‘About what happened down at the river—’ he began in measured tones.
‘You were lying, weren’t you?’ she cut in before he could say more.
‘Lying?’
‘About Pen telling you those things.’
Cass waited for an answer but he seemed in no hurry to give one, his eyes speculative. She regretted asking.
‘Don’t bother,’ she quelled any doubts. ‘I know you were.’
‘I shouldn’t have said anything,’ he finally returned. ‘Not today, anyway.’
Cass read it as an admission of guilt and was satisfied.
It was Dray who continued, ‘I shouldn’t have kissed you either.’
‘Forget it,’ she threw back. ‘I have.’
‘That easy, is it?’ His mouth twisted in a parody of a smile.
No, it wasn’t that bloody easy, but Cass saw a way to hit back.
‘Frankly, yes,’ she agreed coldly and actually enjoyed the look on his face. If he’d imagined he was anyone special, he didn’t now.
‘Well, as long as you talk to Tom,’ he responded at length, making it clear his brother was still his priority.
Cass said nothing, taking the steps to the terrace. She wanted to get away altogether but Tom, who had been looking out for them, emerged from a doorway and came towards them.
‘I couldn’t go down there,’ he said without preamble. ‘Not to the summer house. You understand?’
Cass nodded. ‘I think so.’
‘She used to use it. I found out,’ he ran on. ‘The floor, I suppose. There isn’t a settee… Or the chair, maybe. Did she tell you?’
Cass stared back at him, speechless. Was this all he wanted to ask her?
She mouthed something at Dray Carlisle and then walked away once more.
He caught her up, grabbing her arm.
She rounded on him furiously, ‘Didn’t you catch that? Well, it was naff off. Is that clear enough?’
‘Calm down,’ he instructed, glancing back at an agitated Tom. ‘I didn’t know he was going to ask you something like that.’
‘I bet!’ she spat at him, ‘Well, just for the record, let me tell you: I don’t know anything about the affair she had; I don’t know his name, what age he is, where he lives, how good he is in bed. Nothing! And I don’t want to know.’
‘Yes, okay. Fair enough.’ He signalled for her to hush and attempted to pacify her with, ‘I believe you.’
‘No, you don’t!’ she snapped at this patent insincerity. ‘But it’s true all the same. I’ve seen my sister half a dozen times in the last three years and on none of these occasions did we trade bedroom secrets. All right?’ Her voice rose with her temper but he still didn’t respond in kind.
Instead he looked hard at her, then towards the house.
Finally Cass noticed the set of French doors just feet away. They were open to let in air on this warm day. Beyond them was the drawing room where people were eating their buffet lunch—or had been until they’d heard angry voices and stopped to gaze out onto the terrace.
‘Oh, God!’ Cass looked aghast as she tried to remember what she’d said. ‘Do you think they heard?’
‘Probably.’ He didn’t go out of his way to make her feel any better. ‘I think I’d better rejoin the funeral party and defuse the situation.’
‘You don’t expect me to go in there, too.’ Cass didn’t know these people, didn’t want to.
Dray shook his head. ‘I gave up expecting anything from you a long time ago, Cassie,’ he said with a sudden weariness. ‘You can go now, if you want. Perhaps it’s best.’
Go? Now he’d turned her world upside down again. Go? Now he had no more use for her. Nothing really had changed.
‘She can’t go,’ came from Tom listening on the sidelines. ‘Dray, she can’t go. I don’t know what to do… Cass, please. You have to help me…’
He fixed desperate eyes on her, clearly at the end of his tether.
Cass could walk away on Dray Carlisle; she owed him nothing. But Tom was different.
‘It’s all right, Tom, I’ll stay,’ she replied quietly.
‘Thank you.’ He shut his eyes in momentary relief. ‘It has to be a secret. We’ll go somewhere…’
‘My sitting room,’ Dray suggested and Tom nodded, turning to lead the way.
Cass made to follow but Dray caught her arm once more. ‘I’ll be as quick as I can. Don’t take anything Tom says too seriously,’ he instructed in an undertone. ‘He’s…he’s not himself.’
‘I realise that.’ Cass wondered if he thought her a fool on top of everything else. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll just let him talk.’
‘Good.’ He let her go but she could feel his eyes boring into her back as she walked away with Tom.
Tom took her down a long corridor to a room used exclusively by the family. It was walled by battered bookcases and furnished with an old chesterfield sofa and easy chairs round an Adam fireplace. No interior designer had been let loose in here and it was the more relaxing for it.
The fire wasn’t lit, of course. It was too warm.
She refused Tom’s offer of whisky and watched in concern as he clinked the crystal decanter against a glass and poured himself what was at least a double measure.
He drank it down, then refilled the glass, bringing it with him as he sank down on a sofa. She sat in a seat opposite.
She waited for him to speak but, now that they were alone, he seemed to be having difficulty finding words.
‘You knew her, didn’t you,’ he choked out at last, ‘better than anyone?’
Cass could have said yes, but was that what he wanted to hear?
‘I wouldn’t say that,’ she hedged.
‘But you knew about the baby?’ Blue eyes suddenly focused on her.
She shook her head. ‘Actually, no, I didn’t. Not until this week… How is she?’ she added quietly.
He frowned, then dismissed impatiently, ‘I didn’t mean that baby. I meant the other one.’
Cass felt her stomach drop. She should have been expecting it, of course.
‘The other one?’ She played for time.
‘She had a baby before.’ His mouth twisted with pain. ‘The doctors assumed I knew… You must have.’
Cass couldn’t see a way of denying it and there was no reason to, any more. Pen was dead.
‘Yes, Pen had a baby when she was younger,’ she confirmed quietly.
‘How much younger?’
‘Does that matter?’
‘Yes, it bloody matters!’
Angry, he sounded more like his big brother, but Cass forgave him it. His whole world had fallen apart a week ago.
‘She was sixteen.’
‘Whose was it?’
‘A boy she met at a party. He wasn’t much older.’
‘She must have liked him,’ Tom considered, ‘to have had the baby.’
‘I suppose.’ Cass decided against telling him that it had been too late for Pen to do anything else. ‘She was very young, Tom. It was a mistake. She wanted to forget all about it. You can understand that.’
She spoke gently but Tom resented it all the same. He didn’t want to understand Pen. He wanted to hurt her for all the lies she’d told him, only she was out of reach.
Cass was the next best thing, as he threw at her, ‘And where were you when this was all happening? Too busy with your own life to bother keeping an eye on her?’
Cass blanched at the accusation, accepting there might be some truth in it. She had been immersed in her studies at the time Pen had gone off the rails.
‘I…I’m sorry.’ Tom sensed the hurt in her silence and was concerned she might leave. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. I have no quarrel with you.’
‘It’s all right.’ Cass realised it had been his grief talking.
‘But I need to know,’ he continued raggedly, ‘what happened to it—Pen’s first baby?’
She kept her emotions in check as she relayed, ‘He died shortly afte
r birth.’
It was a very long time since she’d talked of this. In fact, Cass and Pen had almost never talked of it. Alexander Joseph, born two months early, had barely drawn a breath. Despite an initial reluctance to accept her pregnancy, Pen had been devastated by the loss.
‘I’d assumed he’d been adopted.’
‘That had been discussed.’
‘It’s not hard, is it? To find them a family, I mean. Lots of couples desperate for a baby.’
‘I imagine not.’
Even as she said the words, Cass felt they were wrong. It was hard. To carry that small body and feel the slight beat of its heart against yours. To stroke the down on its head, the soft curve of its cheek. To do all that, then hand it over, like a parcel sent to an incorrect address. Hard? It must be killing.
‘Best solution all round.’ Tom was on his own train of thought. ‘Don’t you think?’
This time Cass said nothing. She didn’t want to talk about what might have happened had Alexander survived.
‘At any rate, it should be your decision,’ Tom rattled on. ‘I hardly have the right to make it and there’s no one else. I understand it’s well enough to travel…I’d be grateful if you could take it today.’
Cass stared at her brother-in-law in confused disbelief. Either he or she had lost the plot somewhere.
‘What are you talking about, Tom?’
‘The baby.’
‘Which baby, Tom?’
A frown questioned whether she’d been listening. ‘Pen’s baby, of course. It’s a girl, this one, did Dray say?’
Cass shook her head to clear it. She must have misunderstood. He couldn’t be asking her to take the baby away!
‘T-Tom,’ she began shakily, ‘I’m still not sure…You can’t want me to—’
‘Yes, I do,’ he cut in. ‘I’ve thought about it. In fact, I’ve thought about little else for days. I know it didn’t do anything. It’s just a baby. But I can’t bring it up.’
Cass ignored her natural inclination to correct his ‘it’ for a ‘she’ Tom was clearly too unbalanced to be accountable.
The question was: how long would his condition last? Days? Weeks? Months? And, meanwhile, who would care for the infant?
Close family? There was just Dray and her. Dray wouldn’t be volunteering, and she couldn’t. She had nothing to offer a child.
‘Listen, Tom,’ she spoke in cool, professional tones, ‘you are in no state to make such a decision. You’ve lost your wife. That’s devastating enough. And on top of that, you’ve discovered something fairly distressing about her past. Perhaps you have yet to bond with your baby daughter, but that’s-’
‘It’s not mine!’ was torn from Tom and colour suffused his face.
Cass was halted in her tracks. Quite unexpected, but not so far-fetched to induce shock or indignation. She could think of no useful thing to say, so once again said nothing.
It left Tom jumping to the wrong conclusions. ‘You knew, didn’t you? I told Dray you would.’
Cass shook her head once more; she hadn’t even known of the pregnancy.
Tom didn’t notice as he stared at the bottom of his glass.
‘Is it the same man, the one she was seeing last year,’ he added, ‘or a new one?’
‘I really have no idea, Tom,’ she denied. ‘I’ve hardly seen Pen in the last couple of years—’
‘No, of course. I forgot.’ He gave a laugh that cracked in the middle. ‘All those nights away. In town visiting Cass. So easy—with a mobile phone you can pretend to be anywhere. Only she wasn’t with you at all.’
He laughed again, a tortured sound. He’d obviously been over this same ground a thousand times in his head but still needed to go over it again.
‘Tom, I can’t tell you how sorry I am,’ she said inadequately and it drew a hard look, more reminiscent of his older brother.
‘Are you?’ He didn’t give her a chance to answer. ‘And were you also sorry when you lied for her the time I called?’
Cass had the grace to look ashamed. Without her knowledge, Pen has used her as an alibi, then begged her to back up her story. Cass had been furious and hadn’t wanted to do it, but Pen had made her feel if she didn’t, the marriage would be over.
‘Yes, I was sorry…very sorry,’ she returned quietly, ‘but I thought I was doing the right thing. Pen realised she’d been an idiot and it was you she loved, and she promised never to have another affair.’
‘She told me the same,’ sneered Tom, ‘but only after I made her confess all… You’re not a very good liar, Cass, do you know that?’
Cass nodded. Pen had said as much, when Cass had failed to convince Tom that Pen had been with her.
‘Your sister was far better,’ he added bitterly. ‘I actually believed she’d be faithful after that. More fool me.’
‘I’m sure she meant to be,’ Cass put in softly, wanting to comfort.
But Tom didn’t want to be comforted. He wanted the stark truth. ‘So what was his name? I have the right to that at least.’
‘I don’t know, honestly.’ Cass could claim that with a clear conscience.
Pen had told her the other man was an executive of Carlisle Electronics but that was all. It didn’t seem a wise piece of information to offer now.
Tom looked disbelieving, before saying, ‘Well, it doesn’t matter. I don’t imagine he’ll want the baby, anyway.’
‘Tom,’ she appealed softly, ‘why are you sure she isn’t yours? Have you had tests done?’
He shook his head. ‘I don’t need tests to tell me what I already know. The way she was acting…shutting me out…it all falls in place…she must have said something to you!’ he insisted.
‘Only that you were completely reconciled and planning a family,’ she revealed, ‘and that was ages ago.’
‘When exactly?’ he demanded, as if it were important.
‘I can’t remember a date.’ Cass had been doing her first stint in Casualty, with one long week rolling into another. ‘Early October, I think.’
His mouth twisted. ‘She was lying.’
‘I don’t think so.’ Cass remembered the gist of the conversation and there had been no reason for Pen to lie.
Pen had come to her for medical advice. Tom had been pressing her to start a family and she’d wanted to know the odds on a safe pregnancy.
Cass hadn’t minced her words. There had been no way Pen should have had a baby. The risks had been too great. Even with hospitalisation, there had been a forty-per-cent chance of mortality for either her or the baby or both. The only thing she should have done was come clean with Tom about her medical history.
Pen had been horrified at that idea but Cass had pointed out that, if she had embarked on another pregnancy, the doctors would have known it wasn’t her first and it was unlikely she’d have kept that from Tom.
Cass had actually believed she’d got through to her. Now she felt she had failed Pen by not pursuing the matter the next time she’d called instead of accepting Pen’s assurance that she and Tom had gone off the idea of babies altogether.
‘She was lying,’ Tom repeated, breaking into her thoughts. ‘She was already pregnant, then.’
‘What?’ Cass was confused.
‘In October,’ he stressed, ‘she was two months gone.’
Cass continued to frown. How could that be? She did some mental arithmetic.
‘I thought the baby was premature.’ She was sure Dray had told her that.
‘We thought so, too, at first,’ Tom admitted, ‘but the doctors have since said it’s full term. They can tell these things.’
Oh, God, Pen, Cass groaned inwardly as she realised what Pen had done. Already pregnant, she’d come to her for approval. When she hadn’t given it, she’d decided to bury her head in the sand.
‘The dates prove it,’ Tom added leadenly.
‘Prove what?’
‘It isn’t mine.’
Cass assumed from this that he had been absent at
the time of conception.
‘I really am sorry, Tom,’ she said gently, but he made a dismissive gesture, as if he didn’t want to hear it.
He rose to his feet and she followed, searching for a means to console him.
But it seemed she already had, as he announced, ‘Thanks for coming. I feel better now… You won’t tell Dray, will you?’
‘About the baby?’
‘Yes.’
‘But if you don’t intend keeping her—’
‘No, the other baby.’ They’d been talking at cross purposes again. ‘I don’t want him to know. I don’t want anybody to know.’
He was adamant and Cass didn’t argue. The present was bad enough without dragging in her sister’s past.
‘Listen, if there’s anything else I can do—’ she offered without really considering her words.
‘It’s enough that you’re taking the baby away,’ he responded, and began walking towards the door.
‘But, Tom—’ Cass tried to stop him.
Perhaps he didn’t hear—or didn’t want to—as he left the room without another word.
She went after him, but stopped short as he reached the front hallway. He had joined Dray and their Uncle Charles at the entrance, saying their farewells to the departing mourners.
She didn’t want to tackle him again in public so she retraced her steps to the sitting room. She felt unable to run out now. She sat waiting, knowing Dray Carlisle would track her down.
She assumed he must have been aware of what Tom was going to ask of her. It also seemed likely that such a plan had his approval. She was here to take care of an inconvenience.
Cass struggled to get her head round it. They intended her to drop off at the hospital on her way home and pick up the baby. As if it were that simple. As if Cass had no life to rearrange.
No life to give up, because that was what it meant. Tom wanted her to look after her niece en route to adoption but Cass knew she couldn’t do it. She’d once held another baby, a tiny scrap of humanity that had literally died in her arms. She remembered how she’d felt then. If ever she held this one, she would never wish to let her go.
She could walk away, of course. No one could stop her. But the thought of Pen’s baby, no longer a Carlisle, no longer wanted, kept her there.
She had the briefest of waits before Dray Carlisle appeared. He stood in the doorway, that look of contempt back on his handsome face.
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