His Baby!

‘He’s bringing Sophie with him, of course,’ continued Mrs Hamilton. ‘So we’ll need to get hold of a cot from somewhere.’

‘And I haven’t even bought them a Christmas present!’ said Daisy in dismay. ‘When is he arriving?’

‘Tomorrow afternoon.’

‘That soon?’ But that was Matt for you—man of action.

‘Mm,’ said his mother. ‘You know Matt; once he’s made his mind up about something, he doesn’t hang around. The flight from New York gets in to Heathrow mid-afternoon and he’s arranged for a hire-car to meet him and then he’ll drive straight here.’

‘Did he sound very ... upset?’ asked Daisy tentatively, but Mrs Hamilton shook her head emphatically.

‘No. That’s the extraordinary thing; he didn’t. He sounded just like Matt.’

So outwardly, at least, he wasn’t playing the grieving widower, thought Daisy. But hadn’t Matt always been a past master at keeping his feelings hidden beneath that devastating exterior? You never really knew what was going on behind those clever grey eyes or that coolly enigmatic smile. Daisy had once overheard one of his countless girlfriends complaining bitterly to him, ‘You’re nothing but a machine, Matt Hamilton—a beautiful, unfeeling machine!’ And Daisy had jealously listened to his low, mocking laughter, his murmured reply, then silence, and had known that the ‘unfeeling machine’ was kissing his willing victim into submission.

‘He must be feeling terrible,’ said Daisy slowly. ‘But I’d imagine he’d be very brave about it all; he always was brave, wasn’t he? And it must have been the most awful thing in the world—his wife dying and leaving a tiny baby behind.’

Mrs Hamilton narrowed her fine grey eyes and gave a tiny frown. ‘It must have been unspeakable. I just wish that he’d shared his grief with us, instead of staying on in New York with Sophie. But nothing changes the fact that I always thought that it was the most unexpected of marriages,’ she said, with her familiar candour.

Daisy looked at her, open-mouthed, in amazement. ‘You don’t honestly believe that? What man wouldn’t want to be married to a woman like Patti Page? International rock stars who look like top models aren’t exactly ten-a-penny!’ she added, unable to keep the trace of wistfulness out of her voice as she remembered Matt’s stunning wife.

‘For which we must be thankful,’ said Mrs Hamilton drily, still smarting over the fact that her only son hadn’t invited her to his wedding.

And then an awful thought occurred to Daisy. ‘Mrs Hamilton,’ she said slowly. ‘You won’t tell him, will you?’

‘Tell him what?’

Daisy blushed. ‘You know very well.’

‘That you’ve foolishly chosen to leave school without taking any exams, thereby kissing goodbye to a promising career in mathematics? Is that what you don’t want me to tell him, Daisy?’

Daisy’s colour heightened even further. ‘Er—yes,’ she said, for once uncharacteristically hesitant. ‘You know what Matt can be like.’

‘I most certainly do. And, knowing Matt, I expect he’ll find out whether you want him to or not.’

Daisy raised her rather square chin with determination, and her hair shimmered in a silky golden-brown curtain all the way down her back. ‘Then we’ll just have to make sure he doesn’t find out. Now, shall I go and get his room ready for him?’

Mrs Hamilton smiled at her affectionately. ‘Would you, dear? I think we’ll put him in the blue room, shall we?’

The dreaded blue room. Daisy gritted her teeth as she remembered that dawn morning a year and a half ago, when she’d spotted a scantily clad Patti Page creeping out of the blue room where Matt had been sleeping, her hair all tousled—the look of a smug and satiated cat all over her face. Daisy might have been innocent, but you wouldn’t have needed to be Einstein to know what she and Matt had been up to.

‘Why not make up his old room?’ she suggested quickly. Because surely it would only make his pain all the harder to bear if he was put in a room where he’d spent a night making passionate love with the woman he was later to marry? ‘It might help him feel less miserable if he’s in the room he had as a boy—surrounded by all those trophies he won at school and college.’

‘What a good idea!’ said Mrs Hamilton fondly, and the two smiled at one another in perfect accord, with the easy familiarity of two people who went back a long way.

Mrs Hamilton was almost like a second mother to Daisy. Daisy’s mother and Matt’s mother were the best of friends, had been at school together, had been bridesmaids at each other’s wedding, then godmothers to their first-born—Matt and Daisy’s elder sister, Poppy. So that when Daisy’s father had run off to India to ‘find himself’, leaving behind a penniless wife with two children to support, Eliza Hamilton had offered her best friend what help she could.

Daisy’s mother had become housekeeper to the immensely rich Hamiltons, though the only formality was in the title itself, and when Matt’s father had died the two women had become even more like companions than employer and employee.

And Daisy had grown up alongside Matt. Ten years older than her, in Daisy’s starry eyes Matt had been the expert on everything; he had taught her everything. It had been Matt who had shown her how to fly a kite; Matt who had discovered her outstanding talent for maths when he’d started teaching her chess. And Matt whom she had hero-worshipped ever since she could remember.

Daisy had fulfilled all Matt’s predictions for her academic career. She had done outstandingly well at school. She had worked hard because she really wanted to shine—partly for herself, and partly to make Matt proud of her. But then one day he had run off and secretly married Patti Page, the world’s most glamorous rock star, destroying all Daisy’s secret dreams in the process. And after that nothing had ever seemed quite the same again . . .

But perhaps all that was about to change, she thought hopefully as she opened the door to his bedroom and gazed wistfully at all the trophies which dazzled in a silver line on the window-ledge which overlooked the paddock.

* **

The hours before Matt was due home whizzed by faster than a big-dipper at the fairground, and Daisy and Mrs Hamilton rushed around the place like dervishes.

‘Do you think this laurel garland is a bit over the top?’ enquired Daisy as she leaned precariously over the oak bannister to fasten it so that it hung in fragrant green loops.

‘A bit,’ said Mrs Hamilton. ‘But I expect he’ll love it. He’s been away too long—let’s give him a really English Christmas.’

Daisy thought that she heard the sound of a car’s tyres swishing to a halt on the gravelled drive, and she quickly ran downstairs to peep out of the window.

‘He’s here!’ she said, her voice rising with the excitement which had been building up inside her all day. ‘He’s home!’

She watched as the sleek, dark car glided to a halt in front of the big old house. She was, she realised as her heart hammered away crazily, still an absolutely hopeless case where Matt Hamilton was concerned. Some things, she had discovered ruefully, simply never changed.

She peeped out from behind the heavy richness of the crimson velvet curtains into the gloom of the December afternoon, where the first white flakes of snow were beginning to fall from a pregnant, gun-metal-grey sky.

‘What’s he driving?’ asked the car-mad Mrs Hamilton as she patted her hair in front of the mirror.

Daisy, who was completely useless where cars were concerned, screwed her eyes up so that she could just make out the silver badge which adorned the front of the vehicle. ‘It’s a Bentley, I think—a big, dark green Bentley. Very staid.’ She remembered him driving home in the black, phallic Porsche which had so suited his effortless transformation from Cambridge scholar to hugely successful international financier. But Matt was a family man now ... ‘I’ll go and open the door for him,’ she said.

But by the time she reached the heavy oak door the old-fashioned bell was jangling imperiously, followed by a loud thumping which could not possibly be ignored, and she pulled the door open to the tall figure who stood like some dark, avenging highwayman amidst the cold flurry of snowflakes.

It was not how she had dreamed his home-coming would be.

Matt scarcely acknowledged her as he walked straight past her; he was too busy shielding the baby from the snowflakes which had started to come down in earnest. A bundle of thick white blanket was clasped against the shoulder of his black sweater and at that moment it gave a protesting little squawk.

‘Hell! I’ve flown from one blizzard straight into another!’ he exclaimed, then gave his aloof, rather enigmatic smile which nevertheless could melt the coldest heart. ‘Hello, Mother.’

‘Hello, darling.’ Mrs Hamilton offered him her cheek.

And then the smoky grey eyes were turned in Daisy’s direction. ‘Hello, Daisy,’ he said slowly, in the familiar, deep voice, but she thought that it sounded harder, more cynical than she remembered, and his smile was strangely gritty.

‘Hello, Matt,’ she whispered.

The years had only increased the sheer physical impact he made when he walked into a room. He was tall and lean and rangy, and his eyes were the colour of a stormy sea, his hair as black as a moonless night. The angular slant of his high cheekbones and the firm, jutting squareness of his jaw made him look like some chivalrous Knight of the Realm, who had strayed inadvertently into the wrong century.

The bundle at his shoulder gave another protesting squawk, and his mouth underwent a dramatic and devastating transformation as it widened into the tenderest smile Daisy had ever seen.

‘And this is Sophie,’ he said softly, loosening the top blanket to reveal a chubby-looking baby of about eight months. ‘Little Miss Sophie Hamilton. Say hello to Grandma and to Daisy, darling.’

‘Hello, Sophie,’ beamed Mrs Hamilton, and two wide grey eyes looked around at her with interest.

The baby was the absolute image of her father, Daisy realised as she stared into the smoke-coloured eyes which were so like Matt’s, and at the thatch of dark hair which was already beginning to hint at a recalcitrant wave. ‘Oh, she’s absolutely beautiful!’ exclaimed Daisy involuntarily, and Matt looked down at her and gave her that swift, indulgent look he had always reserved just for her, and for a moment Daisy’s heart stirred into ecstatic life—as it had always stirred when Matt looked at her like that.