Christmas Knight

by Meredith Webber

  ‘All our mothers waved wooden spoons at us as kids—it was the ultimate threat. Mum’s actually connected with the back of my legs from time to time, and I don’t think it’s done me any irreparable damage.’ She paused, then half smiled as she added, rather sadly, ‘Though maybe Mum thinks it has. Or maybe she’s thinking she didn’t do it often enough.’

  ‘What’s happened between you?’

  Grant hadn’t realised he was going to ask the question, but there’d been so much pain in Katie’s words, he’d blurted it out.

  She hesitated, sighed, then said softly, ‘She’s old-fashioned, I guess. And me coming back to Testament made things worse. You know what Mum was like. Underneath, she’d do anything for anyone, but she did tend to lord it over people. She always had a huge sense of her own importance. If I’d taken off for Craigtown, pregnant and unwed, she’d probably have reacted better, but coming here…’

  ‘But she will come? They’ll come? When they come home from their trip?’

  Katie nodded.

  ‘Of course. After all, it’s likely to be their only grandchild, but, well…It’s my fault, too,’ she said, her voice thick with the emotion she was trying hard to hide. ‘We argued, Mum and I—back in the beginning—and I said things I shouldn’t have said, things about her marriage.’

  She looked up at him, then admitted, ‘You know me—act first and think later.’

  Grant, who’d been about to question the ‘only grandchild’ statement, found he was more intrigued by the final admission and set the other remark aside for consideration later.

  ‘What kind of things?’

  He saw a smile flicker on her lips, although the sadness in her eyes remained.

  ‘Stuff that must have been stewing for a long time, but was probably quite wrong—like wanting more than she and Dad had had from marriage. More than mutual affection and respect, which was all I had for Mark. In fact, as our relationship continued I didn’t even have the respect part, and though I probably would have married him to give the baby a father, and made a go of it, the way Mum and Dad had, I’m sure I’d have always felt something was missing.’

  This time her smile was warmer, and cheekier, and it did things to his intestines he didn’t want to think about.

  ‘All in all, it was probably a good thing he made having an abortion a condition of us getting married, then was so adamant about not having anything to do with the baby if I went ahead with the pregnancy. It got Mark out of my life, though it did cause problems between me and Mum.’

  There was a silence as he ate the sandwich she’d prepared, while she cut hers into little pieces then rearranged them on the plate, as if by shifting them she’d fool him into thinking she was eating.

  ‘You’ll sort it out,’ he said, speaking gently—wanting to make things right for her.

  She nodded.

  ‘I know. After all, as I keep telling myself, we’re both adults.’ Then, with typical Katie-bravado she added, ‘Though getting Mum to agree with that isn’t easy.’

  She ate a minute piece of sandwich then looked up at Grant.

  ‘Do you think I’ll be the same? Is mothering a hereditary trait? Will I be able to accept the baby’s old enough to make her own decisions when she’s, what? Fourteen? Eighteen? Twenty-six?’

  ‘Never, if you’re still calling her “the baby”,’ Grant told her. ‘And I think decision-making is something that you learn as you grow and develop. Take a six-month-old tasting solids for the first time—if he decides he doesn’t like them, splat, they’re spat right back at you. Two-year-olds can probably decide whether they want jam or peanut butter on their toast, four-year-olds know if they play with the hose and get all their clothes wet, they’ll be in trouble, so have to decide if the fun is worth it.’

  Kate heard the words, but underlying them was something she didn’t understand. Though one thing was certain—Grant wasn’t winging this conversation. He’d thought it through, considered it, worried about decisions and responsibilities himself.

  ‘Does Linda have a child?’

  She didn’t know why she’d asked, but as soon as the words were spoken, she knew they’d have been better left unsaid. Grant’s expression changed from a momentary perplexity to understanding to pain. He shook his head, added ‘No’ in case she didn’t understand head shakes, then he pushed back his chair, stood up, muttered something about a note he’d forgotten to write at the surgery and walked out.

  You’re here to help Katie, not add to her burdens by dumping your baggage on her, he told himself fiercely, striding across to the surgery and unlocking the door. What he had to do was find someone to take care of the baby, so Katie could ease back into work, then, once she was happy with the arrangement, he could get out of town.

  If the young woman who was getting married later next year could work until Mrs Carter came back from overseas…

  Or would a trained nanny from the city be better? Someone who’d been to nanny school and knew all the right things to do?

  He thought back to couples he knew who’d employed these paragons, and remembered a discussion he’d had with one of the employers. Phoned the house.

  ‘A city nanny would have to live in,’ he said to Kate, then smiled to himself as he imagined her mental adjustment. ‘And from what I’ve heard, they need their own space, a kind of bed-sitting room and en suite. Definitely their own bathroom. Have you thought of that?’

  ‘They need an en suite?’ she repeated, in tones of such disbelief he had to smile. ‘But I haven’t got an en suite!’

  The expletive she wasn’t going to use again was quickly followed by, ‘Jeez Louise! I hadn’t even thought of bathrooms. I mean, a live-in is good from the point of view of having someone here if I’m called out, but if they have to have a bathroom…’

  There was a pause, then she asked, ‘Why are we talking on the phone? Have you a lot of paperwork to do? I said I’d do all of that. I’m bored rigid doing nothing, and the house is so clean it’s starting to feel like one of those display places.’

  Another pause.

  ‘Only they usually have two bathrooms, don’t they?’

  And on that note she hung up.

  Grant knew he should stay away, even take off on the bike, but he was drawn back to the house by the same irresistible attraction that led moths to a light.

  Kate was in the third bedroom. She had pinned her hair up so it was doing its ‘falling down all over’ thing again, and in the loose curls behind her ear he could see the end of a pencil. In one hand she held a tape measure and in the other a piece of paper.

  ‘You’d think they’d make measuring tapes longer than a metre,’ she complained, as she scratched a mark on the carpet then moved the tape along.

  ‘They do,’ Grant told her. ‘You buy them at hardware shops, though the idea that you’d own such a thing as a tape measure intrigues me no end. One usually associates such things with button bottles and sewing baskets, and I remember you loathed sewing as much as you hated cooking when you were younger and had to do it at school.’

  ‘But I did have a sewing basket,’ she told him primly, moving the tape again then searching for her pencil to write something down. ‘Still have it, though I doubt I’ve used it from that day to this. Can you see my pencil?’

  ‘It’s in your hair, but there’s an easier way to do this, unless you want the measurements exact to the last centimetre.’

  She straightened so she was squatting on her heels, pulling the short shorts very tight across firm buttocks.

  ‘I’ll step it out,’ Grant said, desperate to distract his mind from that part of Katie’s anatomy—any part of Katie’s anatomy. ‘I assume we’re doing this to see if we can fit another bathroom in here. There, it’s three metres by about three and a half, not big enough for a decent bedroom and an en suite. And though a second bathroom is an excellent idea, are you sure you want someone living in?’

  She reached out a hand and he pulled her up, though that was
a mistake as any time she was within arm’s length he had a terrible urge to kiss her.

  An urge not much diminished by the frown she was directing his way.

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ she said. ‘Have you heard horror stories of people with live-in help? Are there implications I should know about?’

  Grant hesitated, mainly because the remark had been instinctive. He wouldn’t want anyone living in—not in a house this size where someone else would be…

  Would be what? he asked himself. A barrier between you and Katie? A curb on your lustful thoughts?

  Get real here, mate. A live-in help is just what Katie needs.

  And you won’t be here, remember?

  But no amount of talking convinced him, deep down in his gut, that it was the right move.

  ‘Well, while I’m here the nanny thing isn’t a problem, so you don’t have to decide immediately. But a spare bathroom’s good. Let’s walk right through the house and see if we can’t figure out the best place for it.’

  ‘I thought I already had,’ Kate muttered to herself, but she went along with him, mainly because she was puzzled by his failure to answer her live-in nanny questions, and was more concerned with figuring out why than with asserting her authority over where the bathroom should go in her house.

  Apart from the fact a city girl might hate the country and the baby might have to put up with a few of them before one eventually stuck, having live-in help seemed a great idea.

  The baby!

  She really should choose a name—now she wasn’t so sleep-deprived and her body had settled into the routine of feeding.

  ‘What was the name you suggested yesterday?’

  They were in Grant’s bedroom now, and Kate realised she hadn’t been in here since he’d arrived. She looked around, seeing how tidy he kept it, smelling the air, which was definitely different—decidedly male.

  ‘We’re talking about bathrooms, not names at the moment,’ he reminded her. ‘And as this is the largest of the bedrooms, it would probably be most suitable to convert into a kind of bed-sitting room. See, you could take part of that wall out and put a small en suite in there, plus a dressing room. You’d lose that small bedroom, but you’d still have three. One for you, one for the baby—Caroline was yesterday’s name—and one for the nanny or for visitors.’

  ‘So I couldn’t have both at once,’ Kate said, though she was thinking more of how strange it felt to be in a male’s bedroom—in Grant’s bedroom, as it was right now. ‘The nanny and visitors.’

  But her eyes were drawn to Grant’s bed, and she was imagining him lying there.

  Naked…

  ‘Shortened to Carrie, or Cassie, or even Caz, and all of them are OK.’

  She blinked away an image of a naked Grant and peered suspiciously at him.

  ‘Weren’t we talking about bathrooms?’

  His grin suggested they’d moved on from that conversation some time ago.

  ‘Yes, we were, but you’d lost that particular plot so I assumed you were thinking of the other conversation we were kind of conducting. Baby names? Caroline? Not bad when shortened?’

  ‘Is it wrong for me to want to go to bed with you?’

  The question came so completely out of the blue, Grant could only stare at her.

  ‘Well, not especially with you, but with anyone. Shouldn’t my sexuality be in abeyance when I’ve just given birth and am feeding a very young infant? Do you know anything at all about it? Perhaps I should look it up? Would I find it in a medical book, or would it be under psychology?’

  And whether to suit action to the words, or to go off on some equally bizarre quest, Grant couldn’t tell, but she left the room without waiting for an answer to any of her questions, which was just as well, for it could be a day or two before he recovered sufficiently to even gabble out a reply.

  ‘The problem is,’ Kate told the baby as she bathed the little body, ‘I was so used, when I was growing up, to talking about anything and everything with Grant. Arriving in town in the summer holidays, and Dad having meetings with his father, he was about the first kid I met. From that time, he kind of took care of me, making out I was a nuisance but looking out for me anyway. Especially when I started high school, and was too big for my boots and always getting into trouble.’

  The baby kicked at the water as if to agree with what had been said, but didn’t offer much else in the way of an opinion.

  ‘And the other problem is,’ she added, while silently marvelling at the perfection of miniature toes and toenails, ‘that when I considered our future, yours and mine, building a life together here in the country, I never considered for an instant that I might ever feel sexy again. I mean I hadn’t—with Mark—not for a long time, and I thought it was probably age or that women didn’t feel an urge for sex the way men did, especially as they got older. So this attraction thing is just so totally unexpected—and definitely unacceptable, given all the circumstances.’

  The baby offered no opinion on female sexuality so Kate sighed and resolutely turned her thoughts to more practical stuff.

  ‘Would you like to be called Caroline? While you’re small, and the name’s a bit grand, we could call you Cassie. Would you like that?’

  A smile she knew wasn’t really a smile hesitated on the tiny pink lips and, in the surge of excitement the almost-smile generated, Kate called for Grant to come.

  ‘Look, she almost smiled. I called her Cassie—well, I suggested it to her—and she really did smile.’

  ‘Is that why you yelled? I thought something terrible had happened.’

  ‘I didn’t yell, I called,’ Kate argued. ‘And I thought you might be interested.’

  Though now he was here, splashing water on the baby—yes, Caroline shortened to Cassie might work well—Kate remembered her previous conversation with the man, and regretted the yell—call.

  ‘Aren’t all smiles put down to wind until the baby’s, what—six weeks old, is it?’

  ‘How could she have wind when she hasn’t been fed? And anyway, five weeks isn’t so far off six weeks,’ Kate muttered, though why she felt compelled to argue with him was a mystery.

  However, Grant seemed unperturbed, by both the argument and, apparently, her previous idiotic questions. He was catching the tiny feet as they splashed, and getting very wet in the process, and if the baby—Cassie—wasn’t smiling, then she had a whole lot of wind.

  ‘She might be precocious. What do I have to do with a precocious child? Do you accelerate them? Put them into programmes so they get maximum stimulation?’

  These new worries brought on the familiar sense of panic over the future which Kate experienced so regularly she sometimes wondered if she could survive motherhood, but Grant was laughing—at her this time, not the baby.

  ‘I don’t think they’re issues you need to address right now. I could be wrong, but I doubt they have stimulation programmes for bright five-week-olds.’

  ‘You’re right,’ Kate admitted, feeling some relief but a new concern over the effect of Grant’s laughter—here in her bedroom. ‘And bath-time’s over.’

  She grabbed a towel she’d set out on the bed and bent to lift the baby from the small tub, but something went wrong, and though the baby ended up in the right place, in her arms, the tub upended itself, splashing across the bed.

  ‘You are so totally disorganised,’ Grant told her, grabbing other towels to mop up the mess. ‘Why you set a bath on something as unstable as a bed is beyond me! As you haven’t bothered to get proper nursery furniture, why don’t you bath her on the kitchen table?’

  Kate clasped Cassie—yes, it suited her—to her chest and glared at her accuser.

  ‘I did until you came, then I thought you might think it wasn’t too hygienic so I changed to doing it on the bed, and I haven’t got proper nursery furniture because it’s not the sort of thing you can buy in Testament, and what with taking over a very neglected practice and working out how to do the paperwork associated with be
ing a single-practice GP, and Paul Newberry leaving, I didn’t have time to go to Craigtown. Vi gave me the crib and after that…’

  She’d started out mad, telling him off, but her confidence had oozed away so by the time she finished the little speech she sounded so uncertain that Grant wanted to put his arms around her and promise her he’d take care of everything.

  But he couldn’t do that. He was only a temporary solution, and if they got too close, his departure would leave her life even more barren than it had been before he’d arrived.

  And if they got too close, his departure would undoubtedly leave his life more barren than it had been.

  Though until his return to Testament, he’d doubted whether that would be possible.

  ‘I’ll chuck the towels into the washing machine—your sheets, too. They’re soaked.’

  He spoke because he had to say something to explain a hurried departure from the room, but in his heart he knew it was already too late—the getting-too-close thing. Knew his life was going to be more barren than it had been, when he left Testament and Katie.

  For a brief moment, as he measured laundry liquid into the machine, he contemplated not leaving. Fear, terror, helplessness and grief—emotions he’d thought he’d conquered long ago—rose up to engulf him. Katie worried about how she might cope with an exceptional child, and whether she’d be too dominating a mother.

  She didn’t know the half of things there were to worry about—things that clutched at your heart and drove you to the edge of madness with the pain they caused.

  He started the machine, then, by way of insurance, walked back to the bedroom and poked his head through the door.

  She was sitting on the driest part of the bed, her back propped on pillows, shirt unbuttoned, and Cassie was sucking greedily on one finely blue-veined breast. The image was so serenely beautiful it stole his breath, and it took a moment before he could speak.