The Secret Daughter by Catherine Spencer

Author:Catherine Spencer
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780263160529
Publisher: Mills & Boon
Published: 1998-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

He was leaning on the parapet of the little humpbacked bridge, watching the waterwheel’s slow turning, when she came out of the restaurant.

“Why don’t we walk a bit?” he asked, when she joined him. “There’s a path beside the river, and it’s still early. Or do you have to get back home?”

“No, Joe,” she said mockingly. “I can come and go as I please. And I’d like to walk.”

He took her arm and steered her down a rickety flight of brick-lined steps to where low-wattage lamps strung on an overhead wire marked the path. “You mentioned being in Thailand,” he said. “What was it about the country that had such an effect on you?”

“I worked in an orphanage near the Laotian border. There were so many children, some so sick they were just waiting to die. It broke my heart to see them, especially the babies. There was one in particular, a little girl four months old, but she was so tiny she might have been a newborn. Maybe that was what made her so special to me. I loved taking care of her, loved the way she’d burrow into my neck when I held her.” One day,

She swallowed, once again fighting tears. “One day, she began to run a fever. By evening, she had trouble breathing. There was an old rattan rocking chair in the nursery. I sat there with her the whole night, watching her sleep and listening to the wheezing of her poor, congested little lungs.”

He heard the break in her voice and took her hand. It didn’t matter that he said not a word. His touch was comfort enough, and gave her the strength to finish what she’d started.

“Some time after midnight, I fell asleep. When I woke up, she was dead in my arms.” She stopped, dazed at the depth of her pain. She had not expected to find it easy to tell him, but neither had she known it would this hard. “You might find it difficult to believe, Joe, but I think that was when I finally faced up to our baby’s death. I mourned that little orphan as if she’d been my own. Even now, it’s her face I see whenever I think about our daughter. Not long after that, I came back to Canada and took up work that had nothing to do with children so I wouldn’t be faced every day with reminders of what I’d lost.”

“Damn your mother!” he said, with sudden vehemence. “And damn everyone in that hospital who conspired with her to shut you out of—”

“It wasn’t their fault,” she said. “They meant well. And I went along with them.”

“And because of them, you still haven’t put your baby to rest, Imogen,” he said, his voice a murmur. “You need to do that.”

Perhaps he was right, but she was afraid of the poignant memories such action might stir up, afraid she might fall back into the dark pit of despair that had been the legacy of her night of love with him.

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