Savage Courtship

by Susan Napier

  Until now...

  Vanessa’s fingers tightened further on her cup. She had an unwelcome premonition that this visit was going to alter the pleasant tenor of life at Whitefield House completely and forever. Already her perception of Benedict Savage had been unwillingly altered. He was no longer merely her employer, he was now regrettably entrenched in her brain as a man...

  He was still looking at her, and she cringed at what he must be thinking.

  If only she could remember what had happened!

  Unfortunately, last night was a total blank, from the time she had fallen into bed after imbibing more than her share of champagne over an early dinner with Richard, until the moment she had become aware of the sounds of dawn filtering through a window that she knew she had firmly closed the previous evening.

  When she had opened her eyes and found herself almost nose to nose with her naked employer, her arm draped over his hard waist, her thigh trapped intimately between his, she had thought at first that she was dreaming. Not that she had ever had erotic dreams about Benedict Savage before; she had always felt utterly safe in that regard. He was just not the sort of man she found attractive. He was too cerebral, too dispassionate, too much of a perfectionist for Vanessa, who much preferred comfort to sharp-edged perfection.

  Luckily she had been too muddle-headed to scream when the rest of her senses had confirmed the shocking reality of the bare flesh pressed against hers. She had merely frozen, terrified that her consciousness might awaken his, unable to believe that the supple male hand possessively cupping her soft breast really belonged to Benedict Savage...not to mention the steely hardness that pressed into the hollow of her thigh where it was wedged snugly between his. He might not have roused from sleep but the man in her arms had definitely not been unaroused!

  Shame and disbelief had warred for supremacy in the long moments it took for her to realise that she might still be able to extricate herself from the immediate consequences of her folly. The deep, even tenor of his breathing had indicated that Benedict—Mr Savage, she corrected herself grimly, clinging to the flimsy protection that the formality offered—was still deeply asleep, and Vanessa had prayed that he would continue to remain so as she extracted herself, inch by excruciatingly cautious inch, from their tangled embrace, her eyes fixed on his sleeping face.

  All had gone well until the final few seconds when he’d shifted and growled an inarticulate protest at the withdrawal of warm, feminine flesh but, blessedly, he hadn’t woken...

  When she’d finally slithered off the side of the bed, taking most of the upper sheet with her, he had merely rolled further over on to his face with a groan, slinging a long, sinewy arm around the pillow she had vacated and dragging it under his ribs, pinning it there with his drawn-up knee. She had primly flung the sheet back over him and fled hastily, her mortification ridiculously intensified by the knowledge that her presence in his bed was so easily replaced by a shapeless pillow!

  It had taken her all of fifteen minutes’ hard scrubbing in the shower to feel that she had washed the masculine scent and feel of him off her skin and even now the memory of it returned to haunt her.

  Once again, she damned Benedict Savage for taking advantage of an innocent mistake. Why hadn’t he woken her up? Or, worse, what if he had woken her and, in an alcohol-induced stupor, she had been recklessly wanton...?

  She shuddered, looking warily up at him through the protective screen of her lashes. Why on earth was he just standing there like that? Why didn’t he say something—an accusation, a joke, a request for an explanation, a demand she pack her bags and never darken his door again—anything to break this unbearable tension?

  Nervously she tried to assess his uncertain mood. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was ruffled—not a very good sign for a man who always presented a perfectly groomed image, even when relaxing in private. His saturnine face had a more than usually shuttered look, his thin mouth a tight slash across the unshaven lower half of his face that emphasised the general impression of indrawn tension. However, his crisp blue and white striped shirt and dark blue trousers were immaculately co-ordinated, so he hadn’t been in such haste to track her down that he’d just thrown on the first clothes to hand.

  The silence stretched on just long enough for her nerve to break under the strain.

  ‘Did you want me, sir?’

  Too late Vanessa realised the suggestive ambiguity of the question and she had to clench her teeth to stop herself gabbling a disclaimer into the ensuing silence. Her neatly buttoned collar suddenly felt chokingly tight.

  ‘I...’ He released her from the torture of his sole attention, looking around the kitchen again, as if hunting for his words. ‘Er... Am I the only one breakfasting...?’

  Vanessa was aware of Mrs Riley’s sidelong glance but refused to share her silent puzzlement at their employer’s uncharacteristic vagueness. She was too busy worrying over whether he was deliberately prolonging her agony or merely unwilling to humiliate her in front of the housekeeper.

  ‘Why...yes. Vanessa didn’t mention that you’d brought any guests with you this time...’ Mrs Riley was saying, a faint look of bewilderment crossing her face as she watched her employer’s eyes drop as he studied his stylishly shod feet with apparent fascination.

  ‘No, I didn’t. So...it’s just me, then...’ His inflexion rose slightly on the last word, just enough to suggest the possibility of a question. Nobody answered immediately and his gaze swivelled suddenly back to Vanessa, who wasn’t quite quick enough to banish her look of apprehension.

  He scowled at her. ‘Can I see you for a few minutes in the library, Flynn?’ He turned on his heel and was almost out the door before he halted, looking back. ‘Incidentally, Mrs Riley, I’m really not very hungry this morning, so perhaps just some toast and tea...’

  ‘Oh, what a pity, Mr Savage, and I’ve just put a nice pot of porridge on the stove—’

  ‘Porridge?’ He jerked around, looking so shocked at the suggestion that Vanessa, already primed with nerves, gave a jittery little laugh and found herself once again impaled by the focus of his attention.

  ‘In the library. Now!’ For Benedict Savage the quiet hiss was the equivalent of a furious shout.

  ‘Yes, sir!’ Vanessa muttered to empty air, rising from her seat and unhooking the cropped navy jacket that was draped over the high back.

  ‘Well, I never!’ said Kate Riley, crossing her arms over her ample chest and shaking her grey head so that her corrugated perm quivered. ‘You’d have thought I was offering him arsenic. He always said he liked my porridge!’

  Vanessa, shouldering into her jacket and procrastinating by squaring the cuffs and lapels, soothed her injured pride absently. ‘He’s probably just in a bad mood—’

  ‘Mr Savage doesn’t have moods—he’s always a perfect gentleman,’ Mrs Riley pointed out with inescapable truth. ‘He never gets out of bed on the wrong side but it certainly seems as though he did this morning...’

  Vanessa murmured something indistinct in answer to the unfortunate metaphor and rushed out of the kitchen, pressing cold hands to her hot cheeks.

  Calm down, calm down, she lectured herself sternly as she walked down the flag-stoned hall. If he fires you, you can charge him with sexual harassment. Or was he planning to charge her...? She almost moaned aloud at the thought, its absurdity eclipsed by her horror of scandal. Whatever happened, there would be questions asked because she couldn’t possibly continue to work at Whitefield. She would have to leave the place she had come to look on as a quiet, secure haven from the madness of the world. And what was she going to tell Richard? Oh, damn, damn, damn!

  ‘Well...?’ Thankfully Benedict Savage had not chosen to adopt an intimidating position of dominance behind the meticulously tidy antique desk that fronted the French windows. Instead he was standing just inside the doorway, one hand resting on a walnut shelf of the book-lined wall, fingers tapping involuntarily against the aged wood as she closed the door behind her.


  ‘Yes, sir?’ Vanessa stood straight and tall, shoulders squared against the imminent attack.

  He cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry if my early arrival has caused problems, but I just needed to get away for a space of time and Whitefield seemed the place to do it. The apartment in Auckland is too accessible and...’ he shrugged with a trace of diffidence ‘...well, I know that Mrs Riley gets in a tizz about these things... Just make sure she knows that I don’t expect everything to be as organised as usual...that I don’t want any fuss...’

  Vanessa was hard put to it not to let her jaw fall open. Mr Perfection was telling her he didn’t expect perfection? He was waffling about household arrangements when the real business at hand was shrieking to be settled?

  She looked at the tapping fingers. Nerves? Mr Cool was nervous?

  ‘So, you’ll tell her that, will you?’ His fingers suddenly stopped their fluttering with a sudden slam against the wood.

  Vanessa’s eyes shot back to his face to find him watching her warily. She scrabbled for foundation on a rapidly shifting ground. He was nervous of her? The notion was mind-boggling.

  ‘Ah, yes, yes, of course, sir,’ she assured him hastily.

  ‘Right.’ He took off his spectacles, cleaned their spotless lenses with a beautifully pressed handkerchief retrieved from his hip pocket, and put them on again. ‘I didn’t bring anyone with me.’

  ‘So you said, sir—in the kitchen, just now,’ she added as he regarded her blankly.

  ‘Did I? Oh, yes, of course I did.’ He pushed off the bookcase and began to pace. ‘So...where is our other guest, I wonder?’

  Vanessa stiffened. ‘If you’re suggesting—’

  He jumped in, correspondingly quick to suspect. ‘Suggesting what?’

  ‘That I take advantage of your absences to invite people to use your house—’ she began, angry that he might be trying to make up spurious reasons for terminating her employment. If he was going to fire her for sleeping with him he was going to have to admit it!

  ‘No, no, nothing like that.’ His answer was as swift as it seemed genuine, and edged with irritation. ‘If I didn’t trust you I wouldn’t continue to employ you, would I? I just wondered if you knew...’

  ‘Knew what?’ She was deeply uneasy now. Maybe she just should have opened up with an apology and explanation instead of leaving it up to him to introduce the subject. But she had never known her employer be anything but direct, sometimes brutally so.

  He stopped pacing a mere stride away and turned to her, hands on his hips. This was it, the moment of truth.

  Vanessa lifted her chin bravely, gratified to note that even in flat heels she topped him by at least an inch. Whatever he said, she wasn’t going to shrink into physical insignificance before him!

  ‘There was a woman...’

  ‘A woman?’ Vanessa felt herself beginning to heat up. Oh, God, was he going to try to smooth things over by explaining how last night had only been a spasm of lust and that she wasn’t to place any importance on the fact that they had slept together because there was someone else...?

  He bit off something that sounded like a curse. Another first. Benedict Savage’s words were usually as cool and as measured as the rest of him, precisely weighed and placed for maximum effect with minimum effort.

  ‘Yes, a woman.’ His voice roughened sharply at her wide-eyed shock and he raked her with an insulting glare. ‘You do know what a woman is, don’t you, Flynn?’

  Her flush deepened at his sneer and she saw his eyes flicker behind their clear lenses, his mouth compress with self-disgust. ‘I’m sorry, that was in extremely poor taste...’ His hand rasped across his beard-shaded chin as he continued rigidly, ‘I mean...last night when I came in, just before midnight...there was a woman—er—in my room...’

  ‘In your room?’ She couldn’t help it, and when she realised that she had once again inanely repeated his words she bit her lip but this time he ignored the provocation.

  ‘In bed. A blonde.’

  ‘A blonde?’ Vanessa retreated, startled, visions of sin dancing in her head. Had she taken part in some kind of orgy without being aware of it? Disported herself in some kind of perverted ménage à trois? Her employer had never brought a female companion with him to Whitefield before, although he had included unattached women in groups of people whom he had occasionally entertained at weekends. She had thought that his love-life must be as reserved as the rest of him, but now Vanessa found herself regarding those weekend groupings in a suspicious new light.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ Her air of silent condemnation caused an explosion that was contained almost as soon as it occurred. His hard jaw clenched as he continued doggedly, ‘She had long, fluffy hair...like golden fleece.’ Benedict Savage held her mesmerised stare, faint streaks of red appearing on his high cheekbones as he went on, ‘Have you by any chance seen her around this morning? She’s not anywhere upstairs...’

  Golden? Fluffy? Vanessa’s eyes widened as she resisted the urge to touch her neat French pleat to make sure that the wavy, sun-bleached ends were firmly rolled into the concealing centre.

  It suddenly occurred to her that her employer had never seen her with her hair down. To him she was just Flynn, discreet, sexless, quietly running his household and overseeing the ongoing restoration of the former coaching inn while he jaunted about the world earning a luxurious living designing buildings that were the complete antithesis of Whitefield.

  Vanessa, along with the other permanent staff, was merely one of the chattels that he had acquired when he had unexpectedly inherited a distant relative’s property and, after initially balking badly at the discovery that the late Judge Seaton’s butler was young and female, he had accepted the impeccable references supplied by the lawyer who had handled the judge’s estate. He had, however, made it quite clear to Vanessa privately that she was only acceptable in the position as long as the fact that she was a woman never impinged on the job. It never had.

  ‘Apart from being blonde, what does she look like?’ Vanessa asked in a strangled voice that tested a wildly implausible theory.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said, his bluntness daring her to display any shock. ‘It was dark...I never saw her face. And before you ask, no, I don’t know what her name is; we didn’t get around to introducing ourselves! So, now that your prurient suspicions are confirmed, perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering my questions?’

  His sarcasm went right over her whirling head. She was shattered by knowledge that her outrageous theory was right.

  There had only been one woman in Benedict Savage’s bed last night and that woman had been Vanessa. But he didn’t know that!

  ‘I...but...I—’ Relief poured like adrenalin along her veins, throwing her into an even deeper moral dilemna.

  As long as he never found out who the woman in his bed had been, Vanessa’s job was safe...

  ‘I’m not imagining things!’ he growled tersely.

  Vanessa licked her lips. ‘Oh...of course not,’ she said, wondering how long her meagre acting skills would sustain her charade of ignorance.

  He chose to take her placating comment as a piece of sarcasm and reiterated tightly, ‘She was here, damn it! It was late and I was thick-headed with jet-lag but I wasn’t completely detached from reality. I wasn’t hallucinating!’

  ‘I haven’t seen anyone except Mrs Riley this morning,’ Vanessa said, carefully avoiding any outright lie that could have unpleasant repercussions later. ‘Perhaps it was one of the resident ghosts, sir,’ she joked weakly.

  ‘I didn’t know we had any. Not that I believe in them, anyway.’

  His scepticism was only what she expected from such a logical mind. You only had to look at the buildings he designed to see that his imagination was chained to the starkly realistic. ‘Oh, yes, people say that there are several—’

  ‘Female?’

  She was disconcerted by his persistence over what had been a purely frivolous mention. ‘A couple of them, yes�
��’

  ‘Yellow-haired? Scantily dressed? A seductive siren luring a man towards the gates of hell and damnation?’

  Oh, God, now she was certain that whatever they had got up to had been deeply sinful.

  ‘Er, I understand one of them was a guest murdered by one of the ostlers here at the inn—a...a dancing girl who was on her way to entertain at the goldfields at Coromandel...’

  ‘You mean a whore?’ He cut her gentle euphemisms to ribbons with cool contempt. ‘Well, that certainly fits.’

  ‘There’s no proof that she was a whore!’ Vanessa said hotly, not sure whether it was herself or the ghost she was supposed to be defending.

  ‘What about last night?’

  ‘W-what about last night?’ Vanessa quavered. Surely she hadn’t given him the idea she had expected money for whatever it was she had allowed him to do!

  He looked at her impatiently, mistaking her horror for fear. ‘Forget about bloody ghosts. They don’t exist. So-called supernatural apparitions usually turn out to be the self-generated fantasies of people who are either gullible, publicity-seeking or deranged. You said you didn’t see anyone around this morning. What about last night? You were here then, weren’t you? Did you see or hear anything then?’

  Oh, God... Her collar tightened again, squeezing her voice into a reedy squeak. ‘I was out. I went to dinner over in Waihi...’ No need to mention she’d been back, and tucked up cosily in his bed, by ten-thirty p.m.

  ‘Who with?’

  In the three years she had worked for him he had never asked her a single personal question and Vanessa floundered, feeling that she was giving away a vital piece of herself with the information. ‘R-Richard—Richard Wells.’

  ‘The horse-breeder—from the property along the road?’ He frowned. He was obviously trying to remember his fleeting acquaintance with his nearest neighbour; he was probably also wondering what Richard saw in his sexless employee, Vanessa thought sourly, only to be proved wrong as he said sharply, ‘Not with Dane?’