by Gloria Bevan
IT BEGAN IN TE RANGI
Gloria Bevan
The housekeeping job at Te Rangi was just what Maggie Sullivan wanted—but the boss, John Dangerfield (so aptly known to everyone as “Danger!”) refused to consider anyone who wasn't middle-aged.
But a series of domestic disasters forced him to keep her on—at any rate for the time being.
CHAPTER ONE
Right from that first moment when Maggie, from her table in the New Zealand back country hotel, glanced up to meet the searching look of the tall man standing motionless in the doorway, she felt that disturbing sense of awareness. It was like—like coming alive again, after all this time! The next moment she told herself that she must be overtired from the long day’s motoring, to entertain such crazy thoughts.
She realized that the stranger’s long strides were bringing him swiftly in the direction of her table, and in a flutter of confusion she stubbed out her cigarette, picked up her coffee cup. If he imagined that merely because she chanced to be seated here alone, a solitary diner in the emptiness of the shadowy room ... if he thought for one moment that her involuntary surprised glance could be taken as an invitation to seek her out...
‘Pardon me.’ He paused at her side and she looked up, up, into strong, compelling features. A well-shaped mouth, a deep indentation in the firmly moulded chin, eyes startlingly blue in a deeply tanned face. The chilliest blue eyes she had ever encountered. Dark hair, sideburns, a lean brown face. Handsome as they come, she thought swiftly, with a cool stare that was deliberately impersonal. What then did he want of her?
A sudden grin transformed the bronzed features. It made him look, Maggie thought, all at once more human, less stern and forbidding.
‘Strangers are pretty rare around these parts,’ he was saying in a deep, vibrant voice. ‘I guess you’re the owner of the blue van out there in the yard?’ He jerked a dark head towards the open door of the big room.
‘Yes, I am, but—’An expression of alarm leaped into Maggie’s wide dark eyes. ‘It’s not—’ The panicky thought tumbled through her mind. What if the Bedford were damaged, put out of running order? Elderly and battered though it was, the van was her only means of transport. She just had to reach Te Rangi tonight. Why, if she didn’t make an appearance within the next hour or so the Barrington woman with whom she had arranged the interview would conclude that Maggie wasn’t coming and someone else would obtain the housekeeping position. She had told Mrs. Barrington that she would be arriving late in the day and there was still time, barring accidents.
‘Not to worry.’ The stranger’s deep tones were soothing to Maggie’s taut nerves. ‘Just that it happens to be a bit in the way where it is ... Wouldn’t have troubled you except that I happen to have an. appointment tonight back at the homestead ... got to zip away fairly soon.’ He dropped down to straddle the chair opposite and meeting that direct gaze, once again Maggie was aware of that odd lurch of the heart. ‘Give me the keys,’ he was saying, ‘and I’ll shift her for you—run her out on to the main road. That way you’ll be able to finish your coffee.’
‘It’s all right, I don’t want any more.’ Feeling suddenly flustered, Maggie gathered up cigarettes, swung her suede bag over one shoulder and got to her feet.
‘Sure?’ He rose, towering above her. ‘I didn’t want to barge in on you.’ Maggie surprised an expression of genuine concern in the vividly blue eyes. So he could be thoughtful, this stranger, as well as aloof. For some reason, though, he made her feel confused and uncertain. She had been so sure that these days nothing could shake her composure, yet now...
They threaded their way together between the scattered circular tables covered with snowy damask cloths and set with gleaming silverware. At the counter a smiling young Maori waitress took the money that Maggie handed to her in payment for the meal. The girl nodded towards the tall man as though she knew him. ‘Good night!’
Then they moved out into the dusk and silence of the countryside with its scattered farmhouses and handful of small timber stores lining the dusty metal road. Sombre bush-covered hills were sharply outlined against the lemon afterglow of a spectacular sunset that shaded upwards to merge into the clear washed blue above.
But Maggie was conscious only of the old van parked at an angle across the narrow metal driveway, an obstruction to any driver wishing to leave the parking area before herself. How could she have been so careless as to leave the Bedford in such a position? Fortunately one vehicle only, a dust-coated Land-Rover, was trapped by her thoughtlessness. And guess who that belonged to!
Her heart sank as she glanced around the trucks and cars now closely clustered behind her own vehicle. No doubt the drivers were at this moment enjoying themselves in the bar and would remain there for some time. It would be no easy matter to manoeuvre the old van out of the maze and on to the main road. Nevertheless she’d have to manage it, somehow.
The tall loose-limbed man at her side must have read her thoughts. ‘The keys?’ His tones were soft yet peremptory as he extended a lean tanned hand. ‘I’ll move her out for you.’
But some crazy urge of contrariness, something about him that affected her in the oddest way, made Maggie say quickly, defensively, ‘It’s okay, I can do it!’
He was silent, but she was acutely conscious of his quizzical expression. She’d show him that she could turn the old Bedford with as much expertise as anyone else! Heaven knows she’d had plenty of practice, and in trickier situations than this! Why, at some of the country horse shows and gymkhanas she’d attended, she had been forced to thread her way between horse floats and transporters to find a parking space for the van on steep and muddy hillsides. This was nothing!
But today something had happened to cloud her judgment. Put it down to the amused glint in the eyes of the watching stranger. Or could be it had to do with nerves, the long day’s trip over unfamiliar roads. She swung the steering wheel too far and only after considerable effort succeeded in getting the van back to its original position. Then she tried again. This attempt to drive clear of old Studebakers and Chevrolets with dust-caked wheels finished in a wild swoop that narrowly avoided a collision with a gleaming late-model Holden, standing directly behind her.
Tense and nervous, her frenzied efforts to escape from the narrow confined space merely took her further and further from her goal. Confusion and self-consciousness merged into a helpless feeling of desperation. Now she was making frantic efforts to right the van before attempting a fresh effort to back around the cars in the rear. Bang! Crash! She knew only too well what the ominous thuds signified. She scarcely dared to glance over her shoulder. When she did it was just as she had feared. Of course it was his Land-Rover that she had struck! Angrily she reflected that even so it would be her lighter-built vehicle that would have sustained the most damage. It was all his fault! If only he wouldn’t stand there watching, waiting for her to make a mess of things! Why couldn’t he do something? she thought distractedly, forgetting in her agitation that she had already refused his offer of assistance.
Climbing down from the Bedford, she walked to the rear of her vehicle. Oh no! There was a deep dent in the van, and what was even worse, the collision had locked the bumper in the heavy front bar of the Land-Rover. That she knew would be no easy matter to put right, at least, it wouldn’t be easy for her.
‘It’s not too bad,’ the stranger bent to survey the damage. ‘Looks as though you got the worst of it, I’m afraid.’ He was eyeing the locked bumper bars, then he turned to face her. ‘Shall I—?’
She could have wept with anger and frustration. She turned her face aside, hoping that he hadn’t noticed the hot colour that was suffusing her cheeks or the dampness at her temples. ‘I’ll wait here,’ she said in
a muffled tone.
It appeared so simple a matter when he performed it, she reflected wryly, watching him disentangle the locked vehicles without apparent effort. A heave, a determined pull from those tanned, muscular arms and the job was done. Then he climbed up into the van and in a few expert turns had guided it clear of the vehicles parked haphazardly around it. Leaving the Bedford on the road he strolled back towards Maggie.
‘Thanks.’ She tried to achieve a careless laugh. ‘It looked so simple to get out of that jam, until I had a go at it! I’ll have to be careful in future,’ she said lightly, ‘not to tangle with any more Land-Rovers.’ Or their owners, she vowed silently. ‘Well,’ she reached a hand towards the starter button, ‘I’ll be on my way. I hope,’ she added with forced politeness, for after all she did owe him something for coming to her aid, ‘that I haven’t made you late for your appointment?’
He leaned an elbow on the window ledge and grinned engagingly across at her. ‘Maybe she’ll wait—if I’m lucky!’
Maggie brushed the clinging tendrils of dark hair back from her damp forehead, then put the van into gear. She? Absurd to feel this odd little pang. As though it could possibly matter to her who he had an appointment with!
‘Take care.’ He stood watching as she pulled away and followed the dusty shadowed roadway that cut through the small township. A few moments later an upward glance in the dust-smeared overhead mirror confirmed her suspicion that he was still standing motionless, watching her progress. No doubt, she reflected crossly, he was expecting at any moment to be called on once again to come to the help of a clueless woman driver. Then she turned a bend in the road and the watching figure was lost to sight.
Odd how he had moved her, first to awareness, then to interest and finally to a state of nervous tension where she had lost all her customary confidence and skill in driving. Maddening creature that he was! And yet there was something about him. It had been a long time since any man had stirred her so. Two years, to be exact. She’d been so certain that she was finished for ever with all such foolishness.
Two years since the night when Colin, her fiancé (correction again: had been her fiancé), and Andrea, her best friend (correction again: had been her friend), had sought her out for the purpose of letting her know something that she should have guessed weeks earlier. Anyone but a complete idiot like herself would have realized from the beginning what was happening, would have correctly interpreted the warning signals that were so painfully obvious, afterwards. For instance, there was Colin’s sudden lack of interest in his and Maggie’s approaching wedding; Andrea’s odd silence whenever Maggie talked of her future with Colin. There were other pointers too, noted subconsciously in a corner of her mind but brushed aside as unimportant at the time. Like Andrea’s state of wild excitement whenever Colin came to dine with the two girls in their small city flat. And yet he had seemed happy enough with their engagement, until he met Andrea, and then ... As always at this point Maggie’s clear objective thinking broke down and the old pain, the sense of hurt and humiliation, took over.
She had a sudden mental picture of Colin’s florid, good-natured face. He had always been joking, laughing loudly. Now she wondered whether the jokes had served as a shield to hide his inner unease whenever he was with the two girls at the flat.
Andrea, the Australian girl who had come to New Zealand on a working holiday. Dark, intense, and quite beautiful; keeping things to herself, things she should have confided to Maggie at the beginning instead of letting her go on thinking, believing, planning, wearing on her finger the diamond solitaire that was in reality one big, glittering lie!
Once the position was made clear, events had followed swiftly. Unbeknown to her, Colin had been successful in gaining a position with a law firm in Australia. Within three weeks he and Andrea were on their way by air to Sydney. They planned to be married in Andrea’s home town a few miles distant. Maggie didn’t know how she could have borne it had the other two not gone away.
The winding road glimmered palely, a curl of ribbon lost amongst the dark mass of hills ahead. Long lines of softly waving toe-toes lined the shadowy highway, tall sentinels with feathery plumes ghostly in the gathering blue dusk. Maggie switched on the headlamps, her gaze fixed on the arc of light playing over the rough metal of the roadway, her thoughts far away.
No more engagement rings for her—ever. She had learned her lesson, had her fill of pain and misery. No sense in risking all that over again! Most difficult of all to bear had been the despairing feeling of being unwanted, thrust aside; the bruising blow to her self-esteem. Oh, she’d got over it now, of course, managed to organize her life so that her time was fully taken up with other things. You could make yourself forget if you kept sufficiently active. Weekdays were taken care of by nine-to-five secretarial work in a law office. Early mornings, after-work hours and weekends were fully occupied with the care and training of Pete, her big bay gelding. What if out-of-town grazing fees, feed bills, plus veterinary fees and show entry costs, not to mention the upkeep of the old van, made any savings from her generous weekly pay envelope well-nigh impossible? Pete was worth every cent she spent on him. In a way, he was her link with home, a vast sheep station on the East Coast where she had grown up, the youngest child in a family of boys. Pete had been a brumbie brought down from the rugged Gisborne hill country, and almost at once he had shown promise of being an outstanding hunter. A great ungainly bay with powerful muscles, a coarse brown mane and a great heart, Maggie had loved him from the start. In the period she had spent in the city, her collection of show ribbons and silver trophies testified that Pete, despite increasing years, had lost nothing of his qualities of strength and endurance and was still well known in show-jumping circles as a brilliant jumper.
Nowadays the family was scattered, the property long sold and her parents retired to town life in Gisborne. Anyway, you could look after yourself at twenty. Or could you?
She could of course have enjoyed quite a different type of living, had she chosen, for there was never any shortage of alert, up-and-coming young business men who were only too eager to escort the small dark girl with the huge brown eyes and a trick of listening, really listening, to what a guy was telling her. Maggie liked them well enough too, for a time.
She had managed to cope fairly well with her life, or so she had imagined, until the day when her employer had all unwittingly shocked her once more into feeling. Out of the blue had come news that elderly Mr. Standish had decided to take a junior partner into his law firm. ‘You might be interested to know,’ he told Maggie as he paused at her desk one morning, ‘that I’ve found the right man for the job. He’s been over in Sydney for a couple of years, but he’s keen to get back here to Hamilton. Got the word that I was on the look-out for a junior partner and phoned me from Sydney last night. Local chap actually. Name of Ames. Colin Ames. You might—’ He broke off, an expression of embarrassment clouding his keen grey eyes in a thin lined face. Too late a hazy recollection niggled at the back of his precise lawyer’s mind. Maggie could almost see his thoughts ticking over. Evidently the girl had forgotten all about that old trouble. She hadn’t turned a hair. Water under the bridge now, probably. She might look small and rather childish, younger than her years, but one thing, you could always depend on Maggie not to let you down.
On the following morning he had reason to alter his opinion. Maggie, after a sleepless night of worry and indecision, faced him across the wide office desk. ‘I’m sorry, Mr. Standish, but I just can’t stay on here. It’s because of—well, personal reasons. Would a week’s notice suit?’
Her employer was accustomed to sizing up situations. Now his shrewd perceptive glance took in Maggie’s unaccustomed pallor, the dark smudges beneath her brown eyes. He hadn’t realized the affair had gone so deep. The next moment he told himself that he should have anticipated this. He was annoyed with himself. Must be getting old to have overlooked that old romance between Maggie and his prospective junior partner. What had
happened? He remembered now. Engagement broken off at the last moment before the wedding. Ames went off to marry her friend. Silly young fool! He had half a mind to tell him so too when he arrived. Place wouldn’t be the same without her.
Before he could settle on the most effective line of persuasion however, Maggie cut in. ‘It’s no use asking me to stay on, Mr. Standish.’ Her employer she knew was an astute speaker and she had no wish to parry the endless arguments she sensed he was about to put forward in favour of her changing her mind. ‘It’s all arranged,’ she rushed on breathlessly. ‘I—I’ve taken another position, you see.’ Avoiding her employer’s surprised expression, she sought wildly for inspiration and on impulse clutched at the first idea that presented itself. ‘In the country! I—I thought it would be a change. I’m sorry the notice is so short, but—’
‘I see.’ For once the elderly man was nonplussed. He had just recollected Maggie’s undivided interest in the show jumper that she kept out in some suburban paddock, ten miles out of town. Got up at the ungodly hour of five every morning, winter and summer, she had told him once, to attend to the care and training of her mount. It came to him that any girl who arose at that hour and returned at night after a day’s work to tend her horse must be fairly keen on country life. He sighed and making the best of a bad situation, wished her luck in her new venture.
When she reached the flat that evening, Maggie found she had no appetite for her meal. Seated at the small table pushed under the window she stared distastefully down at the boiled egg and slice of buttered toast that she had prepared. In giving her notice today at the office she had burned her boats behind her, but she wasn’t sorry. For being big-hearted and generous and understanding about a broken engagement was one thing, but to be forced to come in daily contact with an ex-fiancé was something else again! It might be cowardly on her part, it probably proved a complete lack of self-confidence, but she couldn’t help it. The prospect of having to see Colin and Andrea again put her in a state of panic. Even were she to take another position in the town, it was inevitable that they would meet. The other two would be bound to look her up. She could imagine how it would be. Andrea, starry-eyed and sweetly considerate. Colin, his florid features redder still with embarrassment. ‘Must go and see Maggie,’ they’d have decided privately. ‘Have to do it sooner or later. Better get it over with.’