by Ann Charlton
The view from the rather eccentric casement window was mixed and magnificent. Other roofs and treetops, Luna Park’s gaudy fun-hall peaks and beyond the moored boats of Lavender Bay, the Opera House across the harbour looking about to set sail from Bennelong Point. It was all here-the single great arch of the Bridge so in harmony with the meandering port shores, the pale towers of the city. As Teressa watched, the ferry churned in on a white bow wave to the bay’s pier. When Ashe bought a view, he bought the best.
‘It’s not a real tower,’ she said, thinking of the Italianate grace of her tower at Cliffe House.
‘No. But you’re not a real captive, are you?’ he pointed out drily.
Ashe went to shower and Teressa waited for him in the livingroom. Roaming around its cluttered, interesting confines, she was conscious of a new uneasiness.
This house had things to say about its owner—nice things. The clock chimed seven while she waited.
He came back in a chest-hugging ,T-shirt and cream canvas jeans. Teressa wondered just what she had expected. Perhaps in her imagination she had not gone quite so far as a brocade dressing-gown and a knowing leer. But certainly events so far seemed a long way from the scene of seduction in this comfortable house with the homey smell of a casserole wafting in from the kitchen. Ashe poured two drinks, handed her one and took her arm.
‘We’ll sit on the terrace while the dinner heats.’
They sat down and looked in silence at the tangle of trees shot through here and there by a tall palm. Keyholes in the green showed shining patches of water aglow with late orange sunligt.A silver gull carked as it circled overhead, and within minutes it was joined by others in a lazy aerial display that appeared to have no purpose. .
‘You said Cecily was married,’ Ashe said at last. ‘Tell me about her husband.’
Teressa took some pleasure in acquainting him with Mike’s eligibility, good looks and success in the family business.
‘Hmmm.’ Ashe chewed it over. ‘Sounds like a decent fellow. Let’s hope he can … How long has he known your sister?’
It was none of his business. Nor were any of the other questions he asked, but Teressa told him anyway. She might as well talk about this as anything.
‘She married rather late,’ he observed. ‘How old is Cecily now—twenty-six?’
‘It’s no thanks to you that she left it so long. When we first went to Perth after Dad died, I was worried sick about her. She had so many—’ She bit off the words.
‘Boyfriends?’ he supplied in a dry tone.
‘After the way you treated her I daresay she couldn’t trust another man in a serious relationship. When she met Mike—well, I was relieved that she’d finally found someone who could make her forget all that—’
‘And who was looking after you while you were worrying over your older sister’s behaviour?’
‘No one,’ she snapped. ‘When we went to Perth we lived with Cecily’s godmother for a couple of years, then we moved into a flat.’
‘So there was a godmother,’ he mused. ‘How come you didn’t live with relatives? You had an aunt, I remember, and wasn’t there an uncle on your mother’s side?’
‘Oh, our aunt lives a very fashionable life. She might have welcomed Cecily, but not a plain teenager with the awkward business of growing up ahead of her—and our uncle had just married his third bride and wasn’t too thrilled with the idea of permanent house guests. Elaine genuinely wanted us with her—and anyway, we were keen to get away from Sydney.’
As Cecily was of age, they could have set up house by themselves, but Cecily wasn’t guardian material, and knew it.
‘If you liked this Elaine so much, why did you move out?’
There had been an argument—a few, in fact. Elaine Curtis and Cecily hadn’t hit it off. The older woman objected to Cecily’s friends, and her interference had become intolerable. As soon as Teressa finished school and turned eighteen, they had moved out. She had regretted it in some ways, for Elaine had been a moderating influence on Cecily. Once away from her, Teressa had felt the full responsibility on her own shoulders. Cecily might be four years older, but she went through life like a charming child.
‘It suited us to move into our own place,’ she said, uneasy over all this reminiscence. She felt vaguely disloyal to her sister to admit even privately that she had been indiscriminate in her choice of friends and occasionally careless of Elaine’s feelings. But she was strung up over Damien’s death then and over
Ashe’s heartless treatment. The new life-style was hard for Cecily to bear too. Accustomed to limitless clothes and her own sports car, she had had to wind down her spending and wait until she was twenty-five when her trust money became available. There had been no holding her then.
‘You weren’t old enough to feel the loss,’ she said to Teressa. ‘All those clothes I used to have—the car,the trips abroad—’ she groaned. ‘You can do something worthy like buying a house when you get your share, darling, but I’m going to blow mine on sheer, decadent luxury.’
But it wasn’t true, Teressa thought. She had been old enough to feel the losses. Not just the immediate shattering loss of Damien and Cliffe House but later the loss of the years she’d been waiting for. To be old enough for the celebrity-filled parties that Damien threw, old enough for the wilder, exciting bashes that brought Cecily’s friends roaring up the drive in their sports cars. Just when she was almost the right age, the party was over.
‘Did you have friends of your own in Perth, or were you drawn into your sister’s set?’ It sounded like a criticism and her hackles rose.
‘Her friends were mine, naturally,’ she lied, thinking about those worrying pre-Manetti days.
‘That explains a lot,’ muttered Ashe, and took her glass from her with an angry gesture and went inside to refill it.
‘There’s not as much Scotch in it as you’d probably like,’ he remarked as he gave her the part-filled glass, ‘judging by the way you knocked back that bit I gave you at Deception.’
‘Oh, I needed that—Dutch courage. It’s not every night I set out to…’ .
‘Seduce a man? No, you wouldn’t normally have to use much persuasion.’ He swirled his drink around, his fingers tight around the glass, ‘You’re a gambler, Teressa, like your father. How did you know I would do the honourable thing? Your opinion of me otherwise is low enough. How come you felt you could provoke me in safety?’ He tossed back some of his drink and looked searchingly at her. ‘Or were you like any good gambler, prepared to take a loss if the game had gone the other way?’
She had been sure, absolutely sure that she was safe.
Her faith in his honour and self-control was even more confusing now. ‘I-does it matter?’
‘Yes, I think it does,’ he returned. ‘You’re a mystery to me, Teressa—neither the shy Tess you used to be nor quite convincingly like your sister. But whatever you are I intend to find out.’
She didn’t like that at all. Ashe prying into her mind. pushing her to reveal herself. It was a lone, vulnerable feeling, like standing in an empty football stadium with the spotlights on. In the livingroom the clock chimed eight.
‘Why?’
His face was grim. ‘l owe it to your father. And to you in a way. There doesn’t seem to be anyone else to pull you out of the mire.’
Teressa was astonished, gaping. ‘You—you intend to reform me?’ Her laughter made him grimmer still. ‘Oh no, that’s funny really. Reform me!’
‘You think you don’t need help? A girl who hasn’t had any proper parental guidance since you were thirteen when your mother died?’ He tossed aside her indignant gasps about Damien. ‘Oh, Damien was a great fellow and I liked him a lot, but he didn’t spend too much of his time on you, Teressa. You’ve been left to your own devices too long, then in your sister’s care. And now you’re an irresponsible, lying, malicious brat mixed up with the wrong crowd.’
‘And you intend to take me over, do you?’ she scorned. ‘You of all
people! Is this some belated attempt at penitence for being such a rotter six years ago?’
His jaw clenched. ‘Never mind why I’m doing it. As for six years ago … I can’t believe you haven’t guessed that there was more to it—'
‘What do you mean—more?’
A deep breath raised his shoulders. He held it a long time, then let it out. ‘Forget it. Come inside. Dinner must be almost ready.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY ate in silence. No music, just the rustle of trees and the canna lilies at the window, the far-off hum of traffic, the high toot of a horn carrying over water.
And, faint from here, the ticking of the grandfather clock. Teressa’s tension mounted.
‘What happens after dinner?’ she blurted out. ‘I mean—'
Ashe pursed his lips. ‘Oh, I don’t know. I hadn’t really decided. Tea? Coffee? Does either of those appeal to you?’
‘No. I mean—yes. I meant—' she licked her lips, do you intend me to stay here tonight?’
Smiling, he got up and went to the kitchen. He appeared at the tiny serving hatch on the counter.
‘Not all night.’ When he came back he had a bowl of fruit, plates and two fruit knives. ‘Peach?’ he offered Teressa. She took one and thumped it on her plate With scant regard for its delicate flesh.
‘How dare you?’ she said in a shaking voice.
'You’d rather a plum? You only have to say,’ he chided, and held out the bowl. Teressa pushed it aside.
‘All that hypocrisy about reforming me and reclaiming me from undesirable influences! Owing it to my father to look out for me!’
‘Did you think that meant I was no longer interested in you, Teressa? Physically, I mean.’ Ashe began to peel peach. The knife moved slowly, surely, removing a narrow path of skin in increasing circles.
‘You’re disgusting!’
The knife didn’t so much as waver. ‘You have yourself to blame, inflaming me with those big, grey eyes and that clinging, trusting, sexy body. It’s really rather a relief to discover that you’re not the inexperienced girl who had a crush on me six years ago.’
There was silence.
‘I did not,’ she protested. ‘I loathed you!’
‘You thought you did. But all those blushes, falling over chairs—'he concentrated on the peach, ‘—all those darkling looks you sent me along the dinner table or when Cecily was being demonstrative. Definitely a crush.’
Silence.
One day she had gone into the sunroom and found Cecily there in Ashe’s arms. They were on the cane lounger, almost lying on it. He was kissing her and she was making small, murmuring noises of pleasure.
God, how she’d hated Cecily. Hated? Teressa felt the blood rush to her face as another memory shattered and reformed in truth. The first, the very first time she’d set eyes on him she’d felt a stab of jealousy. She was locked inside a dumpy body with braces on her teeth and lovely, lively Cecily had the most beautiful man she’d ever seen by the arm. ‘Mine,’ she seemed to be saying, and Teressa heard his voice and rushed away to be alone. It had become a habit after that to try to hate him. And in the hating, she had an excuse to conjure up his face, ponder over the secret malice hidden behind his fantastic smile, examine the patronising aspects of his rare conversations with her.
‘No, don’t be ridiculous,’ she said in a small voice.
Ashe said nothing, just levelled those topaz eyes at her.
Her gaze slid away. She left the table, flinging down her napkin and going to the double doors. Of course it was true. All that passionate dislike, justified in the end, had been a gigantic crush.
‘Anyway, what does it matter? If I had a crush on you—if—it meant nothing.’ But it did, she saw, floored by the deviousness of her mind that had disguised this for so long. She turned to look at him.
On his plate was the peach, its skin peeled completely away.
‘You must have had such a lot to talk about with Mr. Warwick,’ Thelma Richards prompted when Teressa got home from her temp assignment the next day.
‘Yes, we talked a bit about old times,’ she said.
Since last night her memories of old times had been stirred up and found to be, in some cases, erroneous.
Absently she told Thelma about his house near Lavender Bay and the job he had for her. The old lady was intrigued. Her pale blue eyes were alight with speculation. Teressa came back to earth and saw the conclusions forming in Thelma’s mind.
‘There was no candlelight or roses, Thelma. After dinner we played a video game.’
Thelma was clearly amazed. ‘One of those electronic things with beeps and explosions and all?’
‘One of them.’ Teressa smiled at her expression. If Thelma had seen her distinguished boss, glasses perched on his nose and one hand deftly manipulating the lever that would blow her spacecraft to smithereens, she would be speechless. Thelma burst into several expressions of her surprise. Perhaps not speechless, Teressa amended.
‘Well, I never! Everyone has a hobby, I suppose, but someone like Mr. Warwick—with all that responsibility-you don’t imagine him getting time to be a boy, do you?’
That boyish quality had bothered Teressa. She had been apprehensive when he suggested coffee and cognac in the livingroom after his ambiguous remarks about his intentions.
‘You like playing games, Teressa,’ he’d said in his ironic way, and she’d sat stiff as a board on the edge of the sofa until he showed her the games he had in mind.
Instead of the battle she had dreaded, Teressa found herself hunched over an electronic stick desperately trying to avoid Ashe’s attacking craft while she shot his down. The coffee went cold while spaceships and startrackers whined and beeped and exploded. All hints to the contrary, he took her home before midnight.
‘Nine on Monday,’ he said as they walked upstairs to her flat. ‘And bring a change of clothes. We’ll eat out that night.’
‘I might already have a date,’ she replied, bridling at his dictatorial tone.
‘If it's Merrow, tell him you won’t be seeing him again. She had already refused Joel once since the New Year’s Eve party, but that wasn’t the point. ‘You can’t organise my entire life on the strength of Thelma’s mistake.’
‘Tell him.’
‘You—you arrogant devil! Is this some paternal concern that Joel is the “wrong kind of friend”? Or,’ she added sarcastically before she could stop herself, ‘is it plain jealousy?’
‘Let’s say a little of both. But there’s nothing paternal about my concern, Teressa. Don’t make that mistake.’
‘And who won?’ Thelma broke in on her recollections.
‘Won?’
‘The game you played, dear.’
‘Oh, he did, of course.’
Thelma was ecstatic about the new working arrangements at Warlord. Ashe had assigned a young man to work With her under some minor alteration of the contract. ‘Such a nice boy,’ Thelma enthused. His name was Len and, from what Teressa could make out, Len’s only failing was that he wore a bracelet.
‘And Mr. Warwick is so nice. I had a good long talk with him tonight.’
‘What about?’
'Oh-this and that—” she said vaguely. ‘He’s going to get his sister’s autograph for me. He’s such a nice man, considering how we deceived him.’
If she only knew, Teressa thought, pouring tea.
‘I saw the dress designer tonight, too,'Thelma confided.
‘Lara Moore? In his office?’
‘Yes. She came in to wait for him. They were off to dinner, I think … I must say I’m surprised after last night… She cast a speculative look at Teressa.
‘Oh, that was nothing, Thelma. He’s just a—a friend of the family.’ So it apparently took more than a night With another girl to diminish Ashe’s charms in the heiress’s eyes. Savagely Teressa stirred her tea.
What a busy man he was! Following up on her last night With all his sexy overtures that admittedly had come to nothm
g—yet—and tonight, entertaining the rich girlfriend . Unscrupulous swine, she thought.
How could she imagine for a minute that he might have changed?
Joel called her again. Ashe’s autocratic commands about him still chafed and she was tempted to make a date with Joel purely to reinstate her independence.
But there was Thelma, and she couldn’t risk it.
Besides, Joel himself had lost much of his attraction for her since New Year’s Eve. So she turned him down again. Pleasantly. Joel didn’t seem deterred. He didn’t like to let her go unconquered.
‘You’ll change your mind, Tess,’ he told her with supreme confidence.