Angel of Darkness

Dark colour had sprung up in a line over his striking cheekbones. He had the rail at the foot of the bed between his lean hands and so fierce was the grip that she could see the whiteness of his knuckles shining through his brown skin. ‘How could I have known you were pregnant?’ It was a rare plea for understanding.

‘You didn’t much care either way,’ Kelda retorted, fighting against the tremendous tiredness sweeping over her.

‘That isn’t true,’ he argued rawly.

‘It really doesn’t matter now.’ Her weary voice slurred the syllables, her eyelids lowering without her volition. ‘All water under the bridge, not worth tussling about—’

‘Not worth—?’ Angelo bit off whatever he had intended to say with visible difficulty. ‘How can you say that? If you had been alone at the cottage today, you would have died and my child with you!’ he said with restrained ferocity, incandescent golden eyes flaming over her pale but now intent face. ‘It was the merest good fortune that you collapsed in a public place. So don’t tell me that what I feel now doesn’t matter!’

He had shaken her, but still her long feathery lashes drifted down. She shifted uncomfortably on the pillows, her hair trapped below her shoulders. Somebody gently slid a hand beneath her spine and tugged the recalcitrant strands of red-gold across her slight shoulders. ‘Thanks,’ she mumbled, and slept.

After breakfast the next morning, the flowers were delivered. Great drifts of headily scented blooms that filled half a dozen vases and brightened her smart but serviceable surroundings. Her first visitor was her mother.

Daisy was wreathed with smiles. ‘I see Angelo’s flowers have arrived.’

‘Angelo? I assumed you—’

‘Well, I was going to, but when I overheard Angelo ordering them on the phone I decided to leave it to another day.’

Kelda, propped up against her banked pillows, was rigid. ‘Why would Angelo send me flowers?’

Daisy opened her eyes very wide. ‘Can you think of anyone else with more reason?’

‘Reason? What reason?’ Kelda demanded shakily.

Her mother sat down. ‘When Tomaso called Angelo yesterday and told him that you were having emergency surgery, I was angry. When Angelo arrived, I was very upset...well, I said some pretty unforgivable things,’ Daisy confided. ‘All these months, you’ve been alone and he’s been running round like Casanova—’

Kelda bit the soft underside of her lower lip and tasted blood.

‘But here in this hospital yesterday, Angelo was distraught,’ Daisy asserted quietly. ‘Really, genuinely frantic with worry about you and the baby. I’ve never seen Angelo like that before. I never realised how emotional Angelo really is underneath the cool front. Tomaso always said he was but I have to admit that I thought that was the fond father talking. Well, as you can imagine, while we were waiting to hear how your surgery had gone, it was a very tense time—’

‘Yes?’ As her mother’s delivery slowed up, Kelda prodded her on, prickles of foreboding tightening her muscles.

‘We didn’t interfere.’ Daisy had stood up again, clearly becoming uncomfortable under the onslaught of her daughter’s strained gaze. ‘But when it emerged that you had actually told Angelo that your baby wasn’t his, well, naturally Tomaso and I were very shocked—’

‘Naturally,’ Kelda repeated in a flattened whisper.

‘How could you lie to him like that?’ Her mother asked without comprehension. ‘We tried to accept that you were both adults and that you knew what you were doing but of course we assumed that, when your pregnancy started to show, Angelo would hear about it and go to see you and things would be sorted out. Thank goodness, Angelo had enough intelligence to realise that you had been lying—’

‘Clever Angelo,’ Kelda muttered tightly, thinking that she would be hearing about Saint Angelo next. She was now the baddie in this scenario. Angelo now stood absolved of all insensitivity towards her plight in recent times. Then their parents were so innocent. They did not have a clue that Angelo’s sole ambition seven months ago had been to buy her into bed and establish her as his mistress.

‘I want what’s best for you and the baby,’ Daisy emphasised.

‘I already have what’s best,’ Kelda said woodenly.

‘Angelo had breakfast with us and then he went to bed for a couple of hours. He’ll be in later. He says that you’re getting married—’

‘Does he indeed?’ Kelda’s pale complexion was consumed by hot colour. Angelo says...her mother had reeled that off with the same naïve faith as she so frequently resorted to ‘Tomaso says...’ When the males in Daisy’s life spoke, she endowed them with oracle-like brilliance.

‘I can’t tell you how happy we are—’

‘He hasn’t asked me yet.’ Kelda pushed out the admission through clenched teeth.

Her mother’s gentle eyes rested rather unfortunately on the swell of Kelda’s stomach and then flicked up to her daughter’s burning face. ‘You’re hardly going to say no, are you?’ she said, not with satire but with gentle conviction that no woman in Kelda’s position could possibly say no to a respectable proposal.

‘Mother, Angelo has just got engaged to Isabel Dunning—’

‘Don’t be silly. Isabel is engaged to his personal assistant, Roger Bamford,’ Daisy contradicted with amusement. ‘Actually Roger isn’t his PA now. Angelo promoted him and now the Dunnings are a bit happier about accepting Roger into the family.’