Savage Courtship

by Susan Napier

  Vanessa gasped. ‘Mr Judson? Of course not. As far as I know he’s at home in Auckland.’

  ‘Wellington, actually. So he didn’t tell you about his little arrangement...’ He resumed his pacing, looking slightly more relaxed, but Vanessa couldn’t allow her vigilance to relax correspondingly.

  ‘Arrangement?’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ He glanced out of the French doors towards the back of the house and suddenly halted with a jerk. ‘What the—? Whose car is that in the garage?’

  Desperate for a change of subject, Vanessa moved up beside him to look out at the gleaming white car tucked under the open arches of what had once been the coaching-house stables. ‘Oh, that! It—’

  ‘What an incredibly beautiful beast of a car!’ His envious drawl cut her off, startling her with its hint of boyish eagerness. Benedict Savage, the last word in sophistication—boyish? ‘Isn’t it a—?’ He leaned closer to the glass panes. ‘Yes, I think it is...a 1935 Duesenberg convertible coupé...just like the one Clark Gable had custom-made. Who on earth...?’ He straightened, suddenly letting loose a rare laugh that sounded half annoyed, half admiring. ‘My God, I bet she arrived in it! That would just be Dane’s style. So that must mean she’s still here somewhere—’

  Vanessa stared at him, confused by this added complication. ‘But...I thought it was yours.’

  His head snapped sideways. ‘Mine?’ His eyebrows rose in a haughty disclaimer. ‘What on earth gave you that idea? You know very well I have the BMW.’

  Yes, a precision-engineered, elegantly low-key car that had seemed perfectly suited to his introverted personality. And yet here he was, practically drooling over a flashy, red-upholstered brute whose every gleaming inch was flauntingly extrovert.

  ‘Well...I...it was delivered yesterday in your name, so I naturally assumed... I thought perhaps you’d bought it as an investment...’ It was the only explanation that had fitted his coolly calculating image.

  ‘It was delivered? By whom?’ As usual he cut swiftly to the heart of the matter.

  ‘Two men. Yesterday afternoon. There was a letter—I assumed from the dealer. I put it there on your desk with the car keys.’

  With one last, narrow-eyed glance at the car he picked up the flat envelope and slit the sealed edge with a neatly manicured thumbnail.

  What he withdrew wasn’t a letter, but a large card of some kind. He stared at the weedy-looking, spectacle-wearing nerd that Vanessa, pretending not to look but unable to restrain her curiosity, could see gracing the front, before slowly opening it and reading the contents. As Vanessa watched, the flush that had lightly streaked his skin a few minutes earlier exploded into a full-blooded, Technicolor blush. He made a strange choking sound in his throat.

  Vanessa was fascinated. She had never seen him look so flustered. ‘I beg your pardon, sir?’ she murmured, her determined coolness rewarded by his dazed regard.

  ‘Dane’s given me a car...’

  ‘Given you a car?’ She now understood his helpless amazement. She had known that his friend was wealthy, as were most people professionally associated with her employer, but, even as ignorant about cars as Vanessa was, she realised that the gorgeous specimen in the garage was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. Dane Judson had a quirky sense of humour and a liking for extravagant surprises, but his extravagances had never been reckless.

  ‘For my birthday.’ He scanned the card again and corrected himself. ‘No, not given, loaned—it’s being picked up again on Monday...’

  That was more like it. Quirky but grounded in economic reality!

  ‘It’s your birthday?’ For some reason Vanessa had never thought of her employer having birthdays like ordinary people. He had always been so remote as to be ageless, above such frivolous goings-on as birthdays...

  ‘Today. I’m thirty-four,’ he revealed absently, staring down at the card, reading and re-reading the writing inside as if it were printed in a foreign language that he was having difficulty translating.

  ‘Many happy returns,’ Vanessa murmured weakly, wishing she had some recollection of the precise nature of the gift she had rendered on the eve of his birthday.

  He didn’t respond, raking a hand over his head, spiking up more of the ruffled strands.

  ‘My God, last night on the phone...all that time Dane was talking about lending me a car, and I thought he was talking in clever metaphors...’

  He groaned and closed his appalled eyes. ‘My God, if he ever finds out what I thought I’ll never hear the end of it!’ His hand covered his mouth as he groaned again, with heartfelt disgust, and his next mutter was almost smothered. ‘I must be mad! Ghosts? I could have sworn I hadn’t imagined any of it...’

  ‘Why, what did you think he was giving you?’ Vanessa asked, the extreme nature of his reaction spicing her curiosity.

  His hand dropped away, and the eyes that had been blue with dismay chilled to the colour of pure steel, but his complexion was still betrayingly warm. ‘None of your damned business!’

  She knew then exactly what ‘arrangement’ he thought that his sly-humoured friend had made.

  She pokered up immediately, forcing down a rush of humiliated fury at the thought of being used as a sexual birthday favour. At least she had the excuse of being inebriated for whatever licentiousness she might have indulged in. He had no excuse whatsoever! And he hadn’t even bothered to look at her face! Her woman’s body had been all that had mattered. Her normally placid temper simmered dangerously.

  ‘No, sir.’

  His eyes narrowed on her, as if he sensed the insolence she so badly wanted to display, but she remained stubbornly impassive and with a shrug he picked up the car keys, tossing and catching them in a gesture that was subtly defiant. ‘I think I’ll go and check out this magnanimous gift of Dane’s.’

  ‘I’ll tell Mrs Riley to hold your breakfast,’ said Vanessa smoothly as she watched him open the French doors and slip outside.

  She knew what he was doing and a small smile of malicious satisfaction curved along her wide mouth.

  The imperturbable Benedict Savage was running away. She had witnessed the temporary disintegration of his cynical self-possession and that made him uncomfortable. He knew that she was a shrewd judge of human behaviour—it was what made her such a skilled butler, responsive to the needs of him and his guests to the extent that she seemed able to anticipate their every wish—and he had no desire to be judged on his vulnerabilities. Until now he had been serene in the knowledge that his was the dominant role in the master-servant relationship and now it had probably occurred to him that that balance of power wasn’t immutable, that the power of knowledge accumulated over time might make a servant of the master.

  Good! It would serve him right to wonder how much she knew or might guess. She hoped he would relive his discomfort every time he saw her for some time to come. Why shouldn’t he suffer at least a modicum of the helpless self-consciousness that she felt in his presence?

  She watched him cross the cobbled courtyard that led to the stables with a smooth, lean-hipped stride, keenly aware of a unique feeling of alienation within her own body and fiercely resenting it. Suddenly she wished that she hadn’t been too embarrassed to inspect the body she had briskly scrubbed under the shower an hour ago. Whatever had happened in his bed might have left marks, evidence that might have relieved her fears—or confirmed them—instead of leaving her in this limbo of...

  Evidence?

  Give that fearsomely logical brain physical evidence to work on and she wouldn’t stand a chance!

  She stiffened, her heart fluttering in her chest. A fresh surge of panic galvanised her into action. She darted over to the French doors and turned the key in the lock before racing out into the hallway and up the stairs, taking them three at a time, her long legs comfortably stretching the distance.

  The door to her employer’s bedroom was firmly shut but Vanessa ignored any qualms she had about invading his privacy and skidded inside.
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br />   The bed was in exactly the state that she had fervently hoped it would be—abandoned and very much unmade. Vanessa blessed the fact that Benedict Savage’s parents had raised him in a rich and rarefied environment that rendered him ignorant of the kind of basic domestic chores that ordinary mortals like Vanessa grew up performing for themselves.

  She quickly ripped the top sheet off the bed, rolling it into a loose ball before dumping it on the floor and attacking the pillows, cursing their ungainly size as she struggled to remove the custom-made pillowcases. Her heart pounded as she spotted the long strands on hair that straggled across one of them. She had never realised that she moulted so much at night...or had it been because this time her head had been thrashing to and fro on the pillow in the throes of unremembered ecstasy?

  Her mouth went dry at the insidious image of herself writhing beneath a sleekly tapered male body. Who would have thought that under the fashionably loose clothes a man in a sedentary occupation like architectural design would have a body so hard and compact? His skin had been glossy with health, rippling over lean, surprisingly well-developed muscles.

  Furious with herself for letting her thoughts run riot, Vanessa wrenched anew at the stubborn pillowcases and shook them out vigorously before turning them inside out and throwing them on top of the sheet on the floor. She stretched across the bed and had just slipped her hand under the mattress to free the far corner of the sheet when the door jarred open, and a voice rattled chills down her spine.

  ‘What in the hell do you think you’re doing?’

  She could feel one neatly manicured nail catch and tear against the mattress as she jerked upright and around, her sensible shoes skidding on the discarded linen, tangling her feet, so that with a cry of dismay she toppled helplessly backwards across the bed.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ANYONE else would have reflexively reached out and tried to prevent Vanessa’s fall, but Benedict Savage was a law unto himself. He didn’t lift a finger to save her.

  He merely folded his arms across his chest and watched her bounce and come to rest before coldly rephrasing his question.

  ‘I asked you what you were doing in my room?’

  The crisp pattern of his speech was slightly blurred by his rapid breathing. He had been running. What had occurred to her had obviously also belatedly occurred to him; he was here to attempt to sort fact from fantasy.

  If she had felt at a disadvantage earlier in his study, it was nothing to what Vanessa felt now.

  She pushed herself upright on trembling arms, drawing her knees together and tugging down the skirt over her dangling legs in a vain attempt to recover her dignity. ‘I would have thought it was obvious,’ she snapped defensively, wishing he would move out of the way so that she could stand up. ‘I’m making your bed.’

  ‘Why?’

  She bit back the smart-mouthed reply that sprang to her lips and struggled for a respectful monotone. ‘Because it’s my job.’

  ‘You make my bed?’

  For a moment he looked as uncomfortable as she felt. He had refused to allow her to perform the more personal services that a butler usually provided, ones that she had cheerfully carried out for the judge—waking him in the morning, running his bath, laying out his choice of clothing for the day. Benedict Savage had informed her squelchingly at that chilly initial interview that he didn’t require nannying, and that he would thank her not to invade his privacy unless invited. She had duly kept the required distance, but it wouldn’t hurt him to realise that caring for someone’s house was, in its own way, as intimate as caring for their person.

  ‘I often help Mrs Riley with the housekeeping,’ she said, adding pointedly, ‘As you may have noticed from the household accounts, I only employ extra housekeeping staff when you bring guests to stay. It’s not economic to have a full household complement idle for most of the year.’

  His blank look confirmed a long-held suspicion. She doubted that he ever bothered even to glance at the accounts that she scrupulously presented him with every six months. She could be robbing him blind for all he cared. Once he had decided to trust her, he had given her a totally free hand and however flattering that was to her ego it irked her that it also meant the true extent of her efficiency went largely unappreciated.

  Unfortunately he ignored the red herring, and pursued a point she had hoped would not occur to such a supremely undomesticated animal.

  ‘Have I ever given you reason to think I’m so fanatical about cleanliness that I require my sheets to be changed daily?’ he said drily. ‘This is a home, not a hotel—I’ve barely had the chance to get them warm, let alone dirty.’

  ‘You do have a reputation for being extremely fastidious,’ Vanessa muttered, guiltily thinking of the silky heat that she had been cuddled up to that morning. He had certainly been warming the sheets then. However, she could hardly contradict him.

  ‘But not to the point of being unhealthily obsessive,’ he said with controlled distaste.

  No, she couldn’t picture him being obsessive about anything. That would require a degree of passion she didn’t believe he possessed.

  ‘You haven’t been here since the beginning of February and your bed hasn’t been properly aired because we didn’t know you were coming,’ she invented hastily. ‘I thought the sheets might have been a bit musty.’

  ‘Well, they weren’t.’ He looked down at the tumble of linen at their feet, his voice acquiring a strangely husky note. ‘In fact they were quite deliciously fragrant...’

  Vanessa tensed with shock at the thread of remembered pleasure in his voice, finding his choice of words disturbingly sensual for someone whom she preferred to think of as a thoroughly cold fish.

  Thank God the perfume she had dabbed on at the beginning of last evening was so expensive that she only wore it when she was going somewhere special! She sought for a way to scatter whatever images were re-forming in that frighteningly intelligent brain.

  ‘Probably from the washing-powder Mrs Riley uses,’ she said prosaically, and rose from the bed, forcing him to step back as she summoned a brisk dismissal.

  ‘Well, since I’ve gone this far I’ll have to finish the job. I can’t put these sheets back on after they’ve been trampled on the floor. Excuse me.’

  He looked from the bed to her and for a terrible moment she thought he was going to dig his heels in. She bravely stood her ground, banking on his intensely private nature to win the brief internal battle he was evidently waging. The thought of exposing himself to her curiosity again would be anathema to him. She deliberately allowed a hint of speculation to impinge on her expression of polite patience.

  His reaction was swift and instinctive. His face shuttered and he inclined his head, saying sharply, ‘If you think it’s necessary, I suppose I must bow to your superior domestic knowledge.’

  Sarcastic beast! In the past his cynical comments hadn’t bothered her. Now every word he uttered seemed to grate on her nerves.

  ‘Thank you.’ She hesitated, waiting for him to depart. He looked at her enquiringly, raising his dark eyebrows haughtily above his spectacle frames. It had the irritating effect of making Vanessa feel as if he was looking down on her, even though the reverse was true. She had won their little tussle of wills and now she was being made to pay for it.

  Vanessa’s wide mouth pinched as she strove for the self-effacing politeness that until this morning had been second nature in her dealings with this man.

  ‘I’m sure you must have something better to do than watch me make beds.’

  ‘Not really,’ he said unobligingly. ‘When you’re on holiday there’s something very satisfying about watching other people toil.’

  ‘You’re on holiday?’ Vanessa hoped she didn’t sound as appalled as she felt. He had never spent more than a long weekend at Whitefield before. Surely he wasn’t staying any longer than Sunday? She didn’t think she could take the strain.

  An idle Benedict Savage would undoubtedly be a bored Benedict S
avage, and when bored he might look around for something to engage his intellect—like solving a puzzle that was best left unsolved.

  To hide her agitation Vanessa gave the remaining sheet a huge yank to free it and rolled it clumsily up over her arm.

  ‘More or less,’ he replied absently, watching her bend to pick up the rest of the linen. ‘You could say I’m in between jobs at the moment.’

  She was so used to hearing that euphemistic phrase trotted out by people who came to the door applying for casual work, thinking that domestic service was a sinecure for which they needed no skill, training or enthusiasm, that her soothing response was automatic, her mind occupied with more weighty matters.

  ‘I’m sure you’ll find other employment again soon.’

  ‘I’m flattered by your confidence. But if not I suppose there’s always the unemployment benefit.’ His smooth answer followed so seamlessly on hers that it was a moment before she realised her faux pas.

  ‘I’m sorry, sir, I wasn’t thinking,’ she said, mortified by her slip.

  ‘I thought it was the reverse,’ he murmured with dismaying perception, his blue eyes studying her flustered face. ‘You seemed to be very deeply immersed in uneasy thoughts. Is there anything worrying you, Flynn?’

  Another unprecedented personal question. Now was the moment to confess all and throw herself on his mercy!

  Only Vanessa didn’t think that he had any. She vividly recalled his declaration at their meeting that he never made an idle threat and she had seen him deal ruthlessly with those who proved to be dishonest or disloyal. Employee or friend, they simply ceased to exist for him. Vanessa was already in over her head in deceit and, in addition, she had broken his golden rule: thou shalt not be a woman.

  ‘No, why should you think that?’ Unfortunately her voice cracked on the last word.

  ‘There’s a slightly...fraught air about you this morning.’