Cuthbert's Way (DCI Ryan Mysteries, #17)(30)

“Rest easy, Harry,” he said softly. “Things are gettin’ better by the day.”





CHAPTER 14


“Splish, splash, splosh!”

Anna stood in the doorway of the bathroom with the baby’s towel tucked beneath her arm and a bottle of milk in the other, smiling.

“Well now, let’s get that tummy all washed…”

She watched incredulously as Charles Ryan, a distinguished former diplomat and member of the minor aristocracy, bathed his granddaughter gently, making quacky-quack noises as he went.

“I think you’re all done, baby girl…ah! Here’s your mummy…”

Anna stepped forward to lay out the towel and swaddle Emma, whose indignant cries at being snatched up from her warm bath could probably be heard all the way from Land’s End to John O’ Groats.

“I just heard that Ry—ah, Maxwell’s on his way home now,” she said, awkwardly. It was a sticking point for Charles that his only son chose not to answer to his given name and had, instead, appropriated his surname for regular use, and she had no wish to stoke the fire.

Charles heaved himself to his feet with a slight click of the knees, which wasn’t bad for a man over seventy.

“That’s good to hear,” he said, and began tidying the bathroom while Anna dried and dressed the baby.

He was about to head back downstairs, when his daughter-in-law called for him.

“Charles?”

He stuck his head around the door and in the dimly-lit nursery, just for a fraction of a moment, she caught a glimpse of how Ryan might look in a few years’ time.

The idea of her husband as an older man brought no sense of sadness or remorse for the passage of time—in fact, if he was planning to stay as fit and healthy as his father, she’d be a very happy woman indeed.

“Yes, dear?”

“I was wondering if you’d like to give the baby her bottle? Eve happened to mention that you didn’t have the chance to do it when Natalie and Max were babies and I thought—well, you haven’t had much of an opportunity here, either, since one or the other of us is always fighting over the privilege. Would you like to try?”

Charles felt as nervous as a new driver. “Ah—well, yes. Yes, if you really don’t mind—”

“Of course not!” Anna smiled. “Why don’t you come and sit over here?”

She settled Emma’s grandfather in the comfy nursing chair and turned the lights down low, before reminding him of the best position to hold the baby while she fed.

“I’m all fingers and thumbs,” he muttered, while his hands shook slightly at unexpected responsibility.

“There you go,” Anna whispered, stroking her daughter’s head as she began to suck noisily at the bottle. “You’re a natural, grandad.”

Charles smiled, and might have been fifteen years younger.

“She’s all right like this?”

“I’d say so, wouldn’t you?”

He looked down into his granddaughter’s beautiful brown eyes, and found himself smiling.

“She’s a corker,” he murmured. “I remember—”

It seemed he wasn’t going to say anything further, but then he continued.

“I remember the day Maxwell was born,” he continued, keeping his voice low. “I’ve handled artillery rifles, shotguns, hand grenades…you name it. But I can tell you, holding his little body in my arms when we brought him home that first night was the most nerve-wracking thing I’ve ever done.”

“R—Maxwell felt the same way, when we brought Emma home,” she said.

“You should call him by the name you’re used to,” Charles said, gently. “I can’t quite bring myself to call him ‘Ryan’ just yet, but I’m working on that.”

Anna thanked him, and wished whole-heartedly that Ryan could have been there to witness the moment.

“Emma has Ryan’s black hair…and yours,” she said.

Charles looked down at the baby he held.

“More grey than black, these days,” he said, and wondered where the time had gone. “She has her mother’s eyes…just as Ryan has Eve’s shade. They’re more silvery-grey than blue, really.”

Again, Anna stared at him, drinking in the moment. He was not a man given to wasting words, nor volunteering conversation unless he could help it but, in the quiet space of his grandchild’s nursery, he let down his guard.

“I always think Ryan’s are the colour of the North Sea, in a storm,” she said.

Charles smiled at that. “Yes, that’s a good analogy,” he agreed. “It suits his temperament, too, wouldn’t you say?”

“Perhaps,” she admitted. “His waters run deep, but they’re mostly placid until something really angers him—usually injustice of some kind.”

Charles thought about his son’s strong moral yardstick, and was proud.

“Ryan has great self-control,” he said. “I don’t know whether he learned that from me, his mother, or his schooling, but I suppose it helps him with his work to be somewhat detached.”

“Did that help you?”

He looked up, mildly embarrassed. “Me?”