Furious with herself for letting her thoughts run riot, Vanessa wrenched anew at the stubborn pillowcases and shook them out vigorously before turning them inside out and throwing them on top of the sheet on the floor. She stretched across the bed and had just slipped her hand under the mattress to free the far corner of the sheet when the door jarred open, and a voice rattled chills down her spine.
‘What in the hell do you think you’re doing?’
She could feel one neatly manicured nail catch and tear against the mattress as she jerked upright and around, her sensible shoes skidding on the discarded linen, tangling her feet, so that with a cry of dismay she toppled helplessly backwards across the bed.
CHAPTER THREE
ANYONE else would have reflexively reached out and tried to prevent Vanessa’s fall, but Benedict Savage was a law unto himself. He didn’t lift a finger to save her.
He merely folded his arms across his chest and watched her bounce and come to rest before coldly rephrasing his question.
‘I asked you what you were doing in my room?’
The crisp pattern of his speech was slightly blurred by his rapid breathing. He had been running. What had occurred to her had obviously also belatedly occurred to him; he was here to attempt to sort fact from fantasy.
If she had felt at a disadvantage earlier in his study, it was nothing to what Vanessa felt now.
She pushed herself upright on trembling arms, drawing her knees together and tugging down the skirt over her dangling legs in a vain attempt to recover her dignity. ‘I would have thought it was obvious,’ she snapped defensively, wishing he would move out of the way so that she could stand up. ‘I’m making your bed.’
‘Why?’
She bit back the smart-mouthed reply that sprang to her lips and struggled for a respectful monotone. ‘Because it’s my job.’
‘You make my bed?’
For a moment he looked as uncomfortable as she felt. He had refused to allow her to perform the more personal services that a butler usually provided, ones that she had cheerfully carried out for the judge—waking him in the morning, running his bath, laying out his choice of clothing for the day. Benedict Savage had informed her squelchingly at that chilly initial interview that he didn’t require nannying, and that he would thank her not to invade his privacy unless invited. She had duly kept the required distance, but it wouldn’t hurt him to realise that caring for someone’s house was, in its own way, as intimate as caring for their person.
‘I often help Mrs Riley with the housekeeping,’ she said, adding pointedly, ‘As you may have noticed from the household accounts, I only employ extra housekeeping staff when you bring guests to stay. It’s not economic to have a full household complement idle for most of the year.’
His blank look confirmed a long-held suspicion. She doubted that he ever bothered even to glance at the accounts that she scrupulously presented him with every six months. She could be robbing him blind for all he cared. Once he had decided to trust her, he had given her a totally free hand and however flattering that was to her ego it irked her that it also meant the true extent of her efficiency went largely unappreciated.
Unfortunately he ignored the red herring, and pursued a point she had hoped would not occur to such a supremely undomesticated animal.
‘Have I ever given you reason to think I’m so fanatical about cleanliness that I require my sheets to be changed daily?’ he said drily. ‘This is a home, not a hotel—I’ve barely had the chance to get them warm, let alone dirty.’
‘You do have a reputation for being extremely fastidious,’ Vanessa muttered, guiltily thinking of the silky heat that she had been cuddled up to that morning. He had certainly been warming the sheets then. However, she could hardly contradict him.
‘But not to the point of being unhealthily obsessive,’ he said with controlled distaste.
No, she couldn’t picture him being obsessive about anything. That would require a degree of passion she didn’t believe he possessed.
‘You haven’t been here since the beginning of February and your bed hasn’t been properly aired because we didn’t know you were coming,’ she invented hastily. ‘I thought the sheets might have been a bit musty.’
‘Well, they weren’t.’ He looked down at the tumble of linen at their feet, his voice acquiring a strangely husky note. ‘In fact they were quite deliciously fragrant...’
Vanessa tensed with shock at the thread of remembered pleasure in his voice, finding his choice of words disturbingly sensual for someone whom she preferred to think of as a thoroughly cold fish.
Thank God the perfume she had dabbed on at the beginning of last evening was so expensive that she only wore it when she was going somewhere special! She sought for a way to scatter whatever images were re-forming in that frighteningly intelligent brain.
‘Probably from the washing-powder Mrs Riley uses,’ she said prosaically, and rose from the bed, forcing him to step back as she summoned a brisk dismissal.
‘Well, since I’ve gone this far I’ll have to finish the job. I can’t put these sheets back on after they’ve been trampled on the floor. Excuse me.’
He looked from the bed to her and for a terrible moment she thought he was going to dig his heels in. She bravely stood her ground, banking on his intensely private nature to win the brief internal battle he was evidently waging. The thought of exposing himself to her curiosity again would be anathema to him. She deliberately allowed a hint of speculation to impinge on her expression of polite patience.
His reaction was swift and instinctive. His face shuttered and he inclined his head, saying sharply, ‘If you think it’s necessary, I suppose I must bow to your superior domestic knowledge.’
Sarcastic beast! In the past his cynical comments hadn’t bothered her. Now every word he uttered seemed to grate on her nerves.