The Duke's Unusual Proposal

Chapter 9

        Simon left a sleeping Regina in the morning bathing and dressing he went downstairs in search of Annabel and Sophia. He found them both in the breakfast room and upon seeing they were the only ones there closed the dinning room door and asked Connors to keep everyone out until he said otherwise.

        Annabel looked toward Sophia wondering what Simon was about as he took a seat across from them.

        "Last night Regina had another one of her nightmares and this time she said something in her sleep but upon awakening she could not remember anything other than seeing bright flashes of light," he told them and watched as they looked toward one another but didn't say a word him. "Did John Davenport not want the baby they were going to have?"

        Annabel looked at her aunt once again and Sophia nodded to her. "Go ahead and tell him," Sophia said when Annabel hesitated. "But what she tells you Simon you are not to repeat to Regina or anyone. I want your word on it before she does."

        "You have it."

        "Four days before they were to return to Texas by train with my parents I came downstairs in search of Reggie. Out parents and Aunt Sophia were out of the house for the evening and it was only John, Reggie and myself in the house. I guess they thought I was upstairs already in bed," she said and stopped to take a deep breath.

        "I head loud voices coming from the library and I walked in that direction but I stopped when I was near enough to hear what was being said. John was telling Reggie, no yelling at her that he didn't want the baby. He told her he never wanted children. They were in his words an inconvenience that would change his lifestyle and he didn't want that." Tears ran down Annabel's check as she remember that night. Sophia got up from her seat at the table and put her arms around Annabel's shoulders.

        "I could see my sister through a crack in the door and she was white as a sheet and crying. I'd never seen her like that before or since. I never realized what kind of person John was  before but once I thought back over the years they were married I became aware that everything had centered around him, what he wanted. He soon stormed out of the room but I was by then up against a wall and he never saw me. Once he left I heard Reggie sobbing and she seemed to have a hard time catching her breath. I wanted to go in to the room and help her but I knew she would be devastated if she knew anyone had overheard them so I quietly left her once I knew she had her breath back and was sitting in a chair staring straight ahead thinking. Reggie remembers nothing of this except in those awful nightmares she has."

        As Simon listened to Annabel tell her story his anger grew at John Davenport and how he'd treated Regina before the accident. He wished the man were still alive to beat him to within an inch of his life yet then again he was glad the man was dead because Regina was now his to look after and take care of.

        She was his....

        "I didn't tell my parents and I should have," Annabel finished with more tears streaming down her cheeks. She was just a young girl of seventeen at the time, Simon thought, about how upset she must have been and in just a few short days she lost her parents and almost her sister.

        "The doctor's informed us that Regina might never regain that memory," Sophia said. "Do you have any idea how hard it has been for us not to tell her what she cannot remember? What she'd found out about her husband only days before he died? That she was married to a man not worthy of her. A man she has kept on that damn pedestal because she cannot remember what a bastard he truly was!"

        "Are you the only two that know of this?" Simon asked them.

        'Now it would seem it is three," Sophia replied. "When she has the nightmares she doesn't always talk but I know it's about that night because of her not being able to catch her breath when she awakens. What were you doing in her room last night that you heard her?"