Page 130 of Modern Romance June 2025 1-4

An observation about myself that does not thrill me.

But I am not getting any less pregnant, and it will soon be impossible to pretend it’s just random weight I’ve gained, so in the second week of November I invent a job in Spain, leave the firm in Tess’s capable hands, and go.

I land in Seville, hole up in a lovely hotel that feels like a private hacienda, and dedicate myself to working out how, exactly, I’m going to get to the Marquess himself.

If it could be as easy as showing up on his doorstep, I would—but all my research tells me that the Marquess lives on a grand, old estate in the rolling hills of Andalucia that comes complete with a name and its own history.

The gates to keep the unwanted and uninvited out are implied.

And also visible when I look it up online.

I’ve been to Spain before. I had a client based in Madrid, and another in Bilbao. But I have never been to this particular part of Spain with its whitewashed houses and dreamy hills. A few days after arriving in Seville, and adjusting to the new time zone, I drive myself out into the countryside in my rental car.

Because I determined that the de Luz estate is open to the public at certain times each month. And lucky me, I make it over to Spain just in time for one of the house’s open weekends.

I’ve spent my few days in my lovely, airy hotel room fuming.

Mostly at myself. It’s true that I was a virgin that night. But I was not a young virgin straight out of the schoolroom, some trembling little fawn being taken down by the big, bad wolf.

Quite the contrary. I might have deliberately chosen not to get that close to another person over the years, but in the meantime, I didn’t exactly live a sheltered life.

I know perfectly well that I should have used birth control. I should have discussed it, at the very least. Then insisted upon it.

I can’t forgive myself for forgetting. For somehow being so swept away in the magic of that night and that man that I…became someone else. Someone reckless and irresponsible, when I’ve never had the luxury to be either.

But the funny thing is, no matter how annoyed I am with my own failures, now that I know I’m pregnant it’s as if my stomach is settling into the truth of it.

And so do I.

Because I find myself rubbing my belly, but not because it feels weird any longer. These days I’m talking to the baby that’s growing inside.

“Just you wait,” I whisper. “We’re going to have a great life, you and me.”

Because as I drive myself along the winding roads that lead the way to the bit of countryside where the man I know and yet don’t know at all lives—in and out of picturesque whitewashed villages clinging to hillsides, through olive tree alleys, through vineyards, past bell towers and haciendas,cortijosand fields, all the way to a set of huge, imposing gates that look as if they’ve stoodjust sosince medieval times—I know one thing with deep certainty.

I will not be weak. I will not be my father. I will always protect this child, no matter what happens. If that means from my baby’s own father, then so be it.

But before I give birth and all the days after, I will make certain that my baby knows that it is loved.

These are the things that sustain me across the ocean, through my handful of days in Seville, and out into the lands known as a part of the Patrias estate.

But none of this, I remind myself as I drive, excuseshim.

Heshould have been more concerned about protection against exactly this result, given that he is the one with these apparently vast lands and a title already in question.

At the very least, he should not have disappeared the way he did—without a trace, if I’d been someone else—knowing perfectly well that no steps were taken to ensure thisdidn’thappen.

Not, I can acknowledge, that I was in any fit state to negotiate such things myself.

The massive gates are open today, which does not make them any less imposing. I drive through them at the requested slow pace and I don’t really want to admit that everything inside of me is jittery and strange and something like…

But I don’t want to think that word. I’m notexcited. This is a business call, nothing more.

Because I’ve done a lot of furious thinking on the way here. And I’ve had three days to sit in a hotel room, asking myself what I really want from this. From him.

It’s not apologies, not really. I can already sense how insulted I might be if he attempts to apologize for this child within me.

What I do want, and will insist upon, is that we come to some agreement about how this child will never want for a thing. Not one thing, ever. No matter what happens to me. So that if my business disappears tomorrow, the child will be just fine.

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