Reform of the Rake

by Catherine George

  ‘Go away,’ she said furiously.

  ‘Not until I’ve seen you.’

  ‘It’s not convenient—I’m not alone.’

  ‘The only one up there with you is Rhosyn. So let me in, Lowri.’

  She hesitated, in an agony of indecision.

  ‘I won’t go away,’ said Adam, with a finality which won him the day.

  ‘Oh very well,’ she said angrily. ‘But only for a minute or two. I’m tired.’

  She released the catch on the outer door, then raced to check on Rhosyn. She turned the baby on her side and covered her up securely, then braced herself and went to open the door to Adam’s knock.

  He stood outside on the landing, dressed in the same dark overcoat, a smile playing at the corners of his mouth as he eyed her towel-swathed head and all-enveloping scarlet wool dressing-gown.

  Lowri went ahead of him into the sitting-room. ‘Come in here, please.’

  Adam followed her into the small room, looking round him at the functional furniture and unornamented walls, the only splash of colour the crimson silk curtains, which added a touch of luxury to an otherwise stringently practical décor.

  ‘So this is where you live,’ he commented. ‘May I take off my coat?’

  ‘Are you staying long enough to make that necessary? I’m expecting my—my boyfriend back soon.’

  Adam shook his head decisively. ‘I don’t believe you. After I left you tonight I made some enquiries. You live alone, Lowri. Except for the baby.’

  Lowri stared at him malevolently, then shrugged. ‘I see. In that case you’d better sit down and wait for a moment. My hair’s dripping down my neck. I need to dry it a little. There’s an evening paper somewhere.’

  She hurried to her bedroom, her mind in a ferment as she rubbed furiously at her hair, then brushed it back from her face and secured it with a ribbon, hoping she wouldn’t catch pneumonia by leaving it so wet. She eyed the dressing gown for a moment, then shrugged. That could stay. If Adam got a glimpse of striped pyjama it served him right for barging his way in like this.

  Adam got up from the sofa when she rejoined him, a strangely bleak look on his face. ‘Why did you pretend someone shared this place with you, Lowri?’

  ‘I didn’t. You asked me if anyone would object if I brought a strange man home and I said yes,’ she said coldly. ‘Rhosyn likes all my attention, I’m afraid.’

  ‘So where’s Rhosyn’s father?’

  ‘He and I are no longer in a relationship.’ Lowri forced a smile. ‘I’m afraid I don’t keep anything to drink in the flat—alcoholic, I mean. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘No, I would not! Thanks,’ he added belatedly. He leaned back on the sofa, eyeing her narrowly as she sat down in a nearby armchair. ‘I went round to the garage this evening.’

  ‘Garage?’

  ‘The one who towed away your car. They said it would be ready next week.’ Adam raised a sardonic eyebrow. ‘The owner’s a friendly sort of chap. Said he’d do his best for you. Promised he wouldn’t do you over unnecessary parts, and so on, just because you’re a woman on your own.’

  Lowri stared at him, incensed. ‘I never realised Mr Booker was such a chauvinist.’

  ‘He told me you’re a very plucky little thing, single parent and so on and making such a success of the business. He told me you lived over the shop, too.’ Adam’s smile was wry. ‘You didn’t tell me you owned it.’

  ‘I don’t. I’m in partnership with someone else. Fran lives with her husband and family not far from here.’

  ‘I didn’t realise you were a lady of substance.’

  ‘I came into a very modest sum of money on my twenty-first birthday. My mother left it in trust for me.’ Lowri smiled coldly. ‘It came in very handy, one way and another.’

  Adam’s answering smile was ominous. ‘This chap Booker said something else very interesting, by the way.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Apparently you had the car serviced recently—wanted it in good time for your daughter’s birthday. Which,’ he added very deliberately, ‘he told me was last week. Rhosyn’s older than you made out.’

  Lowri sat very still, her eyes on his.

  ‘You lied to me,’ he said harshly. ‘Not once but twice. Rhosyn is not nine months old, neither was she a false alarm. She’s mine! Why the hell did you lie to me? Why didn’t you go through with the marriage, you—?’

  ‘Stupid woman?’ she finished for him. Her chin lifted. ‘Let’s get something straight, Adam. The accident of conception does not make Rhosyn yours in any way other than purely biological. You didn’t want her, so she’s mine—mine alone. And I didn’t marry you because I couldn’t face the thought of life with a man who was taking me on sufferance. It would be nice to say I stopped caring for you the moment you accused me of engineering the whole situation—but I didn’t, more fool me. I hoped right up to the last minute that you’d come round, revert to the lover I’d once had. When it was obvious that wasn’t going to happen I made other plans. If it soothes your ego a little I freely admit I was in love with you, Adam. Otherwise I couldn’t have let you make love to me. But to you I was just a surprisingly sexy little playmate to take to bed. You cooled off so completely once you knew I was pregnant that it painted a very vivid picture of what our life together would be. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. So I lied. And I’ve never regretted it,’ she added, then smiled sardonically. ‘It was hard work keeping my father—not to mention Rupert— from telling you the truth. But in the end I had my own way.’

  ‘No wonder your father threw me out of his house,’ said Adam bitterly. ‘Surely you told him I was willing to marry you?’

  Lowri glared at him. ‘Willing? How very good of you, to be sure! But I needed someone passionately eager to marry me, not just willing.’

  Suddenly a wail through the intercom put an end to the argument. Lowri leapt to her feet and ran to find Rhosyn was standing up in her cot, tears streaming down her cheeks. She held up her arms and Lowri scooped her up to hug her close.

  ‘Oh, darling, you’re all soggy. Mummy can’t have fastened your nappy properly.’ Her heart still thumping angrily, Lowri put the baby down on a bathtowel on the floor and changed her swiftly, then handed over Rhosyn’s bunny. ‘There, cariad, cuddle Flopsy while I change your bed.’

  But Rhosyn scrambled up, clinging to Lowri’s knees, her eyes like saucers as Adam appeared in the doorway.

  For a moment all three seemed frozen in tableau, than in a strained, constricted voice he asked, ‘Can I help?’

  ‘No!’ Lowri sat her daughter down again. ‘I’ll just change her cot then she can go back to sleep.’

  But Rhosyn wasn’t having any. She pulled herself to her feet on the end of the cot and stood eyeing Adam with hostile dark eyes. He laughed involuntarily.

  ‘You look just like your mother.’ He held out his hand coaxingly. ‘Won’t you come and talk to me?’

  ‘Leave her alone!’ ordered Lowri. ‘If she gets excited I’ll never get her back to sleep.’

  But Rhosyn’s curiosity had overcome her caution. Dropping the rabbit she trotted across the room to Adam, who watched her progress with something so like pride that Lowri went cold.

  ‘She can walk!’ he exclaimed.

  Lowri ignored him as she whipped off damp sheets and replaced them with dry ones, tucking them in with a speed and precision any ward sister would have approved.

  ‘Can I pick her up?’ he asked, never taking his eyes off the child.

  ‘She won’t let you. She doesn’t see many men.’ Lowri added a cellular blanket to the bed then turned round to see her daughter in the careful, unpractised embrace of her father, who was holding the child in such a precarious way that Lowri would have laughed if it had been anyone else.

  Rhosyn stared curiously at the strange face so close to hers. She reached up a hand to tug on Adam’s hair, then turned to look at her mother, as if asking what this strange, male person was doing in her bedroom.
>
  ‘You can give her to me now,’ said Lowri, wanting to tear her child from Adam’s arms.

  He surrendered the small warm body with a reluctance which struck fear into Lowri’s heart. She switched on the bottle-warmer then wrapped the baby in a blanket and went into the kitchen to get a bottle of milk from the fridge, Rhosyn held tightly in her arms.

  ‘Lowri,’ said Adam, when she returned. ‘Don’t look like that. I wouldn’t harm a hair of her head. You must know that.’

  Lowri put the bottle into the warmer and sat down in a rocking chair with Rhosyn cuddled close. ‘If you’ll go back into the other room I’ll join you as soon as I’ve put her back to bed.’

  ‘Can’t I stay to watch her drink her milk?’

  ‘No.’ Lowri refused to look at him. ‘She’ll never settle if you do.’

  Adam left with such obvious reluctance that Lowri had to force herself to relax, deliberately emptying her mind of all the fear and worry crowding it as she fed her child, then cuddled her to sleep. Gently she put Rhosyn in the cot, drew the blankets over her and tiptoed from the room.

  Adam was prowling restlessly round the sitting-room when she rejoined him. ‘Lowri, I’d appreciate that coffee now.’

  ‘All right,’ she said ungraciously. ‘But while I’m in the kitchen don’t even think of going into Rhosyn’s room.’

  His face hardened. ‘What the hell do you think I’d do if I did?’

  ‘Disturb her—wake her up.’ Lowri eyed him levelly. ‘My day starts early, Adam. I need my sleep. And I won’t get it if Rhosyn decides she needs entertainment at two in the morning.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘I promise I shan’t move from the spot.’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to go back to the paper while you wait. I do own a television, but it’s in my bedroom.’

  ‘For lack of any other company?’ he said swiftly.

  ‘No. Because now Rosie’s walking I keep all electrical gadgets well out of her way,’ returned Lowri coldly. ‘I’ll make that coffee.’

  When she got back with it, Adam was doing the crossword in the paper. Lowri handed him a mug and resumed her chair to drink her own coffee. ‘No biscuits, I’m afraid, I’m on a diet.’

  He frowned. ‘Why? You’re thinner than you used to be.’

  ‘Only because I work at it.’

  Adam drank some of his coffee in silence, his eyes brooding, then he set the mug down on the table beside him and leaned forward, looking at her commandingly. ‘Lowri, what are we going to do about this?’

  Her eyes narrowed. ‘About what?’

  ‘About Rhosyn. As you know perfectly well,’ he added with barely controlled violence.

  ‘Nothing, Adam.’

  ‘What do you mean, nothing!’ His eyes glittered coldly. ‘She happens to be my daughter.’

  ‘That’s right, Adam,’ snapped Lowri. ‘You just “happen” to be her father. It was an accident. And you hated the very thought of being tied down with a baby, remember. So I solved the problem for you.’

  ‘You had no right to take it on yourself to do so,’ he said savagely.

  ‘I had every right!’ She glared at him. ‘Rhosyn is mine, Adam. So go away and leave us alone. We don’t need you! I won’t have you upsetting our lives just because you’ve discovered some stray paternal fondness you never knew you had.’

  ‘I might have discovered it a bloody sight sooner, given the chance,’ he retorted, white with anger. ‘It’s your fault I don’t know my daughter, nor she her father. Left to me, you and I would be married and I’d have been there at her birth—’ He stopped suddenly, looking grim. ‘Who was with you, Lowri?’

  She smiled mockingly. ‘I was probably the least lonely single parent in the entire world. Sarah and her sisters Rhia and Mari-Sian were actually with me in the room, but my father and Rupert were downstairs with Holly and young Huw Morgan, my new little brother.’

  Adam breathed in deeply. ‘So the absence of a father went entirely unnoticed—and unlamented.’

  ‘I wasn’t in a hospital,’ she told him quietly. ‘I gave birth to Rhosyn at Rhia’s home. She was the relative I went to when I left London. She’s Sir Charles Hadley’s widow.’

  ‘Hadley Pharmaceuticals?’

  ‘That’s the one.’

  His mouth twisted. ‘I didn’t realise you had such influential connections.’

  ‘Kindness, not influence, is the key word in this instance,’ Lowri contradicted. ‘Rhia has two teenage stepdaughters, but never gave Charles a child of her own, to her great sorrow. The girls were away at boarding school, Rhia was still grieving over Charles’s death, so when I told Sarah about my little problem—’

  ‘You swore me to secrecy,’ he reminded her swiftly, his jaw set.

  ‘She came on me by surprise when I was crying my eyes out a few days before I was supposed to be marrying you.’

  ‘Supposed being the operative word!’

  Lowri’s eyes flashed dangerously. ‘As I said, she found me in tears because I was in the process of facing up to the truth. That you were never going to revert to the lover I’d been so besotted with. Sarah got the truth out of me, and decided Rhia was the answer to my problem.’

  ‘I assumed you’d go home to your father.’

  ‘He wanted me to.’ Lowri’s mouth twisted. ‘A few heated arguments sizzled along the wires between London and Cwmderwen on the subject, believe me. But Dad already had more than enough on his plate with Holly, who was very poorly before Huw’s birth and worried everyone to death. Besides Dad’s very fond of Rhia, and Mari-Sian, who’s frighteningly clever and lectures in modern languages at Cambridge, convinced him that my company, even with all its attendant problems—or maybe because of them—was just the thing her sister needed. So he gave in.’

  ‘Wasn’t Lady Hadley afraid your sorry little tale would be a bad example to her stepdaughters?’ said Adam cuttingly.

  Lowri gave him a hostile glare. ‘On the contrary. Rhia felt my predicament served as a graphic warning to them in their future dealings with your sex.’

  There was a fraught silence in the room for an interval, while Lowri stared down at her tightly clasped hands, very much aware that Adam never took his eyes off her averted face.

  ‘So,’ he said at last, at the point where Lowri thought she’d scream if the silence lasted any longer. ‘I’m refused anything to do with my daughter.’

  Lowri raised implacable dark eyes to his face. ‘That’s right, Adam. I like our lives the way they are.’

  ‘What about Rhosyn?’ he said swiftly. ‘Shouldn’t her preferences come into it somewhere?’

  ‘At the moment I am all the preference she possesses. And I intend to keep it that way.’ Lowri looked pointedly at her watch.

  ‘I’m not going yet, so you can stop that,’ he said angrily.

  ‘You won’t change my mind, Adam, however long you stay. So you might as well go.’

  He jumped to his feet and stood in front of the fireplace, glaring down at her. ‘I’m not the first man to feel shock at being rushed into marriage, dammit! Are you going to make me pay for the rest of my life because I didn’t embrace the idea with open arms?’

  ‘You’ve missed the point,’ she said, unmoved. ‘I wasn’t the one rushing the marriage. You were. And for all the wrong reasons. Saving face, at a guess. The right thing to do and all that—which I could have coped with. Just. But you accused me of getting pregnant deliberately to trap you into marriage, Adam. And that I just couldn’t take.’

  ‘So you agreed to a wedding just so you could punish me by not turning up,’ he said heavily.

  She nodded. ‘More or less. It was deeply satisfying at the time.’

  Adam picked up his coat and shrugged into it. ‘So we’ve reached an impasse. You can’t forgive me because I said something stupid in the heat of the moment. While I can’t forgive you for keeping his only grandchild secret from my father before he died.’

  Lowri stared at him, arrested. ‘Your fath
er’s dead? I didn’t know.’

  ‘He knew he had only a short time to live when he agreed to the cruise. At least he hung on long enough to enjoy that. But his condition was the reason for rushing me into taking over the company before he went.’

  ‘Did you know?’

  ‘Yes. And my mother knew too, of course. They never kept secrets from each other.’

  The words hung in the air for a moment.

  ‘But they were different,’ said Lowri very quietly. ‘They loved each other.’

  ‘You said just now that you loved me,’ he reminded her.

  ‘Oh, I did, Adam. Past tense,’ she added, to remove all possible doubt.

  He stared down at her in frustration, anger in every line of him. ‘The last word on your part, I assume.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lowri went to the door and opened it. ‘Goodbye, Adam.’

  He gave her a searing look as he went out into the hall. ‘I take it there’s no possibility of a last look at my daughter?’

  ‘None at all,’ she said without emotion.

  ‘You’ve developed a bloody good talent for cruelty since the old days, Lowri,’ he said with bitterness.

  She smiled disdainfully. ‘It’s not really surprising. To quote Henry James, Adam, I was taught by masters. Well, one master really. You.’

  CHAPTER TEN

  AFTER Adam had gone Lowri shivered with reaction for minutes on end, until at last the need to talk to someone was so overwhelming that she rang Sarah to tell her what had happened.

  Sarah whistled after she’d heard Lowri out. ‘How did Adam react to your punchline?’

  Lowri sighed. ‘He stood there like a statue and just looked at me. Then he turned away. Sort of in slow motion. And left without another word.’

  Sarah paused. ‘Do you still feel bitter towards him?’

  ‘I don’t know how I feel. I just wish I hadn’t met him again.’

  ‘How was he with Rhosyn?’

  ‘Fascinated. Terrifyingly so.’

  ‘Understandable, in the circumstances.’

  ‘But she’s not a son to train up for the business—she’s a girl.’