastating urge to reach out and hold him.
As she tried to absorb the full implications of what she was experiencing it seemed to Dany that somehow or other the foundations of her whole world had shifted dangerously beneath her, leaving her very afraid and alone.
"Feels like she's going to inherit your talent for making her presence felt," was Jon's only comment as he removed his hand and stepped back from her, but although his voice was steady,  Dany could see how moved he was by what he had experienced.
"She?" she queried, her own voice husky.
"You want it to be a girl then?"
"Yes," Jon confirmed, his voice becoming familiarly harsh. He added, "Atleast that way....." He shook his head, his mouth clamping shut on what he had been about to say.
It suprised Dany that he would want a daughter; she had imagined that a man like Jon would only value sons. Despite the fact that they were friends, she knew suprisingly little about him as a man, she recognised, but she was learning.
Oh yes, she was learning, she acknowledged later in the day, lying in a chair in the garden, waiting for Jon to return from his trip into town. And not just about Jon.
The odd feelings that she had experienced this morning....the shaft of pure, liquid desire that had shot through her when she'd seen him standing in the bedroom doorway, that flood of heart-rocking emotion that had swamped her as she'd watched him reaching out to make contact with their child......
Frantically she tried to control and dismiss them by comparing them to the love she always felt for Robb, but somehow it was impossible for her to summon up anything more than a faint echo of the emotion which had dominated her entire life for so many years.
Even picturing Robb was an effort, and when she did the face that looked back at her through her imagination was simply that of her friend and not her adored, longed for lover. Her body and her heart were empty of the intensity of yearning that she expected to feel.
Was it her pregnancy that was responsible for her lack of physical and emotional desire for Robb? She had desired Jon only a few hours earlier, she admitted, and she desired him now.
She moved her body uncomfortably on the sun lounger but the torrent of heat engulfing her had nothing to do with the strength of the sun. She sat up, her face burning with the shock of her discovery.  She couldn't want Jon. It was impossible.
But she wasn't an innocent girl anymore; she was a woman....a woman who knew perfectly well how her body reacted when it was aroused, when it wanted and desired. There was no mistaking such signals, no confusing them with something else.
But Jon, of all men. Was it something to do with the fact that they had already been lovers?
Instinctively Dany looked towards the front of the Villa, searching for some sign of his return, her heart racing. She wanted Jon to come back, Dany acknowledged; she felt vulnerable without him, afraid of her own feelings and what they might mean, alienated from her past and apprehensive about the future.
It might be the baby who was responsible for her see-sawing emotions, she tried to reassure herself; it had to be...... and for her physical desire?