by India Grey
Hovering halfway between sleeping and waking, she found herself unable to think of anything other than Orlando’s hands.
She let her head fall against the high back of the chair and felt delicious warmth wash through her as she remembered him undressing her in the moonlight, his fingers moving over her quivering skin, brushing her face, closing over hers as she struggled with his tie…
Her eyes closed, and she was suddenly struck by a vivid image of him walking ahead of her through the gloom, his long fingers brushing the wall, almost as if…
Her head jerked upright, her eyes flying open.
Coming into the kitchen, Orlando walked straight over to the kettle, snatching his hand away as he touched its hot surface. He whirled round.
Rachel was curled up in the big Windsor chair at the head of the long kitchen table. He could see that her knees were tucked up, her head awkwardly resting to one side. He couldn’t tell if she was asleep or not, nor see any sign of the baby.
Swiftly he crossed the room, coming to stand over her. As he did so she raised her head, and although he couldn’t see her eyes, he could feel them burning into him.
‘You should be in bed,’ he said gruffly.
There was a small silence, in which he heard her soft, indrawn breath. ‘Yes,’ she said eventually, with barely controlled anger.
‘Yes, I should be in bed. I’d love to be in bed. But that particular luxury was reserved for you and Arabella.’
Orlando turned away and went back to the kettle. He hadn’t been to bed, but he didn’t tell her that. He’d been up all night, thinking, planning, and had waited until a decent hour this morning to phone an old friend from his RAF days, whose wife was a doctor in a general practice. She had confirmed that it sounded very much as if Arabella was suffering from post-natal depression, and that it would be best for everyone if he supported her decision to have a complete break from the baby.
But she, like everyone else, didn’t know of his own medical problems.
‘Where is he?’ he asked casually, as he switched on the kettle and reached for a mug.
‘Here,’ she said sardonically, as if she were stating the blindingly obvious.
Fair point, he thought grimly.
Out of the corner of his eye he watched her unfurl her long legs. The baby was nestled against her, and he understood now how she had curled herself around him, cradling him with her body as he slept. Her feet were bare, and she was wearing nothing but the ivory silk nightdress he had peeled off her so hungrily two nights ago.
He felt his heart thud uncomfortably in his chest as guilt, gratitude and a handful of other, far less noble emotions and impulses clashed inside him.
She was standing up now, and he could see the baby’s dark head against her creamy shoulder. She must be freezing.
‘Why didn’t you go back to bed? He’s asleep, isn’t he?’
She gave an incredulous gasp. ‘And do what, exactly, with your son? Where was I supposed to put him down? You asked me to look after him and I said I would—although believe me I wouldn’t have been so accommodating if I’d known it was going to be for half the bloody night! Stupidly, I thought you meant just until one of his parents could tear themselves away from their joyful reunion to come and take over!’
Her furious words exploded and died in the quiet kitchen.
Orlando gave her a cool smile.
‘Sorry. It was unreasonable to leave you with him for so long.’
‘Too right it was unreasonable! I know nothing about babies. I’ve never even picked one up before. I didn’t know what to do…’
‘He doesn’t seem to have any complaints.’ Orlando nodded curtly at Felix, whose small, starfish hand had come up and grasped a lock of Rachel’s hair. He turned away and busied himself with the coffee, to try and distract himself from the sudden surge of acid envy and resentment that rose in the back of his throat. History was repeating itself, he thought with sardonic self-mockery. Felix would be delighted to see his namesake cradled so tenderly in the slender arms of the girl Orlando craved. It seemed the old rivalry was set to run and run.
‘He’s lovely,’ said Rachel softly. ‘Which just makes your behaviour all the more despicable. And as for Arabella…’
‘She’s not well,’ Orlando said shortly.
‘Wh-what do you mean?’
‘Post-natal depression. She’s completely unfit to look after a child.’ Some sense of loyalty and protectiveness to the baby prevented him from adding that even if she hadn’t been ill Arabella felt the same way about babies as most people did about plague-carrying rats.
‘She’s in a bad way,’ he continued blandly. ‘The guy she was living with in London dumped her because he suspects the baby isn’t his.’
‘For crying out loud, he’d be mad not to,’ Rachel snapped. ‘Look at him, Orlando. Just look at him!’ Deftly she moved the baby from her shoulder to the crook of her arm, and crossed the kitchen towards him. ‘He’s yours—can’t you see that?’
Her voice was raw with contempt, and her words seemed to reach inside him and wrap around his heart, squeezing all the good, honourable, civilised feelings out of him.
‘No,’ he said very quietly. ‘No, I bloody can’t.’
There was a long silence. Neither of them moved. He could feel the blood thrumming through him, filling his head with a primitive, insistent pounding. What had he just said? What the hell had he just said?
He’d all but told her.
Great. Excellent idea. Tell her. Shock her into leaving or shame her into staying out of pity and guilt. Perfect.
He glanced dismissively down in the direction of the baby. ‘I don’t see the likeness at all, actually—I’m much taller than he is, for a start—but at the moment that’s hardly the point. The fact is, Arabella needs a break. She wants to go to Paris for a while—she’s booked herself into some private spa or something. Which means I’m left holding the baby.’
‘Huh!’ said Rachel scathingly. ‘Don’t you mean I am…?’
He looked down at her, fixing his eyes on where he thought hers would be, staring into the blackness in the centre of his vision and picturing the luminous amber eyes that had haunted him for weeks after he’d seen that poster. It took all his self-control to keep every trace of emotion out of his voice as he smiled grimly.
‘Funnily enough, I was just coming to that.’
CHAPTER TEN
THERE was no more snow in the week following the party. The garden, which had been so suddenly transformed into an enchanted wonderland on the night of Rachel’s arrival at Easton, slowly thawed back into damp, grey reality. Like her hopes.
It had been a terrible week, during which she must have asked herself a million times what the hell had made her agree to Orlando’s request that she stay on to look after Felix. After all, there were countless compelling reasons for saying no. The fact that she knew nothing about babies might have been a good one to start with.
Straightening up, and tossing another tangle of branches on the pile she had already hacked down, Rachel felt the ache in her shoulders. On the amount of sleep she’d had in the last five days it was perhaps stupid to be out here in the biting cold, making futile attempts to tame the walled garden, but it felt good to be doing something, and the growing mountain of cuttings combined with the ten metres or so of pathway she had cleared gave her a sense of achievement. It also beat staying inside the house, where the atmosphere was several degrees colder than out here in the freezing air.
She paused to survey what she had done so far. With the worst of the brambles and overgrown weeds stripped back, the bones of the formally laid out garden were beginning to emerge. Yesterday she had had the very great excitement of discovering an old stone seat in what had obviously once been some kind of rose arbour. Felix’s pram stood there now, and she wandered over and sank down gratefully beside it, looking in at him as she did so.
He was still asleep, thank goodness, his long black lashes sweeping over
his flushed cheeks, no doubt exhausted by yet another wakeful night.
He wasn’t the only one, she thought ruefully.
After five broken, sleep-deprived nights she was light-headed and spacy with fatigue, aching in every bone and muscle, and more ill-equipped than ever to deal with the constant demands of looking after a small baby. She felt as if she’d been abandoned in the middle of the Amazonian rainforest without a map or a compass. The fact that she wouldn’t have known how to read a map or use a compass was almost irrelevant; it was the abandonment that hurt.
Since Arabella’s departure, Orlando’s withdrawal from both her and the baby had been total.
Looking down into Felix’s sleeping face, Rachel felt a stab of anguish. In spite of everything—the torturous nights, the endless challenge of making up bottles and changing nappies—he was utterly adorable. Orlando’s relentless refusal to even acknowledge him was as incomprehensible as it was devastating.
She had been so utterly sure that he was better than that. In him she had thought she’d found a man who proved that Carlos’s shallowness and her father’s fecklessness weren’t common to all men. That heroes still existed.
Wrong.
Sadly she tucked the pashmina she had wrapped Felix in more snugly around him, wishing she could keep out the hurt of being unwanted as easily as she could keep out the cold. Impulsively she trailed a caressing finger down his plump rosy cheek, and instantly felt a thud of alarm.
It felt hot. She thought straight away of Lucinda, and the speed with which she’d succumbed to that awful virus. Flu could kill babies, couldn’t it? Did Felix have flu?
She took a step backwards, breathing out slowly and trying to quell her mounting panic. Of course he didn’t have flu, she rationalised. Lucinda had gone by the time Arabella had arrived; he hadn’t even been in contact with her. He felt hot to her because her hands were so cold.
Nevertheless she found herself turning the pram and beginning to hurry back towards the house. He’d slept for longer than usual that morning, but she’d put that down to the two hours he’d been awake in the early hours. She’d fallen into a weary routine at night, bringing him downstairs when he refused to be settled by a bottle, and propping him in his car seat while she played the piano. So far it had never failed to soothe him, and, equally importantly, she found it soothed her too, by giving her something familiar to hold onto. A reminder that she was actually good at something.
Last night she’d played for longer than usual; surely that was why he was sleepy this morning? He couldn’t be ill. He couldn’t be…
Reaching the back of the house, she hefted the pram over the scullery step and bent down over the sleeping baby. Apart from the hectic flush on his cheeks he seemed fine—his breathing was normal and he was deeply asleep. He’d be crying if he was ill, wouldn’t he?
Determinedly she kicked off her boots and walked into the kitchen. She was overreacting, she told herself sternly as she took a pizza out of the fridge and, pulling off its cellophane wrapping, slid it into the vast stainless steel oven for lunch. She was too tired to think straight, never mind make anything more sophisticated. After all, what was the point? Orlando hadn’t shown any interest in the things she had taken trouble over. She’d spent all afternoon making laboriously spaghetti Bolognese the other day, and he hadn’t even come out from his office to try it.
Wearily she shrugged off the old wax jacket she had pinched from the boot room and went to hang it back up, looking into the pram as she passed. Felix’s cheeks were positively glowing now. Rachel felt an icy jet of adrenaline pulse through her as she pressed the backs of her fingers against his skin.
Her hands were tingling as the warmth seeped back into them, and against them he felt burning hot. She gave him a gentle shake, hoping to see his eyelids flutter open, but they stayed firmly, ominously closed.
‘Oh, God,’ she whimpered, seizing him and picking him up, still swathed in the pashmina. Clutching him to her chest, she rushed back into the kitchen.
Please, Felix, please…
‘Orlando! Orlando!’
Startled out of sleep, Felix instantly began to scream, his face turning wine-dark with outrage. Rachel laid him on the table and with shaking hands began to undo the fiddly buttons on his pale blue coat. She needed to get him out of it so she could see him properly, but his back was arched, his small body rigid with fury as he cried.
‘Orlando!’
God, he really was hot, she thought in panic: his face was burning to the touch now, and as she pulled down the neck of his vest she could see an angry red tide spreading down his chest. Dear God…what was the matter with him?
‘Orlando…’ she croaked, picking up Felix and holding him against her shoulder, automatically rocking him as blind panic choked her.
‘What’s wrong?’
He was there in the doorway, and she let out a cry of relief. As he came towards her his face was completely impassive, and in that moment she felt again his strength, the sheer unshakable capability of this man.
‘I don’t know…It’s Felix. I don’t know what’s wrong with him. I think he’s ill. He’s so hot, and he won’t stop crying, and—’ She could hear the hysteria in her voice as she raised it over the noise of Felix’s screams, but was powerless to control it.
In one swift movement Orlando’s big hands had closed around the angry, bellowing form of his son and taken him from her. For a moment he held him upright, at arm’s length, as the baby yelled in rage, and then, cupping one hand under Felix’s head, with the other supporting his back, he began to rock him firmly.
Felix blinked, let out a half-hearted hiccupping gulp, and stopped crying, his dark eyes fixed on the face of his father.
The world beyond the steamed-up windows of the warm kitchen faded into a monochrome blur and time hung suspended. The only sound was the low, comforting hum of the fridge; the only movement was the rhythmic rocking motion of the small baby in Orlando’s strong, able hands. The angry flush had faded from his cheeks now, and his eyes were bright. Rachel felt she was intruding on a very intimate encounter, but was powerless to tear her eyes away from Felix as his dark, curious gaze met and locked with Orlando’s.
And then, with an sudden look of astonished joy and recognition, Felix’s face broke into a wobbly smile.
Rachel’s hands flew to her mouth. In that instant all the fatigue and frustration, all the confusion and insecurity evaporated, and she found herself torn between laughter and tears.
‘He smiled,’ she whispered incredulously. ‘Orlando, he actually smiled…’
She glanced up and felt the fragile bubble of happiness pop.
Orlando’s face was as cold and hard as granite.
‘Which just goes to show that he’s fine,’ he said curtly, thrusting Felix unceremoniously into her arms again. ‘Now, if the immediate crisis is over, maybe I could get back to work?’
He was halfway across the kitchen before Rachel found her voice again. Unfortunately sensible words were a little harder to locate.
‘God…you…you…How could you? He smiled! Don’t you understand? That was his first smile!’
Orlando didn’t flinch. Not a flicker of emotion passed across his perfect face.
‘I’m not surprised. He hasn’t exactly had much to smile about, has he?’
Rachel gasped as if she’d just been winded. ‘You bastard. You absolute, irredeemable bastard! It means nothing to you, does it? You are so bloody wrapped up in yourself that you can’t see what’s going on right in front of you!’
Orlando’s mouth quirked into a humourless smile at that. ‘Interesting. Please, do go on,’ he said, very softly.
Rachel tilted her chin and looked at him. ‘You’re letting him down, Orlando. With every day that passes you are letting your child down more and more spectacularly. And I can’t just stand by and watch you do it. He needs you!’
‘In that case maybe you’d like to go and talk to the American Chief of Defence about intern
ational security issues while I change nappies?’ Orlando’s voice was quiet, and terrifyingly polite, but there was a lethal edge to it that should have set alarm bells ringing in Rachel’s head. But she was too tired, her emotions too raw, to pick up on the atmosphere of dangerous calm that had suddenly fallen.
‘International security?’ The words flew from her mouth in a rush of scorn. ‘Oh, please! Forget saving the world for a few days, can’t you? What about the security of your son? He doesn’t need a goddamned superhero; he just needs a father!’
‘I see. Is that all?’
His eyes were narrowed to dark, glittering slits, but his face was expressionless. Suddenly his absolute indifference was too much. It was as if a dam had burst inside her and all the frustration and anxiety and anger and longing of the past week had been unleashed in one crashing tidal wave.
‘No,’ she said through bloodless lips. ‘Seeing as you asked, that is not all! You told me I lacked courage, and I listened to you—I learned from you—and, boy, have I got braver. Which is why I’m going to say this. You lack courage, Orlando. You might have been some hot-shot fighter pilot, you might have risked your life on a daily basis for the service of your country, but only because it made you look good, heroic, so that girls like Arabella would throw themselves at your feet and into your bed. Well, good for you. But it’s time to grow up now. This is where the real business of being a hero starts—and, you know, it’s hard and it’s thankless, and it means you have to stay up all night and you don’t even get laid. But you have to give your son someone to look up to.’
Orlando stared at her, his head tilted backwards in his habitual attitude of utter disdain.
‘That was quite a speech,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘You’ve obviously spent plenty of time carefully identifying my numerous shortcomings. Am I to assume that your thorough character analysis includes no redeeming features whatsoever?’
She glared at him as her eyes filled with tears. ‘If you’d asked me that a week ago I would have had a very different answer. I thought you were the most astonishingly brave and strong person I’d ever met. But now I can see that I mistook bravery and strength for callousness and coldness.’