Phantom Marriage

‘Mandy!’

The cry was torn from her lips, as Sue and Alec reached her, Sue’s arm going protectively round her shoulders.

‘James?’

There was an urgent question in Alec’s voice as he hurried across the grass.

‘She’s all right,’ James assured them without turning. ‘Just shocked and frightened. She didn’t realise the water was so deep. She saw Misty go in…’

Tara shuddered and broke free of Sue to go and kneel beside Mandy’s prone form. ‘I know,’ she said huskily. ‘I saw it all from my window; I guessed what was going to happen, but there wasn’t a thing I could do…’

‘Mandy wanted to get Misty’s stick,’ Simon interpolated in an uncertain voice. ‘It was floating away.’

How many times had she warned them against the dangers of water? Tara wondered tiredly, but it was no use blaming the twins. The blame was hers. If anything had happened to Mandy! She shuddered deeply. If she hadn’t been so wrapped up in her own thoughts, so selfishly determined to put as much distance between James and herself as she could… Mandy stirred and opened her eyes.

‘Mandy!’ Tears rose in Tara’s eyes, as her self-control threatened to give way. ‘I’ll take her upstairs,’ she began, but it was James who lifted the slight body in his arms, his eyes unexpectedly tender, before he veiled his expression from her with lashes which she had always maintained were far too thick and long for any man.

‘There’s no need—’ she began formally, but Mandy herself overruled her by murmuring huskily, ‘No, Mummy, I want James to carry me.’

Upstairs in the twins’ bedroom James placed Mandy carefully on the bed.

‘I’ll get Doctor Lewis out just to take a look at her,’ Sue announced.

The blue dungarees were filthy and soaking, and Tara stripped them off, running a bath in the adjacent bathroom. A subdued and worried Simon had crept into the room and was sitting down watching Mandy’s pale face.

James turned to go, but Mandy started to protest so much that he turned back.

‘I want James to give me, my bath,’ Mandy announced. There was a hectic flush on her cheeks, and fresh alarm flared as Tara saw it.

‘James has got to go out,’ Tara rem

inded her. ‘And you haven’t thanked him yet for rescuing you. I still don’t understand how you managed to get there before me,’ she told him. ‘I was watching from my bedroom.’

‘So was I,’ James told her grimly, ‘but I used the backstairs—much quicker. It’s all right,’ he told her when Mandy made another plea for his company, ‘I’m not going out, as it happens. Come on, young lady!’ He scooped Mandy up in his arms and, watching him, Tara could almost have believed she had imagined the dislike with which he had looked at the little girl only the previous day.

When Doctor Lewis arrived he pronounced Mandy to be suffering from nothing more than too much pond water and mild shock. ‘Kids are blessedly resilient,’ he told Tara sympathetically, eyeing her pale cheeks. ‘Far less vulnerable than we tend to think, although they can tend to play up a bit. I dare say they’ll give you more than the odd grey hair before they’re done,’ he added to James with a grin.

Shock wrenched through Tara, her eyes widening and fastening on James’s as he frowned slightly. With every thud of her heart she expected the doctor to comment on the likeness between James and Simon, so absurdly his father in miniature that Tara couldn’t believe James himself couldn’t see it, but to her relief he said nothing. Although when Sue had escorted the doctor back downstairs, Simon frowned consideringly and said questioningly, ‘Why did the doctor think James was our daddy? Doesn’t he know we haven’t got one?’

‘I don’t think he does, darling.’ Tara bent down, ruffling the dark hair, keeping her face deliberately averted from James.

‘I wish we did have a daddy,’ Simon sighed wistfully. ‘If we had a daddy we could live in the country and have a dog.’

‘I can’t honestly see Chas Saunders providing either of those requirements,’ James murmured dulcetly in Tara’s ear as he turned to leave the room. ‘Can you?’

The warmth of his breath against her ear caused her to shiver faintly. Now that the ordeal was over and Mandy was safe reaction had set in. Her legs felt like jelly, the cessation of adrenalin being pumped into her veins inducing a lethargic and shivery sensation that made her long to lie down on her own bed.

The atmosphere during lunch was slightly subdued. At least she need not fear that Sue would repeat her invitation, Tara thought inwardly, toying with the delicious seafood salad Mrs Barnes had prepared without the enthusiasm the food warranted.

‘When I think what might have happened!’ Sue commented, shuddering as she voiced all their thoughts. ‘I won’t be able to rest until that pool is filled in, Alec.’

‘You need eyes in the back of your head with kids about,’ Alec agreed, bending to grin at Simon. ‘Kids and dogs, who’d have them?’

For Simon’s sake Tara was trying to behave as normally as she could.

After lunch she excused herself to slip upstairs and check on Mandy, who was still sleeping, and when she returned, to her surprise she heard Simon’s voice coming from the library, the high-pitched boyish tones mingling with the deeper, more measured timbre of James’s.

‘James is teaching me to play chess,’ Simon announced importantly when Tara put her head round the door.