by Liz Fielding
‘Who’s she?’ she demanded.
Faith, who had suffered from bad dreams after her mother was killed in a road accident, might not know much about children but she recognised a fake nightmare when she saw one. The child was undoubtedly missing her mother, but she could certainly do Harry the favour of letting her know that not all adults were as gullible as doting uncles.
‘I’m Faith,’ she said, briskly, heading for the room from which the child had appeared. ‘I used to have bad dreams too. Would you like me to tell you about them?’
‘Is that a good idea?’ Harry intervened, sharply.
‘Oh, yes,’ Faith said, confidently. ‘And if I show her how it should be done she’ll be much more convincing next time.’ She held out her free hand to the child but Alice clung tightly to her uncle. Faith shrugged. ‘You splash your nightdress with water, Alice and then sort of twist it all round you like this...’ She shifted Ben slightly to demonstrate with her skirt. The child’s eyes lit up and Faith knew she had been right. ‘It’s cold and not very comfortable but it scares the grown-ups witless—’
‘What kind of nanny are you?’ Harry demanded horrified, following her to the door.
She glanced up at him. ‘I told you, Mr March, I’m not any kind of a nanny. I’m a banker.’
His dark brows drew together, disparagingly. ‘You obviously relish your work. What do you do to the poor souls who run up an overdraft? Lock them in the coal cellar until they promise to be good?’
‘Actually, I advise the bank and its clients on ethical investments. However if your bank has nothing better than coal to keep in its cellar, Mr March, I would seriously recommend changing to a different establishment. But perhaps you’re right.’ She offered him the baby. ‘Perhaps you should take care of the children yourself while I get back to London. All this fresh air seems to be going to my head.’ Ben who had slept through the commotion now stirred and whimpered.
‘On the contrary, you seem to have everything well under control.’ He declined to retrieve his nephew and she settled him back under her chin, crooning gently to him so that the baby frown disappeared from his tiny brow. She glanced up.
‘Then maybe you should go and have that drink you were promising yourself?’
Alice who had continued to stare at Faith from the safety of her uncle’s arms for a moment, turned to Harry. ‘It’s all right, Uncle Harry, you can go away now,’ she commanded, imperiously. ‘She can put me to bed.’
‘Well, I’ll be damned!’
‘Mummy said you weren’t to use that word in front of me,’ Alice admonished severely before wriggling free and dropping to the floor. She took Faith’s hand, smiling up at her brightly. ‘Come on,’ she ordered. ‘It’s this way.’
‘It seems you have your answer, Faith Bridges. Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings—’
An infuriatingly smug little smile tugged at the corner of Harry’s mouth but Faith said nothing, contenting herself with granting him the kind of look that she normally reserved for spiders in the bath before smiling down at Alice.
‘Will you help me put Ben to bed first?’ she asked. ‘I haven’t a clue where anything is.’
‘I’ll show you,’ Alice said. ‘You can go now Uncle Harry.’ She shooed him away.
But Harry it seemed was in no great hurry to depart, leaning against the door as Faith settled Ben into his cot, fussed around by Alice who offered advice with all the seriousness of an experienced nanny dealing with a rather thick student. In fact she sounded exactly like her Aunt Janet.
‘You seem to know an awful lot about babies, Alice,’ Faith said.
‘I help my mummy all the time.’ Which explained it. Aunt Janet had been Elizabeth’s nanny, too. ‘I’m five next week,’ she said, confidingly. Then, artlessly, ‘How old are you?’
Faith probably imagined a chuckle from the door.
‘I’m twenty-five. Nearly twenty six,’ she said.
‘That’s really old,’ Alice replied, sympathetically, before helpfully adding, ‘but Uncle Harry’s much older than that. He’s older than Mummy and she was twenty-eight when it was her birthday.’
‘Oh, I know all about your Uncle Harry,’ Faith informed the child. ‘My Aunt Janet was his nanny and she told me all about him. Did you know that he was a very naughty little boy?’
Alice peered around Faith at Harry clearly finding it difficult to believe that he had ever been a little boy. ‘How naughty?’ she asked.
‘Oh, he put frogs in her bed and glued her shoes to the floor and once, when he was very bad and was sent to his room, he climbed out of the window and he fell and broke his leg.’
‘I didn’t fall. The drainpipe broke,’ Harry corrected her.
She turned to face him. ‘I see. The drainpipe broke and then you fell and broke your leg.’
She knew her aunt had blamed herself for the accident and that made her angry. It was surely plain to anyone not besotted with the boy that he was spoilt and reckless and deserved every minute of the long hot summer he had spent stuck in a plaster cast.
Her eyes said it all but she was disconcerted to discover that his own acknowledged as much and embarrassed she turned back to Alice. ‘Come along, back into bed with you.’
Alice, eyes wide open, wanted to know more.
‘Is that why you walk lopsy, Uncle Harry?’ she asked. ‘Does your leg still hurt?’
Very conscious of Harry’s tall figure leaning against the doorpost, eyes narrowed as he watched her, Faith had retaliated, wanting to pay him back for his less than gracious reception of her when she had put herself out to help him. Her words turned sour in her mouth and she started guiltily as he swept past her and picked up the child, carrying her across to her bed.
‘No, sweetheart. When I climbed out of the window it was the other leg that was broken.’
The child still wasn’t satisfied. ‘Well, how did you hurt that leg?’ she demanded, pointing to the one that he limped on.
‘Doing something a lot more dangerous than climbing out of a first floor window. Although that was a very stupid thing to do,’ he added, throwing a swift glance at Faith, demanding instant back-up.
‘Very stupid,’ Faith agreed, quickly. ‘Only a boy would ever do anything so silly. A girl would have used her brains.’
A dangerous light sparked in Harry’s dark eyes before his face quite suddenly dissolved into a grin. ‘Whereas it’s an acknowledged fact that boys don’t have any,’ he finished for her. ‘Hop into bed, Alice and I’ll read you a story.’
‘I want Faith to tell me a story.’
‘I think Faith has told enough stories for one evening,’ Harry said, pointedly. ‘Settle down now, while I show her where her room is and then I’ll come back and read to you.’
Her lower lip trembled and for a moment rebellion threatened. ‘Faith put Ben to bed. I want her to put me to bed too.’
‘But I didn’t tell him a story,’ Faith pointed out, tucking the covers around her. ‘Uncle Harry did that,’ she added, her fingers crossed behind her.
This seemed to mollify the child a little. ‘You’ll come back and kiss me g’night won’t you, Faith?’ she asked, sweetly.
‘Yes, Alice, I’ll come back,’ Faith promised, from the doorway.
‘This is your room,’ Harry said, leading the way along the corridor to the next room and throwing open the door for her. Faith, however, lingered before taking refuge.
‘I’m sorry. It was very stupid of me to have told her that you climbed out of the window, but I did warn you. I’m just not used to dealing with children.’
‘A minor slip, you’re doing pretty well so far,’ he conceded magnanimously. ‘She had me fooled.’
‘I guess it takes experience to spot a fake.’
‘Experience?’
‘I suffered from bad dreams after my mother was killed by a car outside our home. I know what the real things looks like.’
He nodded but wasn’t crass enough to say that he was sorr
y. ‘I see. Well, in that case I’m sure that if Janet gave you a blow by blow description of the reason I walk as if my leg hurts you’ll keep it to yourself.’
‘She didn’t,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s just that when I was a little girl she used to tell me about the things the children she cared for got up to. I’m afraid you featured rather heavily.’
‘I was a bit of a handful and I gave her a very hard time, but she was the nearest thing I ever had to a proper mother. I’ve done my best to make it up to her since. However now you’ve done your best to put me firmly in my bath chair perhaps you should call me Mr March after all.’
‘I don’t think so.’ She didn’t think he did either. ‘But when I was seven, you were fifteen; a vastly grand and distant figure performing heroic feats on the sports field of your public school.’
He pulled a face. ‘A legend in my own lifetime, no doubt.’ Almost. But she wasn’t about to boost his ego by telling him of the scrapbook her aunt kept of his exploits, winning a rowing blue for his university, laughing his way across the pages of the society magazines, on the polo field, or at some charity ball, always with a beautiful girl on his arm, always with a glass of champagne in his hand. ‘How things change,’ he added a touch bitterly, crossing the bedroom and throwing open a door concealed in the dark panelling. ‘You have your own bathroom. Is there anything you need?’ he asked, turning to her.
She shook her head. ‘No thanks. I’ll just go and get my overnight bag from the car.’
He held out his hand. ‘Give me your keys and I’ll fetch it for you.’
‘There’s really no need. I’m quite capable of carrying—’
‘So am I, despite the limp.’ He snapped his fingers impatiently.
‘I didn’t mean that.’ She swallowed. ‘And besides, the keys are in my bag, downstairs. I can manage, really, it’s not in the least bit heavy and Alice is waiting for you.’
She was babbling she realised. Faith Bridges, efficient, unemotional, unflappable under pressure, was babbling. Unbelievable.
Harry appeared not to notice, or maybe women were always reduced to babbling in his presence. The man should have a health warning printed across that scarred and glowering forehead of his in letters an inch high.
‘Please yourself,’ he said, finally turning away. ‘Come down and have a drink when you’re done. I’ll be in the library.’
Back in her bedroom, with the door safely closed against the disconcerting masculinity of the house, she managed a wry grin as she stood in front of the dressing table. Doe-eyed blonde indeed!
Her eyes were large enough she acknowledged, but of a most ordinary brown and as for her hair — she unfastened the tortoiseshell clip that held her hair at the nape of her neck and feathered it out with her fingers — she had no illusions about that. At fifteen she had made the mistake of enquiring casually of her father if her hair could be classed as blonde.
‘Your hair is mouse, my girl,’ he’d informed her in his matter-of-fact way, peering at her over the top of his newspaper. ‘Cheerful mouse, if you like, but the only way you’ll ever be a blonde is out of a bottle.’
She had scoured the enticing shelves of a high-street chemist, purchasing a bottle of hair colouring which in the secrecy of the bathroom had turned her hair bright guinea gold. Her father never said a word during the long months it took to grow out. Presumably he thought having to live with the ghastly colour was lesson enough.
And after Michael’s desertion he had been equally matter-of-fact. ‘Count your blessings. Work hard and use your spare time looking for ways to help other people instead of feeling sorry for yourself.’ An undemonstrative man, it was what he had done after the crushing blow of his wife’s death. It was what he preached from his pulpit every Sunday. She took his advice, but how she had longed for him, just once, to take her into his arms and simply hug her.
Faith sat on the edge of the bed. She hadn’t thought about Michael for a long time. Not really thought about him. Or of the wild, giddy romance that had swept her off her feet so that she hadn’t known what day of the week it was, hadn’t cared about her place at university, hadn’t cared about anything but the joy of being in love, the life they were going to have together and the dozens and dozens of children.
Her heart snagged on the thought and she backed away from it. She had blotted him out of her mind with the same relentless determination with which she had applied herself to her career. She had tossed all those dreams, all the painful emotions that she associated with him, along his engagement ring, in the river. And she had promised herself, never again.
And now Harry March, who had done the same thing to his beautiful Clementine, had dredged all those feelings up again just as she had her life organised, settled.
‘Faith!’ Alice, impatient for her kiss called out, interrupted the disquieting thoughts.
Pulling herself together she went back to the nursery. Alice was waiting for her, sitting up, determined not to fall asleep before she had claimed her kiss.
‘You were so long!’ she complained as Faith sat on the bed beside her.
‘I’m sorry. I was finding my way around.’
‘S’okay. Are you going to stay with me until my Mummy comes back?’
‘I’ll be here when you wake up tomorrow, Alice,’ she promised, hating herself for not being able to just say yes to such trusting innocence. But it wasn’t possible.
‘Will Mummy be home then?’ the child persisted.
‘I think you’d better ask Uncle Harry about that,’ she said. ‘Time to go to sleep now.’ She kissed the child, settled her down under the covers, tidied away her story books and checked on Ben. By the time she had done that, Alice was asleep. She turned off the overhead light, leaving the soft glow of the nursery lamp throwing a pink blush onto the curve of the child’s cheek.
Julian, thoughtful, deeply caring, was firm in his belief that the world already had enough children and that his refusal to add to the planet’s burden. It had seemed so sensible, written in his small neat handwriting, using the refillable fountain pen and the recycled paper he had asked her to send him. Not a sacrifice at all. But looking at the two sleeping infants she wondered briefly what sense had to do with the soft touch of a baby’s breath against your cheek, the trusting grip of his fingers wrapped tightly about one of your own.
That was all she allowed herself to wonder before she pulled the door half way closed and beat a retreat to her own room to take a quick, invigorating shower.
She changed into a pair of softly pleated moss coloured trousers in a fabric rich enough for the evening and a shirt in the palest primrose silk. She added just a touch of make-up to skin honeyed by weekend walks with her father alongside the river and left her long straight mouse-coloured hair loose about her shoulders.
Harry was standing at the window when she walked through the library door and he turned as he heard her. ‘All peaceful?’ he asked, a smile lining his cheeks.
This older, darker, Harry March was, she decided, far more dangerously handsome for his all scars than the young Harry March had ever been. He had been too perfect, too beautiful and the jealous gods had exacted their revenge. Now, with the evening light slanting in through the mullioned windows throwing his features into sharp contrast, hollowing his cheeks, sharpening the angles of his face and with his white open-necked shirt billowing loosely above the tightly stretched fabric of his jeans, he had all the appearance of a battle hardened buccaneer. He lacked only the piratical glint of gold at one ear she thought, then caught herself. Sensible women, level-headed women, avoided pirates.
‘All peaceful,’ she replied. At least in the nursery. Her heart had gone racketing off on some mad roller-coaster ride the moment he had smiled at her. ‘But Alice wants to know when her mummy is coming home.’
‘I can’t tell her what I don’t know.’ He lifted his shoulders in a resigned shrug. ‘Faith, I’ve had Janet on the telephone.’
‘She said she’d ring to make
sure I arrived in one piece.’ Her aunt did not approve of her racy little sports car. Neither did Julian come to that. He was adamant that everyone not using a bicycle should be using public transport. That was one of the things on her list — sell her car and buy a bike. ‘Is she all right?’
He pulled a face. ‘There’s certainly nothing wrong with her voice. When I told her you couldn’t stay she threatened to discharge herself from hospital and come straight down here.’
‘You told her I wasn’t staying?’ Faith demanded. ‘Of all the idiotic, stupid—’ Words failed her as Harry’s eyebrows hit the ceiling.
‘I’m so sorry,’ he said, with just enough irony so that she would know he wasn’t a bit sorry. ‘I didn’t realise that it was a state secret.’
‘It isn’t, but I would have thought that even you could have foreseen the consequences of telling her. Or was that the reason you told her? Were you going in for a little emotional blackmail on your own behalf, Harry March?’
‘Only the guilty are susceptible to blackmail, Faith.’
Guilty! The nerve of the man! Yet although his eyes were expressionless she sensed a deep anger inside him. Well he had no right to be angry and she was damned if she would explain why she couldn’t stay. It was none of his business.
‘I would have gone to see her the minute I got back,’ she said, frostily, refusing to allow herself to be browbeaten by the man. ‘By then she would have had her operation.’ He was unmoved. ‘Please, Harry, she can’t possibly come here. You’ve got to stop her, whatever it takes. She finds it hard enough to just cope with looking after herself.’
‘And you’ve just let her get on with it?’
‘She’s a stubborn woman. I told you that we offered to pay for the operation but she wouldn’t—’ His exclamation of disgust infuriated her. ‘Well what would you have done? Knocked her out with your famous killer charm and performed surgery yourself with your trusty cutlass?’ No, no, that was pirates... ‘She seems to think you can walk on water so maybe a magic wand would have done the trick—’ She stopped abruptly. Mixing metaphors was apparently catching.