But there was something missing. There was no sign of the former tenderness, or the sexily inviting smile that had captivated her, had bound her to him during that lost, lazy, loving summer. The man he had become was arrogant, his slight smile insolent, the dark glitter of his eyes speaking of derision overlaid with the bleak menace of an anger she couldn’t understand. If anyone had the right to be angry it was she.
‘So you decided not to ask for a tray in your room. Bravo!’
The nerve-pricking insolence deepened his smile. Caroline went very still. This had to stop, this needling. She opened her mouth to tell him as much but her lips remained parted and silent as he gestured with one finely boned, strong hand, ‘Shall we eat?’
The small circular table had been haphazardly set with earthenware plates of cold-cut roasts and uninspired salads. But there was wine, an excellent muscat, she noted as she reluctantly took her place, vowing not to touch a drop. She needed to keep a clear head when dealing with the man who carried such an aura of danger.
She shivered suddenly and if she’d hoped she could keep that betraying reaction to herself she was doomed to disappointment.
‘Cold?’ An upwards twitch of one straight black brow. ‘I thought it was unseasonably warm for mid-April.’ He lifted the wine from the ice bucket, but she quickly placed her hand over her glass.
‘No?’ He poured sparingly for himself, his movements deft, undeniably pleasing. ‘Then do help yourself—I think we’ve been given beef.
’ A semi-humorous glance at her pale, set features. ‘And I apologise for the cheap plates and cutlery. But that’s the way the cookie crumbles. Your father must have sold all the family silver along with the Royal Worcester.’
They’d eaten from Minton, not Worcester, the pieces mismatched but beautiful, the silver flatware heavy, with richly decorated handles. She felt colour stain the skin that covered her cheekbones.
‘Cut it out!’ she ground out unthinkingly, her lips tightening at his undisguised taunt. She hadn’t meant to rise, had decided to ignore any sly jibes coming from him, but it hadn’t happened; she hadn’t been able to help herself.
Her hands knotted together in her lap, she added heatedly, ‘I know why you wanted me to come here, so let’s take it as read, shall we? Then perhaps I can get on with the work you hired me for.’
The urge to get to her feet and walk out of this room was strong. But she wouldn’t do it; it would be another display of regrettable temperament, letting him know just how easily he could get to her.
So she sat mutinously still, hoping her features displayed nothing but boredom now. Until he leant back, one arm looping over the back of his chair, lazy mockery in his dark velvet voice.
‘So you tell me—why did I want you here?’
Anger kicked inside her again and she said goodbye to all her remaining control for the first time in years, huge, thickly lashed violet eyes snapping as they clashed with the black enigma of his. ‘Because my father called you the scum of the earth.’ She recalled his exact words, spoken contemptuously so long ago. ‘You stole from him, you were a danger to the morals of the village girls—’
That didn’t hurt her, not now, not after so many years! How could it?
‘You lived in squalor. So when father died, in debt, and you were able to buy up his property, you decided to drag me here and rub my nose in it!’
Suddenly running out of steam she sagged back. Since his callous betrayal of her younger self she’d learned not to have strong emotions, certainly not blind, unthinking anger. Still, she supposed, it was better said than not. Bottled anger festered, left scars.
‘Wrong,’ he said lightly, his long mouth twitching unforgivably, her tirade and character assassination not causing him a moment’s discomfiture. ‘But interesting. My mother and I lived in squalor because when we arrived in the village we couldn’t afford anything else and it gave your father a very small income while the cottage was in the process of falling down.
‘And as for stealing from him…’ long fingers played with the stem of his wine glass, the dark, hypnotic depths of his eyes holding hers ‘…I was fourteen when we came here and was under the mistaken impression that the trout in the stream that ran behind our hovel were free for the taking. Your father put me right with the aid of a rather threatening shotgun.
‘That said…’ his mouth hardened ‘…I didn’t bring you here to rub your disdainful little nose in my financial success. Your presence here is a necessity.’
‘Now,’ he inserted coolly, handing her the platter of cold meat, ‘I suggest we eat, and then you can get down to work.’
Once, he’d told her she was necessary to his happiness; now, her expertise was the only thing he wanted from her. She swallowed convulsively, wishing her mind didn’t stray into the past, comparing it to the uncomfortable present. Another impulse came to cut and run. But Edward would not be pleased, and that was putting it mildly. Dexter was paying handsomely for her presence here. Walk out and the gallery would lose a potentially valuable client, acquire a black mark against its venerable name.
Grimly, she speared a slice of beef, added a tomato and wondered if she’d be able to force any of it down. He hadn’t countered the claim that he’d been a moral danger to the village girls simply because he couldn’t.
Did he know he’d left at least one fatherless child behind him when he’d disappeared from the village, richer by the several hundred pounds her father had paid him to leave, an amount that must have seemed like a fortune to him back then? Of course he did. Maggie Pope had told him her baby daughter was his. He hadn’t wanted to know.
‘As I’m here to sort out the dross from the remaining good pieces, perhaps you would tell me where you’d like me to start. Or do I have a free hand?’
She did her best to sound brisk and business-like, to put the regrettable disturbance of the personal behind her. But recalling the part of her life that had left her disillusioned, hurt and betrayed had sapped her energy, had made her feel drained.
She was hardly in a fit condition to endure the long appraisal he gave her expensively tailored, slim jacket, the fine fabric and sophisticated style discreetly announcing a coveted designer label before he stated, ‘Start at the top and work down. I don’t think the contents of the attics have been looked at in years. And, I’ll warn you, you’ll find a fair amount of builders’ rubble—part of the roof had to be retiled—among the dust and grime of decades. It can be properly cleaned out once you’ve decided if there’s anything up there worth keeping.’
He finished the wine in his glass and said with a flicker of impatience, ‘If you’ve finished mangling your food perhaps you would make a start.’
He was vile! Caroline thought as she stood in the open attic doorway. He had looked at the way she was dressed and had deliberately sent her up here.