by India Grey
He nodded slowly. ‘In that case it’s just as well I’ve been looking into making more permanent arrangements for Felix. You’ll be delighted to know I’ve spoken to an agency, and they can have someone here by Monday.’
Rachel stepped backwards, as if she’d been slapped. She could feel the blood draining from her face and her eyes widening in shock.
‘No!’
‘It’ll be better for all of us.’
He turned on his heel, making for the door, but she caught up with him, placing herself and Felix in front of him. ‘Orlando, no—you can’t! He’s had too much change in his life already. He’s just got used to me…and—and I’ve just got used to him!’ She was aware that she sounded as if she was pleading, but she was too shattered to care. All she knew was that the thought of leaving Felix was unbearable, and she found herself impulsively reaching out and touching Orlando’s arm.
It was a very, very bad move indeed. As her fingertips brushed his skin she almost passed out with longing.
Leaving Felix? If only it was that simple.
‘He managed without you before; he’ll manage without you again.’
Rachel tried again, feeling as if she was arguing for her life. ‘I’m doing OK now, honestly. I can look after Felix just as well as anyone—it’s been a tough week, but the worst is over now, and I’ve learned so much. Especially when you think of how clueless I was when I first arrived—’
She broke off, looking round in alarm, suddenly aware of a horrible smell of burning plastic coming from the direction of the oven. Orlando beat her to it, swearing viciously as he opened the door to release thick clouds of noxious black smoke.
‘The pizza!’ Rachel wailed. ‘But it’s not even supposed to be ready yet!’
Swiping ineffectually at the smoke, she grabbed a towel and pulled out the shelf. Melted plastic dripped down between the bars from the polystyrene disc on the base of the pizza, which Rachel had forgotten to remove. Holding it at arm’s length, she crossed the room and deposited it in the bin.
When she turned back she saw a flash of grim triumph on Orlando’s face.
‘You were saying?’
It would be better when she was gone, he thought bleakly as he crossed the hallway. Felix would get used to someone else…someone who didn’t cook pizza with the plastic still on, and make damning accusations when she was in possession of only half the facts. Someone who didn’t put the radio on and dance with him in the kitchen, or wrap him in her soft, rosescented scarves, or soothe him when he was fretful in the night by playing Chopin to him in the moonlight.
Orlando’s first heroic act had been to let her stay at Easton. His second would be to let her go. Felix would forget. It was just his father who was sentenced to a lifetime of remembering.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
‘HUSH Felix…please, darling…It’s all right, it’s all right…’
Rachel gritted her teeth and tried to make the straps of the car seat meet across Felix’s furiously squirming body as his howls intensified, inches away from her ear. With her car out of action, she had borrowed Orlando’s to come into the village for supplies, but it was so ridiculously low that she had to virtually bend double to fasten the seat in place. As hostile to babies as its owner, she thought viciously, bashing her head against the top of the car as she stood up.
‘Bloody, bloody hell!’ Rubbing the back of her head with one hand, she picked up a bag of shopping with the other and threw it into the car. It hit the catch of the glove compartment, which fell open, disgorging its contents into the shopping bag. Felix screamed even louder.
Rachel slammed the door, closing her eyes briefly as the noise was abruptly, blissfully, reduced. Since her encounter with Orlando at lunchtime she had felt as she had just before her wedding—filled with helpless dread at what lay ahead. The difference was that then he had been the one to show her a way out. This time he was the cause of her anguish.
But she had come a long way in the last week. It was amazing, she thought miserably, considering Orlando hadn’t been talking to her for most of that time, exactly how much he had taught her. The meaning of the word orgasm was one. That she could influence the course of events if she felt strongly enough was another.
And, boy, did she feel strongly about this. She had no intention of just walking away from Felix now. She knew too well what being rejected by your father and growing up in a loveless home felt like.
Making a visible effort to collect herself, she walked round to the driver’s side and got in, starting the engine and turning on the radio in an attempt to comfort Felix.
But he was tired and hungry and refused to be soothed. Rachel drove quickly, one hand stroking his cheek, frantically trying to quieten him. But then, as Chopin’s Nocturne in E Minor came on, filling the small space of the car with memories and longing, she gave up, and they both cried all the way back to Easton.
Rachel longed for an hour-long soak in scented water to calm her frazzled nerves and soothe the ever-present ache in her neck and shoulders, but there wasn’t time to bath both Felix and herself before making a start on dinner. She’d discovered that the village boasted an award-winning butcher on the high street, and had thrown herself on his mercy, telling him she needed to cook something foolproof but fantastic. He’d recommended duck, fresh in that lunchtime, and told her exactly what she had to do. She wanted to get Felix settled for the night before making a start.
At the last minute she decided to get into the bath with him, shivering as she stepped into water which, to her, felt only lukewarm. As a tiny concession to vanity she added a dash of her rose-scented bath oil, and, lying back in the chin-deep claw-footed bath, with Felix beached on her chest like a baby seal, she was overwhelmed with anguish and love.
Where would she go if she had to leave here?
Her old life now seemed as remote and unimaginable as snow on a summer’s afternoon. Musingly she calculated the date, working out that the concert she had been scheduled to give at the end of her honeymoon was due to take place in just two days.
Idly trickling water on Felix’s back, she thought of Carlos. He’d always appeared to her like some evil puppet-master, controlling the world around him as effortlessly as he controlled his orchestra, but surely this situation was beyond even his influence? He would have had to cancel the entire tour. The thought gave her a shameful moment of pleasure.
Felix was almost asleep now. Tenderly she gathered him up and stepped out of the bath, wrapping him in a towel and laying him gently on the floor while she slipped back under the water to wash her hair for the first time since the party.
It was hardly the most luxurious beauty regime, but it would have to do. Tonight wasn’t about seduction. Tonight was about sense. She wanted to impress Orlando with her maturity and competence—show him she was indispensable, not irresistible. After all, she’d tried that before and it hadn’t got her anywhere. He’d managed all too easily to resist her from the moment Arabella had reappeared.
Rinsing the last of the shampoo out of her hair, she sighed and stood up. Even if she’d had all the time in the world there was no point in going to any more trouble anyway. Orlando always looked straight through her.
Downstairs in the kitchen, she set Felix down in his little bouncing chair while she boiled water for his bottle and unpacked the shopping. There was no sign of Orlando, but that was hardly unusual, she thought sourly. Felix was at his most adorable, his hair standing up in a soft dark halo from the bath, his tiny feet in the white sleepsuit kicking excitedly. As she passed she couldn’t stop herself from taking them in her hands and raining kisses on him, revelling in the scent of him and in his tiny gasps and gurgles of pleasure.
‘You’re gorgeous.’ She smiled, putting her finger into the palm of his hand and letting him curl his own small fingers around it in a surprisingly strong grasp. ‘You’re gorgeous and strong and handsome, no matter what your miserable excuse for a father says…Yes, you are,’ she cooed. ‘And it’s h
is problem if he can’t see it…’
There was a cough from the doorway.
‘Sorry to intrude on what’s obviously a private conversation,’ said Orlando acidly, ‘but I came to get a drink. Don’t let me disturb you.’
Standing up quickly, and disentangling her finger from Felix’s octopus grip, Rachel felt a hot rush of colour flood her cheeks. Not that Orlando noticed, of course. He went straight to the fridge and took out a bottle of Sancerre. There was a careful deliberateness about his movements. He looked terribly, terribly tired, she thought, with a sudden flash of compassion which she quickly squashed.
It served him right. He should spend more time with his son and not work such stupidly long hours.
She managed a stiff smile. ‘I’m cooking tonight. I hope you can stop work.’
He took down a glass and turned away while he sloshed some wine into it. ‘I doubt it,’ he said tersely.
It was suddenly very still in the brightly lit kitchen, and Rachel’s soft exhalation of frustration and disgust was very audible.
‘Fine. Doesn’t matter.’
Orlando turned round and leaned against the marble worktop, his eyes boring into her over the rim of his glass. They were as pale as the wine, she noticed with a thud of irritation, feeling a horrible, unwelcome warmth begin to unfurl in the pit of her stomach and spread outwards into her limbs, like wreaths of smoke. His hair was untidy, where he’d been pushing his fingers through it, and there were lines of fatigue around his eyes.
‘It’s work.’
She busied herself spooning powdered milk into Felix’s bottle. ‘No problem. I just thought we could…talk. About Felix. But,’ she said nonchalantly, ‘if you’re too busy that’s fine by me. I’ll eat alone.’
Her body was saying something completely different. His presence changed the atmosphere in the room, charging it, instantly making the vast kitchen seem too small, too full of his broad shoulders, his penetrating gaze. Oblivious to the currents of hostility swirling around him, Felix gurgled away happily. Rachel was furious to find she’d lost count of how many spoonfuls of milk she’d put in the bottle.
‘OK—look, I’ll try.’ He sighed heavily, making his way to the door, and Rachel felt her chest constrict with annoyance. ‘I’ll try. Just so long as you promise you’re not cooking pizza.’
It was all she could do not to turn round and hurl the tin of powder at him as he left the room, and she allowed herself a small moment of self-congratulation at her admirable restraint.
He hadn’t even noticed Felix. Hadn’t so much as glanced at him.
Leaving the bottles to cool, she turned and scooped him up, nuzzling her cheek against his soft fuzz of hair. ‘Oh, sweetheart, how could he fail to adore you? You’re so lovely.’ Frowning, she cradled his warmth against her and rocked him absent-mindedly as she finished emptying the shopping bag.
Right at the bottom was a leaflet. She took it out, glancing at it as she went to the bin to throw it away. It must have fallen out of the glove compartment when it had come open.
For a second everything seemed to stop. The clock on the wall, her footsteps across the stone-flagged floor. Her heart. And then it all came rushing back again, with a rushing of blood in her ears. Felix squirmed and whimpered in her arms, and she realised she was crushing him against her as a succession of emotions rampaged through her and understanding dawned.
Her hand shook as she held the leaflet and re-read the title.
Living with Sight Loss. A Patient’s Guide.
At ten past eight Orlando took a deep breath and opened the door of the library. It had been an incredibly exhausting week, with the Middle Eastern border crisis growing more tense and volatile by the minute. His ambitious tactical strategy had, at one point, seemed to be taking fourteen airmen directly to their own funerals, which had tested his reserves of inner strength to their absolute limit.
He’d just heard that the last plane was safely home.
He felt light-headed with relief. Now he wanted nothing more than to go to bed and sleep, deeply, for about a year. Or at least until Monday, when Rachel would be out of the way and he could slide quietly back into his uncomplicated life. His empty, isolated life, free from inconvenient feelings and painful emotions.
Out in the hallway it was quiet, but a surprisingly delicious smell of cooking was drifting through from the kitchen, and he realised with a small jolt of surprise how ravenously hungry he was. Distracted by work, he’d hardly given a thought to food all week, surviving on coffee and snatched slices of toast. He approached the dining room, thinking to walk through it to the kitchen to find Rachel, and came to a standstill in the doorway.
The room was lit with the glow of candles, placed in the old silver candelabra right in the middle of the table and in rows along the mantelpiece, where they were reflected in the mirror. The curtains had been left open, so in the blackness of the windows the candles shone like stars. The light they gave off was surprisingly bright. Soft, gentle, beautiful…but amazingly strong. Just like the courtyard at the ball.
Which reminded him of several things—most of them in the territory marked Dangerous, but one of which was that he’d meant to try ringing Lucinda again. He’d telephoned her office yesterday, only to be told that she was still off sick, but that she’d asked for her sincere apologies to be passed on to him, along with assurances that he wouldn’t be invoiced for the party organisation. At the time, he’d thought there had been some mix-up, and had quickly dismissed it. Now, seeing the candlelit room, he wasn’t so sure.
Rachel had created those eccentric, stylish arrangements of branches at the ball. What else had she done?
He’d been very quick to dismiss her as being fey and prima-donna-ish, just because she was so very different from Arabella…
Thank God.
Arabella was right. He’d never really loved her, but he’d admired her sharp mind, her well-maintained body and her aggressive high-achieving personality. Looking back on it now, he could see that he’d chosen her in exactly the same way he’d chosen his cars. Quite simply, he always had the best, the fastest, the sleekest model available. It would never have occurred to him to look at anything less, but the fact was that when the terrain had got rough, fast and sleek had been no use to him at all.
And, standing there in the familiar room that suddenly felt so different, he wondered whether if he hadn’t been faced with losing his sight he’d ever have seen that. If it hadn’t been for the curse of this damned disease everything would be as it was before: he’d still be flying, still with Arabella, and, if she was to be believed, Felix would still be alive. Would he go back?
‘I hope this isn’t keeping you from anything important?’
Rachel’s voice from the opposite doorway was soft and hesitant. He turned his head in her direction, locating her in the dim, flickering light by the coppery gleam of her hair. He felt suddenly absolutely wiped out by the longing to feel it under his hands again.
He shook his head, walking towards her. ‘No. It’s been a bloody awful week. But the crisis appears to be over.’
‘Crisis?’
‘Border defence,’ he said briefly, following her into the brightly lit kitchen. Going over to the fridge, he pulled out a bottle of champagne. ‘We’re celebrating.’
‘What are we celebrating?’
‘Survival.’
Rachel moved to the cupboard to get down glasses as he tore off the foil and effortlessly eased out the cork with his thumbs. His fingers had healed enough for him to have taken the bandages off now, but she could still see the livid dark red scars. Evidence of a more hidden suffering.
She felt unbearably shy, totally unable to look at him and yet paralysingly aware of his nearness. Since she’d read the leaflet things kept coming back to her…slotting inexorably into place—filling in the gaps to make a picture she’d almost known was there all along, from the moment she’d watched him trailing his fingers along the wall as she followed him upstairs.
She’d judged him so harshly.
‘Here.’ Briskly, she took the bottle from him. ‘I’ll pour this if you could open some red. I should have done it earlier, but I couldn’t find the corkscrew.’
He didn’t want her to know. She respected that, and she would make it easy for him. God alone knew she’d made it difficult enough already, by repeatedly taunting him for not making enough fuss of Felix. For not being heroic.
She stopped, setting the bottle down for a moment, waiting for the bubbles in the glass to subside again, along with the fizz of remorse and longing that rose up inside her. God, but he was more heroic than she could ever have imagined. To have lost what he’d lost and bear it alone…
She suddenly remembered what he’d said that night when they’d made love. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, like something that had happened to someone else, but his words came back to her just as vividly as if he’d just spoken them. ‘I lost something…Something I took for granted. And now I miss it. All the bloody time…’
Picking up the two glasses, she held one out to him, making sure she put it into his hand.
‘To survival.’
‘And the end of the crisis?’ she suggested quietly, silently cursing the transparent need in her voice.
Orlando took a long mouthful of champagne. ‘For the time being,’ he said resignedly. ‘For tonight, at least, it seems peaceful enough. Tomorrow we can all start thinking of new ways to tear each other apart.’
‘Is that how it seems?’
He was looking straight ahead, his eyes glassy with tiredness, a muscle flickering in his cheek. ‘Sometimes. It’s necessary and inevitable, but, yes. Sometimes I just get tired of planning for the next attack. Always being on the defensive.’
There was a long pause. Rachel averted her eyes from his ravaged, beautiful face and picked up the bottle. She had to have something to do with her hands, otherwise she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from reaching up and taking his face between them and smoothing away the lines of exhaustion.