‘You want me to convince you?’ Marco teased her suggestively, his hand cupping her breast.
‘Maybe,’ she agreed mock-demurely.
His, ‘Right, come on then, let’s get dressed,’ wasn’t the response she had been expecting and her chagrin showed, making him laugh.
‘We’re going shopping,’ he told her. ‘For a wedding ring and a marriage licence.’
When her eyes rounded, he pointed out, ‘You said you wanted me to convince you. I can’t think of a better way to do that than marrying you, just as soon as we can arrange it.’
‘Oh, Marco. Shouldn’t we wait to make plans until after the scan?’
‘Why? The potential severity of our baby’s heart defect doesn’t make any difference to my feelings for you or for him. You suggested earlier that I might be ashamed of our baby for not being perfect. That could never happen. He will be perfect to me, Emily, because he is ours, perfect in every way, no matter what.’
‘Oh, don’t,’ Emily protested. ‘You’ll make me cry all over again.’
‘And then I’ll have to kiss you all over again,’ Marco said, pretending to give a weary sigh, but smiling whilst he did so.
‘Well, then, let’s have a look. It’s been a few weeks since we did your last scan, and that will have given your baby a chance to grow and us the chance to get a better idea of what’s going on. As I told you at your first consultation with me, these days, in-utero surgery means that we can do so very much more than we once could. Even with the most severe cases.’
Emily felt Marco squeezing her hand, but she dared not look at him just in case she broke down.
These last weeks since their initial appointment with the neo-natal heart consultant had seemed so long, despite the fact that they had managed to squeeze getting married into them, along with a flying visit to Niroli, where Marco’s grandfather had very graciously welcomed her formally into the family. Marco had also brought his grandfather up to date with his plans to establish the charity he had promised during his abdication speech.
New scans had been done, and now they were waiting anxiously for the specialist’s opinion.
‘However, in the case of your baby, I don’t consider that an operation would be appropriate.’
Emily gave a small moan of despair. Was he saying there was no hope? ‘What exactly is our baby’s prognosis?’ Marco’s voice wasn’t quite as level as normal, and Emily could hear the uncertainty in it.
‘Very good. Excellent, in fact,’ the specialist told them, smiling. ‘There is a small area that we shall need to keep an eye on, but if anything it seems to be healing itself—something we do see with this condition. Sometimes babies will grow in stops and starts, and this leads us to make diagnoses we later have to amend. That is what has happened here. Initially, it did look as though your baby’s heart might not be developing properly, but these latest scans show that everything is just as it should be.’
‘Are you sure?’ Emily asked anxiously. ‘I mean, should I have another scan in a week or two? What if—?’
‘I am perfectly sure. In fact, I was pretty sure when you first came to see me, but I wanted to wait and see how things went before I said anything, which is why I wanted to do this last scan. Of course, I am going to recommend that we continue to monitor the situation, just to be on the safe side, but my view is that there is nothing for you to worry about. Your baby is perfectly healthy and developing normally.’
Outside on the street, oblivious to the amused looks of passers-by, Marco held Emily close and tenderly kissed the tears from her face.
‘I can’t believe it,’ she whispered to him. ‘Oh, Marco. It’s like a miracle.’
‘You are my miracle, Emily,’ Marco told her softly. ‘You and our child, and the future we are going to share.’
‘How has the king taken things?’
‘Not as badly as we might have feared.’ The senior courtier was well versed in tact and diplomacy, and he had no intention of telling the junior aide anything about the extraordinary scene he had just witnessed in the Royal Chamber, when the king had stopped in mid-rant about the stupidity of his grandson and heir to stare at the report he had just been handed, about an Australian surgeon who was pioneering a new treatment for the heart condition from which the king himself suffered.
On the face of it, there had been nothing in the grainy photograph and short biography of the young Australian to cause such a reaction. But the senior courtier had been in service at the palace for a very long time and when the king had handed the report to him in an expectant silence he, too, had seen the same thing that the king had seen.
‘I want that young man brought here, and I want him brought here now,’ the king had instructed….
PENNY JORDAN
QUESTIONS & ANSWERS
Did you enjoy the experience of writing about Niroli?
I found the experience challenging and fascinating, it was a real learning curve for me-a new area to explore as a writer.
Would you like to visit Niroli?
To be honest I feel as though I already have visited the island-I can even smell its warm scented air whilst I’m writing about it.
Which of the ‘Rules of Niroli’ would you least like to abide by?
All of them-I hate rules!
How did you find writing as part of a continuity?
Like I said I hate rules, and I found it very challenging! One always wants to give the reader the best possible read, and I found my imagination got tangled up in the complexities of writing for a continuity. Having said that, I also felt it was good for me as a writer to meet the challenge it represented.
When you are writing, what is your typical day?
I start work at around 9.30 am and normally spend the morning reviewing and editing the previous day’s writing. I then write in the afternoon, and the evening. Writing is my life and absorbs 75% of my waking hours.
Where do you get your inspiration for the characters that you write?
I let the plot lines inspire me and work from there trying to build up a character or characters who will logically fit into the emotional conflict I want to create. For me no character ever exists simply in the here and now of the story-I have to know their whole emotional makeup and the events in the lives that have shaped them from childhood.
What, in your opinion, makes a great ‘Modern’ hero?
For me a hero has to be compelling both sexually and emotionally, he has to be proud and strong and even perhaps a little arrogant, but he also-vitally important to me-has to have some vulnerability. He has to have a human side which allows us to sympathise with him and to see that here in this man there is something genuinely lovable. He also has at some point to show a willingness to understand that his love for the heroine is such that he must overcome whatever inbuilt mind-sets he has that are coming between them. Like this writer, he has to grow in awareness and self knowledge so that he can be worthy of his heroine’s love for him.
Tell us about the project you’re working on at the moment.
I’m sorry but I am rather superstitious about discussing my future writing in detail! But I do hope to go on creating truly memorable heroes and stories for the readers for many years to come!