The Baby Bond. Sharon Kendrick
name?’
‘He’s here with me now,’ Rory told her steadily. ‘I brought him with me.’
RORY had anticipated all kinds of reaction to the news that he had brought his infant nephew with him, but the one which he got had not even featured near the bottom of the list.
Angel sprang from her chair like a jack-in-the-box and turned on him, her face white, her eyes spitting green fire and looking so incredibly angry that he seriously thought that she was about to start pummelling those small fists against his chest.
‘Do you mean to tell me,’ she demanded, her breath coming in trembling bursts, ‘that you’ve brought a new baby—and an orphaned baby, to boot—over to a strange country and then just left him out there, in the car?’
‘Angel—’
‘In the middle of winter?’
‘Angel—’
‘Just what kind of a man are you to have charge of a young child, Rory Mandelson?’ she stormed. ‘I’ve a good mind to report you to the authorities!’
Despite everything, Rory smiled—and it was a relief to know that he still could. It was, he realised, the first time he had smiled since the police had arrived on his doorstep with the grim news of his brother’s death.
‘But I didn’t leave him in the car,’ he objected.
‘Then where is he now?’
‘With Mrs Fitzpatrick.’
‘With…Mrs…Fitzpatrick,’ repeated Angel slowly, as though he was speaking to her in a foreign language. But didn’t that make sense? Wouldn’t that explain the hotel owner’s rather agitated preoccupation earlier this morning—rather than the conclusion to which Angel had immediately jumped? That Mrs Fitzpatrick had been bowled over by Rory’s good looks!
Nonetheless, his conduct with the baby sounded like a serious case of neglect to her. ‘So you just arrived here this morning and handed the baby over to her, did you?’ she quizzed, as passionately as if she had been the barrister instead of him. ‘Just like that?’
He nodded his dark head, reluctantly impressed by her tenacity. And by her temper! She was much more fiery than he remembered. And far too young and beautiful to be wearing those horrible black mourning clothes. ‘Pretty much,’ he agreed.
‘And what would you have done if she had refused to babysit for you and told you she hated babies? Or what if she’d looked like an axe-murderer?’
This time he actually laughed, and that simple, un-complicated sound of mirth reassured Rory more than anything else could have done. For it told him that heartache—even the intense, almost unendurable heartache of a sibling’s tragic and premature death—could heal eventually. And that the human spirit was a most resilient thing.
‘Well, I presumed that you wouldn’t have sought employment under an axe-murderer, Angel, though I suppose one can never tell,’ he mused. ‘But if I’d thought that Mrs Fitzpatrick was unsuitable to babysit for half an hour—or was unable to cope with the demands of a new baby, or if I’d had any reservations about her whatsoever—then naturally I would have brought him in here with me.’
‘But you didn’t want to do that?’ she guessed, narrowing her green eyes as she wondered why.
‘No,’ he said flatly. ‘I didn’t.’
‘Because?’
‘Because I thought that it would be too much for you to handle—on top of everything else I had to tell you.’ His face had resumed its sombre expression.
‘That was very thoughtful of you,’ observed Angel, hoping that her expression didn’t show the surprise she felt at his concern for her feelings.
He shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘Not really,’ he murmured, and something in the husky quality which tinged his voice made Angel feel suddenly and inexplicably aware of him as a man, and not just as a man who had been related to her by marriage.
She swallowed down her confusion, pushed the troubling thought away. ‘C-can I see him?’ she asked tentatively.
Again, that fleeting smile. Only this time it was like the sun breaking free from behind a cloud, thought Angel, before she drew herself up quickly. What on earth was she thinking of? Just because she had been behaving like a nun since her marriage had broken down, that didn’t mean she had to undergo a complete personality change now. Fancy analysing the man’s smile when there was a poor little orphaned baby waiting!
‘Of course you can see him,’ said Rory softly. ‘He’s asleep in the kitchen. Or rather—he was asleep when I left him.’
‘Then what are we waiting for?’
Angel led the way downstairs to the kitchen, which looked as though it was straight out of a brochure on the joys of rural Ireland. There was an old-fashioned dresser covered with many plates—some chipped—and from the range drifted a soft heat and the unmistakable smell of soda bread baking. The vast wooden table which dominated the room was scratched and carved, and carried the marks of generations of children who had written their homework on it.
And there, in the centre of the table, sat a dark blue carrycot, with a white bundle swathed inside.
Mrs Fitzpatrick had been bending over the cot, but she straightened up as soon as she heard their footsteps. Her expression wasn’t just curious as she glanced from one to the other of them; she was obviously bursting to know why this tall, handsome Englishman had arrived with a baby, asking to see Angel.
All Angel had told her was that her husband was dead, and that his brother would be arriving to see her. Molly Fitzpatrick had planned to find out more from the brother himself, but something in Rory’s eyes had cautioned her and she had refrained from asking any questions. For the time being, anyway.
‘I left him on the table because I didn’t want the dog licking at his face!’ she declared, in her thick Irish brogue. ‘The kettle has just boiled and there’s soda bread cooling on the side. I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be changing linen upstairs if you need me, Angelica.’
‘Thanks,’ nodded Angel, but her attention was all on the sleeping bundle, which was mostly obscured by a snowy fleece blanket, so that she barely heard Mrs Fitzpatrick leave the room.
Angel walked over to the cot and stood silently over it, unable to see more than a tiny tuft of dark, silky hair and two sooty half-moon eyelashes which swept onto perfect pale cheeks. One little fist was clenched and visible, each finger so tiny that it would have looked more at home on a doll.
Angel had always adored babies, but this baby was her late husband’s son, and despite all her mixed-up emotions concerning the ending of her marriage something stirred in her heart as she watched the barely perceptible rise and fall of the little boy’s chest. How she wished that he would wake so that she could pick him up!
She glanced up to find that Rory’s eyes were fixed unwaveringly on her, and she felt uncomfortable under that brief, hard scrutiny. Colour rushed vividly into her cheeks, in a way it hadn’t done for years. ‘W-will we wait until he wakes?’ she whispered.
‘Yes,’ he whispered back, his eyes glittering, though he made no mention of the fact that she had been blushing in a way he hadn’t seen a woman blush for a long time. ‘His lungs are far lustier than you would imagine for such a little fellow. Such a tiny little fellow,’ he added almost dreamily, as he gazed down at his nephew.
Angel watched the almost reluctant softening of Rory’s features with something approaching astonishment. But there again newborn infants had the ability to grab your complete attention, didn’t they? Even from people who never normally gave babies a second glance. There was some quality in their cry which always alerted an adult to their