“How many?”
“Four or five.” Placing her shoes beside her, she stared out at the ocean, the waning sunlight creating a beautiful halo around her.
“You’d make a great mother.”
At first, she didn’t say anything. When she did, her voice wavered. “That’s what my grandmother always told me.”
“What do you say?”
She blinked several times. Wait a minute. Was she crying?
“Are you okay?” I asked, trying to pull her closer.
“I’m fine. There’s one little problem. I can’t have children.”
With so few things in life shocking me and this one stunning me into silence, feeling both clueless what to say to her and inept was something I wasn’t used to. “How do you know?”
“Because I went to a doctor a couple weeks ago. I was having some cramps and some spotty bleeding issues. So she ran a few tests. I got the results back the other day.” She sniffed and looked away. “I’m not a real woman.”
She tried to stand, but I refused to allow her, pulling her close. “Ah, Emmeline. You are without a doubt more of a woman than anyone I’ve been with. You can’t measure your worth by whether you can physically have children or not.”
“Yeah, well. Some men would think so, but hey, if Alexander is really interested in selling me off to form the most powerful alliance in the world, then maybe since I can’t have children, the deal will fall through.”
“What are you talking about? Alexander would never even consider an arranged marriage.”
“Are you certain about that?”
“Absolutely.” But in truth, I wasn’t one hundred percent. I couldn’t imagine he’d stoop to something so low, yet his father had considered the arrangement, albeit briefly.
She pulled away so she could look me in the eyes. “I know people have been following me long before the recent incidents.Alexander is picky so maybe one of them decided to move forward on the deal themselves.”
“No, he won’t do that. I know how much your entire family cares about you.”
“Why don’t you ask him?”
“I plan on it.” She was still hesitant around me, as if I was more of a company man than anything else. “The news you received is why you really left town. Isn’t it?”
She rested her head on her bent knees. “Fifty-fifty. I needed space and time to process, which might sound like a copout, but the news was nothing I expected. With my family, you get neither easily if at all. I shouldn’t have left without thinking everything through, but I wasn’t ready to talk to anyone.”
Why in the world she thought she was going to be married off was a situation I couldn’t process. Under no circumstances could I even imagine that Alexander would think of destroying her life.
Unless he believed he had no other choice. Even then he’d have a plan on the backside.
While I couldn’t know the truth, whatever was said to Emmeline had frightened her.
And I didn’t like it one bit.
In fact, if I discovered there was any truth to the plan, I’d take matters into my own hands, preventing him from taking action or making promises that weren’t his to provide.
What lengths would I go to keep him from disrupting her life?
A thought entered my mind, one that could work but would need to be believed.
Marrying the beautiful woman myself.
CHAPTER 22
Emmeline
