Savage Courtship

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.