by Susan Napier
Elizabeth's head jerked up and she looked squarely at him for the first time. The silver-grey eyes seemed to penetrate her protective dark mask for a fraction of a second before they lowered mockingly to her breasts. Her hands rose automatically to shield herself but before she could place them across her chest her tormentor had shaken out the neat folds of his handkerchief and draped it gracefully across the provocative indigo pattern traced by the transparent fabric. She clutched it to her soaked body as he murmured, 'Have you something else to change into? I'm sure the air hostess will find some way to dry your blouse for you by the time we reach Nouméa.'
'I—no,' said Elizabeth grudgingly, thinking of her buttonless jacket.
At that moment the hostess returned with a small towel and Elizabeth held it gratefully against her rapidly cooling chest, blotting up the worst of the moisture while extricating the now sodden handkerchief. Should she offer to have it dry-cleaned?
The decision was taken out of her hands when the air hostess spoke across the top of her head in French, graciously offering to have the handkerchief dry-cleaned with Elizabeth's blouse, calling the man 'Monsieur Hawkwood' with a familiarity that implied he was a frequent flyer with Air Caledonie. The man responded with a lazily flirtatious remark and in the course of their exchange reiterated his suggestion that Elizabeth change out of her wet blouse.
Elizabeth opened her mouth to tell him that she was perfectly capable of making her own request when he cut her off with a condescending smile and a rough translation, minus the flirtatious bits, of the conversation. He obviously assumed that Elizabeth was a naïve scatter-brain who couldn’t possibly have mastered another language, and she closed her mouth again when she realised that his erroneous assumption could be to her advantage. If he didn’t know that she spoke his language fluently he might inadvertently betray something useful in her hearing.
At the hostess's urging Elizabeth slipped into the compact toilet to remove her blouse and rinse both it and her slightly sticky breasts. She took off the necklace and very carefully washed it, marvelling anew at the fine workmanship that had gone into the ornately wrought settings and triangular gold links of the supporting chain. The diamonds and blood-red rubies glittered brilliantly in her hands but Elizabeth felt only unease at the recognition of their beauty. Why, the stones alone were probably worth tens of thousands of dollars!
Her bra was also damp but she had no intention of removing that, too. For one thing her full breasts always felt uncomfortable without firm support. For another, J.J. Hawkwood made her feel self-conscious enough without the added awkwardness of feeling physically vulnerable.
Therefore she was appalled when the air hostess passed her the promised replacement shirt through a crack in the door—not one from a spare crew uniform as Elizabeth had expected but 'kindly lent by Monsieur Hawkwood, who always carries a full change of clothes'. Elizabeth longed to reject the offer but had already handed over her blouse. The shirt wasn’t of an inexpensive polyester variety either—it was pure silk, white, softly draping from narrow gathers on the yoked shoulders. The label proclaimed it custom-made. The sleeves hung well down over her hands but Elizabeth had to roll them up anyway because the cuffs only had slits for cuff-links, no buttons.
Elizabeth smoothed her dark brown hair unnecessarily, putting off the moment when she would have to step out of the door. Her lipstick had worn off and the lower part of her face under her thick fringe and concealing sunglasses looked far too pale. She took the sunglasses off. That was even worse. Her eyes looked huge and bruised in her pale face, a little wild and definitely fearful. A dead give-away in fact. She bit her lips to try and give them a bit of colour but they only seemed to emphasise what she had always felt was a too-small mouth. Everything about her looked somehow out of kilter, which was exactly how she felt.
She buttoned the shirt right up to the small stand-up collar but still it looked far too... sexy. The shirt was too big, of course, but instead of concealing her curves the thin shroud of silk seemed to settle lovingly against them every time she moved. Even in these days of unisex dressing there was something risqué— about wearing a man's shirt, Elizabeth thought glumly. Something challenging, and the last thing she wanted was for J.J. Hawkwood to think she was challenging him in any way whatsoever.
Elizabeth sighed. If only Marge hadn’t fallen ill she wouldn’t be in this mess.
When Uncle Simon had unexpectedly turned up to run her out to the airport earlier that morning she hadn’t at first suspected an ulterior motive. She had merely thought that he wanted to save his two elder brothers the rush-hour trip across town. At seventy-two and seventy-five respectively Miles and Seymour Lamb generally preferred someone else to drive them around in their lovingly cared for vintage Citroen—usually Elizabeth herself.
Uncle Simon had allowed her to say her farewells to the two old men in blissful ignorance, waiting until they were on their way to the airport to drop his bombshell.
'Marge can’t go with you.'
'What?' Elizabeth turned her shocked face towards his profile and he gave her the reassuring 'everything'll be all right, Jake' grin that usually meant the opposite.
'If you've suddenly found some urgent work for her I hope she quits and comes anyway,' Elizabeth said furiously. 'She hasn’t had a holiday for sixteen months—' Marge Benson was Simon's secretary-receptionist and general dogsbody, and Elizabeth often felt that her uncle didn’t truly appreciate the extent of her friend's dedication and loyalty.
'No—nothing like that,' her uncle told her hurriedly. 'She woke up this morning with some horrendous variety of flu. She got her doctor to make a house-call and he refused to give her clearance to fly for at least a week. She knew that you'd be upset so instead of ringing she asked me to tell you...'
'But why didn’t you let me know earlier?' Elizabeth cried in dismay. 'If we try and cancel now I'll probably have to forfeit most of my fare!' That was no small sum. The resort at which they were booked was highly exclusive and air fare, accommodation, meals and entertainment were all included in the cost.
Her next unpalatable thought was that she couldn’t cancel, anyway. Too much depended on her going to New Caledonia as soon as possible.
'You can’t cancel!' her uncle unknowingly echoed her thoughts. 'I mean, you don’t have to,' he corrected himself hastily. 'Marge insists that you go; she'll feel awfully guilty if you don’t. Just because she's sick is no reason that you should have to lose out. You've been looking forward to a holiday for ages and you had to juggle a whole load of schedules to get this leave. You originally intended going by yourself, anyway. And the weather here is awful at the moment—you wouldn’t have much of a holiday at home. What with having just got over the flu yourself you need to get completely away for a good rest. What better place than a sub-tropical island in the South Pacific?'
Elizabeth was touched by his fervent concern until he added sheepishly, 'And...well, I need you to go.’
In spite of her questions he refused to be any more forthcoming until they got to the airport, his craggy face taking on the familiar look of pugnacious determination that served him so well in his profession. After racketing around the world in a variety of jobs in his youth and then doing a five-year stint in the army, in middle age Uncle Simon had surprised his family by settling down to run a detective agency in Auckland.
At the terminal, Elizabeth balked at checking in, steering her uncle instead to the coffee shop and insisting he explain himself, which he did, at exhaustive length.
Marge, it seemed, had jumped at the offer to accompany Elizabeth to the Isle of Hawks in New Caledonia not just because she wanted a holiday, but because it was timely cover for the budding detective to carry out a small 'job' for her boss. She was supposed to bring back photographic evidence of an errant wife's affair with her married boss—who happened to be none other than Jean-Jules Hawkwood, head of the corporation which owned the international chain of exclusive Hawk Hote
ls.
Elizabeth was appalled. 'What do you mean, photographic evidence?' She had visions of Marge hiding in closets and jumping out on the lovers.
'Just shots of them together that might show they're more than just colleagues,' her uncle said soothingly. 'My client has suspected his wife of being unfaithful for a while but he doesn’t want to confront her until he's sure that he's right. He's not looking for divorce evidence; in fact he hopes he can save his marriage by confronting her with the truth. His wife is pretty high up in local management for Hawk Hotels, so trips to the flagship resort at Ile de Faucons for seminars and meetings are not unusual. But my client accidentally discovered that, contrary to what she told him, there isn’t any seminar this time—that the ten days she's spending up there is being salaried as "holiday pay" and that Hawkwood is going with her. She hadn’t mentioned that little titbit either...'
'What about Hawkwood's wife? Where is she?'
'In France. She lives on her family's estate there most of the year, along with their three school-age children, while Hawkwood spends most of his time living out of Hawk Hotels all over the world. Actually the corporation is registered in New Caledonia—Nouméa is his official residence as far as tax records are concerned—but he only spends sufficient time there to qualify for citizenship. It's all in the file.'
Elizabeth looked at the buff-coloured envelope her uncle slid across the table towards her. 'What are you giving it to me for?'
Her uncle smiled hopefully.
'No, oh, no!' She realised his intention and pushed the envelope back towards him, shaking her head vigorously. 'No, you can’t ask me to do this, Uncle Simon—'
He pushed it back. 'Why not? You've done little tasks for me before...'
'Yes, easy ones—research jobs, gathering information from files—organisational things that I know I'm good at—'
'But wouldn’t you like to try your hand at some real detection? You love spy novels and TV detective shows. Now's your chance to try it for yourself. Who knows? You might find yourself with a new career!'
'I'm well aware of the difference between fantasy and reality, Uncle Simon,' Elizabeth said firmly. 'I may enjoy reading about murder and mayhem but that doesn’t mean I want to strap on a gun and risk life and limb to battle real-life baddies. I like my thrills to be strictly vicarious!'
At twenty-five, Elizabeth thought of herself as more mature than most women her age, less physically adventurous and more... settled. While she had indeed sometimes envied Marge the unpredictability of her job, the minor upheavals of excitement and intrigue that spiced her life, on the whole Elizabeth was quite satisfied with her own comparatively mundane lot.
She had been brought up in a very old-fashioned and yet also very unusual fashion by two middle-aged uncles whose consuming interests in life were intellectual. Seymour and Miles Lamb loved books with a passion, and had instinctively passed that love on to the child unexpectedly placed in their charge after her parents' death when she was four. Thus from a young age Elizabeth had been taught to revere learning. She had found that for every question there was an answer to be found in the pages of the books which were crammed, floor to ceiling, in her uncles' second-hand bookshop— rare first editions cheek by jowl with dog-eared paperbacks and musty tomes by some long-forgotten author whose only claim to interest lay in the lavish leather bindings of his turgid prose. She hadn’t felt the restless need to travel as had many of her generation in their late teens, because she had already travelled the world in her mind without leaving the comfort and security of the cluttered shop or the roomy old book-crammed apartment upstairs where the three of them lived.
Besides, Seymour and Miles had needed her. They were capable, intelligent men, but they were slaves to their passion. In good times it had been enough for them to run Lamb's Tales more as a hobby than as a proper business, but when the recession had hit it had taken Elizabeth's practical common sense to sort out that their problems were largely caused by the two men acquiring rare books that they were then loath to part with, jealously guarding them against potential customers. Elizabeth had even known Seymour to patrol the shelves and snatch a book out of browser's hand if he considered that the person wasn’t truly appreciative of what he held. Only certain hand-picked customers were worthy of being offered the best, and profits had suffered accordingly.
As her uncles grew older and even more eccentric in their habits, Elizabeth had gradually taken on more and more of the workload, sandwiching it between her flexible hours at the university, until she was virtually managing the store and doing all the bothersome paperwork that her uncles had too frequently neglected and leaving them free to go on the buying expeditions that they so richly enjoyed. Elizabeth was enormously proud of the reputation that Lamb's Tales was building in the rare and second-hand book trade. When she finally inherited the bookstore she intended to make it her full-time career.
'Oh, come on, girl, it's not as if I'm asking you to do anything dangerous or illegal; the only thing you'll be armed with is a perfectly harmless camera,' Uncle Simon coaxed, producing a fearsomely professional-looking camera-case and placing it on top of the envelope between them.
'It's not complicated—all you have to do is point it and click; the camera does the rest. Truly, Beth, you'd be doing me a tremendous favour, and Marge of course-she feels awfully guilty about letting me down...
'I've met Hawkwood personally otherwise I'd have done the job in the first place, but I can’t risk him recognising me and there's no one else I can send on such short notice even if I could switch the bookings. Naturally I'll reimburse you for your fare and expenses. All I want is a few casual shots of the two of them on holiday!'
'Compromising shots,' Elizabeth clarified tartly, sorely tempted by the thought that she might be able to afford a totally stress-and-obligation-free holiday later in the year if she accepted his offer. At the rate this trip was deteriorating she might need one as soon as she returned!
'Not necessarily. I'm paid to find out the truth, not manufacture evidence. I can’t believe that you'd think—
I would ask you to do that,' her uncle replied with an air of offended dignity that didn’t fool her for a moment. If Uncle Simon thought he could shame her into helping him he would play the injured innocent to the hilt.
On the other hand she had already agreed to help Uncle Miles out of a far more unpleasant situation. How could she justify turning her back on Uncle Simon in his hour of need? He hadn’t had as much of a hand in her raising as his brothers but on his travels he had sent her letters and postcards and exotic presents from every far-flung corner of the globe.
She sighed. 'I'm not trained to be sneaky like you and Marge—'
'I know; all I'm asking you to do is keep an eye on their activities. If they're intimate it's bound to affect the way they behave in public. They probably won’t feel the need to be too careful on Hawkwood's home territory—his father was English but his mother is French New Caledonian and it's her family who put up the money for Hawk Hotels—that's why the first and reputedly still the best resort was built there... they even changed the name of the island to celebrate its original opening.' Uncle Simon's voice lowered as he attacked her rapidly weakening resistance head-on.
'Jean-Jules Hawkwood is rich and powerful and can and does probably have anything—and any woman—he wants, whereas my client's wife is his whole world. From what I can discover from a couple of Hawkwood's other ex-lovers he'll never divorce his wife—their families have too much jointly invested in Hawk Hotels to brook a rift... not to mention the fact that she's a staunchly conservative Catholic. If anyone is going to suffer from this liaison it certainly isn’t going to be the Hawkwoods...' Simon paused hopefully. Anyone who knew Elizabeth knew that her compassionate heart could always be relied on to support the underdog, even if it sometimes went against her better judgement.
'Oh, Simon...' The exasperated dropping of the respectful 'Uncle' signalled he
r annoyance as well as her capitulation.
Elizabeth's uncle wisely hid his grin of relief as he tucked the envelope into her reluctant hand and wound the camera strap through the loop of her shoulder-bag.
'Thanks, honey, I knew you wouldn’t let me down. Now, hadn’t you better check in before the plane takes off?'
He hustled her off towards the desk at a speed that suggested he was afraid she might change her mind, but before they got there he stiffened and stopped in his tracks, dragging her around in front of him.
'What's the matter?'
'Hawkwood. He's over there. Behind you. At the first-class check-in for Air Caledonie.' By slumping his shoulders her brawny Uncle Simon suddenly metamorphosed himself into the shuffling stance of an elderly man rather than the fifty-five-year-old he was. Elizabeth couldn’t help admiring the chameleon-like disguise as she automatically began to turn.
'No, don’t look now!' Her uncle grabbed her shoulder to stop her. 'He mustn’t see us together. Just stand in front of me as if you're saying goodbye...'
'I need to know what he looks like if I'm going to be spying on him,' Elizabeth pointed out drily, and the old man before her frowned.
'There's a photo of him in the file. Whatever you do be discreet, be casual. I'm going to walk away in a minute; you can take a look at him then. You won’t be able to miss him. He's the arrogant one in the brown coat with the long black hair and the earring.'
'Earring?' Elizabeth was startled.
'It's apparently a Hawkwood male tradition,' her uncle shrugged dismissively. 'Something to do with some Renaissance ancestor and an old superstition about the Hawkwood luck. They seem to have a lot of it and they guard it fairly jealously.'
Elizabeth was dying to look around by now. 'What about her—your client's wife? Is she with him?'
'Serena. Serena Corvell. She flew up this morning, I guess so her husband wouldn’t see Hawkwood and start to ask questions.' He proceeded to tell her a few other things that he thought she ought to know and gave her some last-minute instructions and reassurances.