Читать книгу In Bed With...Collection - Emma Darcy - Страница 49

CHAPTER SEVEN

BEAU forced his jaw to keep working, doggedly chewing up each mouthful of the Beef Wellington to the point where he could swallow it. At the other end of the table, Maggie Stowe was carving through her dinner with military precision, and he’d be damned if he was going to let her see she’d robbed him of his appetite. The woman had too much power as it was.

She tapped straight into every male hormone he had, setting them more abuzz than they’d ever been, regardless of the dictates of his brain. She messed with his mind, too, blurring what should be completely clear, straight-line logic. He couldn’t decide whether she was a superb actress or completely for real. If it wasn’t for the missing million, he’d be tempted—strongly tempted—to accept her story at face value.

At least he now had some facts to check. Sir Roland would be a reliable eyewitness to the first meeting in the restaurant and he wouldn’t mind Beau questioning him about it. Zabini’s Circus and the cattle station, Wilgilag, were items he could pass on to Lionel Armstrong. Any competent private investigator should be able to get some character references out of them. If she’d told the truth about her nanny background.

He glanced down the table. Her face was in shadow, frustrating his need to see past her polished facade. “Sedgewick, would you please switch on the overhead light and remove the candelabra? I can hardly see what I’m eating.”

“As you wish, sir.”

Beau could feel his irritation growing as Sedgewick complied with ponderous dignity. The disapproval emanating from the old butler was so thick it could be cut with a knife. Maggie Stowe was clearly upset. With all the subtle skill at Sedgewick’s command, he kept letting Beau know who was at fault and it wasn’t the nanny.

The brighter illumination of the room didn’t really help. Maggie’s face was like a white mask, completely expressionless. Beau watched her pick up her glass of claret and take a swig. Not champagne tonight, he thought with acid satisfaction. He’d told Sedgewick to serve a good red. The champagne days were over for Nanny Stowe at Rosecliff. No doubt she could buy it for herself soon enough with the missing million.

She had to have that million squirrelled away somewhere.

It was the obvious answer.

Yet she had flatly denied taking any money from his grandfather apart from her wage. And she had scorned him for not looking beyond the obvious.

The woman was a wretched torment. He glared at her as he picked up his glass of wine, needing a good dose of full-bodied claret to ease the angst she’d given him. She didn’t look up from her dinner. Since she’d sat down to it, she hadn’t met his gaze once. Beau was left with the strong impression she had wrapped a shield around herself and comprehensively shut him out. Her stony silence reinforced it.

The urge to smash it down spurred him into speech. “What did you do after you left Wilgilag?”

Very slowly, reluctantly, she lifted her head. Her eyes glittered like sapphires. “If you want ammunition against me, find it yourself, Mr. Prescott,” she said flatly.

Her reply gave him no joy nor satisfaction. Having made him feel like a slime, she returned her attention to her meal and continued eating. Beau couldn’t stomach any more food. She had his gut twisted into knots.

“I simply want to know more about you, Maggie,” he defended, trying to beat off the sense of being in the wrong. Very badly in the wrong.

She shook her head, not bothering to even glance up at him.

Beau seethed with frustration. He couldn’t make her talk. He recalled the artless, open way she had bubbled on before he’d put in the jab about millionaires and savagely wished he’d held his tongue on that point.

Yet had it been artless or artful? Truth or lies? Impossible to know until he’d checked out what she’d told him. One thing was certain. Because of his stupid gaffe in revealing his own train of thought, she was not about to hand him any more information about herself.

He emptied his glass and signalled to Sedgewick to refill it. The action was performed without comment, without eye contact. Beau felt himself being cold-shouldered on more than one front.

Was he wrong about Maggie Stowe? Was he hopelessly, foolishly, hurtfully wrong? He couldn’t deny that her passionate defence of her relationship with his grandfather had struck chords of truth. And guilt.

Perhaps he’d been lonely.

Those words hit hard. Beau doubted this situation would ever have arisen if he hadn’t stayed away so long. Or if he’d found the time and the woman to marry and have children—which was what his grandfather had most wanted, an extension of the family line. Having plenty of friends did not provide the same sense of closeness and caring as having someone who belonged to you, who was there all the time.

Beau could even see now why his grandfather had chosen to take Maggie Stowe in and make her one of his family...a flower-seller with the potential to be much more, given the means and the guidance. “She’s going to be my creation,” he’d boasted to Lionel Armstrong, and he would have revelled in the role of Henry Higgins; the achievement of it, the sheer theatre of making someone over and producing a star, the heady reward of her appreciative response to his teaching.

If Maggie Stowe had really had an underprivileged life, why wouldn’t she be eager to try everything on offer, hungry for it, loving it? It made sense. The only fly in that ointment was the missing million, which suggested she could be a very clever con woman.

Beau just couldn’t let that go. Not without knowing more. A lot more. He cursed himself again for letting his advantage slip. She was on guard against him now. He’d have to work other angles and hope something pertinent would turn up.

It startled him out of his dark reverie when she rose abruptly from her chair. She laid her refolded napkin on the table and looked directly at him, making his heart kick at the renewed link between them.

“I beg to be excused, Mr. Prescott,” she said with quiet dignity. “I am not feeling well.”

Which left him no loophole for insisting she stay. Beau set his glass down and rose to his feet, courtesy demanding he let her go gracefully. “I’m sorry. If there’s anything you require...”

“No. Thank you.” She turned to the butler. “Sedgewick, please apologise to Jeffrey for me. I know he will have prepared a special sweets course. Perhaps Mr. Prescott will have two helpings to make up for my leaving it.”

“I’ll ensure Jeffrey understands, Nanny Stowe,” Sedgewick returned kindly, drawing her chair back for easier movement.

“Thank you.”

She walked the length of the table with the carriage of a queen, yet when she paused by Beau, he saw she was trembling, and her face was so bloodless he wondered if she were really ill. Her eyes were no longer glittering. They reflected a sickness of soul that screwed Beau up even further.

“I’ve been presuming too much. I won’t sit at table with you again, Mr. Prescott. As you said this morning, you are not your grandfather.”

Beau opened his mouth to argue, everything within him rebelling against the evasion she intended. The mystery of her was not resolved. He wanted the challenge of her presence. He wanted more of her than he could admit to. But before he could voice the words of protest tumbling through his mind, her eyes misted with tears, making him recoil from saying anything.

“Goodnight,” she whispered huskily and moved on, walking briskly from the dining room, leaving him feeling like a monster for making her cry.

He watched her go, the flouncy little frills of the sexy red dress taunting him with what she might have given him if he’d acted differently. His loins ached with thwarted desire. His mind raged against the circumstances that trapped him into keeping his distance. The angry frustration welling up in him could barely be contained.

Sedgewick proceeded to clear her end of the table, apparently unconcerned by the incident, carrying on with his job, transferring her plates and glass to the traymobile. Beau, still on his feet, his napkin crumpled in his hand, glared at the old butler for being so deliberately officious about his duties.

“If you’ve got something to say, Sedgewick, spit it out!”

A dignified pause. A slight raising of eyebrows. A look down his noble nose at Beau. “I was thinking, sir, I have served many people in my years at Rosecliff. Amongst them, the high and mighty of this country, one might say. People who thought their wealth or power put them above others. Nanny Stowe may have come here without much to recommend her, sir, but she is a genuine lady. Mr. Vivian certainly thought so, too.”

“You don’t know what I know, Sedgewick,” Beau retorted in dark fury.

His lofty mien became ever loftier as he answered, “Possibly not, sir. I have only had two years’ close acquaintance with Nanny Stowe.”

Which neatly sliced Beau’s feet out from under him. He threw the napkin on the table, picked up his glass and strode to the sideboard to collect the decanter of claret. “Please inform Jeffrey I won’t be wanting sweets, either. Nor anything else tonight, thank you, Sedgewick,” he said in savage dismissal.

“Very well, sir.”

Armed with what was left of the good red he’d insisted upon, Beau headed for the library, haunted by a glorious mane of red hair, a red dress that was too damned bold to be worn by a woman with that shade of hair, and the authoritative words of a man who should know what he was talking about.

He found the videotape of his grandfather’s funeral and slotted it into the machine ready to play. Left to himself, he automatically shed the constraints of formality, taking off his coat, vest and tie, then rolling up his shirt sleeves and undoing the collar button. Getting rid of his excess clothes, however, did not ease his pent-up tension.

He poured himself a glass of wine, picked up the remote control panel, and tried to find some comfort in one of the leather armchairs. His thumb was hovering over the play button when he realised his anger was inappropriate for watching the funeral of a man who’d raised him from boyhood, a man he’d revered and loved.

He waited a while, occasionally sipping the claret, clearing his head of Maggie Stowe and filling it with memories of happy times with his grandfather; the adventures they’d had together—cruising The Great Barrier Reef, seeing the wildlife of Kakadu National Park, exploring the underground world of Coober Pedy—then in his teens, the trip to Europe where his grandfather had made history come alive for him.

It had been Vivian Prescott’s gift, to make the world a marvellous place. And he’d chosen to bestow this gift on a woman he’d picked up one night. Right or wrong, it had been his choice. His choice, too, to take a million dollars and do whatever he’d done with it.

Beau wanted to respect those choices. He really did.

A genuine lady...

God! He even wanted to believe Sedgewick was right!

He just couldn’t bear the thought his grandfather had been fooled.

With a heavy sigh, Beau pressed the play button and set the footage of the funeral rolling.

He found the service intensely moving...the songs, the words spoken, the roses, the cathedral packed to overflowing by those whose lives had been touched by Vivian Prescott. Then, at the cemetery, it was indeed a fine, fine touch, having a piper in full Scottish dress, lead the carrying of the coffin to the graveside, the age-old wail of pipes ringing down the last curtain.

The final ceremonial words floated past Beau unheard, his attention fastened on the little group of people standing a few metres behind the bishop, his grandfather’s family, for lack of anyone closer.

He was inexorably drawn into studying the woman who had most recently come amongst them, the woman at the centre of his grandfather’s last years. He focused his entire mind on setting aside his prejudices and seeing her as objectively as he could.

She looked magnificent in a tailored black suit and a broad-brimmed black hat that managed to be both sober and stylish. Doing Vivian proud, Beau thought, finding himself admiring her stance, despite his suspicions about her character. Not once did she look down at the grave. She held her single rose clutched to her chest, and her face was lifted to the sky.

She didn’t appear to be aware of the tears trickling down her cheeks from the corners of her eyes. Or she determinedly ignored them. She kept her gaze fixed upwards, as though she wouldn’t let herself believe Vivian Prescott was in that coffin. His spirit was out there somewhere, soaring free, not tied to the earth in any shape or form. The Angel of Death had come kindly...

Beau winced at the thought, yet ironically found himself in sympathy with it. He switched off the video, having seen enough. His glass was empty but he didn’t feel like drinking more anyway. The sense of having done Maggie Stowe an injustice was strong. Even if she’d had her eye on the main chance, capitalising on all she could, she certainly hadn’t failed her benefactor at the end.

I loved your grandfather. I really did. And whether you like it or not, that’s the truth.

He might not like it, but Beau was beginning to believe it. The whole funeral was an act of love, getting it right, doing his grandfather proud. He could no longer see it as putting on a show. There was too much care, too much feeling behind it for him to dismiss as an exercise in showmanship.

So where did that leave him? An unappreciative, ungrateful, blundering clod? Driving a woman to tears instead of giving her her just due?

Wretchedly at odds with himself, Beau pushed out of his armchair and paced restlessly around the library. He’d set about this nanny business all wrong, shooting off with bees in his bonnet, right from the start, making assumptions without the evidence to back them up.

What if Maggie Stowe was a genuine lady, as Sedgewick claimed?

He’d virtually accused her of being a whore and a gold-digger. There could be no doubt he was wrong on the first count. As to the second...God only knew!

She’d gone off to her room in obvious distress because of him. His grandfather had installed her in a position of respect here and he’d cast her as unworthy of it, cross-examining her like a criminal in the hot seat and judging before she’d had a proper hearing. Was that fair? Would his grandfather be proud of him?

Shame wormed through Beau. His grandfather had trusted him to let everything at Rosecliff carry on as dictated in the will and he hadn’t even let one day pass without blowing it apart. Not one day. What he personally thought was irrelevant. This was a matter of trust to be kept, and keeping it was the least he could do since he hadn’t been here to do more when it would have truly counted.

He checked his watch. It wasn’t too late to straighten things out with Maggie Stowe. Best to do it right now. That way they could start afresh tomorrow. And he’d get to go to bed with a clear conscience.

Fired with resolute purpose, Beau left the library, only realising when he was halfway up the stairs, he didn’t know where Maggie Stowe was. A moment’s thought gave him the answer. His grandfather would have given her the Rose Suite. Their relationship had begun and ended with roses. It fitted. And whatever his grandfather had ordained for her, had to be carried on for a year, come what may.