Savage Courtship Page 5

  ‘In that case I think I might take the Duesenberg out for a couple of hours,’ he said hastily. ‘You can give me the tour after lunch. If that fits in with your plans, of course.’

  ‘Of course, sir,’ she murmured dutifully, heaving an inward sigh of relief as she retreated into the safety of her usual, self-effacing role.

  ‘And don’t tell her I’m here,’ he scowled.

  ‘Of course not, sir.’

  ‘The woman is a human limpet.’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’

  He gave her bland expression a coruscating glare. ‘Are you mocking me, Flynn?’

  ‘No, sir,’ she lied smoothly.

  ‘Good. Because I can tolerate a lot of things from my employees—insubordination included, if they’re good at what they do—but I don’t like being laughed at.’

  It was definitely an order.

  ‘Nobody does, sir,’ Vanessa murmured judiciously. She had noticed that about him—his lack of laughter—it was what contributed to her impression of him as having a somewhat colourless personality. Although he was good-humoured to a fault, he rarely showed any spontaneity. His smile was more of a cynical twist than an expression of warmth. Little seemed to take him by surprise.

  Except this morning. This morning he had been caught very much by surprise. The result had been a very distinct loss of that apparently inhuman self-control, and she wondered how much control he had lost last night, when the surprise must have been infinitely greater! She swallowed, her arms tightening possessively on the sheets that bore witness to her own self-betrayal, struggling against the return of her earlier panic. Surely her guilt was stamped all over her face?

  Apparently not, because her employer was turning away from her, running his hand rapidly over his chin, the same boyish eagerness in his expression that she had glimpsed in the library, and she realised that his thoughts were running ahead to the birthday present he had been side-tracked from enjoying.

  ‘I don’t suppose your historians will be here for a few minutes so it’s safe for me to have a shave before I leave. I think I’ll take a run up the coast to Coromandel, or maybe even Colville or Port Jackson, if I feel like it. Tell Mrs Riley I’ll be back for lunch about one—if you’re sure they’ll be gone by then.’

  ‘I’ll make certain they are, sir,’ she assured him. By one o’clock she was sure she’d also be able to persuade herself into a more rational frame of mind.

  ‘Good.’ He turned at the entrance to his bathroom, to throw her one more terrifying curve over his shoulder. ‘Oh, by the way—don’t lock me out again.’

  She froze on the threshold of escape. ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘Downstairs just now. The French doors to the library—you locked them after I went out to look at the car. I had to go around to the front door and knock until Mrs Riley let me back in.’

  Vanessa sent up a prayer of thanks. ‘Did I? I must have done it automatically. I’m sorry for the inconvenience, sir. It won’t happen again.’

  Not if she could help it, anyway. The circumstances leading up to her action were, after all, extremely unlikely to recur!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ‘WELL, that should be the last of your rising-damp problem,’ Bill Jessop told Vanessa with deep satisfaction as he rose from his crouch in front of the strip of exposed stonework a metre high that ran along the interior wall of what had been the servants’ dining-room. ‘That last section has dried out nicely. You can get the plasterer to work on it as soon as you like.’

  Vanessa followed suit, dusting off her hands as she straightened. ‘I just hope we don’t find any anywhere else,’ she sighed.

  ‘You can’t really complain when the place is over a hundred years old,’ said the stonemason. ‘I think the big problem was that the original builder didn’t finish the job. Now he was a real craftsman.’

  ‘A pity he succumbed to the gold fever,’ said Vanessa with the fine disdain of someone who had never lusted after great riches. ‘Instead of drowning in a flooded mine he could have had a long life of quiet prosperity if he’d stuck to his original plan.’

  ‘Maybe it was excitement he was after, rather than the actual gold,’ said Bill, a big, stolid man who looked as rough as the materials he worked with. ‘Or maybe he was running away from something, or someone. Didn’t you say that his wife worked as a cook here for a couple of years after he took off, and had a reputation for being a right old harridan?’

  ‘I don’t blame her for being shrewish if her husband deserted her,’ said Vanessa tartly. ‘Colonial life could be pretty brutal for a woman who didn’t have a man to protect her. I’m sure she’d rather have had her husband than the gold.’

  ‘Do you think so? I think she would have been more practical than that. “Gold will buy the highest honours; and gold will purchase love.”’

  Vanessa spun around, automatically smoothing her hands down the sides of her skirt as she watched her employer pick his way around the ladders and planks that cluttered the doorway.

  He had come back from his drive obviously relaxed, his face glowing with wind-burn and his normally economical movements expansive under the lingering effects of high-speed adrenalin. He had described the performance of the powerful car at what Vanessa thought was tiresome length as she’d served his soup, then promptly buried his nose in an architectural magazine while he ate, not even acknowledging the substitution of his empty bowl with a salad, followed by a plate of cheese and crackers. Vanessa had waited until he left the dining-room to take a business call before she’d slipped in to clear the table, congratulating herself that he had appeared to have forgotten his demand for an immediate tour. An oblivious, inattentive and introspective Benedict she was well used to and could handle with ease.

  A trickle of dismay slithered down her spine as she realised that she had instinctively referred to him by his Christian name. How had that solecism crept into her thoughts? She glared at him, mentally trying to cram him back into the insulated box labelled ‘Mr Savage’. He was not co-operative.

  ‘That’s a cynical point of view, Mr Savage,’ Bill Jessop said with a conspiratorial male grin. ‘I don’t think Vanessa is going to agree with you on that.’

  She refused to be goaded, folding her hands primly and maintaining a respectful silence as Benedict came to a halt beside them. He had changed, she noticed, into a long-sleeved white polo-shirt which was more casual than anything else she had seen him wear. It must be new, she decided. Something he had brought with him, for she hadn’t noticed it in his wardrobe before. The soft draping flattered his lean muscularity, and, tucked into black trousers, emphasised the perfect masculine proportioning of wide shoulders and slim hips.

  He looked at her and when she didn’t reply his face assumed a bland expression to reflect her own.

  ‘Not me... I was merely quoting Ovid on the Art of Love. That particular piece of cynicism is nearly two thousand years old, but I think that the passage of time has proved the wisdom of his words, wouldn’t you say, Flynn?’

  She could hardly ignore a direct question but neither did she want to stroke his ego by agreeing with him. ‘Then how is it that you’re not knighted and married by now?’ she prevaricated sweetly, and he laughed.

  Vanessa stared. The most humour she had seen him display was a quiet chuckle. His narrow face with its hard, slashing cheekbones, straight, precisely even black brows and high forehead had seemed rigid and austere, the face of a born ascetic. Now, with a sting of shock, she glimpsed a teasing hint of mischief in the warm animation of previously inflexible features, a promise of passion in the relaxed curve of his mouth. In laughter, as in sleep, there was a fullness in his lower lip that was normally disguised by the controlled tautness of his conscious expression. For the first time Vanessa wondered at the origin of that formidable self-control and the faint air of tension that he wore like a cloak—or a suit of armour.

  Horrified to find herself studying his mouth with feminine curiosity, Vanessa tore her eyes awa
y, to find that he had stopped laughing and was watching her with an unsettling intentness.

  ‘Perhaps I’m too much of a miser,’ he murmured, ‘to pay for what I see other men getting for free.’

  Bill Jessop laughed at that. ‘Nobody who’s seen the kind of money you’re pouring into this place would call you miserly!’

  ‘Mr Savage looks on it as an investment,’ Vanessa pointed out evenly. ‘He expects to make a good return on his money by selling as soon as the restorations are finished.’ Perhaps it was her very lack of tone that tipped him off, for he was quick to respond, to sense an underlying hostility.

  ‘You think I should be doing it for purely sentimental reasons?’ he said. ‘Why should I be so altruistic? I have no more historical or personal connection with Whitefield than—than you do.’ She stiffened at this casual reminder of her place. ‘What would you have me do? Live here permanently myself? The place is far too big for one person, and besides, it’s being renovated as an inn. Can you imagine me as a hotelier?’

  ‘Actually, yes,’ Vanessa said, stretching her imagination stubbornly. ‘You’re used to playing host to numerous guests at a time. The only difference is that they would be paying you for the privilege instead of free-loading...’ She bit her lip as her true opinion of some of his non-business guests slipped out, but he merely quirked her an oddly considering smile.

  ‘”Playing” being the operative word. I learned a long time ago the value of preventative socialisation as a method of preserving my privacy. A large part of my youth comprised politely displaying for guests. My parents always seemed to be entertaining a continuous flow of friends and new acquaintances. Unfortunately I had no brothers and sisters to take the spotlight off me, so I acquired a fine repertoire of conversational tricks to conceal my shyness and resentment of the instant intimacy that people seemed to think was the required response. I was a Savage and therefore expected to thrive on all the attention. My parents would have been very disappointed in me if they had known how much I hated having to prove myself their son over and over again...’

  Vanessa was unnerved by the nonchalance with which he delivered his startlingly frank disclosure. She took an automatic step back, trying to widen the distance between them, but she took with her the mental picture of a quiet, solitary child forced to adopt an adult gregariousness in order to please his parents.

  She, too, was an only child but her parents had always made her feel all the more special for being different from them, an individual in her own right. Secure in the circle of their love, she had felt free to rebel and to assert herself, to strike out and make her own mistakes, knowing that any disappointment they felt would be for her, not with her.

  ‘It doesn’t show,’ she murmured.

  ‘I hope that was a compliment, not a comment,’ he said smoothly and she realised that he was playing with phrases from their conversation in his bedroom that morning.

  ‘You could always put in a manager and reap the benefits of ownership without the day-to-day hassles,’ she said, refusing to acknowledge the significance of his word-play. ‘You present the right kind of image: charming yet aloof.’

  ‘Why do I get the feeling that’s definitely not a compliment?’ he murmured back, not giving her time to reply. ‘Do I really come across as distant and supercilious? I’ve always thought of myself as elusive rather than aloof.’

  His gaze was engagingly rueful as it met hers, as if he was aware of the inherent romanticism of his self-perception, and was faintly embarrassed by it.

  ‘You can certainly be very elusive when you choose to be,’ Vanessa conceded wryly, remembering the numerous times she had had to drag him out for meals. Times when he had shut himself up in his studio with his architectural computer and drawing instruments and left his guests to their own devices.

  ‘No more than you. We had agreed that you were going to bring me up to date on the restorations this afternoon.’

  ‘I was waiting for you to let me know when you were ready,’ Vanessa fibbed, conscious of Bill Jessop standing patiently by, his grey eyes bright with interest.

  ‘Really? Is that why I spent ages yanking those damned bell-ropes to no avail?’

  Vanessa pinkened at the pleasantly accusing tone. ‘I’m sorry, I meant to warn you that the bells have been disconnected while some of the tubing is being replaced.’ The vintage mechanical system of zinc tubes encasing sliding copper wires still worked remarkably well and only one or two of the row of bells which hung in the butler’s pantry next to the kitchen had had to be replaced.

  ‘Mm, you obviously didn’t hear me yelling up and down the halls, either.’

  Vanessa raised her eyebrows at him, knowing full well that he had done no such thing. He was too well-trained to stoop to such vulgarity.

  ‘Obviously not.’

  ‘I was beginning to feel like a wraith of my former self...drifting around an empty house with no one to acknowledge my wailing and gnashing of teeth,’ he exaggerated lazily. ‘I half expected to meet up with my golden-haired ghost again.’

  ‘Ghost?’ The stonemason’s ears pricked up. ‘You’ve seen a ghost?’

  ‘I told him about Meg,’ Vanessa cut in hurriedly, moving determinedly away from the two men in an attempt to draw them apart. ‘We won’t hold you up from your work any longer, Bill. Mr Savage—shall we start the tour in the drawing-room? It’s been papered since you were last here...’

  ‘I certainly saw something in my room late last night,’ Benedict said, ignoring her desperate shepherding motion. ‘If it was a ghost then she was uncannily lifelike, whoever she was. Have you ever seen this Meg?’

  ‘Well, not myself, no,’ Bill replied rubbing his stone-roughened hands together as if to remove a chill. ‘But then, I’ve never been here alone after dark. I’ve heard tell of some strange goings-on here over the years. Nobody had lived in the place for a couple of years before the judge bought it and it was getting pretty derelict. Personally, I don’t know if I believe in ghosts, as such...’

  ‘Neither did I until last night,’ said Benedict Savage drily. ‘In fact I could have sworn she was as real as you or I.’

  ‘Oh, it always pays to keep an open mind about such things,’ Vanessa said quickly. ‘The existence of certain psychic phenomena has been well-documented. And if any place can claim to be the site of spiritual turmoil, then Whitefield can. Meg’s wasn’t the only death by violence here over the last hundred years.’

  ‘You mean I may find myself visited by more apparitions?’ He sounded dismayingly intrigued by the prospect. ‘How lucky I’m not of a nervous disposition. Perhaps the Architectural Journal might be interested in a paper on the subject—the influence of the fifth dimension on architectural conservation. If all my ghosts are as beauteous and willing as the golden-haired Meg I should have no trouble in arousing interest...’

  From the corner of her eye Vanessa saw Bill open his mouth to inform him that Meg had been a flaming redhead, not a blonde.

  ‘Yes, I’m sure the historical society would be very interested,’ she interposed brightly. Willing? What precisely did he mean by willing? ‘Miss Fisher in particular is a bit of a psychic buff. If she got to hear that you’d had a visitation from the other side, she’d be up here in a flash with her tape-recorder and psychic investigator’s handbook, haunting the place herself.’

  To her satisfaction her employer blanched, but then he slanted her a keen look. ‘For a warning, that sounded distressingly close to a threat, Flynn.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ she murmured with just the correct touch of haughty surprise. ‘You told me this morning that you wanted to avoid Miss Fisher and I just thought I should point out the possibility. You know how people in these small communities talk...’

  ‘People might, but since I know you’re an utterly loyal and devoted employee, and since Bill here doesn’t want to get fired, I don’t see how any of this conversation is in danger of leaking out.’

  Instead of being offended, Bi
ll laughed. ‘I suppose I’d better get back to washing off down that south wall before you decide to fire me, anyway. Nice to see you back again, Mr Savage.’ He touched his forelock in a mock-salute as he backed towards the door. ‘See you later, Vanessa.’

  ‘Pleasant man,’ Benedict Savage commented, running his hand over the mortar in the joints between the grey stone blocks. ‘Does a fine job, too. Robert did well to find him.’

  Robert Taylor, a specialist restoration architect who worked in the Auckland office of Dane Benedict, had drawn up the plans and a schedule of work for the inn and had been heavily involved in the initial stages...until both he and his boss had realised that Vanessa was more than capable of supervising the ongoing work, even to the extent of employing tradesman as they were required. Now Robert only made a special trip down to Thames as certain, agreed-upon stages were completed.

  ‘Actually, I was the one who found Bill,’ said Vanessa quietly. She got on very well with Robert, but he was ambitious and somewhat opportunistic in his eagerness to create a good impression and she thought it did him no favours to let him get away with it too often. ‘I’d heard of him through the historical society and seen some of the work he’s done in Waihi.’

  ‘I stand corrected.’ His casual nod told her that he was aware of his young colleague’s failing as he continued, placing a mocking hand over his heart, ‘Please, just don’t tell me that the ubiquitous Miss Fisher had anything to do with it.’

  She couldn’t help a small smile escaping the stiffness of her control, her brown eyes lightening with the fugitive gleam.

  ‘No. Madeline’s area of expertise is kitchen utensils and cooking-ovens.’

  ‘And ghosts.’

  Vanessa’s eyes slid away. ‘And ghosts,’ she conceded reluctantly, feeling herself sinking deeper and deeper in the mire of the foolish deception that had grown out of her choice of diversion. She cleared her throat. ‘Where would you like to start your tour?’