CHAPTER TEN
IT WAS dark inside the hilltop apartment and Vanessa cursed at the lack of light as her trembling fingers dropped the doorkey and she had to grope around on the cold marble floor to find it.
Then she had trouble finding the light switch and when she finally clicked it on she had to blink in disorientation as she was confronted by the white-on-white, ultra-modern room. It took a few moments for her to remember to cross to the long narrow window on her left and wave in silhouette to the man waiting on the city street below.
The yellow Corvette took off with a throaty roar and Vanessa watched the red lights glow as he took the corner at the end of the street.
She wondered why Dane was in such an all-fired hurry to get wherever he had suddenly insisted he had to go, when he had done nothing but procrastinate, delay and dawdle all the way from Thames to Auckland. What should have taken no more than an hour and a half had taken over three. He had driven at least twenty kilometres per hour under the speed-limit, stopped for petrol and oil at two different petrol stations and pulled over twice to check his ‘pinging’ engine.
Then, just past Huntly, he had decided he was ravenous and had pulled into an all-night truckers’ restaurant and ordered a huge meal which he had taken ages to eat, all the while plying a white-faced Vanessa with coffee and trying to persuade her to reinterpret the scene which had prompted her midnight flight from Whitefield without even so much as a change of clothes or a toothbrush. She had even had to borrow Dane’s car-coat to cover the crumpled satin costume she wore in order not to create a riot among the truckers.
Somehow it had seemed symbolic that she had left Whitefield as stripped of possessions as she had been of pride. Lacey’s malicious introduction of Vanessa to Benedict’s parents as his lover-cum-butler couldn’t have been better timed to create maximum shock and embarrassment...especially since it was obvious to them all what had been going on in the locked library.
The older couple had heard of the party from Lacey and had duly decided to make a fl
ying visit, expecting to be able to offer their congratulations on what they assumed to be their son’s engagement to a most eminently suitable young lady. Instead they had been confronted with graphic evidence that he had fallen into the clutches of an appallingly unsuitable, social-climbing hussy.
Vanessa had had to bear the shame of hearing Aaron Savage tell his son, ‘For God’s sake, if you want to sleep with the servants at least have the decency to be discreet about it!’ and his mother frigidly suggest that whatever he was paying her it was obviously too much!
‘A female butler! I always wondered what possessed you to agree to such a questionable arrangement,’ Denise Savage had said in cut-glass accents of brittle disdain. ‘And now my worst fears have been justified!
‘Don’t you care about the pain you’re causing your father and I? Do you know the damage this could do to the family’s reputation if it got into the papers? Goodness knows, there are certain people who would leap at the chance to use a scandal to embarrass your father. Whatever you do inevitably reflects directly on us... And you’re not really being fair to this...this person either. Is she really someone you’d be comfortable introducing to our friends? Of course not...because it’s all in such appalling bad taste, Benedict. Even if you’re temporarily blinded by infatuation you must realise that we’d be a laughing-stock if you tried to introduce her to society...’
There had been more in that vein and Vanessa had kept waiting for an angry Benedict to leap in and defend her honour. But he had remained silent and when she’d finally tried to interrupt on her own behalf Benedict had coldly told her to be quiet and let him hear everything his parents had to say.
In the end, she had walked out in such a blind agony that she had nearly trampled Dane as he hovered by the door. Benedict had been so absorbed in what his parents were saying that he hadn’t even noticed her go and, looking back over her shoulder one last time, Vanessa had numbly realised the true extent of the family resemblance.
Benedict’s face had worn the same expression of pale hauteur that his mother’s habitually did and his arrogant stance had been so similar to his father’s that it had been almost like seeing the same man reflected through an age-distorting mirror. Perhaps his fling with her had been just one last act of rebellion against the inevitable genetic trap.
She’d been walking down the driveway towards the gates of Whitefield in a zombie-like state when Dane had caught up with her, and when no amount of desperate pleading could divert her from her obsession with getting to the airport in Auckland by whatever means she could, hitch-hiking—even walking every step of the way if she had to—he had eventually agreed to drive her. She had to go home, she’d kept repeating. She was running to the only haven left to her, the home of her heart—her family—to the love and understanding of her father in Los Angeles. He had never been ashamed of her...
She had fiercely refused to go back to the house even to pack, nor would promise to wait for Dane while he did so, and in the end he had given in to her fragile mental state and got his car.
While he drove he had talked incessantly, telling her what a great guy Benedict was, deep down, and how, if Vanessa was in love with him, she owed it to him to give him the benefit of the doubt; that Benedict’s parents were knee-jerk reactionaries; that she shouldn’t do anything rash, like leaving the country, without talking to Benedict first.
Vanessa had refused to respond until he had pointed out to her, when they were nearly to Auckland, that since she had neither money nor passport she couldn’t leave the country immediately anyway. He had kindly insisted she stay at his apartment for the rest of the night, until she could call her father and ‘reorientate’ herself. By that time all Vanessa had wanted to do was crawl into a bed, bury her head in the pillow and have a good, long, private bawl!
She was a bit disconcerted that, after hours of relentless over-concern, Dane had casually dumped her on his doorstep with his key and a casual ‘good luck’, but she supposed he was respecting her desperately obvious need for privacy. Equally obviously he would have no trouble finding a bed elsewhere.
Bed...
Wearily, she turned towards the spiral staircase that Dane had included in his verbal sketch-plan and plodded upwards. She couldn’t ever remember having felt this hopelessly bone-weary before. She shook her head to try and clear the miasma of exhaustion that thickened her thoughts.
The first room at the top of the stairs was a bathroom and when she clicked on the light and caught sight of herself in the mirror Vanessa shuddered. She looked even worse than she felt. The crimson dress was tawdry and garish against her bloodless skin and she could see several faint, reddened marks on her breasts from Benedict’s lovemaking. Was this what his parents had seen? This...brazen doxy. No wonder they had been so horrified!
Vanessa was suddenly acutely aware that she was still perfumed with the fragrance of her abandon. She could smell Benedict on her skin. With shivering haste she shed the wretched gown and the indecent garment underneath.
The hot shower did its job, easing her aching body and cleansing away the intimate evidence of passion, although nothing could wash away the tiny, tender abrasions on her breasts and stomach and thighs. Weak tears mingled freely with the pulsing water over her face as she began to wonder what she had forfeited by her cowardice. If Benedict hadn’t fought for her honour, neither had she made any attempt to fight for his. What if he, too, was alone and hurting right now...?
Pushing away the painful thought, Vanessa blotted herself on the thick white towel from the heated rail and rubbed half-heartedly at her steam-damp hair, discarding the towel listlessly on the floor with uncharacteristic untidiness before padding naked into the only other room on the mezzanine floor.
In the hint of clouded moonlight from the window she was aware of the vague, shadowy outline of a bed by the far wall but she ignored it, drawn across the room by the melancholy sight of the sleeping city. The view led in a direct line across the bricks and blocks of the central commercial district to the moon-struck waters of the Waitemata Harbour. Moon-struck. That perfectly described Vanessa. She wallowed for a moment in her splendidly miserable, self-induced isolation.
She turned on the standard lamp that she had nearly knocked over as she approached the window, and unlatched the fastening on the casement so that she could open it wide, breathing in the faintly metallic air of the city and momentarily enjoying the faint tightening of her bare skin at its cool touch. She must start to do this now, appreciate the small joys of life, since she was making such a mess of the larger ones.
She turned, a wistful smile of self-derision on her lips, and froze.
The big, wide double bed was already occupied.