This Is My Child. Lucy Gordon

rose and went to the big bay window. She followed him and stood in the light while he studied her. She too could see better now. He was in his mid-thirties, with a stern face that seemed made for authority. His mouth surprised her, being well made and mobile, a mouth that many women would have found attractive. It was relaxed now as he looked at her, and both from his mouth and his dark eyes, she gained an impression that this was an unhappy man. But she had no pity for him. He’d contributed too much to her own unhappiness for that.

      “Take your hair down,” he commanded.

      “What?” She stared at him. “What difference does my hair make?”

      “I don’t make pointless requests. Please do as I ask.”

      She pulled the pins from her fair hair, letting it tumble in waves around her shoulders, and stared at him defiantly. He laid his hand on it, taking a strand between his fingers, savoring its silkiness. “It’s lovely hair,” he said quietly.

      “I don’t see what my physical attributes have to do with anything,” she snapped.

      “I think you do. That’s why you pinned your hair back, to hide its beauty. That’s why you don’t wear makeup, because you want to look severe and professional. It doesn’t work. You’ve got a lovely, delicate face, wonderful green eyes and a figure that must keep the men chasing after you.” He said this in a cool, appraising voice that robbed the words of any tinge of flattery. “And you know as well as I do why I can’t possibly employ you.”

      Her heart thundered. She recovered herself enough to say, “But I don’t know.”

      “David needs stability. He needs a woman who’ll stay with him through thick and thin. I had in mind somebody middle-aged, a widow or divorcée, perhaps with grown-up children, even grandchildren. You’re a young, beautiful woman, which means you won’t stay long.”

      “It doesn’t mean that at all—”

      “Oh, come! At your age the natural sequence of events is to fall in love and get married. I don’t want you vanishing in a few months, just when he’s learned to trust you.”

      “There’s no question of that,” Melanie said desperately.

      “No question?” he echoed, with a satirical look that made her want to scream at him.

      “No question whatever,” she said, trying to speak calmly.

      “You don’t mean to tell me that there isn’t a man in your life this minute?”

      “There isn’t.”

      “I don’t believe you. The very gifts that nature gave you are an incitement. They don’t affect me because I’m armored, but other men aren’t. They must be around you like flies around a honey pot.”

      “Possibly,” Melanie said, fighting to keep her temper. “But they don’t get invited in. Any of them. Like you, Mr. Haverill, I’m armored.”

      “Oh, I see,” he said grimly. “It’s like that, is it?”

      “I beg your pardon.”

      “When a woman renounces love it usually means she’s suffering from a broken heart. Who is he? Is he going to come back and sweep you off?”

      Melanie’s eyes glinted with anger. “Mr. Haverill, this really isn’t any of your business, but—”

      “Everything is my business that I choose to make so.”

      “But the only time I imagined myself in love was nine years ago. And it’ll be the last. You can count on it.”

      There was a long silence. She guessed he wasn’t used to being answered back. Oh, God! she thought, don’t let him refuse!

      At last he said, “I’ll have to take your word for that. I want someone who can make David feel safe and loved. Are you the woman who can do that?”

      “Yes,” she said, looking at him steadily. “I can do that as nobody else can.”

      He was startled by the intensity in her voice. Again he knew the inner prompting to get rid of her. She was dangerous. But he dismissed the notion as fanciful. “In that case,” he said, “let’s go and find him.”

      He led her out into the hall, toward the wide staircase.

      Careful, she thought. Don’t let Giles Haverill suspect that you’ve been in this house before, that you know your way up these very stairs—the right turn at the top toward the room at the end—it’s the same room, and the door’s shut against you as it was before…

      A middle-aged woman in an apron was standing outside the closed door, arguing with someone inside. She looked up as they appeared. “I’m sorry, Mr. Haverill. David’s locked himself in his room again.”

      He knocked hard on the door and called, “David, come out here at once. You know I won’t stand for this behavior.”

      Melanie bit her lip. She wanted to cry out, “Don’t bully him. He’s only a hurt, confused child.” But she said nothing.

      “David.”

      Slowly the key turned in the lock and the door was opened. The little boy who stood there was fair and would have looked angelic but for the sullen defiance written on his face.

      “This is Miss Haynes,” Giles said. “You’ve met her before at school. She’s to stay with us now, and look after you.”

      There was no response. The child regarded her in a silence that held no friendliness.

      “David—” Giles began with an edge on his voice.

      “Never mind,” Melanie said. “There’ll be plenty of time.”

      He sighed. “All right. We’ll discuss money in my office. When can you move in?”

      “My job finishes in two days. I’ll come immediately after that.”

      “Fine. I’ll have a room made ready for you.”

      She smiled at the little boy. “Goodbye, David. I’ll be back soon, and then we can get to know each other properly.”

      Still saying nothing, the child backed into his room, keeping his eyes fixed on her. They were the eyes of a stranger, cold, withdrawn. The eyes of her son.

      

      Late that night, in the bleak little flat where she lived alone, Melanie took out a photograph and studied it. It was battered from long use, frayed around the edges and stained with her tears. It showed a week-old baby sleeping in its mother’s arms, and it was the only memento she had of the child she’d borne when she was sixteen.

      She hadn’t been married to the father. He’d vanished as soon as he learned of her pregnancy, but at that moment she hadn’t cared. Her love for Peter, her baby, had been immediate, passionate and total. She would spend hours holding him, looking down into his face, knowing total fulfillment. As long as Peter needed her, nothing else mattered.

      Even at that age he was an individual. While she smiled at him he would stare back, as grave as a little old man. Then his smile would break suddenly, like sun coming from behind clouds, always taking her by surprise and filling her with joy. For a while only the two of them existed in all the world.

      Then her mother had said coolly, “It’s time you decided to be sensible about this. Of course you can’t keep the baby. It’s a ridiculous idea.”

      “He’s mine. I’m going to keep him,” she cried.

      “My dear girl, how? That layabout who fathered it has gone—”

      “Peter isn’t an ‘it,’” she protested fiercely. “He’s a person, and he’s my son.”

      “Well, he wouldn’t have been if you’d had the common sense to have an abortion. But I thought at least now you’d see