Accidental Mistress

by Williams Cathy

  It occurred to her that she didn’t have any idea what he was doing here, at the cottage, and it also occurred to her that she didn’t care. His presence had taken the sharp edge off her terror, though not the tremendous pain. That was still there and getting worse.

  She had been to her antenatal classes, and they had all sat around in a civilised group discussing pain-killers. What a joke! To think that she was here now and the only pain-killer in sight was the cushion, which she was biting hard on for all her worth.

  ‘The ambulance is on its way. I’ve called them from my car phone.’ She heard his voice from a long way off and raised her frightened eyes to his, while he stroked her hair back from her forehead and reached out to take her hand in his.

  ‘My darling,’ he whispered. ‘Hold on. They won’t be long. Hold on, my darling. Half an hour at the outside. This place is in the middle of nowhere.’

  Had he called her darling? She couldn’t think. She could hardly breathe and she could hear the high sounds of her cries, torn out of her body, wild and primitive. She squeezed his hand tighter.

  ‘Angus, I’ve decided...’

  ‘Not now.’

  ‘Angus...!’

  ‘Later, my love, later.’

  ‘Listen to me!’ she yelled at the top of her voice. ‘The baby! The baby’s coming.’

  And then things started happening with such speed that she forgot where she was, even forgot who she was. She wondered whether he was feeling the same numbing terror that was spreading through her, but when she looked at him as he laid her on the rug in front of the fire he was calm, a deep, reassuring calm that was as soothing on her nerves as any pain-killer could have been.

  His voice, ebbing and falling continually, was deep and comforting.

  How could she ever have wondered, at those antenatal classes, how she would know that she had gone into labour?

  Then her mind went completely blank and nature took over. A strong, driving force that made her body do what it should, when it should. She heard Angus say, ‘You’re doing beautifully, darling.’ Then, almost on top of that, he said, with an emotion that made his voice break and which was as primitive as any emotion she herself had felt, ‘I can see the head.’

  And the baby was delivered just as the ambulance wailed up to the cottage, sirens going, people everywhere. Lisa’s eyes met Angus’s, the question formed on her lips, and he answered it before it could be asked.

  ‘We have a girl.’

  They were bundled into the ambulance and driven with immense speed along the deserted roads towards the hospital, with Angus pelting along behind them in his car. They had wrapped the baby in a cream-coloured blanket and Lisa stared at her for the duration of the drive.

  She couldn’t believe it. She had to keep stroking the tiny head with its mass of dark hair; she wanted to smother the little, crumpled face with a million kisses. She wanted to collapse with happiness. She couldn’t even remember the pain and terror. That all seemed like a long time ago.

  ‘We’ll have to take her from you,’ one of the uniformed men said, bending over her. ‘Just for a short while!’ He held up his hand, smiling at the protest that was already forming on her lips. ‘To check her over, make sure that everything’s all right. It’s not every day that we arrive to find that the baby’s already been delivered.’

  She nodded obediently, then there was yet more activity as they got to the hospital, and lots of smiling faces and ‘Well done’s’ from seemingly everyone they bumped into.

  She was carried in on a stretcher and was told that she would have to be thoroughly checked over, to make sure that everything was in order, and she nodded obediently again.

  ‘We won’t be long with you, my dear,’ the doctor said—another smiling face. They were all making her feel like a national heroine instead of a complete idiot who had done the most foolish thing in the world by going to stay in that cottage in the middle of nowhere when her baby was imminent.

  She wondered, for the millionth time, where Angus was. Now that she could actually think, she wondered whether she had imagined those words of endearment back at the cottage.

  ‘Where’s Angus?’ she asked.

  ‘Is that your young man? Outside. He wanted to come with you in the ambulance, but there wasn’t enough room. He can come in as soon as I’m finished with you.’

  During the brief but thorough examination, the doctor made complimentary, slightly awestruck remarks about Angus’s coolness, his capability.

  ‘Seemed far less nervous than I was when I delivered my first baby!’

  Then, at long last, he left her alone, and when Angus walked in she felt just as shy and tongue-tied at his presence as she had felt all those many, many months ago, when he had walked into a different hospital room to see her after her accident.

  He was as dishevelled as she had ever seen him. His hair looked as though he had raked his fingers through it several hundred times and there was darkish stubble on his face. And she didn’t know what to say. She just knew that she adored this man, no matter whether the feeling was returned or not.

  ‘You look as though you’ve had a rough night,’ she said weakly, lying back on the pillows, and he pulled a chair over to the bed and sat next to her.

  ‘I have had a rough night, now that you mention it. I’ll tell you about it some time. How are you feeling?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ she answered truthfully. ‘On cloud nine, as a matter of fact. They’ve taken her away to do a few tests, just make sure that everything’s where it should be.’

  ‘I know. I saw her.’ He looked a little overwhelmed. ‘And now that I’ve got you to myself there are just one or two things that I want to ask you.’

  ‘You’re going to ask me why I went up there.’

  ‘Why did you?’

  ‘I needed to think. I had no idea that I would end up doing more than thinking.’ She couldn’t seem to stop herself from grinning. She wanted so much to tell him how much she loved him, and it was only the thought of seeing him turn away, unable to reciprocate the emotion, that made her hold back.

  She didn’t want this one day to be marred by anything. It was the most wonderful day of her whole life and she wanted to keep it that way.

  ‘How on earth did you find me?’ she asked.

  ‘I got a phone call from Harrods.’

  ‘Harrods?’ She frowned, puzzled, and he shook his head woefully, as though he was talking to something not quite all there.

  ‘You remember that large department store where we went to buy a few bits and pieces? They tried to deliver the furniture to you and there was no reply, so they telephoned me at work. I knew that something didn’t quite make sense because you had been quite sure that you would be at your house, ready and waiting for them when they called. So I telephoned your boss, because, quite frankly, he was the only person I could think of.’

  ‘And Paul told you.’ She nodded.

  ‘I needn’t tell you that I let him have an earful for sending you on your way to that cottage in your condition. I dropped what I was doing and headed up here immediately.’

  ‘Oh, dear.’ Lisa giggled and reddened. ‘I’m glad you came, though.’ She paused and then said in a rush, ‘I can’t begin to thank you enough. I don’t know what I would have done—’ Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door, which as a gesture of politeness was hardly worth it, because a nurse entered almost immediately with a transparent carry-cot which she mounted by the bed, and another nurse followed with the baby. Her baby. Their baby.

  She was absolutely perfect, the senior nurse told them, which Lisa thought was a little irrelevant since she could have told them that herself; she weighed a little over seven pounds and she could sleep for another hour or so, but then would need a feed. Lisa was to call if help was needed. The nurse then offered her congratulations to both of them, adding, ‘Won’t this be one to tell the grandchildren?’

  Then both nurses left and Lisa and Angus stared at the baby. W
hen she looked at him, she saw, with a burst of pride and elation, that he was looking at the little over seven pounds scrap of humanity as though he had never seen a baby in his life before.

  Let me savour this moment of perfection for just a little longer, Lisa thought to herself. She decided not to mention anything about marriage just yet because that would be like coming back to earth with a bump. She had already relegated his whispers of tenderness to the realms of imagination induced by circumstance. Her mind must have been playing tricks on her because, although he was being kind enough now, there certainly hadn’t been any repetition of ‘darling’ or anything of the sort.

  So she said, looking at the sleeping baby in the cot, ‘She’s still an “it”. We must think of a name.’

  ‘What do you like?’ He was still looking at the baby, couldn’t take his eyes off her.

  Lisa thought and said finally, ‘Emily. Emily was my mother’s name.’ And this baby, she thought, is going to be free like my mother was, free from all those hang-ups that plagued me, free and happy and secure, whatever her surroundings. She’s never going to be scared of taking life into both her hands and living it to the fullest.

  ‘Emily Natasha.’

  ‘Why Natasha?’

  ‘My grandmother’s name.’

  Which was lovely, Lisa thought, and just left the surname.

  ‘Angus,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I know we’re going to have to discuss this, so we might as well do it now. The reason I went up to Paul and Ellie’s cottage, like I said, was to think. I had to get away and I had to get myself sorted out.’

  He didn’t say anything. Just strolled across to the window and stared out, and she wished that he had remained back where he had been, instead of moving away, putting a barrier between them.

  ‘I’ve been so confused. I can’t begin to tell you what it was like when I found out that I was pregnant.’ She looked down at Emily, Emily Natasha, lying in the hospital cot, on her back with both her arms stretched above her, her fists tightly closed, her legs bent at the knees. She couldn’t believe that this beautiful creature had started its life as an unwanted pregnancy.

  Angus was looking at her in silence, a silence which was neither encouraging nor off-putting, merely waiting to hear whatever she had to say. What was she going to tell him? Enough, she thought, but not too much.

  ‘I was so shocked and horrified and lost I felt as though I had suddenly found myself trapped in a box, with nowhere to turn and no one to turn to.’

  ‘You could have done the most obvious thing and turned to me,’ he said roughly, and she smiled.

  ‘But I couldn’t, could I?’ she asked sadly. ‘We hardly knew each other.’

  ‘Some would say that we knew each other very well.’

  ‘When I thought of you, all I could see was an immense gulf, with me on one side and you on the other side. I’m not a fool, Angus. I might not have all the polish and finesse of the other women you’ve been out with, but I’m not a fool. I know that when we slept together all we were doing was giving in to impulse.’

  She laughed to herself. How strange to think that she had once been an inhibited creature. Impulse was something that she’d associated with unhappiness. She’d never known that she would discover it was also what made the vital difference between living and existing.

  ‘I never expected anything to come of our...’ She sighed. I never expected it, she thought, but, like a fool, I hoped. ‘I always knew that we were too different for anything between us to last.’ She risked a glance at him but his face was unreadable and she dropped her eyes, back to the sleeping miracle in the cot.

  ‘You ran away,’ Angus said, without any hint of accusation in his voice, merely stating a fact, and she nodded.

  ‘Yes, I ran away. I ran away because you invited me to become your mistress and all I could see was an invitation to be hurt because it would be a relationship with no conclusion.’ She waited a bit to see whether he would dispute that, and when he didn’t she swallowed down the lump of regret and carried on. ‘Then I found out that I was carrying your child. I know you think that I should have told you, but I couldn’t. I knew what kind of life you led. I knew that if I turned up on your doorstep and dropped this bombshell on you your life would be wrecked.’

  He didn’t answer but a look of dark impatience crossed his face.

  ‘Of course, I hadn’t banked on bumping into Caroline.’

  ‘Who informed you in no uncertain terms, just as she had on the yacht, no doubt, that whatever you thought you were spot on.’

  ‘I didn’t need Caroline to support my views,’ she told him with heat in her voice, but then she looked back down at Emily and felt calm and in control again. ‘I would have arrived at the same conclusions with or without her. No, I bumped into Caroline and I knew that it would get back to you that I was pregnant.’

  Another accident of fate, she thought. Ever since she had met him, she had been destined to have accidents of this nature, or so it appeared.

  ‘And when you asked me to marry you...’

  ‘It was your worst nightmare come true.’ He strolled across to the bed and perched on the side of it.

  ‘How do you imagine a woman feels when she’s proposed to by a man out of a sense of obligation?’ She wanted to dislike him when she said this, but she found that she couldn’t. She wondered whether she really ever had. Maybe a little voice in her head had told her that she needed to dislike him, and she had listened to that little voice and assumed that it was how she felt. ‘I always imagined that a proposal of marriage would be a wonderfully romantic moment...’

  She found that she couldn’t continue because her eyes were filling up with tears and her voice was beginning to waver. She had to make an effort to go on.

  ‘My father proposed to my mother on bended knee. She told me. They were only eighteen at the time, and then they waited until he’d finished his university course before they got married. When he proposed, he gave her a bunch of flowers, then he spent half an hour discussing the leaves...can you believe that? Mum said that she was enchanted.’

  ‘It certainly sounds like a magical moment,’ Angus said drily, which made her laugh a bit. ‘How did they die?’

  ‘In a car accident.’

  It was something that she had never talked about. At the time, there had been no one close enough to her in whom she could confide, and then, later, she had not wanted to; she’d preferred to keep their memory stored away inside her, carefully preserved like the pressed flowers she used to collect as a child.

  ‘They were going into town to get some stuff—food—preparing for yet another leap into the unknown. I was at home, studying madly. It was very rainy and there was a collision with a lorry that lost control and swerved across the central reservation. They both died instantly.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘The fact is, my parents were a romantic couple, and although I don’t think I ever appreciated that at the time, something must have embedded itself in my head, because I always assumed that I would find romance. Instead what I found was a fling with a man and a baby on the way.’

  It could have been romantic, she thought; it could have been everything she’d ever wanted and more, except that romance had to involve both people and there was no love from him, and, whatever hopes she’d had, she had to face the fact that there probably never would be.

  ‘Anyway, I don’t suppose any of this is relevant. I just wanted you to know the reasons why I had to think very hard about this marriage thing.’

  There was movement in the cot and Emily’s eyelids began to flicker and then her eyes opened. Blue eyes. She had Angus’s bright blue eyes and his dark hair. Lisa instantly pressed the buzzer for the nurse.

  She needs feeding, she thought, panic-stricken. What do I do? What if I drop her?

  She was relieved, though, that there was this intrusion, because the conversation had been so intense, and she was very much afraid that if she had carried on much longer she would
have ended up telling him everything, telling him how she felt.

  She would never tell him how she felt. She had made that decision. She would marry him but she would never trap him in a situation where he felt constrained by the fact that she loved him and he didn’t return the love.

  The nurse bustled in as she was lifting Emily out of the cot, and Lisa looked at Angus, embarrassingly aware that she was about to breast-feed and willing him to go away, but he didn’t move. He remained sitting where he was, and she felt her face growing redder and hotter as the baby fumbled by her nipple before finding it and beginning to suck.

  He is the father, she thought, but when she raised her eyes to him she still felt hot.

  ‘And...?’ he asked.

  ‘And my answer is yes.’ She looked down at the tiny thing at her breast and prayed that she had made the right decision.

  CHAPTER TEN

  LISA didn’t quite know what she had expected Angus to say. It was a scenario which she hadn’t worked out in her mind. What she hadn’t expected was the complete lack of response. Total silence. And she didn’t dare lift her eyes to meet his because now a dreadful uneasiness began to sweep over her.

  What if he had changed his mind? She concentrated very hard on Emily’s mouth, working vigorously at her breast. A strong feeder, the nurse had said, despite being a little early.

  All the while, she was wondering why he hadn’t said a word. Perhaps the reality of a child had only now sunk in. It worked that way with some people. They imagined parenthood as a cosy little picture with a forever smiling child who never screamed its head off and went to bed when it was told.

  Had delivering his own baby opened his eyes to how much his life would change if she married him and he found himself a husband and father? She had thought that it had been an intensely emotional moment for him, and perhaps it had been, but maybe now that that brief excitement was over he was already thinking ahead and not liking the look of what he was seeing.