A Family of His Own Read online

  ‘Deal with it? He expected you to get rid of the baby?’

  Dominic sounded as horrified as she’d been at Alexander’s casual, callous attitude.

  ‘I didn’t expect him to play the loving father. I’d twigged that I’d been a complete fool when…well, almost immediately. I did expect him to act like a gentleman. I thought that all those fine school ideals—honour and decency—that were drummed into us endlessly at morning assembly actually meant something. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  ‘What’s pathetic is that he got you pregnant. Hadn’t he heard of safe sex? Surely all those street-smart girls insisted on protection?’

  ‘The condom broke. He wasn’t especially bothered. I was a virgin. No danger to him…’ She shook her head. ‘He muttered something about seeing Matron, that she’d sort it, but I would rather have died than admit to anyone what kind of a fool I’d just made of myself. I just shut it out. Refused to admit it to myself. Unfortunately pregnancy has ways of making you take it seriously; you can’t hide morning sickness when you’re living in close quarters with a load of girls. When someone tipped off Matron, her complaint was not just that I’d had unprotected sex, but that I’d been too stupid to go and ask her for the morning-after pill.’

  ‘Which fine institution is this?’

  ‘Don’t blame her. She was in charge of a mixed boarding-school, full of seething hormones looking for an outlet. She was dealing with reality.’

  ‘So what happened next? I suspect this wasn’t the kind of enlightened establishment where girls are allowed to continue their education with time off to visit the local antenatal clinic.’

  ‘What happened next was that she fixed me up with a termination at a private clinic.’

  ‘Oh, great.’

  ‘No, I was getting exactly the same deal as the girls whose parents paid huge fees to send their daughters to the school. No discrimination because I was a scholarship girl who’d spent her first twelve years being shunted from pillar to post. In fact, the deal was better for me. I had no parents to pay for a termination; I was getting special treatment because I was a scholarship girl, someone they’d taken off the scrap heap of life and given a chance and it had paid off, big time. I was going to bring extra kudos to the school—living proof of their altruism.’

  Her mouth was dry. She hadn’t talked about it for a long time, had tried not to think about it. Even now, laid out coldly like this, it still had the power to shock her. ‘Do you think I could have some water?’

  Dominic felt sick. He hadn’t intended to dredge up painful memories just to satisfy his curiosity about some man who could apparently abandon not just a girl who’d loved him, but also his baby. He wanted to go to her, put his arms around her, tell her that he thought she was wonderful. Wished they were somewhere private so that it would be possible. All he could do was get the water she’d asked for and he didn’t wait for someone to come to him, but crossed to the counter and fetched it himself.

  ‘I’m sorry, Kay,’ he said as she sipped at it. ‘I didn’t mean to cause you such distress.’

  But it was as if she hadn’t heard him. Or maybe, having begun to relive those events, she just couldn’t stop.

  ‘It was only when I refused to go through with it that I had it spelled out for me in words of one syllable. The choice was have an abortion or leave.’

  ‘And the boy?’

  ‘Apart from a certain amount of eyebrow-raising that this glamorous heir to an earldom had stooped to notice me, not a lot.’ She managed to find a smile and it wrenched something loose inside him. He rather thought it was the wall he’d built about his heart. ‘They told his family, of course, so that they were prepared to deal with the legal repercussions, such as maintenance.’ Her shoulders moved in the smallest of shrugs. ‘Maybe they found him a more reliable supply of condoms.’

  He was good at hiding his feelings, but he must have betrayed something because she said, ‘I can see that you’re wondering why I’m living in a grace-and-favour house courtesy of the Hallams, instead of maintenance-funded luxury, courtesy of his lordship.’

  ‘Something of the sort,’ he admitted. Along with disbelief that even a callow boy wouldn’t want to know his own child.

  ‘I was confined to my room while they decided on the best course of action. One of the girls told me that the earl himself had arrived, was closeted with the head. I was terrified he’d apply pressure to get rid of the baby. If it was a boy…’ Her voice trailed into silence, leaving him to work out the repercussions of that for himself.

  ‘I can see that, in the fullness of time, that might have messed up the chances of a legitimate heir succeeding to the title. What did you do?’

  ‘I ran.’

  ‘Ran? Where?’

  ‘Just ran.’

  ‘But your education? Your place at Oxford?’

  ‘I didn’t think that Oxford would be interested in an unmarried mother.’ She shook her head. ‘Maybe I was too hard on them—I wasn’t thinking terribly clearly—and I could have gone somewhere else, I suppose, but it would have meant the baby would have to be left with a minder. She might even have ended up in care, if I couldn’t manage. History was already beginning to repeat itself. I wasn’t going to let that happen—’

  He caught her hand between his. Steadied it.

  ‘I didn’t find it hard to get temporary clerical work. Then a social worker called on me. Someone had been looking for me and they’d found me without any trouble at all. She started asking me what I was going to do when the baby was born, laid out the options. I was bright, she said. I could go far. Maybe I should consider having the baby adopted. And that scared me so much that I ran again. I started to imagine that I was being followed and I became totally paranoid that I’d be kidnapped and that my baby would be taken from me. That she’d be adopted by someone and I’d never be able to find her. Or worse.’ She gave a helpless little shrug. ‘I didn’t dare take a job, the little money I had soon ran out and I started sleeping on the streets. Begged to survive. Looking back, I can see how stupid I was. I’m sure that all anyone wanted to do was help me and my baby. But I wasn’t behaving rationally.’ She did something with her mouth. It wasn’t even an attempt at a smile. She just pulled in the corners of her mouth in a little self-deprecating, who-do-I-think-I’m-kidding expression. ‘I had a breakdown.’

  And who could blame her?

  ‘I wonder how your golden youth would have survived if he’d gone through your nightmare. Alone, abandoned…’

  ‘Pregnant?’ she offered. And finally her smile broke through. ‘Thank you. That is a thought to cheer the soul.’

  ‘You survived. Came through it. That is a thought to genuinely cheer the soul, Kay. But how on earth did you get from there to here?’

  Kay looked down at his hands wrapped around hers as if to give her strength. That was all wrong. She was supposed to be helping him.

  ‘A policeman found me after I’d gone into labour and couldn’t run any more. No one realised I’d had a breakdown, of course—I was in pain and I wasn’t making much sense anyway. They just cleaned me up, wheeled me into Delivery and got on with it, leaving Social Security to sort me out later. I was in bed, half asleep, my baby girl in the cot by my side, when I heard a man’s voice. He was asking for the young woman who’d been brought in by the police. He asked for Katie Lovell.’

  ‘Katie?’

  ‘Katherine, Katie, Kay. The older I get the shorter my name becomes… Anyway. I didn’t stop to find out who it was. My clothes had been taken away, but I grabbed some from the next locker along with some money. I didn’t know who they belonged to, or where she’d gone, and to be honest I cared even less. I just took my baby and ran.’ She shivered to think of what she’d done. How it might have ended. ‘Security’s tighter these days. I wouldn’t have got away with a newborn baby so easily now.’

  ‘Where—?’

  Their food arrived and Dominic was forced to release her hand, sit back, be patient while
the waitress organised the dishes, made sure they had everything they wanted, but he wasn’t interested in food.

  ‘Where did you go?’ he asked, stunned by her courage, her determination. A few minutes ago he had been advising her to stick with her business plan. She needed no such advice from him.

  ‘To Aunt Lucy’s.’ She shook her head. ‘No relation. Everyone calls her that. She’s fostered hundreds of children over the years. I was sent to stay with her for a week before I took up my scholarship. She organised my uniform, saw that I had a decent haircut. That I knew how to deal with the confusing array of cutlery. She was brilliant and I never forgot her kindness. I thought if I could just get the baby to her, she’d know someone who’d take her, keep her safe, adopt her even.’ She shook her head. ‘Suddenly my worst fear seemed like the only solution. To hide her from them.’

  ‘And you?’

  ‘Me? I didn’t matter. Only the baby mattered.’

  Her voice faltered and for a moment their gazes locked, held, and he knew they’d both stood on the edge of the same temptation. To just let go…

  ‘I left Polly on her doorstep with a note telling her what to do. I didn’t sign it. Just put my initial…’

  ‘K.’

  ‘It sort of stuck. Lucy didn’t have a clue who I was when they finally caught up with me and I refused to answer to anything else for so long…’

  ‘I think you’ve outgrown it, Kay. I think you’re every inch a Katherine.’ She blushed. He loved it that she could still blush. That despite everything she’d been through she could still be touched by a simple compliment. Or maybe it was because of everything she’d been through. ‘So, how did they eventually find you?’ he asked. ‘How were you finally reunited with Polly?’

  ‘I was miles away before it occurred to me that Lucy might not do as I asked. That she might feel she had no choice but to call Social Services and I knew, if she did that, they’d publish an appeal for the mother. That it would be in the newspapers. I tried to get back before the baby was found, but I’d been careful to ensure she was found quickly. So then I had to hang around, try and find out where she was.’

  She picked up a fork, toyed with a small parcel of pasta, stirring it around in the sauce.

  ‘And?’

  ‘She’d done exactly as I asked and taken my baby to Amy and Jake Hallam, risking goodness knows what to do it, too. She’d fostered Jake when he was a very bad young boy.’ She grinned. ‘He wasn’t always the darling of the financial papers.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘They had three boys of their own, but Amy had always wanted a little girl. It was the perfect solution.’

  ‘They couldn’t just claim her as their own, Kay. Nobody can just do that. There are formalities, laws…’

  ‘They have a lot of money. A lot of power. And a lot of love to give. I don’t think anyone would have said hang on there, wait a minute, this baby can’t stay in your beautiful home, with a mother and father and a nanny to make sure she never wants for anything. It’s not as if there are dozens of foster places just waiting for a baby to fill them.’

  ‘When you put it like that…’

  ‘It wouldn’t have been easy, but they could have done it. But Amy is a mother, too. She knew I was in trouble. That I needed help. That I wouldn’t go far.’ She blinked, looked surprised as a tear dropped into the sauce. ‘She wanted a little girl of her own and she could have had mine, Dominic. But she and Jake found me and gave her back to me.’ A second tear joined the first. ‘Gave me back my life.’

  Her hand was trembling and as the fork dropped, clattering into the dish, he was round the table to lift her from the chair, hold her, whisper soothing comfort words into her ear—words that he hadn’t said in an age, words that felt rusty on his tongue—terribly afraid that he’d stirred up such bad memories that she’d get sucked in by them.

  But when at last she looked up, despite the tears welling up in her eyes, she was back in control. ‘I’m really sorry, Dominic, I don’t think I can eat anything right now.’

  ‘No.’ His own throat was pretty well stuffed with emotional rocks, too, and, aware that they were attracting curious glances, he said, ‘Let’s go home…’ He stopped. Home. He hadn’t thought of it as that for a long time. ‘I’m no cook, but I can open a couple of cans of soup.’

  He was still holding her. Didn’t want to let her go. But she straightened and he said, ‘OK now?’

  ‘Fine. Really.’

  With no excuse to hold her, he stepped back, took out his wallet, dropped a couple of notes on the table and smiled apologetically at the waitress before opening the door and ushering Kay…Katie…Katherine into the courtyard outside.

  ‘That was Amy’s first shop,’ she said as she picked her way carefully over the cobbles in her high heels.

  He wanted to reach out, take her hand. But she seemed to be intent on keeping her distance, returning the conversation to the ordinary, so instead he glanced at an exquisite black and gold boutique that appeared to be overflowing with exotic oils, soaps, candles. And found his attention suddenly riveted by a display of small citrus fruits in a basket, and a sunny sign that read “Lift Your Spirits…”

  And he thought about the fresh citrus scent that pervaded his home courtesy of Dorothy’s pot-pourri. Thought about the fact that the three women were friends…that Katherine and Amy were much more than that. Thought about the herbs Katherine—and how quickly he’d begun to think of her as Katherine—had planted in the cracks in the paving of his terrace, softening the steps that led down into the garden. How the scents of thyme and marjoram followed him everywhere. What did they do to the spirit…?

  ‘Now she has them in just about every town and city in the country,’ she added, turning away. Perhaps realising that the display was something of a giveaway and belatedly wishing she hadn’t stopped after all.

  ‘Maybe you’ll follow in her footsteps,’ he said, moving on. She glanced at him. ‘Daisy roots spread, don’t they? Given half a chance?’

  ‘Like weeds,’ she agreed. ‘But they use solar energy, which, unlike the internal combustion engine, is free.’ She stopped, clapping her hand to her mouth. ‘My van! It’s still sitting outside your house with the keys in the ignition. If that’s gone I’m up a well-known creek without a paddle! Where are you parked?’ As she quickened her step, her heel caught in the uneven surface and she was abruptly checked.

  He caught her, held her shoulders to steady her, meeting her gaze for a moment, and then he was the one who was knocked sideways. Had been from the moment he’d seen her smothered in flour and blushes. By her liveliness, a vulnerability she tried hard to hide and now by her thoughtfulness and compassion. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked and she nodded quickly.

  ‘You’d better wait here. I’ll go and fetch the car.’ And when she would have protested, ‘I’ll be quicker on my own.’ On his own he’d have a chance to recover from the continuous close encounters that were beginning to make rational thought nigh on impossible.

  Kay looked up from the careful placement of her feet just in time to see something flutter from Dominic’s pocket as, taking his car keys from his pocket, he walked quickly away.

  ‘Dominic, wait! You’ve dropped…’ But his long stride had already carried him out of sight. It didn’t matter. It was just a stem of dried-up leaves that crumbled in her fingers. Her instinct was to sniff at the remains and she caught the faintest scent of a herb. Marjoram. He was still carrying about the sprig she’d picked and given to him?

  There were any number of reasons why that might be. That he’d simply stuffed it in his pocket and forgotten about it was the most obvious one.

  Except that he’d been wearing a different jacket.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “Thus may we gather honey from the weed, And make a moral of the devil himself.”

  William Shakespeare

  KAY’S VAN was sitting in front of Linden Lodge exactly as they’d left it, but Dominic decided
that reminding her of his assertion that no one in their right mind would take it wouldn’t be kind. Not now her business depended upon it.

  Instead he said, ‘Maybe you’d better lock it before you come in. It doesn’t seem wise to mock providence.’

  She seemed to hesitate, draw back a little, and he sensed that she was about to make some excuse about needing to go home. He wasn’t giving her the chance. Not because there were still a dozen questions burning inside his head—she’d been through enough for one day and they could wait—but because he knew she would be better off occupied. Thinking about something else.

  ‘We’ll take a look at those brochures,’ he said, taking the keys from the ignition, locking the door. ‘And, since I gave up my lunch for you, you can tell me the condition you were going to impose on joining me for lunch.’

  Her hand flew to her mouth as she blushed again, not prettily this time, but hotly, covered in embarrassment.

  ‘Oh, no…’

  She’d clearly hoped he’d forgotten. Didn’t want to be reminded of something she’d thrown out when she was confident enough to tease him. Now she was feeling vulnerable and, even as he hated himself for being the cause of such confusion, some half-forgotten instinct—something predatory, primitive, wholly male—made him press her for an answer.

  ‘Oh, yes.’ And he held on to her keys.

  For a moment neither of them moved. Then she gave a studied little shrug and it occurred to him that she’d practised that gesture…used it as a way of distancing herself when she was unsure of herself. ‘It wasn’t anything onerous,’ she said and lowered her lashes, shadowing her eyes. ‘I was simply going to try for a little quid pro quo, hoping to twist your arm into agreeing to come to the harvest supper tomorrow evening.’ Her mouth became soft as she offered this small temptation to leave the house, join in the community celebration, become part of the village. And he knew exactly why the golden boy had taken the trouble to seduce her.