by Amanda Doyle
With a tiny flutter of complete dismay, Rennie realized in a single, uninspired guess that the owner of that silky, sarcastic drawl could be none other than Mr. Chalford Sandasen himself!
CHAPTER THREE
‘Mr. Sandasen?’ she exclaimed stupidly. ‘I — thought you were out of town!’ She put a slender, manicured hand to her throat to still the tiny pulse that fluttered there.
‘That much is obvious,’ he assured her, with cold disapproval. ‘When I instructed Krantz to tell you to order anything you liked, Miss Bentmore, a baby-sitting service was a long way from my thoughts, I can assure you! What sort of a girl are you? On your very first night in a strange country, to abandon a child and go out with some—some lounge lizard you’ve bumped into on the way out! If I hadn’t heard the whole thing, I’d scarcely be able to believe it! As it was, I sent that woman off to her bed, and remained here myself. You are aware of the time, I presume? Or did all other thoughts but those so obviously shared with your companion desert your mind entirely?’
Rennie ran her tongue over her lips. She was dizzy with fatigue and reaction.
Now that Keith had departed, the exhilaration which had kept her going throughout the evening was there no more. The magic had fled, and in its place there was only agonizing embarrassment and this peculiar lightheadedness—no doubt brought on by the very real fright she had just received.
She stared at the man, lost for words. He didn’t look as though he’d be impressed by anything she had to say, anyway, she realized bleakly, as she took in the imperious mould of the lean, deeply tanned face, too angular to be conventionally handsome, with its high forehead and squared-off jaw. He had mid-brown hair that was almost as bleached in places as the sun-gold, jutting brows which cragged above heavily-lidded eyes of a singularly clear, glittering green colour.
As he stepped out from the doorway, Rennie instinctively noted the excellent cut of the pale grey, lightweight suit he wore, the fashionable double-vented jacket, the perfection of the narrow trousers, and the rightness of that particular tie which lifted the whole effect from the merely immaculate to the unquestionably elegant.
He wore his clothes with the carelessness of the outdoor man who doesn’t give a hoot for such things—and indeed, thought Rennie, with that tall, narrow-hipped, athletic frame, obviously in the peak of physical condition, and the almost panther-like grace with which he moved, he didn’t have a care, did he?
She raised her eyes, met the steady, penetrating gaze of those peculiar, almost phosphorescent green orbs.
‘It’s not like you think at all, Mr. Sandasen,’ she muttered breathlessly, cursing her voice for its momentary indecisiveness, which could almost be mistaken for lack of conviction.
He made an impatient gesture.
‘Look, Miss Bentmore’—and the deep, smooth drawl was impatient, now, too—‘if you’re thinking of trying to gammon me, I don’t advise you to try it!’
‘Gammon you?’ She looked bewildered.
‘Sorry. I forgot you don’t yet know the lingo. To gammon is to—er—issue a false statement.’ His mouth twisted without humour.
‘Why can’t you just say “lie”, then, and be done with it?’ demanded Rennie hotly, with returning spirit. ‘And I’m not trying to—to gammon you. How dare you even suggest such a thing! I—we—Keith and I—we are—old friends.’
‘Yes? How old is old? You’ve known each other long enough for him to call you his “alluring little airport pick-up”, eh? At least, I think that was what he said, and I’ll even go so far as to agree about the “alluring” bit. I was quite preoccupied with counting the number of vertebrae you have on exhibit, while you were busy on that goodnight embrace of yours,’ he told her nastily.
You—oh! You’re despicable! I knew you would be, of course, even before I left London. You spied on me there, and you’re doing it here, too, already! Why couldn’t you have announced your presence when I came in, like any decent man would, instead of lurking there like—like some—some second-rate private eye?’
He raised one eyebrow at this frontal attack. Rennie was amazed at the mobility and expressiveness of that bleached, jutting brow. It spoke volumes, and so did the angry glitter from the wide-set eyes that raked her greenly from head to toe, in a withering manner.
‘Who’s talking of decency? And what was I supposed to do? Blow a trumpet and break up the party?’ he queried sarcastically. ‘I was on my way to announce my presence, as you so delicately put it, when it was suddenly quite painfully evident that my presence was not exactly welcome. And when one finds oneself to be persona non grata, there’s only one thing to do, and that is to lie doggo for a bit.’
‘Doggo, indeed! You were eavesdropping!’
‘Not intentionally. But I’ll admit I heard everything that was said, so why bother pretending? The whole thing was cheap and sickening.’
Rennie gazed at him, in genuine distress now. There was no doubting his displeasure and disgust. The green eyes had narrowed into impenetrable slits that seemed to see both through and beyond her, his features had settled into their former mould of uncompromising sternness, and his mouth was positively forbidding.
Towering over her, with the darkness of the bedroom behind his wide, grey-clad shoulders, he appeared tough and accusing and not a little frightening.
She swallowed nervously. Suddenly, uncharacteristically, Rennie felt that she could quite easily have allowed herself the luxury of crying. That was what she was tempted to do—just cry, with tiredness and frustration and strangeness and despair—and if he were half a man, he might stop being quite so brutish, and comfort her instead. That was what almost any other man of Rennie’s acquaintance would have done just then, and gladly, but instinct told her that this man was different. He didn’t look the kind who’d suffer feminine weakness, either gladly or ungladly, and she certainly wasn’t going to risk a rebuff.
Noting the defiant toss of her head, and the burning strain in her tense, paper-white face, he spoke gruffly.
‘You’d better come through to the sitting-room. You look as if you could pass out, standing there, and a woman in a faint can be a damn nuisance.’
Rennie bit her lip vexedly, but she was glad, all the same, to follow him through the darkened bedroom to the small lounge beyond, where she sank thankfully against the cushions on the sofa.
The man hitched his trousers and took a chair near the reading lamp, where he had evidently been seated with a magazine when he had heard her key in the lock.
He flipped the magazine shut now, slapped it on the table.
‘You’d better lie right back. Twelve thousand miles is a long way, with a night on the town right on top of it. It was madness, I reckon.’ His deep voice was quiet now, just a little kinder.
Rennie blinked her stinging eyelids, and replied tremulously.
‘I know that that’s how it must look, and I can hardly expect you to believe me against the evidence of your own eyes and ears, but it’s quite true, what I told you. Keith and I are old friends. Very—dear friends. I hadn’t seen him for some time, though. We—we quarrelled, you see, over—well, it doesn’t much matter what over, but we did. And when I bumped into him at Tahiti, and he asked me to come out, I—well—’ she shrugged helplessly—‘you saw how it was.’
Even from this distance, she could feel that level green gaze dissecting her thoughtfully.
‘It wasn’t a pick-up, after all?’
‘One is hardly in a position to pick up the pilot, Mr. Sandasen, when one is an aircraft passenger oh an international flight,’ she pointed out dryly.
‘So that’s what he is, an airline pilot! He had me puzzled, I’ll admit.’
He stroked his tanned, clean-shaven chin consideringly. Rennie could see, by the small pool of light right beside him, that Chalford Sandasen had hands that were broad-backed, strong and expressive, with long, flexible square-tipped fingers. Clever hands that matched the eagle alertness behind that lazy gaze and the athletic,
deceptively loose-limbed build.
‘He means a lot to you, then, this—er—pilot?’ he asked at length, carefully.
Rennie hesitated.
What could she say? Deny it, and have him think that she had merely been philandering after all? Admit it, and expose herself to the taunts and teasing which she suspected must inevitably follow? There wasn’t much choice, after all, was there? She was in an acutely vulnerable position, and it remained to be seen whether it was in him to be merciful.
‘Yes,’ she stated briefly, huskily, ‘he does.’
There, it was done. Three people in the world now knew how much Keith Stamford meant to Rennie, and those three were Viv, Rennie herself, and this disturbing, domineering man whom she had known for barely a quarter of an hour! She hated him, now, for forcing the admission from her; hated him, for what he knew!
She glanced down at her hands, surprised to find that they were trembling. Rennie clasped her fingers tightly together so that he would not notice. She was unable to meet the man’s eyes, although she was aware that he was studying her silently.
‘That’s a pity,’ he remarked coolly—and wasn’t there just the faintest hint of casual amusement there as well?—‘because I’m afraid that that impassioned goodnight in the lobby just now must be regarded as nothing less than a valediction—for the time being, anyway!’
‘H-how do you mean?’
‘I mean that, as things are, it was nothing short of a farewell, albeit a temporary one. A good thing I didn’t interrupt it as I was tempted to do!’
‘A farewell! But why?’
‘We leave first thing in the morning,’ stated Chalford Sandasen with characteristic directness. ‘In precisely six hours from now,’ he added, with a brief glance at the watch that was strapped to one hairy brown wrist.
‘Leave? For where? Y-you mean, leave—Sydney?’
‘But of course I mean leave Sydney. You don’t suppose I intend to remain here a day longer than is necessary, do you? I mean to take Magda to her new home just as soon as possible—and you, too, perforce,’ he reminded her sternly, as if sensing her mounting consternation.
Butterflies of sheer apprehension were fluttering around in Rennie’s weary brain, muddling her thoughts. There was something here that she did not understand.
She sat up briskly, eyes opened wide.
‘Where is home?’ she managed to ask in what she hoped was an off-hand manner, just to show that she didn’t really mind.
‘Home?’ The green eyes almost disappeared into those far-seeing, contemplative slits—dreamy slits. The stern angles of the man’s face softened in the lamplight. ‘Home is Barrindilloo, Miss Bentmore.’
She glanced at him suspiciously. He almost sounded as if he were playing with her, and quite enjoying it, too, although there was no doubting the affection with which he had spoken that strange-sounding name.
‘Where is that?’ she inquired cautiously.
‘Oh, a good few hundred miles away from here. But in my plane it’s no distance at all, of course. I’ve a rather nifty twin-engined Aztec sitting out there at the ’drome that’s good at getting me places in a hurry. She’ll take three easily, so you and Magda will be no problem.’
He got to his feet, yawned.
Rennie got to her feet too. Her voice was as tight as a fiddle-string.
‘Where?’ she asked again, and this time she could not even pretend not to care.
‘Well, it’s just this side of the Black Stump itself.’
He grinned down at her lazily. When he did that, deep crinkles appeared at the corners of those long, green eyes, and a sort of dimple indented his lean brown cheek. Just one cheek, it seemed to happen to. The left one, actually, because his smile was a lop-sided sort of one, and it was that side of his mouth that curled the most, too. It altered his whole face, somehow—that smile. Quite apart from crinkling the level green eyes into laughing, teasing slits, it showed the whitest of teeth—a little bit crooked, but they all gleamed like pearl against his teak-brown, weathered cheeks—and when he raised one brow like that as well, the effect was mocking. Maddeningly mocking!
‘The Black Stump?’ Rennie’s own eyes were demanding more information with unconcealed urgency. Actually, she was rooted to the spot where she stood, because she had a sudden strange, intuitive feeling that she was not going to like the information which she was about to receive.
She had to know, though.
He shrugged.
‘Out where the crows fly backwards to keep the dust out of their eyes, and the goannas walk on their tails to stop their bellies from getting singed,’ he elucidated calmly, holding her eyes with his.
‘The—? You mean—the country?’ she squeaked in horror.
What about those lovely beaches, where Magda was to get so brown and strong? What about the lovely sunshine and sand and sea air—and—everything?
Chalford Sandasen laughed—softly, so as not to awaken the sleeping child next door.
‘If you take into account a mountain range or two, the odd river system, a spell of burnt, dry plain, a brief hop over gibber and saltbush and claypan country, a touch of spinifex, then up through the mulga for a bit—yes, I think you could call it “the country”.’ His lips twitched at her expression. ‘The Outback is what we generally call it,’ he informed her kindly, with commendable tolerance.
‘The Outback! You aren’t taking Magda out there? You—you’re gammoning me!’ she accused him fiercely.
The bleached eyebrow shot up.
‘You learn fast, Miss Bentmore! But no, I am not gammoning you. That is indeed where I am taking Magda. And you, too. For three months, isn’t it?’ he reminded her carelessly.
‘Over my dead body,’ announced Rennie firmly. ‘We’ve been misled. You’ve deceived us!’ She glared at him. ‘I really wonder that your wife permitted it. You’d think that she, at least, would have realized what it might mean to pack up our things and come all the way across the world like this on a w-wild goose chase!’
Calm green eyes locked with angry brown.
‘There’s no question of a wild goose chase, Miss Bentmore. And what’s more, I don’t have a wife.’
‘No—no wife? To Rennie this was the ultimate, the final, crime. ‘No wife? But—but who’ll look after Magda? Who’ll bring her up? Who’ll comfort her, and keep her, and bandage her up when she skins her knees—she’s always having accidents—she’s accident-prone, you see—and she gets nosebleeds, too. And who’ll hear her prayers, and kiss her goodnight, and help her with her homework, and—oh, a thousand things a little girl needs and wants? Who’ll do them, out in those w-waterless wastes, with not even a w-wife? Who’ll do them, out where the crows fly backwards and the goannas—goannas—!’ Rennie’s voice rose to a shriek.
‘What devotion! Especially from you, Miss Bentmore. You, who were more than willing to abandon her in a strange city on her very first night. You, who put her into children’s homes without a single qualm, while you go gallivanting off to the sun yourself on that frivolous career of yours.’
‘Who’ll do them?’
‘Hush!’ said the man sternly. ‘I will.
‘You will?’
‘I will.’
Rennie took a deep breath, and squared her shoulders.
‘I’m not going to allow Magda to go out there, Mr. Sandasen,’ she told him stoutly. ‘I am going to keep Magda with me, and we’ll go on as we have before. I’ll get work, and I can support us like I always have. Eventually I’ll get us back to England, back where we came from, to civilization. It might not be too easy, and I know it’s not ideal, my way of life, but at least it’s better than abandoning her to—to that!’
Chalford Sandasen shook his head. His expression was such that it struck chill to Rennie’s very heart. His tough, lean face had congealed into an uncompromising granite mask, his mouth had levelled to a thin, straight line, and his eyes had paled to a cool, unfriendly grey.
‘You, Miss Bentmore,’ h
e corrected her relentlessly, ‘will do no such thing. Kindly remember that you are in Australia now, a visitor—without citizenship, without rights. You have little means of support, and can claim only a distant relationship with the child, who is my own late brother’s daughter, and therefore legally my own niece. I can knock any claim you make into a cocked hat, and you know it—dismantle any argument you choose to employ, and you know that, too. What’s more, I shan’t hesitate to do it, at court-appeal level, if necessary. Therefore Magda will come with me to Barrindilloo tomorrow, and so will you. And Magda will remain.’
Rennie s colour was high, her breath coming fast. How she’d have liked the satisfaction of hitting him, of slapping that hard, tanned, supercilious cheek!
She raised a hand, dropped it impotently, uselessly. And then, in sheer outrage and frustration, she did the very thing which she had determined not to do, the thing she had been trying not to do—something, indeed, that she had seldom done in her whole life. She burst into tears.
Stricken with shame, she put her hands over her face and bowed her head, so that the man would not see. She wept then, quietly, with tiny, almost noiseless sobs.
To her horror, she found that, now she had begun, she could not stop. Rennie wasn’t quite sure exactly what she was crying for. An accumulation of things, maybe. For the loss of her father’s quiet affection and his last unhappy years with Enid. For Magda with her poor little scarred, scared face, and her poor little battered one-eyed panda. For herself. For Keith. For the very hopelessness of the whole situation. Because she knew now that she had made a dreadful mistake in coming out here at all, that she wasn’t going to let Magda go. She couldn’t, could she? Not to a life like that? And that, in its turn, meant that Keith—that Keith—just when she had met him again—had thought herself free—
Hot tears forced their way through her fingers and ran in channels down her cheeks, and then Rennie felt herself being drawn against a broad, grey-suited chest. One of the man’s hands moved quite expertly over her slim brown shoulder-blades and down her back, and the other drew her head firmly against the place where Chalford Sandasen’s clean white shirt-front met the neat low-cut lapels of his elegant, single-breasted pale grey jacket.