by Susan Napier
‘You giggle?’ Benedict raised a disbelieving eyebrow at her, as well he might. Her face was perfectly stony, rigid with the fear that Richard was going to mention just how early he had got her home...
‘I think I’m getting that headache you mentioned now, Richard,’ she said firmly.
He laughed and accepted the heavy-handed hint. ‘And I must get on to the vet’s.’
‘Are you sure you won’t come in? We could have a chat while “Van” finds her aspirin.’
Vanessa gritted her teeth, but fortunately Richard was proof against further charm. ‘Some other time. Will you be staying long?’
‘I’m not sure. It depends,’ Benedict responded with typical reserve, and then took Vanessa’s breath away by saying casually, ‘I’m considering sectioning off part of the upstairs as a private apartment and putting a manager in to handle the hotel side of things. The finishing work isn’t so far advanced that it couldn’t accommodate a few more structural alterations without involving too much extra time and money. So I may soon be here more or less permanently, Wells. At my age a man starts to think about settling down...’
When Richard had gone Vanessa asked him sharply, ‘What did you say that for?’
‘Because I decided that your idea has definite possibilities after all.’ And then he neatly curtailed her desire for further discussion on the subject by drawling sarcastically, ‘I can quite see the appeal you two might have for each other. You make a magnificently matched pair, negative and positive, fair and dark—an earthy god and a giggling goddess. If you breed true, your children will be a race of thoroughbred Titans! Shall we get on and do the service areas now?’
He turned on his heel and stalked into the house, leaving Vanessa open-mouthed and furious at his insulting audacity.
CHAPTER FIVE
A WEEK later Vanessa was feeling as if she had been flattened by a runaway truck.
She only had herself to blame. She had known her employer would not be able to bear being bored for much longer than a few hours. He might have decided he needed a holiday, but he didn’t really want one.
What he really wanted, she’d realised after days of watching him restlessly poke and pry and question everything she had done or planned to do, was change. He was rebelling against the subtle regimentation of his well-ordered professional life and her impulsive suggestion had provided him with the perfect challenge, an opportunity to be whimsical, since she couldn’t believe he really intended to give up his peripatetic lifestyle to languish in the backwater of a small-town inn.
Unfortunately, his method of indulging a personal whimsy had proved to be every bit as serious, meticulously planned and competitive as everything else he did. First, he’d decided that he needed to know every detail of Whitefield’s history and reconstruction; he had even called Robert Taylor down for a special consultation, and had gone over all Vanessa’s old reports with a fine-tooth comb. Then he had started to prowl.
With the Duesenberg only a fond memory—how Vanessa wished that Dane Judson had leased it for a week instead of merely a weekend—there was nothing to lure Benedict away from the house, and everywhere she’d turned he’d seemed to be relentlessly underfoot. After having had virtual free run of Whitefield for most of the last three years it had been extremely disconcerting to have to confer and defer to a higher power and Vanessa had disliked it even more than she had expected that she would.
She couldn’t even get on with her routine daily duties in peace because she was constantly being interrupted with requests for information or assistance. It had been a strain trying to maintain the proper barrier of correctness between them when his own reserve had slipped a little further each day, but somehow she’d managed it, even though it meant her patience was worn to a frazzle. For all his apparent willingness to treat her as an equal, she knew from bitter experience that it didn’t do to trust the motives of rich young employers, no matter how benevolent they might seem. Better to be safe in discretion than risk the sorry consequences of being caught out of your place.
Kate Riley, who didn’t live in and had only relatively brief face-to-face encounters with their employer, had had a much rosier view of the proceedings.
‘He’s turning out a bit of a surprise, isn’t he—not so stuffy as we all thought?’ she said approvingly as she buttered scones for his afternoon tea three days after his arrival. He had told her he would prefer plain, hearty country cooking to the more sophisticated menu of New Zealand delicacies he invariably asked Vanessa to draw up for his visitors—another valuable point in his favour. Country born and bred, Kate didn’t consider a man a real man unless he ate plenty of meat and potatoes. And butter, she declared, was what had made the country great!
‘You know, I think his real trouble was he never learned to enjoy himself,’ she continued, adding lashings of her own blackberry jam. ‘What good has having all that money done him, I ask you? Rush, rush, rush...no wonder he never had much to say for himself; the poor man’s brain must have been in a constant whirl. This is the first time he’s come without his secretary at his heels and look at the good it’s done him already! He’s as happy as a sandboy, pottering about the place. A real chip off the old block.’
Vanessa, who didn’t know what a sandboy was but knew that Benedict’s fax-modem had been running hot late into the night, every night, thought that was going too far.
‘He was only very vaguely related to Judge Seaton, you know. I don’t see any similarities between them at all,’ she murmured.
‘We’ll see,’ was all Kate replied, investing the time-honoured phrase with its customary smugness.
He certainly shared at least one of the old judge’s less endearing traits, Vanessa had to admit later that day, when she found herself barring the way to the small room which led off the butler’s pantry.
Stubbornness.
‘I would prefer that you didn’t,’ she said, using the advantage of her height to block him looking over her shoulder, past the door he had managed to whisk open.
‘Why? What have you got to hide?’ He had wandered into the kitchen for a cold drink and then lingered to inspect the bells which had just been rehung in the pantry, though not reconnected yet. Vanessa had been polishing a canteen of silver, trying so hard to ignore his disruptive presence that she hadn’t been quite quick enough when he had spied the discreet panelled door set back into the far pantry wall, overlooked in his previous glance at the pantry and adjoining larder and scullery.
‘Nothing,’ she said, hanging desperately on to the door-handle and trying to pull it closed behind her. Unfortunately he had moved too close for her to do so without brushing against his body. ‘Because there’s nothing much to see. All it needs is a floor-sand and a paint job—’
‘Then you won’t mind me having a look.’
‘You never wanted to look before.’ She dropped her shoulder as he attempted to duck underneath it.
He straightened and gave her a quizzical smile. In a white shirt and casual, double-breasted navy blazer, one hand thrust into his trouser pocket, he looked lazily relaxed, but there was a distinct threat in his closeness and the steadiness of his gaze. Her awareness of the sinewy strength that lay under his clothes made her doubly nervous.
‘I’ve never been interested before,’ he said simply. ‘You complained that I wasn’t taking a personal enough interest in the inn. Now that I am you seem to resent it. Did you think you could set parameters to my interest? Defend your own hallowed piece of turf when you have free run of mine? Are you refusing to let me see your room, Flynn?’
Vanessa swallowed at the silken enquiry. She had acted purely on instinct and now she was being made to feel thoroughly foolish.
‘And what if I did?’ she asked, more out of nervousness than defiance.
‘I’d respect your right to privacy.’
He lifted a hand at the same moment as he spoke and she flinched at the sudden movement, then flushed when she saw that he was merely removing his glas
ses.
She had never seen him without them before and she was amazed at the difference it made to his appearance. Like his laughter, his unprotected eyes made his face look immediately softer, less austere. Younger, too, and curiously unguarded, his pupils expanding hugely to draw more light into his myopic gaze, leaving only a thin outer rim of clear blue iris, of such intensity of colour that it was almost luminous. It was also mildly hypnotic and Vanessa leaned forward in fascination.
‘Unless, of course, you changed your mind and moved aside,’ he murmured softly, and suddenly his hands clamped mercilessly around her waist and he spun gracefully around with her as if she weighed no more than a feather, setting her back down on the freshly polished pantry floorboards. While she was still wondering exactly what had happened, he coolly replaced his glasses and he strolled unimpeded into her room.
‘My God, I can see you wouldn’t be able to do much entertaining in here,’ he said abruptly, openly appalled at the sight of the single box-bed, dressing-table piled with books and the huge, tasteless Victorian free-standing wardrobe that took up most of the floor space in the cramped room. The single small window looked straight out on to the garden wall. ‘Two people in here would be a crowd!’
Vanessa was still trying to get control of her breathing. He hadn’t even broken a sweat picking her up!
‘It’s adequate for my needs,’ she said unevenly, hovering back at the door.
‘Adequate!’ he exploded, turning to look at her to see if she was being sarcastic. She wasn’t, which seemed to annoy him further. ‘What are you, a masochist? Don’t tell me it was the judge’s idea for you to live in this...monk’s cell. By all accounts he allowed you as much licence as you cared to take—as do I for that matter. You know damned well you could have set yourself up in practically any room in the house!’
She shrugged. ‘It’s convenient, and since I don’t spend much time in there anyway—’
‘Oh, I see. So now I should feel guilty because you work such long hours that you don’t have any time left over to spend in your own quarters—’
She was impatient now. ‘That’s not what I meant. I have plenty of spare time, I just don’t choose to spend it shut up in my bedroom. You said you didn’t want the house closed up like a tomb when you weren’t here, that the most efficient way to air a room was to make use of it, so that’s what I do. When I read or sew or knit I try to use a different room each time—’ She broke off as she realised she was stepping on very thin ice. Any moment she was going to tell him about her methods of similarly airing the beds in sixteen bedrooms, including his...
‘What very domesticated hobbies you have, Flynn,’ he drawled and she frowned, wondering whether he was insulting her or merely making an innocent comment. There was a small gleam in his eye that made her wish he hadn’t put his glasses back on. They were too effective a screen for his emotions.
‘Given your insistence of job equality between the sexes I would have thought your interests would have a more feminist bias. At least now I know why I almost spiked myself on a knitting-needle on the drawing-room sofa the morning after I arrived. And I ran across several copies of Vogue and Metro tucked among the Architectural Digests in the library.’
‘I was only obeying your instructions about the house,’ she said stiffly. ‘I always tidy my things away before you come—’
‘And thereby leaving the rooms looking as sterile and unlived-in as a Digest photographic layout,’ he murmured.
‘I thought that was what you wanted, Mr Savage—’
‘You mean you assumed it was.’
‘You never bothered to correct my assumptions,’ Vanessa pointed out coldly.
‘Probably because I didn’t realise myself how wrong they were,’ he said, half under his breath. Before she could think how to respond to that cryptic remark he had turned back to view the room critically. ‘We definitely have to do something about this room.’
‘I told you, it’s perfectly adequate—’ Vanessa began, thinking that he was introducing radical changes in her life at an ever-increasing rate. Why couldn’t he let her get used to one change before initiating the next? Or let her have it all at once, so that at least it would be over and done with.
‘Adequate in Victorian times perhaps, but hardly these days. Not everyone has your evident taste for spartanism, Flynn. Don’t you find it claustrophobic trying to sleep in here?’
It was unfortunate that at that very moment Kate Riley had come into the pantry to collect a casserole dish and she paused behind Vanessa just long enough to chuckle, and say, ‘I tell her that myself, Mr Savage, her being such a big girl and all, but Van says she’s a very compact sleeper. Mind you, she doesn’t sleep in her own bed too often these days—if she had to cram herself into that little bed every single night of the year I’m sure it’d be a different story!’
She bustled away, still chuckling, and for the second time in a few days Vanessa was privileged to see her employer shocked speechless.
For a moment she thought the jig was up and she flushed miserably as his eyes swept incredulously over her from the tip of her practical shoes to the paranoically tamed hair on the top of her head, no doubt mentally stripping and vainly trying to superimpose her over the explicit image inside his head. Then she was the one speechless as he said icily, ‘And I thought you lived a cloistered, unexciting life here, far from the madding crowd. Another example of the dangers of assumption. That prim-and-proper air of yours is obviously misleading. You must have quite a reputation if even Mrs Riley accepts your sexual antics—or should I say athletics?—as merely routine.’ His expression was very much the ascetic as he continued harshly, ‘However, I’m not inclined to be so generous. When I said you were welcome to have friends come here I wasn’t issuing you a licence for promiscuity—’
‘I am not promiscuous—’ began Vanessa, with tight-lipped precision. There was something richly ironic in being thought promiscuous because of her fervent attempts not to appear promiscuous. And she was innocent on both counts!
‘Good. So it’s only Wells’ bed that you forsake your own for, is it?’ he interrupted, adding dangerously, ‘At least, I hope you go to his place for your little romps, because, when you’re here under my roof, as far as I’m concerned you’re on duty and I’m not paying my caretaker to have sex—’
‘Richard and I do not “have sex,”’ she hissed furiously, side-tracked by the outrageous crudity of his insult.
‘Sorry, make love,’ he corrected himself sarcastically.
‘How dare you—?’
‘Prim and proper won’t wash any more, Flynn. I dare because I pay the bills here and therefore I get to set the rules of conduct. While you live under my roof I’m responsible for your health and well-being, and I’ve always taken my responsibilities seriously.’ He gave her another narrow-eyed look.
‘No wonder you’re so tense and jittery lately. My being here is obviously hampering your freedom—you’re not getting your usual quota of...lovemaking.’ He stressed the words with mocking deliberation. ‘Well, just be patient. I’m off up to Auckland at the end of this week, to an Institute of Architects awards presentation. I’ll stay in the apartment overnight so you’ll be able to entertain your lover at leisure. Just remember the rules. I don’t care what you do under his roof, but under mine you’re as celibate as a nun!’
Vanessa had longed to throw his hypocrisy in his face but the impulse died as swiftly as it was born. Why give him even more powerful ammunition for his pot-shots? Trust him to confuse friendship and genuine human warmth with crude physical desire, she simmered as she watched him leave, wishing she had the courage to heave the canteen of cutlery at the back of his supercilious head. It would give new meaning to the term knifed in the back. She would enjoy seeing him forked and spooned as well!
It obviously hadn’t even occurred to him that she might be in love with Richard, might be a misty-eyed romantic whose dreams he had just callously trampled into the mire. No,
he thought only in clinical terms of lust and appeasing an appetite. No wonder he had never married. He probably wouldn’t recognise love if it hit him in the face.
And, to show that his opinions about her personal life were totally irrelevant, she was ruthlessly good-mannered to him for the rest of the week, which sadly had the opposite effect to that which she had intended. Instead of losing interest under the avalanche of politeness he seemed to delight in testing the limits of her patience, tossing personal comments into seemingly innocent conversations like miniature grenades that threatened to blow apart her armoured reserve.
By Friday Vanessa was clinging on to her composure by the skin of her teeth and it was with unutterable relief and a sneaking sense of victory that she watched him depart for Auckland. For the most part she had successfully held out against his flagrant manipulations. But her resistance had taken its toll. In a week he had cranked up her stress level higher than it had been for years and she welcomed the chance for a respite, however brief, in order to rebuild her shaky defences. Perhaps by the time he came back he would have forgotten his game, or be bored by it, and things could return to a semblance of normality.
When Richard rang soon after the BMW had cruised out of the gates and asked her if she wanted to have dinner with him that evening, Vanessa accepted with alacrity.
A nice, soothing night in Richard’s undemanding company was just the antidote she needed to a severe overdose of Savage teasing. Since they had decided to eat at a fashionably late hour Vanessa took her time getting ready, pampering herself as she hadn’t done in a long time, even painting her nails.
As she got dressed in her newest gown—a black crêpe de Chine streaming out to mid-calf from the fitted, halter-necked bodice—she determined to devote herself to showing Richard that she was now ready to progress from friendly hugs and kisses to something more meaningful.