The Baby Bond

‘Monday?’ she whispered faintly. The day after tomorrow.

So soon?

Too soon, thought Angel as reality drove home with all the gritty force of a hailstorm. Too soon to take everything in.

But Rory had obviously misinterpreted her response. ‘I was going to try and make it tomorrow, but everything is in chaos here. I’ve been busy with…’ He hesitated. Angel thought she heard him swallow. ‘Formalities,’ he finished baldly.

She could imagine. The legal process of death. Angel swallowed too as she tried to take in the momentous news. It was unbelievable. Truly unbelievable.

She closed her eyes and remembered a long, hot summer. An Irish girl alone in London, working as a nanny in a sterile, unfriendly house. Angel had been like a fish out of water, yet unwilling to admit defeat, to return home, to her overworked mother and her six brothers who wouldn’t lift a finger to help themselves.

Then the devil-may-care Chad Mandelson had entered her life like a ray of sunshine. Chad hadn’t believed in problems; he’d shrugged each and every one off with that careless smile which captivated every woman around, Angel included. He’d been the kind of man who in Ireland would have been called a ‘chancer’, but in the hostile world of the big city Angel hadn’t cared. He’d been her rock and she had clung onto him.

He’d been an ex-model and a failed actor, doted on by his ageing mother and so unlike his austere and severe older brother that it had been hard to take in that they were the same flesh and blood. When Angel had met him, he’d been recently bereaved and still grieving for his mother. Afterwards she’d wondered whether that was why he had clung to her, too. But she had answered a need in him, just as he had answered one in her.

And now he was dead.

Dead.

Angel tried to imagine the shocking reality. Dark, unwelcome thoughts began to flood into her shattered mind and she felt the telephone slip from between boneless fingers.

Hundreds of miles away in England, Rory was deafened by the sound of the receiver as it clattered onto the hard, cold slabs of the flagstoned floor.

CHAPTER TWO (#uf53cd2bd-42bd-593a-bd5a-9c05fb8ba988)

THERE was a tap on the door of the old-fashioned parlour, and Mrs Fitzpatrick, the matriarch of the Fitzpatrick Hotel, peered in to see Angel sitting motionless on the sofa.

‘Angel?’

Angel looked up from the photo she had been studying and tried to compose herself, though it wasn’t easy. She had been feeling so emotional since hearing of Chad’s death that her face kept crumpling up with disbelief, and tears were never very far from the surface. She cleared her throat. ‘Yes, Mrs Fitzpatrick?’

Mrs Fitzpatrick was looking more agitated than Angel could ever remember seeing her—even more flustered than the time that the goose had flown into the parlour, minutes before the parish priest had arrived to take tea! Her thick Irish accent was very pronounced, the result of never having ventured further afield than twenty miles from the place where she had been born.

‘The gentleman you’re waiting on; he’s here to see you now. He’s just turned up in a fancy-looking motor car!’ she finished, on a note of excitement which she couldn’t quite hide, despite her obvious concern for Angel.

Angel swallowed nervously, and nodded. So Rory had finally arrived, had he? That would explain why Mrs Fitzpatrick was looking so rattled—for how often did tall barristers with heartbreakingly stern faces wander into the Fitzpatrick Hotel? No, men like Rory Mandelson certainly didn’t grow on trees in any part of the world—least of all in this part of Ireland!

‘Would you like me to show him in?’ prompted Mrs Fitzpatrick.

Angel shifted stiffly on the sofa. She hadn’t known when to expect him, so she had risen at six, just to be sure. Still in shock, she had sat as inert as a statue all morning waiting for him, dressed all in black, as was still the local custom. Her thick, dark hair she had scraped back severely with combs, but now she wondered why she had bothered. It was a style she wore every day whilst working, but this morning her fingers had felt useless—had shaken so much while she struggled to put the combs in place that already rogue curls were beginning to unfurl around her neck.

‘Thank you, Molly,’ she answered quietly. ‘Would you mind awfully?’

‘Not at all!’ The older woman narrowed her eyes shrewdly. ‘And how about a drop of brandy for you, Angelica? Bring a bit of colour back into your cheeks?’

But Angel shook her head, suppressing a shudder. It was eleven o’clock in the morning, and she didn’t want Rory Mandelson walking in and finding her with a glass raised to her lips. He had never wanted her to marry his brother in the first place, but she had no desire to sink any further in his estimation.

Since his phone call she had barely slept. She had lain awake at night, wondering why he was even bothering to come to see her at all—until she’d remembered that he was a barrister, and that there was a need for him to create some kind of order in his life, a sense of doing the right thing—and the right thing in Rory’s mind was undoubtedly to pay his respects to the widow of his brother. But brandy? No way! Imagine his face! ‘No, I won’t, thanks, Molly.’ She gave a wan smile. ‘Not just at the moment.’

‘Then I’ll bring him along now, shall I?’

‘Would you? Thanks.’

After Molly had bustled out, Angel put the photo back down on the side-table and clasped her hands together, feeling more nervous than she could ever remember feeling in her life. Though why she should be so nervous of coming face to face with Rory after more than eighteen months, she didn’t know.

Grief, probably.

Grief made you do all kinds of things, didn’t it? Made you feel vulnerable and alone, for a start. Made you question what life was all about and wonder what you were doing with that life. And it made you study an old wedding photo with amazement, as if the handsome, laughing green-eyed girl in it was a total stranger, instead of herself.

And, yes, her husband might have fallen out of love with her, and left her without a word of explanation, but that did not stop her heart aching for him and the terrible waste of a young life.

The oval mirror which hung on the plain wall opposite offered her a glimpse of her reflection if she moved her head very slightly.

Angel grimaced. The slim-fitting black dress she wore only emphasised the washed-out pallor of her cheeks, and her eyes were shadowed from a lack of sleep. She looked a mess.

Hardly realising that she was doing it, she patted her dark hair fussily as the door swung open, and there stood Rory, his face darkening as he saw the pose she struck, and her hand fell to her side.

Now why had she been caught looking as though she was preening herself—something she never normally did? Why, he probably thought that all she was concerned about was feminine vanity—even at a dreadful time like this.

She blinked as she looked at him.

Angel had quite forgotten how he could simply seem to fill a room with his presence. She wondered, had he been born with that indefinable something which immediately drew the eye and the interest without any effort on his part? Some characteristic which planted itself so indelibly on your memory that he seemed to still be in the room minutes after he had left it.

Or had he learnt that from his job? As an advocate, he dominated courtrooms with his presence and his eloquence, representing the rights of the underdog. She remembered Chad’s derisive expression, unable to understand why his big brother would pass up the opportunity to earn riches beyond most people’s dreams. Instead, he fought cases for the poor and underprivileged—those who would normally be unable to afford a lawyer of his undoubted calibre.

And in that he could not have been more different from his brother, for Chad had chased every money-making prospect which came his way.

Rory Mandelson was a big man, and a tall man, too—with the same kind of dark, rugged good looks as his younger brother. And yet he had none of Chad’s wildness. Or his unpredictability—you could tell that simply by looking at him. Rory emanated strength and stability, thought Angel, like a great oak tree rooted deeply into the earth.

He stared very hard at her, his mouth flattening into an implacable line, which was understandable, given the circumstances of his visit. But it gave absolutely no hint as to how he might be feeling inside.

There was something very disciplined about Rory Mandelson, Angel realised suddenly. You wouldn’t really have a clue what was going on behind those deep blue eyes of his, with the lush black lashes which curled around them so sinfully.

His black jeans were his only concession to mourning, otherwise—with a sweater as green as the Wicklow Mountains, which rose in verdant splendour outside the window—he looked just as casual as any other tourist. Not that there had been many tourists just lately, Angel acknowledged. It had been an unusually cruel and bleak January in this part of Ireland, with no signs of a change in sight.

‘Hello, Angel,’ he said softly. His navy eyes searched her face, and for the briefest second Angel had the oddest sensation of that blue gaze searing through all her defences, able to read her soul itself.

‘H-hello, Rory,’ she replied shakily. She got up from the sofa slowly, with the exaggerated care of an old woman, and crossed the room until she was standing right in front of him. And only then could she sense the immense sadness which surrounded him like an aura, his grief almost tangible in the brittle silence. His deep blue eyes were dulled with the pain, his features strained with the effort of keeping his face rigidly controlled.

Angel acted on instinct.

Rising up on tiptoe, she put her arms tightly around him in the traditional gesture of condolence, and let her head fall helplessly to his shoulder, expecting him to enfold her in his arms in an answering gesture of comfort.

She would have done the same whoever it had been—man, woman or child. It was an intuitive action, and one prompted by the haunted expression in his blue eyes, but Angel felt his muscular frame stiffen and shift rejectingly beneath her fingertips, and she immediately dropped her hands to her sides, where they hung awkwardly, as if they were not part of her body but someone else’s.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said woodenly as she glimpsed his shuttered expression. He was English, after all. Perhaps the widow of his brother should not have been flinging her arms around his neck with so much familiarity. Perhaps it was not the ‘done thing’.

‘Yes, I know,’ he responded flatly. ‘Everyone is sorry. He was too young—much too young to die.’