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?’
‘Weren’t you anxious to show me the drawing-room a few minutes ago? I was rather distracted last time I was here—I had that Japanese consortium in tow—so I think perhaps you should just show me everything you’ve done in the last six months. I’m entirely in your hands this afternoon.’
Vanessa looked down at the hands in question. She thought them too large, like the rest of her, but the long, ringless fingers were slender and well-shaped, the round nails short and burnished with natural polish.
He had been in her hands this morning, too, she remembered treacherously. Her palm had been cupped over the rippling tautness of his back, while her left hand had been tucked cosily between their bodies, her fingers curled against his smooth upper chest, measuring the rise and fall of his contented sleep and tingling with the faint vibration of his steady heartbeat. But of course that had been nothing to where his hands had been...
‘Flynn?’
Her head jerked up and she felt her skin begin to heat up as he regarded her with polite puzzlement.
‘Er...yes...good idea. In that case, we’ll start with the main dining-room. The marble mantelpiece came back from the workshop last week and you’ll be able to see what a difference a professional cleaning job is going to make on that awful one in the drawing-room...’
She was so anxious to escape the intimacy of her thoughts that she rattled on, inundating him with technical details as she took him through the public rooms that were now almost completely restored, albeit with some discreet modern touches necessary for the comfort and healthy well-being of future guests, to what they had been in the former glory years of gold-inspired prosperity.
Judge Seaton had had the enthusiasm and the knowledge but not the financial resources to indulge in more than cosmetic improvements to the old building and Vanessa knew that he would have heartily approved of the changes that his unknown heir had wrought to what had been a sorely neglected piece of local history, whatever Benedict’s mercenary reasons for doing so. Perhaps what had happened had been exactly what he had been hoping for when he had written that extraordinary codicil to his will. He had known that Vanessa shared his love of the dilapidated old place, that she looked upon Whitefield as the home she had never really had. He had enjoyed inspiring her with his love of history and perhaps he had been relying on the possessive sense of belonging he had engendered in her to ensure that she would maintain a careful watching brief over Whitefield after he was gone. The thought pleased her far more than did the notion that he might have made that stipulation purely out of pity, or concern that she wasn’t strong enough to stand on her own two feet.
Her obvious pride of accomplishment didn’t escape the man at her side as he meekly allowed himself to be lectured from room to room like a laggardly schoolboy. At first largely silent, he began interrupting her flow with a pertinent question here and there, just enough to encourage her subtly out of the formal recitation of dry facts into expressing a revealing enthusiasm for her subject. When she forgot herself she even moved differently, her stride long and eager, her hips and arms swinging in an uninhibited rhythm, her head and hands contributing expressively to the conversation.
‘I’m glad you don’t feel that a contemporary bathroom is an unforgivable betrayal of the integrity of the restoration,’ Benedict murmured as he surveyed the chaos of plumbing that sprouted from the tiled wall in one of the small upstairs sitting-rooms which were being converted into bathrooms for the adjoining bedrooms.
‘This is going to be a working hotel, not a museum,’ Vanessa was quick to defend. ‘People expect a reasonable standard of accommodation for their money. Tourists may enjoy visiting museums but they don’t want to stay in them, especially if it means sacrificing their creature comforts. For the sake of strict authenticity we’d have to offer them a wash-stand and chamberpot or portable commode and I don’t see many of them wanting to put up with that! The 1870s were still pretty primitive in this part of the world... I mean, the country had only been settled for a few decades and most of the people’s energy was going into scraping a living from the land. As long as the public rooms are restored in their period I don’t see a conflict, since the kitchens and bathrooms have to be upgraded to meet modern health standards anyway.’
‘Mm, hip-baths in front of the fire do rather lose their rustic appeal when you know you have to haul twenty buckets of hot water up the stairs first,’ said Benedict musingly.
‘You wouldn’t be doing any hauling,’ Vanessa pointed out sourly. ‘Except perhaps on the bell-rope.’
‘You don’t think much of me, do you, Flynn?’ he startled her by saying. ‘You seem to think I’m incapable of doing anything for myself. A complete wimp, in fact.’
‘Of...of course not, sir,’ she denied, not deceived by his mildness. No man who was a complete wimp could have a body that felt like tensile steel wrapped in warm silk, or dominate, as he did, with a mere look. ‘I—it’s part of my job to make sure you don’t have to do manual labour around the house—’
‘During holiday breaks when I was studying architecture, I worked as a building labourer—much to my parents’ disgust. I may give the impression that I’m a pampered rich brat but I do make some effort to keep in touch with the real world.’
‘Of course you do, sir.’
Her soothing tone made his eyes narrow. ‘Are you going to “sir” me to death again now?’
‘No, s—’ She cleared her throat. She hadn’t realised how automatically the word sprang to her lips when she was feeling defensive. ‘No, of course not.’
‘I hate it when you do that.’
‘Do what, s—? Do what?’
‘Agree with me in that unspeakably pleasant voice,’ he said succinctly. ‘And don’t say that’s what I pay you for. I never did have much respect for yes-men. Or yes-women.’
It was unfortunate that he tagged on that last phrase. It had connotations that made her go hot all over. If she had said yes to him last night she had forfeited a lot more than mere respect!