Savage Courtship

‘Ovid again?’ Richard showed that his memory was much better tuned than his jealous instincts.

‘Oliver Wendell Holmes. I’m sure the quotation must be in all the best butler manuals, isn’t it, Vanessa?’

She looked him dead in the eye and smiled crisply. ‘Why, yes, right next to the one that says that few men are admired by their servants; “Many a man has been a wonder to the world, whose wife and butler have seen nothing in him that was in the tiniest bit remarkable”.’

His narrow mouth curved in droll appreciation, as if he knew the extent of dramatic licence she had taken with the quotation. ‘I think I’d rather settle for being a wonder to my wife and unremarkable to the world. A much more comfortable affair.’

‘”Affair” being the operative word, since you don’t have a wife,’ she shot sceptically back. He was already a wonderboy in the architectural world so it was unlikely that any wife he took would have any choice but to accept that most of his passion was devoted to his work.

He inclined his head. ‘Not at the moment, no. So that only leaves my servants to practise on, doesn’t it? Tell me, Vanessa, what more do I have to do to inspire your admiration?’

If he thought to make her blush with his silky invitation he had another think coming, although it was a struggle to resist a torrid rush of blood to her head. What more? Was he smugly waiting for her to say what a wondrous lover she had found him?

‘Clean your own shoes, perhaps?’ she ventured with poisonous sweetness.

He pulled a sour face. ‘Actually I had something a bit more challenging in mind. I’m sure there are far more stimulating things you can find for me to do with my hands,’ he replied with a diabolical innocence, this time succeeding in making her pinken. He leaned back in his seat like a sleekly satisfied cat. ‘You see, Richard, Vanessa and I actually have a symbiotic relationship which works extremely well for both of us, so if you were hoping to gain a butler for yourself by stirring up discontent you’re out of luck.’

Richard gave Vanessa a fond grin. ‘I like to think I already have one, thank you.’

Vanessa sensed the body next to her tighten, but there was no hint of anything but lazy humour in the voice that drawled blandly, ‘Purely at my pleasure, I feel constrained to point out. I’m the one with first call on her loyal and devoted services and I can truthfully state that she is the most obliging creature I’ve ever had under me. In fact her eagerness to please gives new meaning to the phrase “the butler did it”....’

His sheer audacity took Vanessa’s already ragged breath away. She could see that he was working himself into a dangerous mood, Richard’s complacent ignorance acting as a goad rather than the soothing tranquilliser she might have expected it to be.

It seemed to make no difference to him that she had obviously not told a soul about what had happened. She knew, and that was enough. Richard was good-natured almost to a fault but he wasn’t stupid and even he was going to realise that there was more than light-hearted banter going on here if Benedict continued in the same provocative vein. The trouble was, taken at face value, there was nothing in his comments she could object to without bringing the whole embarrassing business out in the open, she thought wretchedly.

‘Her insistence on making beds, for one,’ Benedict continued relentlessly. ‘I thought that sort of thing was against the butlers’ unwritten code of rights but Vanessa seems to invent her own rules as she goes along.’

Richard laughed. ‘I believe it’s called job flexibility these days. So you approve of her game of musical beds? When she first told me I thought she was mad, but when you think about it it does make a nutty kind of sense.’

Benedict’s sharply indrawn breath was audible and there was a distinctly grim edge in his voice as he enquired gently, ‘In what way, would you say?’

‘Well, for myself, I wouldn’t like to swap beds every night, but, as Van pointed out, she’s always lived in other people’s houses so she’s never developed any possessive hang-ups about where she sleeps. And in time-and-motion terms I suppose you can’t get more efficient than airing a bedroom in your sleep. I’ve got a reasonably large place myself and my mother is constantly complaining about the amount of effort it takes to keep the spare rooms from going musty with disuse. I tell her she should take a leaf out of Van’s book, but she says that it would be too much like living in a hotel. Of course, Van says that’s exactly what she’s doing—except she doesn’t have to worry about paying the bill!’

Richard laughed again and Vanessa smiled weakly as the laser-like blue gaze, intensified by the glass lenses, swung back in her direction. So now he had his explanation. And without her having to say a word.

‘Vanessa can be very witty, although her sense of humour sometimes leaves a bloody lot to be desired,’ came the biting reply after a moment’s screaming pause, but Richard’s attention had already been distracted.

‘Oh, Van, I see Nigel Franklin leaving over there—remember I said I wanted a quick word with him about a mare he’s sending over tomorrow? Would you mind? I won’t be a moment...’

Vanessa was aghast at the prospect of his desertion at such a critical moment. ‘Oh, but—’

‘Of course we don’t mind.’ Benedict cut across her stammer. ‘Don’t worry, Richard, I know how to keep Vanessa well-entertained.’

Vanessa glumly watched him go.

‘Perhaps you’re not so as well-matched as I thought, after all. Rather thick, isn’t he?’

Her dark eyes flared defensively. ‘No, just uncomplicated.’

The dark head nodded. ‘I see...you mean boring.’

‘He is not boring!’

‘Maybe not below table-level, but then, who am I to judge?’

She bridled with fury. ‘I was picking up my fork!’ she spluttered.

He sipped his whisky, flaunting his scepticism. ‘You were hiding from me.’