Читать книгу The Colour Of Midnight - Robyn Donald - Страница 6

IN SILENCE they finished the drive back to the homestead. Nick parked the Range Rover in a garage which formed one side of a courtyard at the rear of the house. More flowers and a bed of herbs filled the corners of the courtyard. Like the rest of Spanish Castle it was picture-perfect.

‘There’s room for your car next door,’ he said, and took her through into a double garage, one side of which was taken up by a large Mercedes-Benz saloon.

He opened the roller doors and watched while she drove Ruth’s small car-about-town into the space next to the aristocrat. Once out, she unlocked the boot.

Looking what he was, a man so sure of his position in the world that he had no need to prove himself, a man accustomed to command, he extended an imperative hand. Well, he was stronger than she. With a mental shrug, Minerva passed him the pack that had accompanied her around the globe; in his leanly elegant hands it seemed a battered, cheap thing.

‘This used to be a jumble of rooms,’ he said, leading her through a door into an airy passageway that looked on to the courtyard. ‘It’s now garages and offices and mud-room. This doorway leads into the house proper.’

Up three steps, another wide hall stretched in front of them. He opened a door halfway down. ‘Here’s the kitchen,’ he said.

It was superb. Checking it out with an authoritative eye, Minerva saw that it had been newly renovated and set up for entertaining. Not just the occasional dinner party, either. The French range had enough capacity to feed a hundred, and there was a big old wood range too, crackling softly to itself and giving off a very pleasant heat. Clearly she’d found the source of the unexpected warmth throughout the house.

‘Do you think you can manage the stoves?’ Nick asked.

‘No problem,’ Minerva said reassuringly, trying to project a brisk, businesslike manner.

Of course her hair chose that moment to slip from its knot at the back of her head and slither down her back. Nick’s gaze followed its downward passage until it reached her waist. Beneath the thick fringe of his lashes his eyes gleamed suddenly, something in that hooded scrutiny setting Minerva’s cheeks aflame.

Turning away, she caught the fine, flyaway mass in two hands and ruthlessly anchored it in a knot at the back of her head, forcing the combs into the slippery, silky strands.

So much for her effort to be composed and matter-of-fact!

‘I’ve cooked on everything from a campfire to a hotel range,’ she told him firmly, trying to regain ground.

‘Of course.’ The cool eyes scanned her flushed, averted face. His uneven smile held more than a hint of mockery. ‘You don’t look like my idea of a chef.’

‘Because I haven’t got a white hat on? I only wear one in hotel kitchens.’ Retreating behind a mask of expertise, she asked crisply, ‘What foods do you dislike?’

‘None. I’ll eat anything you put in front of me provided it isn’t too sweet.’ He glanced at the thin watch on his strong wrist. ‘We’ll talk about my tastes later, after I’ve shown you the rest of the house and your room.’

A large tabby cat strolled casually in through the door, looked around with the air of one at home, then headed straight for him.

‘This is Penelope,’ he said, bending down to scratch her in exactly the right place behind her ears. ‘Her official job is to keep any mice down.’

Minerva liked cats. This one, with its ineffable air of sleek self-respect, gave the huge kitchen a friendly, comfortable air. Purring, Penelope displayed herself sinuously about Nick’s ankles, then, when he stood up, leapt gracefully on to a stool and looked expectantly at Minerva.

She laughed softly. ‘Wait until dinner,’ she said. ‘And if I ever see you on the bench—watch it.’

The cat gave her a disgusted stare, yawned ostentatiously and settled down to wash its ears.

‘Don’t you like cats?’ Nick asked.

‘Love them, but with a cat it’s always wise to establish right at the beginning who’s boss. Penelope and I will get on very well, don’t worry.’ She stroked the blunt head, asking, ‘What’s your dog’s name? The one you were carrying on your horse?’

‘Rusty.’

Minerva’s brows shot up. ‘That’s funny. I’d have bet money on him being black and white, without a speck of brown.’

‘And you’d have won. I didn’t name him,’ he said, that half-smile softening his features.

‘Who did?’

‘The man who bred him. I’ve always assumed he was colourblind.’

‘Does he come inside?’ she asked. ‘Rusty, I mean.’

His eyebrows lifted. ‘No, he’s a farm dog.’

So farm dogs were not pets. You learn something new every day, she told herself.

‘I used to have a Labrador who did come inside,’ he said, ‘but Stella didn’t like dogs, so when he died I didn’t get another.’

There was a chilling lack of emotion in his tone, in his face, when he said his dead wife’s name. It was as though she meant nothing to him. Or perhaps, Minerva thought slowly, as though he still couldn’t bear to think of it, as though the only way he could cope was to tamp the emotions down.

‘And what is the horse’s name?’ she asked quickly.

His brows lifted but he said readily enough, ‘Silver Demon.’

Something in her expression must have given her away, because an answering amusement glimmered in his eyes. ‘I didn’t name him, either. Pretentious, isn’t it?’

‘It suits him,’ she said solemnly, smoothing the soft fur behind Penelope’s ears to hide the flutter that smile set up somewhere in the region of her heart.

He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t. Although he’s a stallion he’s as placid as a gelding, which is why he’s here. We don’t breed horses at Spanish Castle, so there’s no place for a temperamental stallion, or mare, for that matter; this is a working station.’ He paused, then added without expression, ‘He doesn’t come inside, either.’

When Minerva laughed he watched her with an arrested expression, almost as though a laughing woman was a novelty. The amusement died in her throat. Abruptly, Nick turned towards the door. Answering the unspoken summons, she left Penelope in charge and followed him from the kitchen.

‘I’ll take you round the ground floor first,’ he said, ‘so you know your way about, then I’ll show you your room.’

The homestead was magnificent, furniture and fabric and the house itself combining to make a harmonious whole. The last room they went into was a splendid dining-room where an eighteenth-century mahogany table was set off perfectly by buttercup-coloured walls and a huge painting that should have been incongruous, a modern South American acrylic of the jungle. Yet the lush, almost naïve picture set off the big room and its elegant, traditional furniture with style and wit.

Gazing around, Minerva asked, ‘Who decorated the house? It’s brilliant.’

‘My mother.’

Was his mother still alive? Yes, Stella had written of a tall, charming woman who had married again. ‘She has great talent.’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Although most of the furniture was in the house, she re-organised the place to within an inch of its life as well as choosing the colours and the materials. In her day it wasn’t done for a young woman to have a career, but she’d have been a success as a decorator. She lives in Singapore now with her second husband, and is having the time of her life redoing his house and garden.’

The stairs led to a passage lit by an arched window above the staircase and a large double-hung window at the other end of the house. More pictures were displayed along the walls, some by artists Minerva thought she recognised, some unknown, but all chosen with discernment and the passion of the true connoisseur.

‘Did your mother collect the pictures?’ she asked, looking at one particularly impressive oil of a woman on the beach.

‘Some. My grandparents and great-grandparents bought some, and I’ve added to them.’

‘They have...’ Struggling for a way to express her feelings, she could only say lamely, ‘They seem to go to together, to make up a whole.’

‘Perhaps because we’ve only ever bought what we really like,’ he said.

Her room, just around the corner from the stairs, was surprisingly large, with a four-poster bed against one wall and a small door opposite. Going over to the bed, Nick turned down the spread.

‘It’s not made up,’ he said. ‘I’ll help you do it now.’

‘I’ll do it,’ she said swiftly. It was ridiculous, but she didn’t want him making the bed with her. ‘Where’s the linen cupboard?’

He nodded towards a massive French armoire on one wall. ‘In there. Are you sure? I do know how to make a bed.’

Minerva’s smile was hurried. ‘I’m sure you can, but honestly, it’s no trouble.’

‘All right. The bathroom is through the door beside it,’ he said. ‘Let me know if there’s anything else you want.’

Minerva looked away. The ripple of taut muscle as he swung her pack on to a chair set uneasy excitement singing through her. ‘I will,’ she said. ‘What time do you have dinner?’

‘Seven-thirty. I think Helen has left a sort of menu.’

‘Yes.’

He said without emotion, ‘Thank you for stepping into the breach. Helen was frantic to get to her daughter, but she wouldn’t have left me in the lurch.’

‘That’s loyalty,’ Minerva said slowly. Was the housekeeper devoted enough to answer a lawyer who asked questions about the relationship between husband and wife with, if not lies, at least a bending of the truth that favoured her employer?

After all, it would be pragmatic of her to be generous in her interpretation of the situation, even a little biased. Not only did Nick own Spanish Castle, he had interests in other businesses, mostly concerned with the agricultural and pastoral sector, including one extremely successful one he’d set up himself. Irritated by the lack of decent software for agricultural use, he had designed his own, marketed it, and now headed a firm which was expanding its exports by a quantum leap each year.

So he was clever, a creative thinker and an astute businessman as well as part of New Zealand’s landed gentry. The Peveril name was one to reckon with in the north. Nick was a local grandee, a power in the country. And he was kind; his concern for Mrs Borrows hadn’t been assumed.

Perhaps no one was all that interested in why his wife had died, especially as he hadn’t been there when Stella swallowed her deadly mixture of pills.

Nick’s broad shoulders moved a fraction. ‘She adored my mother,’ he said calmly, as though this explained everything. ‘Now, about payment. Family or not,’ his voice turned sardonic, ‘I certainly don’t expect you to give up your holiday without making it worthwhile for you.’

Minerva lifted ironic eyes. ‘The family bit cuts both ways,’ she said lightly, hiding even from herself her instinctive rejection of the idea of taking money from him. ‘You don’t pay family for coming to the rescue. It isn’t done.’

The cold fire of his gaze held hers for a pulse-thudding moment. He meant to ride roughshod over her; she could see his intention as clearly as though he had spoken the words.

Then something changed his mind and his expression altered into the chilly impersonality she was beginning to dislike. With a narrow, sharp-edged smile, he said, ‘Very well.’

Oddly enough, she resented his easy capitulation. She had, she realised, looked forward to crossing swords with him. Something told her that he would be a good enemy, hard but just, and that there would be an intense exhilaration in battling him. Minerva rather enjoyed a fair fight; in that she was completely different from Stella, who had hated quarrels and been unable to cope with them.

It seemed suddenly disloyal to bandy words and fence for position with the man who had been instrumental in some way for her sister’s death. Her lips tightened. She said too loudly, ‘Well, that’s settled then. I’d better unpack.’

When he had left the room she stood for a moment, her eyes fixed on the door, before breathing out with a sudden, explosive sound. Then she walked across to the wide bed and sat down on it, her eyes troubled.

He was too much, too tall, too good-looking, with eyes that saw too much and a mouth that promised too much, and a voice that sent too many shivers down her spine. Yet that uncompromising dominance wasn’t entirely physical; even curbed by will-power, the dark force of his personality blazed forth with an indelible impact. No wonder Stella had been overwhelmed.

More than anything, Minerva wanted to understand her stepsister’s state of mind in those last months before her death. Oh, she hadn’t come up here deliberately to spy and poke and probe, but that had to be part of the reason she had turned off Highway 10 and headed up the hill. For a year Stella’s death had nagged at her, demanding that she do something about it, that she make someone suffer for it.

She needed to find out what had driven her stepsister to take that final, irrevocable step into the darkness. If they knew, Ruth and her father could pick up the threads of their lives and find some measure of serenity and acceptance.

Initially she had blamed Nick, but now it seemed fairly clear that like Ruth, like them all, he was living in one of the darker corners of hell.

Minerva sighed, looking around with a troubled frown.

Perhaps Stella should be allowed to rest in peace, that lovely phrase which promised so much.

Biting her lip, Minerva stared down at the faded hues of the Persian carpet, watching the wonderful coppery red and brilliant blue blur through her tears into a jumble of undefined hues.

What had been Stella’s thoughts during the last night she had spent here?

No one, she thought sadly, would ever know. Stella had made sure of that by not asking for help, by giving no reason. Sometimes Minerva wondered whether she would have made a difference; whether, if she’d been home, Stella would have confided in her.

Although Minerva was a year younger, she had been the stronger, treading through the minefields of adolescence with a light foot and comparative ease, whereas Stella had made hard weather of it.

When Stella got drunk it had been Minerva who had smuggled her into the house and dealt with the aftermath, just as she had coped the time Stella had tried marijuana. Later, realising that Stella had embarked on the first of a series of affairs, it was Minerva who had expostulated. Stella had listened, said airily that making love with someone you liked was no big deal, and not let Minerva’s reasoned arguments affect her behaviour at all.

In spite of her light-heartedness and her fragility, Stella had never been one for confidences. Minerva’s hands clenched on her lap as she fought guilt and pain and a wasteland of emotions. Why should she think that she might have made a difference if Ruth hadn’t seen anything, if Nick had been unable to help the woman he had married, the woman who had loved him so desperately? Although it hurt to accept that there was probably nothing she could have done, she had to, or risk spending the rest of her life haunted by regret.

It was time to let the past bury its dead.

Wearily, she went into the bathroom, a room of Victorian splendour, claw-footed bath and all, only modernised in the most essential ways. As warm and dry as the rest of the house, it breathed the same indefinable air of luxury.

Staring into the well-lit mirror, she saw no ghosts, just her own somewhat plain reflection, its only claims to beauty a heart-shaped face and a pair of large, dark blue eyes set in thick black lashes.

Stella had been a golden girl, with skin that tanned easily into a warm brilliance, set off by soft blue eyes and curly amber hair.

When Minerva was growing up she had hated her pallor and the sudden contrast of eyes and lashes and full, red mouth. After the affair with Paul she’d become reconciled to her lack of beauty. Her first and only romance had taught her that, when it came to looks versus character in women, looks won out every time.

Her hands fell to her side. Mouth twisting into a cynical little smile, she recalled unflinchingly Paul’s voice as he had pointed out her deficiencies in that department. She only had herself to blame; stupidly, she had pleaded with him to tell her why he was leaving. So he had.

‘Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror? You’re too thin, and you don’t make enough of what you have got—you dress as though you’re ashamed of being a woman.’

Stung, she had countered, ‘Just because I don’t wear plunging necklines—’

‘Well, darling, you haven’t got anything to plunge to, have you? Nice enough in their little way, but it’s a very little way, isn’t it?’

She understood now that he had been angry because she had forced him to justify his betrayal, but then his acid irritation had humiliated her.

He had looked at her white face and said shamefacedly, ‘I’m sorry, Minerva, I don’t want to hurt you, we’ve had some good times together, but when I saw Cass again, I knew that—well, that’s all they were, good times.’

She had thought Paul loved her as much as she loved him. Lord, but she’d been green, too green to realise that Paul had been using her to make his girlfriend jealous. Even more than his casual dismissal of her physical attributes and the lovemaking they had shared, she’d been wounded by her own stupidity.

The humiliation had long gone; within three months his pretty, voluptuous Cass had dumped him for a tall footballer. Now Minerva knew he’d been immature and cruelly spoilt, but the whole episode had left her with a cynicism that her life cooking meals for the rich had intensified.

Oh, she believed in love; only death had severed her father’s love for her mother, and his second marriage was truly happy, too. But if and when she married it would not be under the spell of a chemistry so intense she mistook it for love.

‘Never,’ she said, shaking her head.

The forgotten locks of hair moved in a rippling mass. She pulled a face at the determined woman in the mirror and set to tidying herself. Her long-fingered hands moved swiftly, pinning the strands to the back of her head. Although the style was severely practical, just as practical as her hands and her skills, it made her look older and more severe.

That, she thought as she turned to make the bed, was how she was. Her hard-won peace of mind was not going to be in jeopardy because the man who had married Stella looked like a fallen angel.

When Nick came into the kitchen just before half-past four, Minerva was taking a tray of muffins from the oven. Acutely aware of his burnished glance, she flicked them on to a wire rack and covered them with a cloth.

His smile, swift and brilliant as a lightning flash, seared through her. ‘Are those for afternoon tea? They smell good.’

Something moved in the pit of her stomach, primeval, intense. ‘Yes,’ she said shortly.

The telephone interrupted. He answered it, asked a couple of questions, said, ‘I’ll ring you back in five minutes when I’ve got the information,’ and hung up, asking, ‘Is the tea made?’

‘No, I’ve only just put the kettle on.’

‘In that case, can you bring it to the office?’

‘Yes, of course.’

The office was a large room with a very intimidating computer set-up. Minerva, who had a novice’s fear of technology, put the tray down on one corner of the desk well away from it, and turned to go.

Nick was reading something at the desk, his lean hand making quick notes in the margin. Apart from calling ‘Come in,’ when she knocked, he hadn’t looked up. But as she moved away, he asked absently, ‘Why is there only one cup and saucer?’

‘Well, I—’

He lifted his head, his eyes narrowing. ‘Go and get another cup for yourself.’

Another direct order, and one that he didn’t expect to be disobeyed. He didn’t seem to realise that she might prefer some privacy. Minerva hesitated.

There was no warmth in his eyes, yet she thought they lingered a moment on her mouth. ‘Minerva,’ he said softly, ‘you’re here as a member of the family who is helping out, not as a hired hand. You said so, remember.’

She returned defensively, ‘After five years of being very much the hired help, being a member of the family is going to take a bit of getting used to.’

‘Get used to it,’ he commanded as she turned to leave the room. ‘You’re doing both Helen and me a favour.’

When she returned he was still scribbling notes in the margin, but as she came into the room he put his pen down and stood up, waiting for her to sit down.

‘Have you got yourself organised?’ he asked quite pleasantly.

‘Oh, yes.’ Far too aware of him, she poured the tea and set the pot down. In spite of his superficial pleasantness there was something curiously implacable about Nick Peveril.

‘Can you cope with the menu for the dinner?’

‘That’s no problem.’ She could cope with an infinitely more elaborate menu than the one Helen had made out, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. It sounded too much like boasting, and he wasn’t her employer; she didn’t have to impress him with her skill. She said, ‘I’ll need some help, though. I can cook it, but I’m not going to be able to serve a sit-down meal for twenty people by myself.’

‘That’s all organised. Jillian Howard’s going to be here all of Friday and Saturday; she’ll help in the kitchen with the dinner, and the two high-school sons of the head shepherd will serve at table.’

Minerva knew she looked taken aback. Composing her expression, she asked, ‘Do they know what they’re doing?’

‘Yes, they’ve done it before. I prefer to get people who are working on the station to help out.’

It sounded very worthy, although Minerva caught herself wondering whether they were too intimidated by the man to refuse.

‘You, of course, will eat with us,’ he said, so blandly that she wondered for one heart-stopping moment whether he was able to read her thoughts.

She frowned. ‘It will make things more difficult,’ she warned.

His brows lifted slightly. ‘Too difficult?’

‘Well, no,’ she admitted.

‘Good. I’d like you to act as my hostess.’

‘Oh, but—’ Minerva’s eyes met his. She could read nothing in their depths, but her protest died before Genevieve Chatswood’s name fell from her unruly tongue.

‘That’s settled, then. Is there anything else you want to know?’ he asked politely.

She shook her head. ‘Not at the moment, no.’

Leaning forward, he said, ‘I know I more or less dumped you in it, and I’m damned grateful. Helen wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t agreed, and, to be honest, I didn’t like the sound of her daughter’s condition.’

Minerva said quietly, ‘I hope she’s all right. As for the other—well, it was good luck that I happened to be here. Perhaps it was meant.’

‘Or perhaps just coincidence,’ he countered, sounding very slightly bored. ‘Do you like what you’ve seen of the north so far?’

‘All I’ve seen so far,’ she told him acidly, ‘is rain. I left Auckland on a glorious day, but as soon as I reached the Brynderwyn Hills the rain set in, and it’s been raining on and off ever since.’

‘Well, you would come up in spring. Look at it this way—things can only get better. Last summer was such a dreary one we’re hoping for a good warm season this year. That’s if Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines doesn’t blow again.’

‘I thought farmers hated lovely dry summers,’ she said contrarily.

‘Who said anything about dry? A summer with no wind and at least an inch of rain each week will do us fine. Although there’s always the possibility of facial eczema then, of course.’

Minerva smiled. ‘I knew there had to be some catch,’ she teased. ‘Farmers are notorious for never being happy.’

‘Only because so much can go wrong when you’re at the mercy of the weather,’ he parried, a glint of amusement softening his features. ‘Cyclones, hailstorms, floods—’

‘Floods? Up here on the top of a thumping great hill?’

‘You’d be surprised how flooded the creek can get. We’re high enough to collect any raincloud that’s crossing Northland so we have to watch it carefully.’

The telephone rang. As he answered it Minerva started to get to her feet, but he shook his head. His hair gleamed golden in the light of the businesslike lamp above the desk. ‘Frank—what—? Where is he?’

The telephone quacked on. Nick frowned, staring into space, his eyes as clear and cold as shards of diamond. ‘No, I’m having afternoon tea. I’ll finish that, then go. I don’t care if he is wet!’ He hung up.

Minerva tried to look blank as though Frank and his wetness didn’t interest her in the least.

‘Frank is the other stockman,’ he said blandly, reaching for a muffin. Strong white teeth bit into it. Minerva knew she was an excellent cook, but she held her breath as he ate it, only relaxing when he said somewhat thickly, ‘This is delicious.’

‘Thank you.’ Curiosity overcame discretion. ‘Why is Frank wet?’

‘Today’s his day off and he’s been down at the pub since it opened. He decided not to drive his car home, so he started to walk. That was the manager’s wife. She’s just come back from shopping and picking up the kids at school. She offered Frank a ride, but he said he wasn’t fit to be in the car with children. Which is true—he’s drunk. So I’ll have to pick him up before the idiot gets run over.’

Minerva’s astonishment showed in her expression.

‘Good help is hard to get,’ he said shortly. ‘It’s the isolation.’

Clearly he had a paternalistic attitude towards his workers. No doubt the less ambitious liked it. It would have irked Minerva no end, but then, she had fought for her independence. Ruth had been horrified when she’d insisted on training as a chef. Her stepmother was a darling, but she was a little snobbish, and the thought of a member of her family working ‘as a servant’ had been hard to swallow.

Had Minerva taken Ruth’s tempting bait, sweetened with love and security, comfort and laughter, she would have stayed at home in a nice, safe job that didn’t take any of her energies, until she married. Like Stella.

‘The isolation?’ she asked now. ‘What isolation, for heaven’s sake?’

Nick leaned back in his chair and looked at her as though the slight snap in her voice intrigued him. ‘You don’t think you’ll mind the isolation?’

‘We’re only about twenty kilometres from Kerikeri. I don’t call that isolated.’

‘It’s a state of mind rather than a distance,’ he said.

Something in his voice caught Minerva’s attention. Hidden beneath the cool, distancing tone was a thread of intensity, a cryptic combination that sent small shocks along her nerve-ends. She looked up at an expressionless face, into eyes that seemed transparent as well-water, at a mouth relaxed into a crooked half-smile, yet she felt some unfathomable force beating through that enigmatic composure like the throb of a distant drum.

‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ she said quietly, more to fill the pulsing silence than to make a point. ‘My idea of isolation is somewhere the mail doesn’t go.’

Dark brows were raised. ‘We get it six times a week,’ he said, dead-pan.

‘How about your television reception?’

‘Perfect.’

‘And you’ve got power and water, as well as at least two bookshops in Kerikeri. A cinema, too. I don’t think you’re isolated at all. This is civilisation compared to some of the places I’ve been.’

His smile was ironic, almost mocking. ‘How adaptable you are. Where have you been?’

‘Oh, all around,’ she said vaguely, and picked up her cup and saucer again. People who boasted of their travels were complete bores.

He nodded, the dazzling eyes holding hers for a second until he reached for another muffin.

‘I’d better get back to the kitchen,’ she said, getting to her feet. He looked at her as though he knew she was retreating, and that slightly lop-sided mouth twisted.

‘Thank you again,’ he said as he rose. He waited until she was at the door before saying lightly, ‘Minerva?’

She looked over her shoulder. ‘Yes?’

‘Welcome to Spanish Castle.’

It almost sounded like a warning. She asked quickly, ‘Why Spanish? I can see the Castle, but it doesn’t look any more like a Spanish castle than an English one.’

‘Have you never heard of castles in Spain? Airy, insubstantial, glamorous illusions that fade with the hard light of day? You dream about your castle in Spain, but you never get it. A hundred and fifty years ago Nicholas Peveril came here with a woman he stole. He was happy for a little while, but he always knew her husband would find them. Which he did, after she’d spent two years in Nicholas’s bed and given him a son.’

‘He stole her?’

‘Remind me to tell you the whole story one day.’ That infuriating indifference had returned.

He nodded dismissively and turned back to the work he had been doing when she came in, his lean, strong hand moving decisively in the margin, the black writing standing out stark and very clear against the white paper.

‘Oh, by the way,’ he said without looking at her, ‘you’d better ring your parents to let them know where you are. If I know Ruth, she’ll have made you promise to ring every day, anyway.’

‘She tried,’ she said ironically. ‘You know Ruth. Five years of looking after myself count for nothing when I land in New Zealand, possibly the safest place in the world.’

‘Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to buck the trends. There are murderers and rapists here too,’ he said calmly.

‘I know. And sometimes there’s a person whose only mistake is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But all the telephone calls home are not going to make any difference, so I keep telling Ruth. So far I haven’t been able to convince her! I will ring her tonight, even if it’s only to make her feel happier. Thanks.’

He left almost immediately on his mission of mercy, so Minerva was able to relax as she peeled the ends of a fat bunch of asparagus, freshly cut from a garden somewhere close by.

It was strange in the big house by herself, with only Penelope, relaxed on the chair, for company. Accustomed to locks and keys and guards, to the strict security of a world gone mad, Minerva wondered at the man who would leave a total stranger here among so many beautiful things, and apparently not worry in the least about it.

She could have been a complete opportunist; she needn’t really be Stella’s sister. Nick obviously hadn’t recognised her. She was surprised to find that this hurt, a tiny niggling ache, and recognised it for the danger signal it was.

Nick Peveril might be a cold fish, but he was a very attractive cold fish, with far more than his share of a profound male magnetism that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with character or worth. Purely physical...

And perhaps he wasn’t so cold, after all. If anyone had asked her she wouldn’t have believed that he would drive through the rain to pick up his drunk stockman.

He arrived back within the hour, but stayed in the office. Minerva gave a final look around the kitchen, satisfied herself that her preparations for the meal were well under control, and went upstairs to shower and change.

Fortunately, in spite of the fact that she had planned to stay in motels and eat mostly takeaways, she had brought two all-purpose, almost uncrushable dresses that rolled up into no space at all. They were hardly glamorous, but they’d do. She eyed them both. One was the soft, clear ice-pink that suited her so well, the other the axiomatic little black dress. Deciding on the black, she hung it in the bathroom while she showered so the steam could smooth out its few creases. It was ready when, after putting on the lipstick and blusher that was all she used, she got into it.

Nick gave her a glass of sherry before dinner; they talked of her parents and her half-brother Kane, who was enjoying himself enormously at the same boarding-school Nick had attended, then found themselves discussing the implications of a book that had startled New Zealand. It was pleasant and low-key, and Minerva didn’t drink all of her sherry, yet she felt as though it had been champagne. Tiny bubbles of excitement fizzed softly through her bloodstream.

They ate in the morning-room off the kitchen, a room that moonlighted as a sitting-room too, for there were comfortable chairs at one end, and a set of cabinets and shelves that held books and pretty things as well as a television and an imposing stereo and CD player. The billionaire had been a stereo buff; Minerva noticed that the name on the speakers was the one on the huge affairs in the yacht.

Over dinner they spoke of generalities, nothing personal. Nick’s conversation revealed an incisive brain and a crisply unsentimental outlook which Minerva rather liked. She enjoyed the way he put her on her mettle.

Afterwards he helped carry the dishes into the kitchen, stacked the dishwasher while she made coffee, and told her that she was to feel free to watch television or play music if she wanted to. Unfortunately he wasn’t going to be able to stay with her; he had more work to get through.

Minerva found herself wondering if the detachment she found so off-putting was merely a front he assumed. Intuition, that subliminal reading of unnoticeable signs and intonations, made her suspect him of being a man of strong emotions and intense desires.

Of course she could be wrong. Perhaps he was simply ice through and through, and poor Stella had frozen to death.

She drank her coffee with him, and when he had gone back to the office rang her parents in their hotel in Seattle.

‘You’re where?’ Ruth asked.

‘Spanish Castle.’ She was glad Nick had left the room, because there was a note of betraying self-consciousness in her voice that galled her. ‘I dropped in to see Mr—Nick, just as his housekeeper was called away on a family emergency. She didn’t think she could go because Nick’s having a group of very high-powered Brazilian officials to dinner on Saturday, so Nick co-opted me.’

‘That’s sweet of you,’ Ruth said with satisfaction. ‘But talk about a busman’s holiday!’

‘I do like cooking, you know.’

‘Just as well, isn’t it. Darling, is Nick there with you?’

Absently, Minerva shook her head. ‘No, he’s working in his office.’

‘Oh, I won’t disturb him then.’

Ruth liked talking on the telephone, but eventually Minerva said, ‘Ruth, I have to go. This is costing me a packet!’

‘Surely Nick will—’

Minerva said firmly, ‘I’m paying for it.’

‘All right, then, I’ll see you when we get home, darling. Don’t hurry back to Auckland, though, if you’re having fun at Spanish Castle.’

Fun! Oh, Ruth, if you only knew, Minerva thought as she hung up.

On her way to bed, Minerva hesitated. Should she just go up, or beard the lion in his den and say goodnight? Bearding the lion seemed more polite. He might growl at her interruption, but Ruth would be proud of her manners.

He didn’t growl, or show any claws. Reading the contents of a file, he was standing across the room by a bank of cabinets. Even after he looked up it took a moment for him to register that she was there. ‘Yes?’ he said curtly.

‘I’m on my way to bed.’ A yawn brought her hand up over her mouth. ‘What time do you eat breakfast?’

‘Seven o’clock, but don’t worry about getting up, I can make my own. Goodnight. And thank you very much for stepping into the breach like this.’ His face was expressionless, his voice cool and distant.

‘Families are wonderful institutions,’ she returned flippantly. ‘Goodnight.’

The rain had stopped during dinner, and with a lightning change of mood the weather had gone from dank to fine. Up in her room, Minerva got into her pyjamas then sat on the bed, listening to the quietness flow in through the windows and through the big house. Nothing stirred; there was no sound of traffic, no breath of wind, nothing but peace and a cool, dark, moonless tranquillity.

Stella had loved parties and dances and dinners, people and motion and music; how had she felt about this all-pervading silence?

Yawning, Minerva got into bed and stretched out luxuriously across the queensized innersprung mattress.

She was almost asleep when she heard Nick come along the passage past her door. For a moment she thought he had stopped outside her room, but no, of course he’d gone into the room next door. It gave her the oddest sensation. The walls were too thick for her to hear more than the occasional noise of movement, but she could imagine him stripping off and getting into bed, and her wayward brain didn’t want to stop there.

Well, why not? she thought, trying to make light of it. Nick Peveril was definitely fantasy material, if you could put up with the icy remoteness.

Later, waking up from a confused dream, she realised she’d seen nothing of Stella in the grand old house, no photograph in the morning-room, nothing to say she had lived there. It seemed that, as far as Spanish Castle was concerned, her stepsister had simply never existed.