He’d paused, responding to a text from his PA reminding him he had a meeting in Paris in two hours, when he heard the sound. Glancing through the deep stone-mullioned window at the helicopter he’d arrived in, which was sitting on the south lawn, Ben was tempted to pretend he hadn’t heard it. Then he heard it again—the sound of a child crying.
Curious, he slid his phone back into his pocket and followed the sound of the cries. The search led him to the kitchen, a room that, like the plumbing at Warren Court, would have made a Victorian feel right at home.
The door to the vast room was open, and as he stepped inside the source of the noise, a child held by his grandfather’s harassed-looking housekeeper, Elizabeth Gray, let out an ear-piercing screech, made even louder by the room’s tremendous acoustics.
‘Wow, that’s quite a set of lungs.’ And quite a head of hair. The wild red curls on the toddler’s head opened a memory he’d have preferred to stay locked inside the file marked move on.
And he had moved on; it was ancient history.
‘Benedict!’
Would Elizabeth’s smile have been so warm and welcoming had she known he’d slept with one of her daughters? The lazy speculation vanished as she advanced towards him holding the screaming child. Horror slid into the vacuum it left.
‘Your grandfather didn’t tell me you were coming...’
‘He didn’t know.’ Ben prided himself on the ability to extricate himself from uncomfortable situations, but for once his ingenuity failed him.
‘Are you staying for...? Never mind—hold her, will you?’
It was not a suggestion or a request, it was a plea, which he hadn’t responded to when he had found his arms filled with crying toddler. A new experience for him... He stood rigid, holding the wriggling, screaming child the same way he would an unexploded bomb—at arm’s length! He’d have felt more comfortable with a bomb; they were more predictable.
Ben had nothing against children, and he understood why people felt the urge to procreate, he just wondered why some did. People like his mother, who had never made any pretence of being maternal. His mother, who had done her level best to forget that she’d had a child after she’d given birth and had done so pretty successfully. She had never made any bones about what came first—her career. And as she’d pointed out, not having a mother coddling him had made him self-reliant.
He recognised similar character traits—some might call them faults—in himself. He was ambitious, ruthlessly focused on his work. Ben had no illusions about his character. Bottom line, he was selfish. That combined with razor-sharp instincts made him successful in his chosen career.
He didn’t need those instincts to tell him he’d have been a terrible parent. It was pretty obvious. Being a good parent required sacrifice and compromise, which he was simply not capable of. His decision not to have children was yet another bone of contention between him and his grandfather, who was fixated on the idea of the family name living on.
‘Is she ill?’ He struggled to hide his unease and eyed the child warily. She might be attractive, but right now, with her crumpled, tear-stained face as red as her hair, she wasn’t.
‘She bumped her head, slipped chasing the cat. Now let’s have a look...it’s not deep,’ Elizabeth said, brushing a mass of auburn curls from the squawking kid’s head. ‘But it simply won’t stop bleeding and Emmy doesn’t like the sight of blood. But she’s a brave girl, aren’t you, my darling?’ she crooned.
The brave girl gave another ear-splitting bawl. Was it normal for a kid to be that loud? Ben, who had been his parents’ only mistake, wasn’t sure.
‘I didn’t know Lara had a child,’ he said, struggling to make himself heard above the din. ‘Is she visiting, or have they moved back from the States?’ he asked, pretending a polite interest he didn’t feel. Though he’d felt mild surprise when the news of the wedding had reached his ears six months after the event.
Lara Gray was the last person he would have imagined marrying young, she’d been a bit of a wild child, but then what did he know? Her sister had always seemed like the last sort of person who’d spend the night with a man and leave before he woke.
But she had.
To wake and find the pillow beside him empty should have been a relief. Yet finding her gone, leaving nothing but the elusive scent of her perfume, scratches on his shoulders and a pearl earring, he’d been furious. While recognising his response as irrational and disproportionate, Ben had struggled to shrug it off. Even now, three years later, the sight of a red curl could flip his mood.