“What’s the matter?” she asked sharply. Charlotte was standing in the doorway, swaying slightly, her face dead white.

“The baby’s coming!” Sophie swung her feet over the edge of the bed, alarm shaking her to the bottom of her fingers.

“No.” Charlotte shook her head slowly from side to side. “No, no, no. He’s back.” She paused and collected herself again, her body visibly trembling.

“Who’s—oh,” Sophie said. She had wondered over the last month whether she should warn Charlotte of Alex’s possible reaction. But then she kept thinking that anxiety wasn’t good for pregnancy, and perhaps Alex wasn’t as rash and stupid as the majority of men she had met in her life. But obviously he was just the same as the others.

“He doesn’t think the baby is his,” Sophie said flatly.

Charlotte’s eyes flew to hers. “You knew!”

“I thought it was likely. Men are such unmitigated idiots.”

“He wants to take the unborn baby away … my baby and Pippa. He is going to take them away.” Charlotte was clutching her stomach, very close to hysteria.

Sophie cast a worried eye on her. Hysteria probably wasn’t any better for unborn babies than anxiety. She moved over and stood in front of Charlotte, her eyes commanding her friend’s attention. “Don’t get overwrought, Charlotte. It’s not good for the baby. We have to think.” Sophie pushed Charlotte into a sitting position on her bed.

“Where is he now?”

“I don’t know … I left him in the summer house.”

Sophie felt a perk of approval at that news. At least Charlotte had left him, rather than the other way around.

“Are you absolutely certain about what he plans to do, Charlotte? Perhaps he just spoke in the heat of anger.”

“He said he couldn’t have his children brought up by a whore, and if the baby was born in the near future he would take it with him to London.” Charlotte’s voice was deadly calm. “He also said that he had already told his solicitor to draw up a bill for divorce.” When she looked at Sophie her face was frozen, tearless eyes looking from a dead white face. “I can’t let him do it, Sophie. Do you think he can?”

“The law is likely on his side.” Sophie was thinking fast. What they really needed around here was Patrick, who had encountered them at the musicale and started all this mess. If anyone could convince Alex that Charlotte was innocent, it was Patrick. But where was he? Perhaps Alex knew.

Sophie looked back at Charlotte. She looked fractionally more like herself.