Savage Courtship

She could just imagine what was going through the other woman’s head. And Dane Judson’s. If his eyebrows rose any higher they would disappear into his hairline.

‘Yes,’ she bit off, and then breached one of the cardinal rules of etiquette by delivering a gratuitous little speech about how she used to air the empty bedrooms.

‘May I go now, sir?’ she said woodenly, when this small exercise in embarrassment was over.

To her horror Benedict rose and sauntered towards her.

‘Don’t be so stuffy, Vanessa; we don’t have to pretend to be formal in front of my friends.’ He slid his fingers under her elbow and turned her towards the door, tossing casually over his shoulder, ‘Excuse us for a minute, won’t you?’

Out in the hall Vanessa wrenched her arm away and stormed off to the kitchen. Kate had left after she had dished up the main course and there was no one to hide behind as Benedict followed hot on her heels.

‘Get out of here! Do you know what they must be thinking?’ she raged at him. ‘Especially after that stupid remark about where I was sleeping. I’ve already had my reputation stolen once by some spoiled young buck and I don’t intend to have it happen again. Go back to your fiancée!’

‘Oh, no, you can’t convince me you still believe that canard,’ he dismissed contemptuously. ‘Not after you’ve seen her in action.’ He leapt back as she angrily turned on the tap over the kitchen sink full-blast, sending a jet of water bouncing off the dessert plates, nearly drenching the front of his pale grey silk shirt.

‘For goodness’ sake, Vanessa, this is not about your reputation—or mine,’ he said, reaching across her to turn the tap off so firmly, she couldn’t get it to budge again. ‘Stop trying to frighten me with your lurid past. I don’t care what happened back in England—except that whatever mess you got tangled up in obviously hurt you badly enough to colour your whole attitude towards love and sex. I’m sorry if I seemed to treat your alleged notoriety lightly, but I was angry at your lack of faith in me. Whether it was a mix-up or a set-up I know you could never have done the things you claim you were accused of. That’s an example of my faith in you.’

Vanessa was in no mood to be coaxed. She turned and, finding herself trapped against the sink, lifted her chin belligerently. ‘So?’

‘So...that pot-shot of yours on the beach about running away wasn’t entirely off-target. I did desperately need a break, but for the last few weeks Lacey’s been popping up wherever I go and I thought she’d never follow me here.

Lacey hates small towns. Even Sydney isn’t big enough for her.’

Detecting a hint of softening in her rigid expression, he moved in closer again, using the husky, confiding tone that turned her bones to wax. ‘She doesn’t love me, Vanessa. My parents have egged her on to think that I’m secretly dying to be drawn back into the family fold and Lacey is ambitious; she can’t bear to fail—in anything...’

‘She can’t force you to the altar, for goodness sake,’ said Vanessa, torn between anger and unwilling sympathy. Lacey Taylor did seem to be an oppressively single-minded woman. ‘All you have to do is say no...’

‘I have. And she tells me I’m just gun-shy about giving up my selfish, bachelor independence—’

‘She’s an intelligent woman; she’ll get the message eventually—’

‘Yes, if I’m sufficiently brutal about it in a public enough way I’m sure I can humiliate her into never even speaking to me again, but she doesn’t deserve that kind of cruelty. I’m not in love with her but before she was encouraged in this fixation we had a good platonic friendship, and as a professional she still has my greatest respect.’

He took off his glasses and blinked at the harsh fluorescence of the kitchen lighting, and Vanessa was sunk. ‘You can understand my wanting to avoid beating her over the head with her pride, can’t you, Vanessa?’ he said softly, placing his hands on either side of her on the bench. ‘If she knew I had someone else tucked away in my life she could blame me instead of herself for her failure to pin me down...’

His hips had crowded her buttocks against the stainless-steel bench and the tip of his tongue was stroking the seam of her primly sealed mouth.

‘You want to pretend that we’re involved?’ she murmured distractedly.

‘I don’t think any pretence will be necessary,’ growled Benedict, nipping at her lower lip, his thighs grinding lightly against her.

Vanessa shivered. ‘I won’t lie—’

‘I know. You won’t have to...’ He nuzzled into the prim white collar above her jacket to kiss the betraying pulse-beat in the curve of her throat, his hands holding her hips as his left knee flexed, pressing inexorably forward against the constriction of her skirt, pulling it taut between her thighs until he was resting his knee against the cupboard door behind her.

‘She won’t believe you’re serious about me...not when you could have someone like her...’

‘She’ll believe.’ His mouth was back on hers, this time demanding entry, his own voice thick with sensuous abstraction. ‘If I appear to be madly in love with you her pride will demand that it be very serious—’

It was like a dousing with icy water. ‘If I appear’... He only wanted the outward trappings of love, not the sincerity that was in her heart. A lie implied was as damaging as a lie spoken, as Vanessa had good reason to know.

Lies had destroyed her ability to trust, had infected her relationship with Benedict from the start. Secrets and lies. She was even starting to lie to herself now, telling herself she didn’t love him. And if she weakened and became his lover, who would he use in turn to get rid of Vanessa when her love became an embarrassing inconvenience?

‘No—’ She pulled sharply at his hair to make him release her and when he staggered back in surprise she twisted away and darted behind the kitchen table. ‘No, oh, no! I’m not playing that game. Lacey Taylor is your problem, you deal with it. Don’t expect me to help you do your dirty work!’

Something in her expression must have warned him how close she was to full-blown hysteria, because he backed off hastily, uttering soothing noises as he retreated which poured salt into her invisible wounds. She didn’t want to be soothed, she wanted to be loved—for herself alone, without guilt or guile. And for no other reason than that she was worthy of being loved.

Over the next two days, however, Vanessa found her sense of proportion returning as Lacey Taylor gave no sign that she noticed anything odd in the way that Benedict and his butler cut at each other with insulting politeness. Of course, she was so busy complaining about everything from the lack of air-conditioning to the smallness of the bathrooms that Vanessa doubted Lacey had time to notice anything but her own discomfort. She made it clear that she only tolerated Whitefield because Benedict was there, although he was spending most of the day shut in his studio with his nose buried in a sheaf of ‘urgent’ contracts that his colleague had handily produced.