Alison Fraser - Her Sister's Baby

She did what he said, sloshing a little lemonade in her vodka to make it drinkable, and placed his glass on the coffee-table in front of him, before taking the chair opposite.

She watched him fortify himself with a mouthful of liquor, then look across at her, searching for the right words to use, and she realised this wasn’t about some stupid thing Pen had done.

Her sense of déjà vu was too strong. Just that afternoon she’d had to tell a sobbing mother her son was dead, hoping the woman would guess before she had to say the words aloud.

‘Something’s happened to Pen, hasn’t it?’ she said to Drayton Carlisle now.

He nodded his head. ‘I don’t know how to tell you this—’

‘She’s dead.’ Cass said the words quickly, then prayed for an equally quick denial.

He looked surprised and gave her brief hope that she was being overly dramatic. Then he took it away as he nodded once more.

He began to speak, to go into detail, but the blood was rushing to Cass’s head and she couldn’t hear what he was saying. She knew she was on the verge of fainting and took a deep breath to steady herself. By sheer force of will, she brought herself back from oblivion, and forced herself to concentrate on his voice.

‘The results should be known by Tuesday,’ he concluded gravely.

‘The results?’ Cass had missed most of the rest.

He frowned as he repeated, ‘Of the post mortem.’

‘They can’t do that!’ Cass was horrified for Pen. Beautiful Pen, so proud of her looks, her model-girl figure.

‘They have to,’ Drayton Carlisle told her quietly, ‘in cases of unexpected deaths.’

Cass understood that. She just wasn’t thinking on a logical level. The first shock was followed by a sense of unreality.

That sense intensified as he added, ‘Tom says you may not have known about the baby.’

‘The baby?’ she echoed warily—was Pen’s secret finally out?

Drayton Carlisle gave her a puzzled look in return. He’d just explained.

‘The baby she was carrying,’ he reminded her. ‘It’s a girl. She’s in special care.’

Cass shook her head in disbelief—Pen had been pregnant again?

‘You didn’t know, did you?’ he concluded from her expression.

Disbelief gave way to anger as Cass muttered aloud, ‘The stupid, stupid girl!’

Drayton Carlisle’s mouth curved with renewed contempt. ‘Presumably she anticipated your reaction.’

‘I’m sure she did.’ Cass recalled the last conversation she’d had with Pen on the subject. She had warned her then, but of course Pen had never listened.

‘She told Tom you might have a problem with it,’ Drayton Carlisle ran on.

That was an understatement. She caught Drayton Carlisle watching her, drawing quite the wrong conclusions. The truth would have vindicated her but how could she reveal it when Pen had paid the ultimate price for her lies?

‘What’s the prognosis?’ she asked instead.

‘Prognosis?’

‘For the baby.’

He frowned at the clinical term, before relaying, ‘She’s a good size for a premature baby so they’re cautiously optimistic.’

Cass nodded but wouldn’t ask more.

‘How is Tom?’ she added instead.

Mention of his brother made Drayton Carlisle’s face grow grimmer.

‘Coping,’ he claimed briefly.

Cass doubted it. She thought of Tom Carlisle—less arrogant than big brother, slightly immature, more likeable for his insecurities.

‘I’ve arranged the funeral for Wednesday,’ Drayton Carlisle informed her, an indication, perhaps, of the true state of affairs. He had arranged, not Tom.

‘Cremation.’ Cass checked he had it right.

He raised a brow at her insistent tone. ‘No, burial… Why?’

‘That’s not what she’d want.’

‘How do you know?’

It could have been a genuine question but Cass didn’t think so. He meant: how did she know when she’d had minimal contact with her sister over the last few years?

But she did. She knew her sister better than any of them. She had lived with the real girl, not the sanitised version that had been desperate to become a member of the Carlisle clan.

‘You can’t bury her,’ Cass repeated. ‘She had this thing about it, after our mother died. About bodies rotting in the ground.’

He still looked doubtful. ‘I’ll check with Tom.’

‘Do that if you want—’ she scowled back ‘—but I’m telling you. She’d want to be cremated.’

‘If Tom agrees,’ he conceded, then went on to relay, ‘It’ll just be a small private funeral, family only.’

She shook her head again. ‘That’s not what Pen would have liked, either.’

This time his face reflected annoyance as he ceased making concessions for her possible grief. Her hard-bitten tones suggested she felt none, anyway.

‘Forgive me, but can you really be the judge of that?’ he countered. ‘It’s not as if you and Pen were very close.’

Statement or accusation? Cass returned his hard glance. She owed him no explanation of her somewhat complex relationship with Pen.

‘Possibly not,’ she conceded. ‘I just happen to know her attitude towards funerals. At our mother’s, she found it pitiful that there were only a handful of mourners and swore she’d have hundreds at her own. She was only fifteen at the time—’ Cass paused and swallowed hard, determined to hold it together in front of this man ‘—but I imagine those sentiments stand. Unless Pen suddenly became the shy retiring type?’

‘Hardly.’ Drayton Carlisle’s mouth thinned at the idea. ‘I was thinking of Tom when I arranged the funeral.’

‘And I’m thinking of my sister,’ Cass replied.

They abandoned their uneasy truce and exchanged hostile stares.

‘And I’m paying for it,’ he pointed out.

End of argument.

Cass’s lip curled. ‘You’re such a louse, Carlisle.’

He grimaced briefly, before countering, ‘And you’re the hardest woman I have ever met in my life.’

Deep down it hurt. No woman liked to be called hard. Cass, however, was a past master at hiding her feelings.

‘How kind of you to say so,’ she retaliated.

‘That wasn’t meant as a compliment.’

‘I know.’

They traded stares again. Anger was prevalent for a moment, but it gave way to intrigue as each wondered what made the other tick.

Cass was the first to look away. ‘I’ll see you out.’

She rose abruptly and he followed. In the hall, they turned at virtually the same moment to reach for his coat and collided a little. The first to recover, Drayton Carlisle put a steadying hand on Cass’s arm.

That was all. But his touch still burned and she recoiled from it as if it were an assault.

‘I wasn’t going to hurt you,’ he ground out in a voice tight with control.

‘As if,’ Cass threw back, angry at her own lack of self-possession.

Perhaps Pen had been right. She was turning into an up-tight spinster.

‘No, of course.’ Drayton Carlisle’s thoughts were on Pen, too, as he relayed, ‘Your sister always said you were scared of nothing and cared about even less.’

Cass could just hear her sister say the words. She shut her eyes but could still hear them. Tough talk, but quite untrue. Surely Pen had known that she’d cared desperately about her?

Drayton Carlisle watched, at first a detached observer. Finally it was there. Pain etched on her beautiful, high-boned face. He’d wanted it there, to see if the girl he’d briefly known—the girl who could feel and laugh and love—had been real, yet he relented almost immediately as she lifted an anguished hand to her mouth.

‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that—’ he reached an arm out ‘—it’s not even tr—’