Her Sister's Baby

by Alison Fraser

  The sun was hot for the time of year and, discarding the wool jacket of her interview suit, she pushed up the sleeves of the plain blouse beneath. Her feet were hurting, too, in shoes that were rarely worn, but she left them on, feeling some discomfort was appropriate to the day.

  Certainly the weather wasn’t. She shut her eyes against the glare of the sun and, inevitably, thought of the first time she’d visited North Dean: it had been a similarly glorious day, when her sister had married into the Carlisle family.

  Had it been the happiest of Pen’s life? Possibly. She’d looked radiant in her white silk wedding gown, and Cass had put aside any lingering worries to feel proud of her lovely sister.

  She had not been envious, however. This wasn’t the life for her. She had sat through the wedding meal, bored rigid by a city banker on one side and a Hooray Henry on the other. She would have slipped away after the toast and speeches, but Tom and Dray’s Uncle Charles had appeared at her side and insisted on taking her up to the Hall to show her the wedding presents. By the time they had returned, the floor of the marquee had been cleared for dancing.

  ‘You must meet the family.’ Uncle Charles guided her over to a table and, seating her, introduced her round to various aunts, cousins and Monica, the stepmother.

  The latter declaimed, ‘Cassandra? Heavens, what a name!’ but the rest were polite enough.

  Then the band started to play and all eyes were drawn to the bride and groom as they circled the floor—two beautiful people in love for all the world to see. Cass was possibly alone in hoping the image would turn out to be reality.

  The newly-weds were followed onto the floor by Drayton Carlisle and Kelly, the chief bridesmaid. Kelly had already changed out of her demure bridesmaid’s gown into a rampantly sexy dress and was, if Cass wasn’t mistaken, trying to vamp big brother Carlisle.

  Dray didn’t exactly look troubled by it. No doubt he was used to women throwing themselves at him.

  Cass wasn’t aware of staring until Uncle Charles put in, ‘Duty dance, my dear. Don’t worry.’

  ‘I wasn’t…I don’t know what you mean,’ an unusually flustered Cass responded.

  ‘But I thought…when Dray asked me to…’ He trailed off at her continued blank look. ‘Sorry. Got it wrong. Forget I spoke. Have a drink.’

  He signalled to a passing waiter and pressed a glass of champagne on Cass before embarking on a tale of his naval days.

  Cass allowed herself to be distracted and was absorbed in the gruesome wedding customs of a particular South Sea island when Uncle Charles interrupted himself with, ‘Ah, here you are!’

  It was directed over Cass’s head; she didn’t have to turn to know Dray Carlisle was there. She wondered how he’d managed to tear himself away from the luscious Kelly.

  He went round the table, greeting any relatives he hadn’t earlier in the day. A maiden aunt beamed with pleasure when he kissed her cheek and two much younger girl cousins went into gales of laughter at whatever he said to them. He even managed to draw a smile from the stepmother and, on the briefest of acquaintances, Cass realised that was no mean feat. Dray Carlisle was evidently popular with his family as well as with women. It seemed charm could get a person everything!

  ‘Have my seat,’ Uncle Charles offered, but Dray shook his head, much to Cass’s relief.

  ‘Thanks but I feel I should dance with my new sister-in-law first.’

  Cass assumed he meant Pen until he came round to her side and curled a hand round her elbow. ‘Shall we?’

  He didn’t wait for a response as he drew her out onto the floor and, encircling her waist, pulled her close enough to dance a slow waltz.

  For a beat or two, Cass’s heart did somersaults before she effectively stilled it with a vision of Kelly draped similarly in his arms.

  ‘You don’t mind?’ he asked, rather late. ‘I thought you might need rescuing.’

  ‘From your Uncle Charles?’ she muttered back. ‘Why? Is he a womaniser…too?’

  His mouth thinned at the question. Any humour in it had passed him by.

  ‘Possibly,’ he replied at length. ‘Would that make him more or less interesting?’

  Now that sounded like a test and Cass couldn’t resist answering, ‘Depends—is he linked to the Carlisle millions?’

  It was sheer cheek. He had to know that.

  Yet his murmur of, ‘Tenuously,’ was followed by a suggestive, ‘Perhaps I should have left you in his clutches.’

  Cass raised her eyebrows heavenward. Did he really believe she’d be that obvious if she were a gold-digger?

  ‘If you think I’m interested in rich old duffers,’ she countered dryly, ‘you’re going to be in for a disappointment.’

  He saw the insult instantly and it stopped him in his tracks, literally, but then the music had stopped, too.

  She made to walk away and he caught her by the arm. ‘Is that how you see me?’

  Of course it wasn’t. He was hardly old for a start—mid-thirties at most. And he was no duffer: this man knew what he wanted from life and made sure he got it. Only the ‘rich’ bit held, a positive attraction for some women.

  Just not Cass.

  It really wasn’t. Not the money, anyway. The man, well, that was something else.

  ‘I don’t know you,’ she finally replied.

  It was carefully neutral.

  The way he looked at her wasn’t.

  ‘You will.’

  He spoke with utter certainty.

  Threat or promise?

  A joke, Cass decided. Safer than anything else. She forced a laugh.

  ‘I doubt it. We don’t move in the same circles.’

  ‘Is that a problem?’

  Not to him, obviously, but then to the rich and powerful, things rarely were.

  ‘It is to me,’ she replied with quiet dignity, and waited for him to let her go.

  He held her tighter for a moment, fingers warm and hard on her flesh, then he dropped his hand away.

  She didn’t linger—not when every instinct of self-preservation was telling her to run—but circled back to the table to collect her handbag.

  Uncle Charles was still seated there and she murmured a polite, ‘It was nice to meet you.’

  ‘You’re going? Surely not.’ He glanced towards the dance floor.

  Cass followed his gaze, not surprised when it homed in on Dray Carlisle. Not surprised, either, to find, with her barely left, another girl had taken her place. No, what surprised her was how bad it made her feel.

  Of course, it was even more reason not to get involved. To feel that jealous after one dance and a handful of words. It was frightening.

  But it was fascinating, too, and when he stared back at her, across that crowded room, it seemed a very long time before either could look away.

  She did it, though. She walked away, too.

  If fate hadn’t intervened, she would have escaped altogether. But wasn’t that the nature of fate—that some things were inescapable?

  She was emerging from a rear exit of the marquee when she saw him, a boy waving from the far edge of the lawn. It took her a moment to realise it was at her, and that he wasn’t waving but signalling and in some distress as he began running towards her.

  She hurried to meet him—faster when she saw his wet clothes—and listened as he sobbed out a story between gasps for breath.

  The rest was panic as she raced to the river beyond the lawns and wooded boundary. Shoes flying, dress ripping, half jumping, half falling from the bank. Ignoring the drifting dinghy. Swimming towards flailing arms in the water. Too slow, too late. Diving futilely. Tiring, swallowing, choking.

  She was a breath short of drowning herself when strong arms dragged her upwards.

  ‘The boy? He’s somewhere round here?’ was shouted over the roar in her ears.

  She could only nod but it was enough.

  ‘Take her!’

  Another set of arms came round her, helping her towards a wooden jetty, leav
ing the first to search.

  Then she was back on dry land, retching and shaking, waiting and praying at each dive made. Seconds, minutes even, ticking by. Hopeless it seemed. Such relief when two heads, not one, suddenly bobbed to the surface.

  ‘Thank God!’ came from the man beside her on the jetty and she gave him a surprised look, having almost forgotten he was there. ‘I’m Simon, by the way…Simon Carlisle.’

  She nodded. They’d met briefly. He was a cousin.

  Her eyes returned to Drayton Carlisle as he backstroked the child’s limp figure towards them.

  They all helped lift the body out of the water. It appeared lifeless but Cass touched her fingers to the neck and found a faint pulse.

  ‘What should one do?’ Simon Carlisle asked uncertainly.

  Cass was already doing it, expelling water from the boy’s lungs before she breathed life back into him. It took time and patience. The men watched in silence until finally the boy spluttered and groaned and regained consciousness.

  ‘Is he fit to carry up to the house?’ Drayton Carlisle deferred to her evident knowledge of first aid.

  ‘I—I th-think so.’ Her teeth had begun to chatter.

  ‘I’ll take him.’ Simon Carlisle had already pulled back on the shirt and trousers he’d discarded on the river bank.

  Both men had been rational enough to undress before diving into the river. Only Cass had gone in fully clothed and was now paying the penalty as she shivered in her wet cotton dress.

  ‘Here. Take it off and wear this.’ Dray handed her his dry white shirt while Simon set off with the boy in his arms.

  Cass’s hesitation was brief. It wasn’t the time for modesty. She turned and he unzipped her dress. It was clammy, ripped and mud-splattered; she dragged it and her tights off. Both were in ruins and she left them on the ground as she slipped on his shirt over her damp skin and underwear, buttoning it as she walked, barefoot, alongside him.

  ‘You’re limping,’ Dray Carlisle observed.

  ‘It’s okay,’ she dismissed, although it clearly wasn’t. A sharp pain was stabbing through the sole of her foot.

  ‘You’re also bleeding,’ he added, and, halting her with a hand, called to his cousin, ‘Carry on to the house, Si. We’ll catch up.’

  He supported her over to a fallen tree trunk. She sat while he examined her foot. He probed it gently but she still flinched.

  ‘You can’t walk on this. There’s something embedded in it,’ he declared, straightening up again.

  Cass didn’t see she had much choice and got to her feet. This time the pain was so excruciating she had to bite on her lip to stop from crying out.

  ‘Full marks for stoicism,’ Drayton Carlisle commented, ‘none for common sense… Just hang on.’

  He put an arm round her shoulders, the other behind her knees, and picked her up before she could voice a protest.

  Cass was reduced to clasping her hands round his bare neck and looking anywhere but into the handsome face inches from hers.

  His bare torso revealed toned muscle in a broad frame and carrying her was clearly no strain, yet she still felt a burden. Ultimately he was the one who had rescued the drowning child and now he had to rescue her and she’d barely said a pleasant word to him.

  ‘I…um…thanks for what you did, Drayton,’ she murmured inadequately. ‘If you hadn’t come along—’

  ‘Someone else would have—and it’s Dray.’ He shrugged easily. ‘Anyway, you’re the brave one.’

  ‘Me?’ Cass didn’t see it. ‘Hardly. Stupid, maybe. I struggle to swim a length.’

  ‘The whole point, surely,’ he rejoined. ‘You tried to save him despite being a poor swimmer.’

  Cass wasn’t having it. ‘For all the good it did.’

  ‘You were there. X marks the spot as it were,’ he ran on. ‘Without you, I would have been diving where the dinghy had drifted, downstream.’

  Perhaps. Cass conceded that, and felt a little less foolish. It didn’t change her view of events, however. He was the hero and an impressive one, too. Who would have thought it?

  She stole a glance at his face and, reassessing, saw strength rather than arrogance in the masculine features. There was intelligence, too, as he caught her staring and read her mind with uncanny ease.

  ‘So, do I get a second chance?’

  To do what? Cass might have asked, but it seemed a rather leading question.

  Instead she threw back, ‘I didn’t know you’d had a first one.’

  He laughed—a deep laugh that made her aware of the mat of hair on his chest to which her hand had slipped. She moved it primly back to his shoulder.

  ‘I thought I had and already blown it,’ he admitted, ‘when you abandoned me on the dance floor… Just as well I set off in pursuit.’

  ‘You did?’

  He nodded.

  ‘After extricating myself. No sign of you, of course, just Si’s son, William, in the throes of an asthma attack.’

  ‘I didn’t realise.’ Cass recalled the first child wheezing but had been too concerned about the boy in danger to question why. ‘Is he all right?’

  ‘I imagine so.’ Dray didn’t seem too worried. ‘William’s attacks are more emotional than physical. I fetched his mother to take care of him while Simon and I investigated his garbled tale of a capsized dinghy and some woman in a blue dress who was going to take care of it.’

  Only she hadn’t and had come near to drowning alongside the other child, Cass realised.

  ‘We should have raised the alarm, of course,’ Dray added, ‘but, at that point, we hadn’t realised there was someone still in the river.’

  ‘You came. That’s the main thing.’ She didn’t hide her gratitude.

  He slanted her a smile in return. ‘The reward was worth it.’

  Being with her, he meant, and Cass felt herself go warm under his gaze. She looked away again. She really couldn’t cope with this man.

  They passed the marquee, the reception still in full swing. Fortunately no one was around to see the bride’s sister, half naked and looking like a drowned rat, in the arms of the groom’s brother, also half naked but displaying a physique that merely enhanced his attraction.

  They continued on up to the house where Simon’s wife emerged from a French window to raise an elegant brow at the sight of them.

  ‘Simon has called an ambulance,’ she revealed. ‘He’s sent me to fetch the Stewarts. The boy’s their son, apparently.’

  Cass had met this woman briefly at the reception and had formed no impression at the time. Now she seemed a rather cold character.

  ‘Well, be careful,’ Dray advised in response. ‘There’s no need to panic them or disrupt the rest of the party. He’s probably going to be all right.’

  ‘Quite,’ she agreed, ‘although he’s making a terrible fuss. He’s been sick on one of your Persian carpets and now he’s crying like a baby and—’

  ‘Who’s looking after him?’ Dray cut into this less than sympathetic account.

  ‘Mrs Henderson and Simon,’ she informed him, before running on, ‘I just hope no one is going to blame William for this. He’s very shaken up. Apparently the Stewart child begged him to go out on the river, then deliberately rocked the—’

  ‘Yes, all right, Camilla,’ Dray interrupted once more, ‘we can go into all this later. If you could fetch the Stewarts, I’d be grateful.’

  If Camilla Carlisle looked a little miffed about being cut off mid-protest, she kept it to herself and walked off towards the marquee.

  Cass was left agog at her self-centredness.

  ‘Did you believe that?’ she demanded on a slightly indignant note.

  ‘Do I look stupid?’ Dray drawled back.

  Cass supposed not. But if he’d known William or Camilla was lying, why had he accepted it?

  ‘It didn’t seem a particularly appropriate time to give Camilla the third degree,’ he answered her unspoken question, ‘but don’t worry, I promise to dust off the thumbs
crews later.’

  ‘Very funny.’ Cass pulled a face and wished he hadn’t such an uncanny knack of reading her mind. ‘You can put me down now,’ she added as they entered the house but, if he heard, he chose to ignore.

  Instead he continued along a corridor until they reached a bathroom. He set her down on the toilet seat, then soaked a towel under warm water before proceeding to kneel beside her and wipe the dirt from her injured foot.

  He took time and care and Cass lost the will to argue as she became conscious of his touch. It was a powerful combination, gentleness and strength. He turned over her foot and cleaned the sole, before re-examining her injury.

  ‘The bleeding’s slowed,’ he murmured, ‘but I definitely think there’s something in the cut. Best left to the professionals, I suspect… Meanwhile a little antiseptic would not go amiss.’

  He reached for a bottle out of the medicine cabinet.

  Cass watched him pour a liberal amount onto a cotton-wool pad and gritted her teeth in readiness, knowing it was going to sting.

  ‘Swear if you want,’ he suggested as he dabbed between her flinches.

  ‘Don’t tempt me.’ She shut her eyes until he ceased his ministrations and the pain subsided.

  ‘I wish I could.’ He was now seated on the edge of the bath, and, catching her slightly startled gaze, added, ‘So what does it take?’

  To tempt her?

  Could he really be interested? It seemed unlikely. She must look a sorry mess, yet he was definitely flirting.

  She decided to go for silent disdain. She almost managed it, but her blush was a bit of a give-away. The trouble was she did find him attractive. Very.

  He smiled at her, slow and amused, as if he knew how she felt and she threw his earlier words back at him, ‘Do I look stupid?’

  ‘Would you have to be?’

  ‘I think so, don’t you?’

  They’d returned to sparring but it was only superficial. The undercurrent was something else entirely.

  ‘Is this a money or a class thing?’ he guessed astutely. ‘Because I have no problem with you being a checkout girl.’

  ‘That’s big of you.’ Her tone was strictly ironic as she decided he desperately needed cutting down to size. ‘Could be a I just don’t fancy you thing?’