Sarah's Baby

by Margaret Way

  Sarah expelled a breath. Get it out. The longer she delayed, the worse it would get. Some secrets were even carried to the grave…. “I love you, Kyall,” she said finally, looking past his handsome dark head to where a bauhinia blossomed in all its glory. “I’ll love you until my last breath.”

  “Don’t make that sound like that could be next week.” Kyall couldn’t stop himself. He bent his head and kissed her in full view of the street and the people who looked toward them from doorways. It wasn’t as if the town didn’t know that Kyall McQueen and Sarah Dempsey had picked up where they left off. This was a piece of news that met with near-universal approval. Hadn’t Kyall’s Range Rover been seen—more than once—parked overnight at the old Sinclair house since Dr. Sarah had moved in some weeks back? The only mystery for most townspeople was why the doctor had chosen that particular house to live in. Obviously Dr. Dempsey didn’t believe in ghosts, although lots of people did.

  Kyall, who, like Harriet, had been very much against Sarah’s moving in, lifted his head with no interest at all in who might be looking their way. His entire attention was on Sarah. “I want us to get engaged. No, stand quietly for a moment,” he said persuasively. “I see no reason why we can’t do it next week when we give the party for Morris. No big drama. I can announce it at the end of the evening.”

  “I’ve got to think.” Sarah couldn’t pretend she wasn’t agitated.

  “No, you don’t,” Kyall answered with quiet force. “Your thinking’s kept us separated for far too long. I’ll announce our engagement at the party. Okay? It won’t come as any big surprise. Even to Gran.”

  “You really love me? Unconditionally?” She desperately needed that reassurance. “Tell me.” She knew it would kill her if he ever turned away.

  “Yes, dammit, I do!” He gave her a lopsided smile. “I should tell you I already have the ring.”

  “What?” Her spontaneous reaction was incredible joy, like a flowering inside her. For a long moment, she stared into his face. “Kyall!” She saw herself floating down the aisle in some glorious bridal creation. Glowing satin. She had no father to give her away. Joe would have done it, but Joe was no longer with them. Why not break with tradition and have Harriet? Harriet in some resplendent garment only she could carry off. Her favorite royal purple or vermilion embroidered in gold, with a matching fantastic headdress. Harriet favored turbans. Her bridesmaids would walk before them, carrying exquisite bouquets of roses. There would be a little flower girl, too, scattering perfumed petals from a gilded basket tied with ivory ribbons. Most of all, she could see the expression on Kyall’s face as he first caught sight of her.

  Dear Lord, could it really happen? Could they have a future free of the tragic traumas of the past? Could that be?

  “Sarah?” His smile was ineffably tender.

  “When did you buy it?” Her voice was soft and excited, shocked out of its habitual calm.

  “I would have preferred you with me, but I was scared you’d panic,” he told her with mock scorn. “I bought it when I went to pick up Morris. No chance thing. It’s going on your finger. I’m debating the precise time. It’s very beautiful. Like you.”

  “How do you know it’ll fit if I didn’t try it on?”

  He smiled into her eyes. “You made it easy for me by showing me your mother’s rings. I’m pretty sure it’ll fit.”

  The pull of temptation was too enormously strong. Surely she deserved to be happy. Surely Kyall would receive her tragic story with pity for what she had endured alone.

  She tilted her head back, thinking they’d always been part of each other. “Very well, Kyall.” She stared into his blue, blue eyes. “I can do this. I can do anything for you. We’ll announce our engagement toward the end of the party. I just hope we know what we’re doing here.”

  “I do,” he said on a sudden surge of emotion, sliding an arm around her waist and pulling her close. “What else matters as long as we’re together?”

  DR. MORRIS HUGHES had only been home ten minutes. He felt encouraged by his day at the hospital, but his mood became faintly melancholy as it always did when he returned to an empty house. No welcoming lights, no inviting aromas issuing from the kitchen. No Anne. He’d just taken off his jacket when he was surprised to hear the front doorbell.

  “Coming,” he called. An emergency? Unlikely, since the hospital could easily contact him via his mobile, which never left his side.

  His slight depression changed to delight when he found himself looking at his neighbor, Miss Harriet Crompton, quite dramatic in a dark reddish garment. It was more or less a sari, he supposed, and it made her appear tall and regal. A cluster of beads at her throat glinted and winked.

  “Miss Crompton, hello.” He ran a quick hand through his hair, trying to restore it to order.

  “Good evening, Doctor.” Harriet’s gracious smile drew him in. “I know you won’t have a meal prepared, so I’ve taken it upon myself to invite you to dinner. You can say no, but I warn you that you’ll be missing out on a very good meal.”

  “Miss Crompton, how very kind of you,” he answered, feeling as though he was in some sort of Edwardian play. “I wouldn’t dream of saying no, but I do have to wash up.”

  Harriet Crompton’s fine gray eyes whisked over him. “How was your day at the hospital?”

  “Fine and informative.” He swallowed. “I’m sure I made the right decision coming here. I very much like Sarah. Indeed, everyone at the hospital, with the possible exception of one female patient demanding nonstop attention.”

  “That would be Celia Gray,” she told him, sounding sympathetic. “She’s neurotic, but no one’s supposed to know. Shall we say thirty minutes? You know where I am.”

  “Yes, indeed.” Morris stepped out onto the porch gazing in the direction of Harriet’s splendid colonial. “I couldn’t help noticing that wonderful Maori totem pole you have guarding the front door. I’d like to take a closer look. I have a great interest in ethnic artifacts.”

  Harriet laughed, picking a big cream hibiscus flower and pushing it into her abundant hair. “Then you’ll have plenty of cultures to choose from. It’s an interest of mine, too.”

  This was far more than he’d hoped. “Thank you, Miss Crompton. You’re very thoughtful.”

  “Harriet, please,” she protested, moving down the steps. At the bottom she waved. Morris waved back, then closed the door.

  His melancholy was forgotten.

  CHAPTER TEN

  SARAH KNEW THE MOMENT she stepped into the house—even before she switched on the lights—that someone had been there. This was what the place had done to her. Made her acutely, perhaps unnaturally, aware. Whatever shadowy figures were about, they apparently avoided her, or they had no wish to frighten her. Her intruder—she accepted the fact quite calmly—was alive and human.

  She switched on the hall light and looked quickly around. Nothing had been touched there, at any rate. Everything was precisely as she’d left it that morning. Unopened mail on the central library table, yellow daisies in a copper bowl glowing in the splash of light, her open briefcase on a hall chair, two files protruding from it.

  She didn’t feel fear. Whoever had been here was here no more. She turned on the dining-room light, a surprisingly beautiful chandelier. Nothing out of place.

  And so on. Each room in turn. It was in the main bedroom that her feeling she’d had an invader was confirmed. A strong fragrance wafted up from the Persian rug, as though a perfume bottle had been broken and the contents spilled. Not her perfume. This was something entirely different from anything she’d wear. Too floral. Too cloying.

  She walked into the dressing room, moving her clothes back and forth on their hangers. She had proof this wasn’t just her imagination. It would be absurd to think something like this mightn’t happen. In fact, she’d been expecting a disturbance from the day she’d moved in. There was no doubt: someone had been in this room. She didn’t like it. She was sure the skirt of her yellow silk dress
—one of her best—hadn’t been sticking out. She rearranged some outfits to give the garment space so the skirt could hang freely, only then noticing that it had been hacked from hip to hem.

  Sparks seemed to fly from her heart while her head went cold. She took the dress from the hanger, carried it to the bed and laid it down on the pink-damask coverlet. Who would do such a thing? She bent over the dress to examine the extent of the damage. This was probably the most expensive dress she owned. A write-off. She could never wear it again. Obviously someone wanted her to know that he—or she—could come and go at will. Why hadn’t the intruder taken the dress, cut it into little pieces and left it scattered all over the perfumed rug? Why just that dress? Why not do more damage?

  Sarah went back to the dressing room, rechecking all her clothes, going slowly so she wouldn’t miss anything. Everything else was intact. She turned and went to the chest of drawers, pulling the drawers out one by one. In the last drawer—her slips—the nicest and most expensive had received similar treatment.

  No one but a woman would do that, surely? Her mind immediately flew to Ruth McQueen, but sheer reason made her discount it. Ruth McQueen always traveled conspicuously in her chauffeur-driven Rolls. Although the house was fairly isolated, her driver, Jensen, would have been witness to her visit. It was hard to believe that Ruth would do this. The damage wasn’t serious, more like something done on impulse—or on orders without a great deal of conviction but with malicious intent. If not Ruth, she couldn’t guess who that someone might be. It was something a jealous girlfriend might do. Inevitably that led her to thoughts of India Claydon. But India was safely at home on Marjimba Station. Or had she been a guest at Wunnamurra recently? No, Kyall would have told her. Still, in her experience, jealous women did a lot of peculiar things. She’d rather it was India than Ruth, though. Whoever it was had started on the bout of vandalism, then wavered. Ashamed? Perhaps something had frightened him or her off. The little Sinclair girl looking through the window? Sarah saw absolutely nothing wrong with having the resident ghost stand guard. There wasn’t much point in telling Kyall about the “break-in.” There was no evidence of forced entry, not that it wouldn’t be easy to get into the old house if one was determined enough. I’m here and I’m going to be all right, Sarah told herself. I have to be. She was still feeling buoyant inside. It all had to do with the excitement of Kyall’s engagement proposal, which had thrilled her more than it worried her. She knew it was a mistake not to be worried, but she was thirty years old, she loved Kyall, and she wanted above all to be married to him. She hadn’t forgotten that he wanted children. She wanted a child badly, never to replace Rose, but to bring fulfillment into her traumatized life.

  Kyall would arrive soon; they had planned for him to have dinner with her and, of course, finish up in bed. Sarah had a quick shower, then changed into a simple sundress with a pretty floral print. No use tying her hair back against the heat. Kyall would pull it out of its clasp, anyway.

  She greeted him in the hallway, lifting her face for his kiss, still amazed that they were together.

  “Darling,” he groaned, as if offering up a prayer. “Darling, darling Sarah.” He moved his mouth to the side of her neck, breathing in the natural fragrance of her skin, loving the way she turned her head to accommodate the caress. “I’ve been very clever and parked the vehicle in the garage.”

  She laughed. “Everyone’s aware that you stay over, you know.”

  He held her close awhile longer. “We were an item before,” he said lightly, “and we’re one now.” He kissed her mouth again, just brushing the surface of her lips.

  “They must’ve wondered about all the items in between,” Sarah said when she could manage it. “India Claydon comes to mind. It can’t be easy to reconcile herself to losing you. Have you seen her lately?”

  Sarah disengaged herself slowly from Kyall’s arms, walking in the direction of the kitchen while he followed.

  Kyall grimaced. “Gran doesn’t miss an opportunity to invite her,” he confessed. “We’re talking about people who don’t know how or when to give up.”

  “So that’s why you’re moving the engagement forward.” She reached for a couple of fresh limes.

  “Much more romantic than that, Sarah.” He leaned back against a counter, studying her. “It’s the first step before I can finally get you to marry me. As for India—can we please forget about her? She’s at the house now, as a matter of fact. Which is one of the many reasons I’m here.”

  So! She thought of the slashed clothing and instinctively put a hand to her breast. “Obviously she can’t get you out of her system.”

  “I’m sure she could if she worked at it,” he said with controlled irritation. “Now, what are we having? I haven’t eaten since morning tea with Morris. How did everything go with him?”

  Sarah paused, her expression revealing her appreciation. “We clicked, just like that. He knows what he’s doing, as we expected, and he has a very pleasant manner with the staff and patients. I know we’re going to work well together.”

  “That’s good.” Kyall stooped to look in the refrigerator he’d had delivered and stocked so she’d have plenty of food on hand after a long day at the hospital. He took out the wine. An excellent chardonnay from their own vineyards.

  “Very good,” Sarah echoed, flashing him a smile. “So now I can have a little time for you.”

  “Maybe you can even find time to get married before Christmas?” he challenged. “It hasn’t exactly been a whirlwind romance.”

  “But incredibly memorable,” Sarah reminded him in an emotional whisper.

  “Indeed it was. How I longed for you.” His gaze slipped over her face to her throat and then her breasts.

  How could she tell him what he wanted to know?

  WHILE SARAH ASSEMBLED the ingredients for dinner, Kyall moved to the deep casement window and looked out. The way the moonlight, a white radiance at the front of the house, missed the back seemed unnatural to him. “I’m far from happy about your being here, Sarah.” The words were torn from him. Yet again. In truth, he couldn’t wait for her to become his wife. He was desperate to protect her from all harm. “I hope you’ve got that .22 by your bed.”

  “I have it handy,” she assured him, not fully knowing herself why she’d chosen to live in the town’s haunted house. “I detest guns these days, but my childhood with you made me a good shot. Anyway, a .22 wouldn’t stop a ghost,” she joked.

  “It’s not ghosts I’m worried about,” he said. “Drifters find their way into town all the bloody time.”

  “I’m quite safe, Kyall. Please don’t worry about me. The town has virtually no history of crime. I’m more concerned about one or two of the people I actually know.”

  She’d moved away from him, so he spun her around to face him. “What’s that supposed to mean?” Was she talking about Ruth? Dammit, what wasn’t she telling him?

  “Just a little joke.”

  “I’m not so sure.” He searched her eyes, dark like his grandmother’s but full of sweetness and sensitivity and golden lights. “You must tell me everything that concerns you. Promise?” He gave her a little shake.

  “I promise.”

  “Sarah, look me in the eye when you say that.”

  Her masses of golden hair framed her face. “I’m going to have trouble with you,” she said, placing both hands against his chest, feeling the thud of his heart.

  “You are if you don’t tell me the things I need to know,” he returned with some emphasis.

  She shivered at those words and pushed him gently away, waiting a few moments before she spoke. “I thought we’d have a Thai-noodle salad. It’s very colorful and very good for you.”

  “As long as it’s filling.” He didn’t care what it was. He only wanted to be alone with her.

  “It is.” She smiled, running an appreciative eye over his tall, powerful frame. “You can open the coconut milk if you would, and the water chestnuts, too, and grate the
ginger. I can manage the rest. But before you do anything, open the wine. It should be nicely chilled by now. I’m going to allow myself two glasses by way of celebration.”

  “We haven’t even begun to celebrate.” He turned his sapphire eyes on her. “That’s a very pretty dress, but I can’t wait to see it fall to the floor.”

  THERE WAS NO SIGN of the Range Rover. Probably it was in the detached garage. He’d built the garage himself some twelve years back for Mrs. McQ. He’d done things for Mrs. McQ that he’d never have done for anyone else, but she knew how to reward him—and scare him, for that matter. He hadn’t the slightest doubt that if he ever attempted to apply a little blackmail, he’d be neatly disposed of. Probably finish up in some pond on Wunnamurra, where he’d spent all his working life.

  He didn’t want to do this now. God almighty, if Kyall ever caught him! He was frightened to be here and he didn’t mind admitting it to himself. But Mrs. McQ wanted to know what had been kept from her. Kyall McQueen, heir to Wunnamurra and the family fortune, was with Sarah Dempsey. They were here together.

  And why the hell not? All the deep-down hatred he felt for Ruth McQueen suddenly surfaced. She had bought him and, by extension, his family, lock, stock and barrel. He was her henchman. Her tool. After the taipan episode—he couldn’t bear to think about it; it was supposed to frighten the old girl away—he knew he had to do this, whether he liked it or not. Spy on Kyall and Sarah Dempsey. Were they together? What were they doing? Report back.

  He had never felt so exposed, although he was dressed in dark clothing with a balaclava ready to pull down over his head. It was so damned hot he’d hesitated to put it on, but now he covered his head and face. He had the greatest urge to run away. If Kyall caught him… If Kyall caught him… Didn’t bear thinking about.