The Baby Bond

Had he deliberately misunderstood her? Angel wondered. Been unwilling to dwell on her action because he was embarrassed by it? Or appalled by it?

Vowing to make amends, and to act as appropriately as the circumstances demanded, she gestured to a chair. ‘Would you like to sit down, Rory?’ she asked him formally. ‘You’ve had a long journey.’

He looked at the chair she had indicated, as if doubtful that it would accommodate his long-legged frame, and shook his head. ‘No. I’ll stand, if you don’t mind. I’ve been sitting in the car for hours.’

‘A drink, then?’

‘No. Not yet.’

Their eyes met.

‘Then are you going to tell me why you’re here?’ asked Angel quietly. ‘Why you came?’

His dark head shook emphatically. ‘Not yet,’ he said again, and Angel decided that she had never met a man who could carry off evasiveness with so much aplomb.

His eyes were distracted by something, and he reached to the side-table and picked up the wedding photograph she had been studying before he arrived. Rory’s mouth twisted as he stared down at the differing expressions of the participants, frozen in time in a group combination which could now never be repeated. ‘So, you were reliving happier times, were you?’ he queried, his voice hard and mocking.

‘Is that so very wrong, then?’ She knew she sounded stung, almost defensive. Was this what he did to witnesses on the stand—backed them into a corner until he had them lashing out, saying things they probably hadn’t meant to say? ‘It’s one of the few photos I have of your brother.’

He shrugged. ‘Forgive me if I sound cynical,’ he observed coolly. ‘But, as you know, I never thought that the wedding should go ahead in the first place—’

‘Oh, yes, I know that!’ she whispered back, with a bleak laugh which was the closest Angel ever got to feeling bitter about the whole affair. ‘You made that quite clear at the time!’

‘And circumstances bore out my initial assessment of the relationship,’ he mused.

She stared at him in horror. ‘You stone-hearted beast!’

He didn’t bat an eyelid. ‘I would therefore be an out and out hypocrite if I now professed to approve of the marriage simply because Chad is dead.’

Angel drew in a deep, shuddering breath as he clipped out that cold, final word. ‘Must you put it quite so callously?’ she demanded, wondering whether he had a sympathetic bone in his body.

His lips flattened. ‘How else would you like me to put it? Do you want me to use euphemisms for what was essentially a horrible and violent end to Chad’s young life? He hasn’t “passed on” or “fallen asleep”, you know. He’s dead, Angel—and we both have to accept that.’

‘Are you deliberately being brutal?’ she asked him weakly.

‘Yes,’ he admitted, watching a pulse beat frantically at her throat. ‘But sometimes brutal is best if it makes you face up to facts.’

Facts.

Angel sank down onto the edge of a chair without thinking as she asked the question whose answer she had little desire to hear. ‘So wh-what happened—exactly?’

He seemed to hesitate, the blue eyes narrowing as if he was silently working out a problem. Yet when he spoke he sounded icily calm. ‘His car hit the central reservation, and—’ He stopped when he saw the sugar-whiteness of her skin. If he had thought that she was pale before, well, now she looked positively anaemic. ‘You’re not ready for this,’ he said abruptly. ‘You need a drink.’ ‘No—’ ‘Oh, yes, you do.’ His mouth was grim. ‘And so do I.’

Too weak to object, Angel watched while he located the decanter and two glasses and poured them each a large measure. If she hadn’t been so shell-shocked by the whole sequence of events, then she might have told him that he had picked up the wrong glasses, and that after he had gone Molly Fitzpatrick would crucify her for not giving a man like Rory Mandelson the best Waterford crystal!

‘Here. Drink this,’ he instructed as he handed one to her, in that rather autocratic manner of his which had always used to drive his younger brother nuts.

Angel sipped and fire invaded her mouth as the strong liquor immediately caused her tense limbs to relax. Without realising that she was doing it, she sat back in the chair and closed her eyes. When she opened them again it was to find Rory sitting opposite her, his eyes fixed on her face. He hadn’t touched his brandy, she noted.

‘Are you okay?’ he wanted to know.

Angel nodded. ‘I’m fine now.’

‘You don’t look fine. You’re so pale that you look as though you’re about to pass out. Though that might be due to the fact that you’re clothed from head to foot in black,’ he added critically.

She was sensitive to the unmistakable reproof in his voice. ‘You obviously don’t approve of my wearing black, then, Rory?’

His broad shoulders in the green sweater barely moved, but he managed to convey all the censure of a dismissive shrug. ‘Surely my feelings on the subject are irrelevant,’ he responded quietly. ‘You must wear what you see fit. Indeed you must behave in any way that seems appropriate.’

But it was clear that he considered her mourning clothes to be highly in appropriate! Angel put her glass down with a trembling hand. Just who did he think he was? Coming over to Ireland when she hadn’t even wanted him to! And with a face like thunder! Sitting there in judgement of her as though she were some kind of floozie—when everyone knew that Rory Mandelson had had more women in his thirty-four years than any man had a right to have.

‘Oh, I will,’ she responded, with a defiant little shake of her head. ‘Never you fear about that, Rory—but I want to know just what it is that you object to. Do you think I have no right to mourn my husband?’

His eyes narrowed sharply, so that they appeared like two bright sapphire shards which slanted beneath the ebony-dark brows. ‘But he was your husband in name only, wasn’t he, Angel? He disappeared from your life over a year and a half ago. The marriage vows which you made so enthusiastically ended up not being worth the piece of paper they were written on.’

She lifted her chin. ‘Just as you predicted, in fact.’

His gaze didn’t waver. ‘Yes. Just as I predicted.’

Angel bit her lip. ‘And I suppose it gave you pleasure, knowing that you were right. Knowing that all your gloomy prophecies were fulfilled. That we couldn’t live together and that I drove him away. Did it, Rory?’

His eyebrows knitted together and he gave a small laugh that was totally devoid of humour. ‘Did it give me pleasure? Is that what you think of me then, Angel? That my ego is so insufferably huge that I would enjoy seeing your marriage crumble simply because I had anticipated that it might happen?’

‘You tell me,’ she responded tonelessly.

Shaking his head with exasperation, he turned on his heel and walked across the room to the window, where the beauty of the spectacular backdrop of mountains momentarily took his breath away—something which did not happen to Rory Mandelson very often. He waited for a moment before he turned round and leaned negligently against the windowsill, and the semi-relaxed stance showed off his physique to perfect advantage.

Did he not realise, Angel wondered rather helplessly, that with his long legs stretched out in front of him like that, and his ruffled dark hair and eyes of deepest blue, he looked like most women’s fantasy come to life? You would have thought that he might have the decency to wear something dull or at least something that camouflaged his body. Or was it his intention that the soft cashmere of the jade sweater should cling so lovingly to each hard sinew of his torso?

Angel shook her head slightly, recognising with a shock the path her thoughts had been leading her down. What was she doing, for pity’s sake—drooling over her ex-brother-in-law?

Rory’s mouth tightened as he registered the way she was looking at him. ‘What kind of brute would I be,’ he challenged softly, ‘if I rejoiced in the demise of my only brother’s marriage? God, Angel—is that the type of man you think I am? No, on second thought, please don’t answer that!’ He threw her a look which was tinged with regret. ‘Once I could see that you were both determined to go through with it, then naturally I wanted to see it last.’

‘But then I drove him away?’ she quizzed.

He looked at her with ocean-dark eyes. ‘I don’t know. Did you?’

Angel shook her head violently, and a black corkscrew curl dangled in a glossy spiral by her pale cheek. ‘Oh, what’s the point in discussing it now? Chad is dead! He isn’t coming back!’ Angel’s voice started to crack as she acknowledged for the first time in her life her own mortality.

For, yes, she had grown up in a remote and fairly inaccessible part of Ireland, where the existence of a close-knit and small community meant that death was less feared than in many places—and many had been the time that Angel had been to pay her respects at houses where families sat and mourned, the body lying in the parlour while people laughed and drank and cried around it—but death had never affected her personally. Like it was affecting her now.

Tears began to slide down her white cheeks. ‘It’s as though he never existed,’ she sobbed quietly. ‘As though he was never here!’

Rory frowned at her obvious distress. He had seen Angel cry only once before, when Chad had disappeared without trace and she had come—inexplicably—to him for assistance. At the time he had been resolutely un-impressed by her distress, partly, he suspected, since he had so adamantly warned her off the marriage in the first place.

But this time for some reason he found the sight of her tears unbearably moving. ‘Of course he existed,’ he contradicted softly, and, coming back to perch on the edge of the chair opposite hers, he took one pale, cold hand between his and rubbed at it absently with the pad of his thumb.

As physical consolation went, it was merely a crumb of comfort, and yet Angel derived an extraordinary sensation of calm just from the touch of his hand. She sniffed, and took the handkerchief he silently proffered and blew her nose like a child.