Best Man to wed

Chapter Nine

"When I look at you, I'm not sure Robb and I made the right decision in opting not to start our family for a few years," Margaery commented enviously to Dany as they shopped together one Saturday afternoon, reiterating the sentiment she'd expressed on the day of Dany and Jon's wedding.
She stopped to draw Dany's attention to the window of a small, exclusive baby wear botique before continuing hesitantly, "it's different for you and Jon, I know. For one thing Jon is so much more....so much more ready to be a father than Robb. You can tell how pleased he is about the baby."
"Yes," Dany agreed quietly.
And it was true. There was no doubt that Jon wanted and already loved this child, but he certainly didn't feel the same way about it's mother.  Ever since that time in Kingslanding when she had begged him to make love to her, he had held her at a distance, becoming so remote from her, that now, six weeks later, it was virtually impossible for Dany to imagine that they had ever been lovers; but these were things she couldn't say to Margaery, who believed that they were deeply in love, or to anyone else.
The reality of her marriage was a secret she had to keep from everyone, the reality of her feelings for Jon a secret she had to keep from him....a secret dge had to keep from him ever since they had last been together, last made love!
She could still remembered how it had felt to wake up in the morning with Jon beside her, to experience that extraordinary, purifying rush of love and self-knowledge, to reach out to touch him with it shining in her eyes and then to have him wake up and turn away from her, rebuff her, reject her.
And she had thought back to the evening  before and had been filled with mortification at the way she had behaved, the things she had done, the things she had said, and even more painful to endure, the way she had felt.
She suspected now that she must have known the truth then, even though she had refused to acknowledge it. Certainly now when she looked back there seemed to be no other reason for what she had done, but in mitigation she had to admit that it would have been hard for the girl she had been.....the girl who had stubbornly and publicly insisted that she could only love one man and that man was Robb.....to confess that she had been wrong and that everyone else had been received right, that she had confused infactuation with love and that when she had finally discovered the difference it had been too late to turn back the clock.
If only she could. The pain if her infactuation for Robb was nothing when compared to the agony of her heart and soul that she was enduring now, knowing that she loved Jon and knowing equally well that he did not love her.
She knew quite well why Jon had suddenly decided that he needed to spend so much more time away, take so many overnight business trips, and it had nothing to do with the fact, as everyone else seemed to suppose, that he wanted to clear some time to be with her and their baby, to be with her for his or her birth and in the weeks afterwards.
She supposed that it was another indication that she had finally, if somewhat belatedly, joined the real adult world that she had not even tried to question Jon about his actions, about his withdrawal and his silence; that she had simply bowed her head and accepted the fact that he did not love her.
She was too aware now to attempt to deceive herself into believing that he might somehow, implausibly, fall in love with her as she had done with Robb. He wouldn't. And Knowing that she loved him, knowing just why her body ached so much with wanting him, had also made it impossible for her to try to reach out to him physically through sex. It would be like drinking contaminated water.... initially thirst quenching but also potentially harmful, destructive, carrying with it the power to destroy her.
Having sex with Jon might temporarily ease the physical ache within her body, but it wouldn't satisfy her emotional need for him, and could, Infact, only underline it. And so she had rigidly enforced a strict control over herself, keeping as much physical distance between her and Jon as she could, in public as well as in private. And only on the nights when he wasn't there did she allow herself the luxury of tears, of crying herself to sleep. But then there were plenty of those.
She wondered tiredly what excuse he would make for being away so much once the baby was born. No doubt he would think of something and she would smile and concentrate her love on their baby, knowing that for as long as their marriage lasted he or she would be her only outlet for it.
Jon was due to go away again this evening and she had deliberately delayed returning from her shopping trip with Margaery so that he would have left before she got home.
Automatically she found herself driving more slowly as she approached the house, dreading seeing his car. Thankfully bit wasn't there. Relieved, Dany parked her own car and hurried into the house. Despite the fact that she hadn't wanted him to be there, the house felt achingly empty without him, like her heart.... like her life.
She had just finished making herself a cup of tea when she heard the doorbell ring.  Frowning, she went to answer it, and was surprised to see Robb standing outside.
"Come in," she invited. "Jon isn't here but...."
"It's you I've come to see," he told her looking slightly akward.
Dany frowned again. Since her marriage ti Jon she and Robb had not really been alone together. She winced, remembering how, on her return from the honeymoon, she had not even noticed that Robb was away from the office until Jon had commented on the fact.
"It's.... it's about Margaery," Robb told her, after he had followed her into the kitchen and she had poured him a cup of tea.
"Margaery?" Dany inquired.
"Yes...Yes it's this baby thing. She's got it into her head that she wants a baby,"he blurted out. "She knew when we got married that....I'm not like Jon. Ofcourse I want a family....but not yet......I want to have Margaery to myself for a while but she won't listen to me."
"Oh Robb, I'm so sorry," Dany sympathised. "But it's Margaery the one you should really be talking too about this," she advised him gently. "Not me."
"Yes, I suppose your right," Robb agreed ruefully, adding warmly, "it's good to see you and Jon so happy together, Dany...... you've always been special to me," he added in a muffled voice, leaning forward to give her a fierce hug, that took her breath away as well as her balance.
Neither of them had heard the door open or Jon come in until he rasped,"What the hell's going on here?"
It was Robb who answered him, apparently oblivious to his fury and Dany's anxiety as he responded cheerfully, "Sorry Jon, I just came around to have a chat with Dany. I shant forget what you said," he told her before glancing at his watch and announcing, "I'd better get back; Margaery will be wondering where I am."
Dany trembled as she saw the way Jon watched her as Robb closed the door and left.
"And what exactly was it that you said, that he won't forget?" he demanded menacingly. *Or can I guess? Were you telling him how much you still love him, Dany? How much you still wat him?"
"No!" Dany cried out in shocked protest. "No Jon, you've got it all wrong. It wasn't anything like that... Robb...."
"Don't lie to me, Dany," Jon interupted her harshly. "There isn't any point. We both know how you feel about Robb. How did you get him to come here? What did you tell him? That you wished he'd been the one you married, that he was the one you wanted when you lay in my arms....is that what you told him?"
"No," Dany denied, alarmed by the violence in his voice. "No, ofcourse not Jon. You've...."
"No! What did you tell him? Did you tell him, perhaps, about the way you begged me to make love to you.... about the way you pleaded with me to satisfy you?"
Dany stared at him in shock. She had never seen him so angry,so out of control.
"My god, you couldn't wait long enough to make sure I was safely out of the way before you got him here, could you?" he demanded. "How long has it been going on, Dany? How often has he been coming around when I'm not here?"
Suddenly Dany had had enough, her shock giving way to pain as she retaliated bitterly, "Why should you care? You're never here and....."
"And Robb, ofcourse is. What did you do to get him here.... pretend you needed a friend's shoulder to cry on? What exactly are you hoping for Dany? You know he doesn't want you."
"Yes, I do," she agreed starkly, her eyes registered her anguish as she mentally added, And much more importantly, neither do you.
"Robb came here to talk to me about Margaery," she told Jon quietly, her anger subsiding under the weight of her pain. "He's concerned because she wants to start a family when they'd agreed that they'd wait for awhile."
"A family.....is that when you told him that she's not the only one to want his child....? Is that why he told you that you were very special to him?"
Dany couldn't conceal her small flush as he repeated the words Robb had said to her.
"Robb just came here for advice.....as a friend," she told him shakily.
"A friend! Is that why you were in his arms?" Jon asked sarcastically.
"Jon, where are you going?" Dany protested as he pushed past her into the hall.
"To get what I came back for," he told her grimly. "Knowing how much you dislike coming home to find me here, I left in too much of a hurry and forgot some papers I need and so I had to come back for them."
Dany heard the door slam, as he went into the small room he used as a study. She was still standing in the kitchen when he walked back in.
"Jon, we need to talk," she told him bravely. "We can't go on like this?"
"So what do you suggest we do? Get a divorce?"he demanded savagely. "Get out of my way Dany," he told her angrily. "before I do something we'll both regret."He paused in the doorway to turn around and tell her brutally, "And I warn you now, if you ever find a way of persuading my brother to fulfill those adolescent fantasies of yours, I promise I'll make the pair of you sorry you were even born. You don't really love him Dany; you don't even know what real love is."
No I don't love him, Dany agreed silently, listening to the engine of his car fire as he started it, the tears pouring down her face. I love you.
And, as for real love, she knew what it was to feel it but certainly didn't know what it was like to receive it. "What do you suggest we do?" Jon had challenged her. "Get a divorce?" Did that mean he was regretting their marriage, that he wanted to bring it to an end?
Unable to endure the loneliness of her own home, Dany spent the rest of the weekend with her parents, explaining away her pale face and preoccupied manner by admitting wanly that she was missing Jon, which was, after all, the truth.....or atleast part of it.
On Monday morning, although she had a splitting headache, brought in, she suspected, by having spent half the night crying into her pillow, she insisted on going into work despite her mother's suggestion that she stay at home, but by mid-morning the pain in her head had become so intense that she finally gave in and told Robb that she intended on going home.
"You can't drive," Robb told her after one look at her too pale face. "I'll take you. When is Jon due home?"
Dany turned away, unwilling to admit that she didn't know. She could have found out eaisly enough; she assumed by asking his secretary, but her pride wouldn't allow her to betray how little she knew about her husband's whereabouts.
Robb had pulled out onto the main road when it happened. He had to stop to avoid a cyclist and the driver of the car behind them didn't realise what had happened in time and ran into the back of them.
Dany felt the impact jerk her forward in her seat against the restraints of her seat belt, automatically crying out both against the sharp, searing agony and in fear of her baby, the pain catapulting her into a pit of smothering darkness as she slid into a deep faint.
The first thing dge heard when she came around was the sound of an ambulance, although she didn't realise then that it was coming for her.
"Don't move Dany," Robb urged her anxiously as she tried to struggle against the restraining belt.
At some point he must have got out of the car, Dany recognised, because now he was standing beside the open passenger door, whilst another man, a stranger, peered in at her and blustered defensively, "It was only s little bit of a knock...... can't have done that much damage."
"She's pregnant," she heard Robb hiss angrily back. "My god man, why the hell couldn't you have watched what you were doing?"
"Damn cyclist," the man grumbled. "It was all his fault."
"I doubt that the police would see it that way," Robb warned him grimly.
Dany wished they would both go away and stop arguing. The sound of their voices was making her head hurt and she dared not evey think about what that agonisingly sharp pain she could feel in her body might portend.
"Jon..... Jon.... where are you?"
She didn't even know she had said the words out loud until the driver of the other car asked, "Who's this Jon?"
"Her husband," Robb told him sharply. "And I wouldn't want to be in your shoes when he finds out what's happened."
Dany was shaking with shock by the time the police car and the ambulance finally arrived.
"Sorry love," the ambulance man apologized as he gently helped Dany from the car, refusing to let her walk, insisting she get onto the stretcher Instead. "It's these roadworks see, we couldn't get through them."
"What happened exactly?" Dany heard him ask Robb, and she could see the way he frowned when the policeman muttered something to him about the car having been pushed along the road for quite some distance.
However there was only calm reassurance in his eyes as he turned back to Dany and told her gently, "Let's get you where they can take a proper look at you love."
"I'll come with you," Robb began, but Dany shook her head.
"No..... there's no need; I don't want you," she told Robb huskily. "I want Jon....." Her eyes filled with tears she couldn't control, her whole body shaking with them.
Nevermind me; what about my baby? She wanted to scream as the ambulance man asked her if she was in pain anywhere. The sharp pain she had felt before had subsided, but the baby was ominously still and Dany, who had felt exasperated some nights when she had been kept awake by it's kicking, prayed desperately now for it to move.
The drive to the hospital seemed to take forever and Dany saw the concerned look the two ambulance men exchanged when she was sick twice on the way there. The nurse who admitted her was kind as well as efficient, promising to get in touch with Dany's parents and assuring her at the same time that babies were tougher than one thought.
"Let's get you sorted out first," she told Dany adding, "that's a nasty bump you've got in your forehead.....does it hurt?"
Dany who hadn't even realised until then that she had bumped her head, touched her temple and winced as her fingers came away sticky with blood.
By the time her mother and father arrived she was tucked up in bed.
"Oh darling! How do you feel?" her mother asked her anxiously as she rushed to her side.
"I'm alright," Dany assured her," it's the baby." She saw the look her parents exchanged and her anxiety increased.
"They keep telling me not to worry.....that it's best to rest....but I haven't felt her kick for ages and I had thus awful pain. I want Jon," she told her mother bleakly.
"Robb is doing his best to find him darling," her mother tried to reassure her. "He'd left the people he was visiting before Robb could get in touch with him and we can't get through to him on his mobile phone."
"He won't use it in the car," Dany told her fretfully. "He says it's too dangerous."
The afternoon passed in a haze of examinations and hushed conversations out of her earshot which left her feeling increasingly anxious. The baby still hadn't moved and she was growing afraid that something might have happened to it. To her....to Jon's child... Jon's daughter.
Fresh tears rolled down her face. Her parents had volunteered to stay with her but she had sent them home. It was Jon she wanted. Only Jon.
She closed her eyes whispering his name, her hands folded protectively across her belly. If only she had been holding her belly like that earlier, it might not have been hurt, she thought miserably.
She tensed as the door of her room opened, but it wasn't Jon who came in.
"Robb," she said weakly in disappointment subsiding back against her pillows. "Where's Jon? Have you been able to contact him?"
"Not yet." He tried to smile, bit Dany could see how anxious he was. "Don't worry."
He tried to comfort her, taking hold of her hand and patting it, but, weak from shock and fear, Dany snatched it back, telling him crossly, "don't.... don't....it isn't you I want....it's Jon..." As she started to cry, she was distinctly aware of Robb ringing the bell for the nurse and her suddenly appearing and the two of them taking in lowered voices. She strained to hear what they were saying.
"She wants her husband," the nurse told Robb. "She's in a very unstable condition, and we're rather concerned about the foetal heartbeat...."
"We're doing our best to find him," she heard Robb respond. "He should have been back by now. God knows where the hell he is," he added feelingly.
Dany closed her eyes. Jon had gone; he didn't care about what happened to her. If anything would happen to their baby, he wouldn't even know and she would have lost them both. Without them, what was the point of her going on? She could hardly swallow past the huge lump of misery blocking her throat.
"They want me to go now," she heard Robb telling her akwardly as he responded to the nurses brief nod and stood up.
Dany didn't care if he stayed or went. Without Jon she was alone anyway, would always be alone.
At some point she must have drifted off to sleep. She knew that the nurse had administered some kind of sedative...."to rest the baby"she told Dany firmly, when she tried to object.
Now as she opened her eyes, she realised that the headache and sickness that she had felt earlier had gone but her body felt stiff and sore and the graze on her temple throbbed painfully.
The room was in darkness, but as she turned her head she realised that Robb was there, standing just inside the door, and that his arrival was the reason why she had woken up.
"Dany...." Robb began, but Dany turned her head away from her him.
"Go away Robb," she told him quietly.
As she heard the doot close behind him, she let out a small sob.
"Jon! Jon, where are you," she whispered under her breath.
"Yes, Dany, I'm here."
The shock of hearing his voice made her stiffen and then turn her head so quickly that she winced in sudden pain.
"Jon!" She repeated in disbelief, her eyes fastening hungrily on his shadowy outline in the darkness, as though she was afraid to believe that he was actually there. "When?....How?....." She began trembling as he sat down next to her.
"Robb had left a message for me at home,"he told her sombrely, then emotion broke through the controlled tautness of his voice as he exploded, "My god Dany....How.....?"
"It wasn't Robb's fault," she told him quickly. "It was an accident; he...." She started to shake violently, her fingers picking anxiously at the coverlet until Jon reached out and took hold of her.
"You're cold," he said, but Dany shook her head, dismissing her own injuries as she told him quickly, "Jon, it's our baby....I can't feel her kicking anymore. They keep telling me not to worry and that she's alright.....but how can she be alright when she's so still,? Oh Jon, I'm so afraid for her," she whispered helplessly. "She's so small, so vulnerable and I love her so much."
"Robb said that you told him to go away, that you only wanted me. Is that true?" Jon asked her huskily.
"Yes," Dany admitted and raised her head off the pillow to ask him uncertainly, "where were you?"
"On my way to Kingslanding....to the villa."
"What? Why?"
"You are not the only one to indulge in pointless fantasies, you know,"Jon told her obliquely. "The only difference between us is that I've had a hell lot of more experience doing it."
"Fantasies? What fantasise?" Dany demanded uncertainly.
"Oh the usual kind," Jon told her gravely. "That the woman I love, loves me back, that she wants me, that in the darkness of the night, in the privacy of our shared bed, she turns to me and tells me that she aches for me to touch her, to love her and to go on, loving her forever."
As she listened to him, Dany's body began to stiffen in anguished shock
"Who us she?.......This woman....?" She asked shakily. Jon was in love with someone else. Why had she never guessed.... realised...? " Do I know her?"
"Yes, you know her," Jon admitted, but he wasn't looking at her any longer, Dany recognised. He was looking at her body instead.
"The baby!" She suddenly gasped in delight. "She's moving.....Oh Jon! She moving... she's alright.... she's....."Even now Dany couldn't bring herself to say the word 'alive' and to admit by saying it just what she had been dreading. "Oh Jon!" As she clutched his hand, happy tears poured down her face.
"Why did you want me with you and not Robb, Dany?" Jon asked her as he reached down his hand and covered the small bulge.
"You're.... you're my husband," Dany told him, unable to bring herself to look properly at him. "My baby's.....our baby's father and....."
"And?" Jon prompted.
He wasn't looking at her. He was still looking at her stomach, which was why perhaps she suddenly found the courage to tell him.
"And because I love you," Dany admitted quietly. "But I know that isn't what you want," added hastily. "I'm not an adolescent any more,Jon. I do know what truly loving someone means. If u want me to.....to set you free so that you can go to her......to the woman you love.....then I'll...." She said bravely, then stopped to bite down in her bottom lip as her emotion threatened to overwhelm her.
"Go to her? I'm already with her, " Jon told her softly.
"Already with her?" Dany's heart started to thump heavily as she looked indignantly from the closed doors to his face.  "You've brought her here....now...?"
"Oh, Dany!" Suddenly unbearable he was actually laughing at her.... laughing as he stood up and leaned over the bed, gathering her up in his arms to hold her close and touch her tenderly.
"You're the one I love. The one I've always loved. Are you really so blind that you never knew it?"
"You love me....? But you can't...." She protested. "You've always been so angry with me, so I....."
"Because that was the only way I had of defending myself from the pain of knowing that you only had eyes for Robb. I feel in love with you about the same time you feel in love with him."
"But If you love me, why....." Dany stopped, her face suddenly crimsoning.
"Why what?" Jon pressed.
"Why did you act the way you did, after..... after....? Why did you behave so coldly to me after we made love?" she asked him huskily."You must have known how much I wanted you." Her colour deepened. "I thought you were.....I thought you didn't want me anymore, that I'd disgusted you...."
"Disgusted me?" Jon interrupted her. "Oh Dany, if only you knew what it did to me when you told me that you wanted me. You'll never know how close I came that night to telling you how I felt, but I couldn't get out of my mind the way you'd told me that you wanted me to be Robb.... that you'd believed that first time that I was Robb."
"I stopped being intimate with you because I had no choice. I knew that it was only a matter of time before my control broke and I told you how I felt and I couldn't lay that burden on you. Nit after everything else I'd done."
"Everything else....? What else....?" Dany demanded.
"Making love to you when I knew you couldn't really want me..... when I knew you were still a virgin and unlikely to be using any form of birth control....and, having done so once, being unable to resist repeating the offence and knowing when I did how it increased the chances of you getting pregnant."
"I think I knew I had,"Dany told him in awe, before admitting half-shyly. "There was something, a feeling....a sort of knowing.
"I didn't set out to force you into a position where you'd have to marry me," Jon told her, "bit once I knew the possibility was there, there was no way I was not going to use it. I told myself it was me who made love to you, me your body wanted, even if your heart remained locked against me, and somehow I'd find away of making you see that you couldn't possibly want me so much physically without there being some possibility that you might come to love me."
"I probably already loved you, even before.... before we made love,"Dany told him hesitantly. "When I was young... before.... you were always...it was you I loved best then," she told him softly, "but somehow when I start to grow up...."
"Everyone goes through teenage crushes," Jon told her gently.
"I can't understand how I ever thought that what I felt for Robb was really love," Dany said. "When I look back now....."
She stopped talking when Jon bent his head and kissed her.
"Jon.... Jon...." She demanded shaking his arm, as she broke the kiss.
"What is it?"
"I want to go home," she told him unsteadily. "Please make them let me go home.... with you...."
"Are you sure?" Jon asked her quietly, searching her face and then cupping it in his hands to kiss her ..... holding her as he simply couldn't bear to let her go, Dany recognised with a sense of wonder.
Now that she knew the truth it had amazed her that she had not seen it for herself. The love she had thought could never be hers was there, displayed in his every touch, his every look. It wasn't just with words that love was communicated, Dany knew with sudden wisdom.
Looking back she could see that perhaps it way no wonder that she had responded physically to Jon the way she had that first time they had made love; her body had recognised the truth that her mind had been too stubborn and perhaps a little too immature to want to see. There was no use in even trying to compare what she felt for Jon with the feelings she had had for Robb.
Robb!
She gave Jon a rueful look.
"I was horrid to poor Robb," she told him solemnly.
"Good," Jon replied unsympathetically, and then relented to smile lovingly at her
"Do you think things will be right with him and Margaery," Dany asked anxiously. "now that she's decided she wants a baby?"
"Robb and Margaery love one another, there's no doubt about that. They'll find a way of working things out."
"I'm so happy you're here," Dany whispered as he bent his head to kiss her again. "And so," she added, *is your daughter. Oh Jon....."she clung to him, trembling slightly, "if anything had happened...."
"Don't....." He begged her. "If anything happened to you, I don't think I could bear to go on living."
The nurse clicked her tongue reprovingly when she came into the room and found ger patient wrapped in her husband's arms.
"I want to go home," Dany told her.
"Well, I don't know about that," she told her disapprovingly. "You're supposed to be resting."
The doctor however, when summoned by Jon, took a more benign view. There was no reason why Dany shouldn't go home, just so long as she took things easy for a few days, he declared.
"Don't worry....she will," Jon assured him, adding in an undertone to Dany, his face mock severe, "Even if I have to stay in bed with her to make her do so...."
"No more business trips away from home?" Dany questioned Jon some twenty minutes later as he gently helped her into his car.
"None," he assured her firmly. "From now on, Robb can handle those."
"Poor Margaery," Dany protested.
"Well, perhaps not all of them," Jon allowed. "But the only way I shall be working away from home in future is if my Wife comes with me."
"There's one condition," Dany told him mockingly.
"And that is?" Jon demanded, his eyebrows lifting in return of his old hauteur.
"That the head of the company and his translator get to share a double room, and a double bed," Dany purred. "All in the name of financial economy, of course."
"Ofcourse," Jon agreed, and added in a husky voice as he saw the way Dany was looking at him, "You're supposed to be resting.... remember?"