by Susan Napier
Oh, God!
‘Is there?’ she said brightly. ‘Well, your arrival did rather catch me on the hop.’ She was glad of the ready excuse. ‘I’m afraid I don’t react well to surprises.’
‘Really? Congreve would have it that uncertainty is one of the joys of life,’ he said suavely, no doubt trying to intimidate her with his intellect. Well, Vanessa wasn’t impressed. Anyone who could read could trot out quotations from classic English literature. She might not have gone to university but she could, and did, love to read widely. With anyone else she might even have enjoyed a foolish game of duelling quotations. As it was she just wanted him to find her dull and boring and totally unworthy of his interest.
‘Not mine,’ said Vanessa firmly, starting to edge towards the door, clutching her burden. She didn’t trust this sudden communicativeness of his. He had never shown any inclination to discuss literature or philosophy with his butler before...or ‘household executive assistant’ as he had ludicrously suggested she be re-titled.
She had given that idea short shrift. She was a butler and proud of it. It was what she had trained for. It was in her blood. Her English father was a butler and she had grown up in the stately British household that was his fiefdom, fascinated by the day-to-day management of what was not only a home but a family seat, and a three-hundred-year-old one at that. It had been her fond ambition to hold a similar position one day but, as she had discovered, life had a nasty way of subverting youthful ambitions.
‘No? That surprises me. I thought that coping with the unexpected was one of your great strengths. You certainly never had any problem accommodating the most bizarre requests of my guests... You didn’t turn a hair at the pet lion cub, or the demand to find enough sculls for a wagered boat race on the lake, or, for that matter, the man who collapsed in the soup with a newly developed seafood allergy. Without your prompt action he might have died.’
‘I didn’t say I couldn’t cope,’ said Vanessa, taken aback by his easy recall of incidents she had assumed were long dismissed from his mind as supremely unimportant. At the time they occurred she had merely received a cool word of approval, as if she had done nothing more, nor less, than was required of her. ‘I just said I didn’t react well—personally, I mean. I get churned up inside...’
‘It doesn’t show.’
‘Thank you.’ She was already regretting having told him that much. He was studying her with an intentness that increased her anxieties.
Her fingers curled into her palms as she fought the desire to check her hair. As it dried it would lighten several shades to the warm caramel that was so susceptible to the bleaching effects of the summer sun, although thankfully the gel she used to keep the sides tidy would prevent its waviness becoming too obvious. Still, Benedict Savage was an architect, skilled in the interpretation of line and form, observant of small details that might escape others...
‘It was a comment, not a compliment.’
‘In my profession that is a compliment,’ Vanessa retorted with an unconscious air of smugness that prompted an amused drawl.
‘Being a servant is hardly one of the professions.’
Vanessa bristled at the implied slur. Snob!
‘Of course not, sir. I humbly beg your pardon for my presumption, sir.’ She would have bowed and tugged her forelock but that would be going over the top. As it was his eyes glinted dangerously.
‘You have a devastating line in obsequiousness, Flynn. One might almost suspect it was insolence. Why have I never noticed that before, I wonder?’
Because she had never allowed herself to be so fixed in his attention before. Aghast at her foolishness, Vanessa tried to retrench.
‘I don’t mean to be—’
‘You mean you didn’t think I’d notice. Have I really been so complacent an employer?’
‘No, of course not,’ she lied weakly, and watched his thin mouth crook in a faint sneer.
‘Sycophancy, Flynn? Was that on the curriculum at that exclusive English school for butlers that you graduated, drenched with honours, from?’
This fresh evidence of the acuteness of his memory was daunting. She hugged the trailing sheets to her chest and refused to answer, realising that no answer, however cunningly phrased, would please him. He didn’t want to be pleased. He wanted a whipping-boy for his frustration. The irony was that she had richly earned the position!
‘That’s right,’ he said silkily. ‘Humour me. After all, you can afford to. You know I can’t fire you.’
‘Can’t you?’ Vanessa said, sensing an unforeseen trap in his goading.
‘Well, I could, but that would jeopardise all that I’m doing here, wouldn’t it?’
‘Would it?’ Vanessa was now bewildered.
‘You could tie me up in legal manoeuvring for years—’
‘Could I?’
Her response was a little too quick, a little too curious. His eyes narrowed. Vanessa straightened her spine and squared her shoulders, lifting her chin in a characteristic attempt to establish her physical superiority.
‘I could, couldn’t I?’ she rephrased with a suitable tinge of menace, but not all the threatening body language and fighting language at her disposal could redeem that brief and telling hesitation.
‘Could you?’
‘Yes.’ Her teeth nibbled unknowingly at her full lower lip.
‘And how, precisely, would you do it?’
She was even more at sea, the look in his blue eyes creating a turbulence that reminded her what a poor sailor she was. He looked amused and—her stomach roiled—almost compassionate!
‘Well, I...I...’
‘You don’t know, do you?’ he said gently. ‘You have absolutely no idea what I’m talking about.’
She lifted her chin even higher. ‘No.’ Her tone implied that neither did she care to find out.
He knew better.
‘Did you not understand Judge Seaton’s lawyer when he explained the situation to you?’ he said, still with that same, infuriating gentleness. ‘He assured me that he’d spoken to you directly after the funeral and that you’d appeared quite calm and collected.’
Vanessa frowned, trying to remember, her brows rumpling her smooth, wide forehead.
She had looked on Judge Seaton as not only a saviour but also as a man she had respected and admired and come to develop a fond affection for.
He had rescued her from the depths of misfortune and she, in turn, had travelled across the world with him, rescuing him from the inertia of his unwelcome retirement and the vicissitudes of old age and an irascible personality. Solitary by nature and never having married, when the judge had started having difficulty in getting about and suffering short memory lapses Vanessa had been the one who chivvied him out of his fits of depression and inspired him to start the book he had still been enthusiastically working on when he died—a social history of his adopted home, Whitefield House, and the surrounding Coromandel region.
His death, though not unexpected in view of his failing health, had been a shock, and at the time of the funeral Vanessa had still been numb and subconsciously hostile towards any threat of change in the haven that she had striven to create for herself at Whitefield. She had mentally switched off at any mention of an arrogantly youthful usurper who, it seemed to her, was proposing to take up his inheritance with unconscionable speed, given the fact that he had never bothered to visit his benefactor while he was alive, nor deigned to attend his funeral.
When Benedict Savage had finally made his appearance a week later he had proved totally alien to the late judge both physically and in temperament—something else that Vanessa had fiercely resented.
The fact that the hostility between them was mutual had suited her preconceptions so well that she had sought no explanation for it beyond the superficial. She was safe with male hostility. She could deal with it. It was male interest that made her nervous—self-consciously clumsy, inept and, worst of all, frighteningly vulnerable.
‘I remembe
r him rambling on and on about the will,’ she said slowly. ‘About there being no financial provision for me or some such thing, not that I expected one—I wasn’t family and I’d only been with him two years. I don’t remember what the lawyer said exactly. I was tired; I wasn’t concentrating very well. I was the one who had to make all the arrangements for the funeral, you know. You didn’t bother to arrive until it was all over!’ There was a touch of querulousness in her voice, the echo of that three-year-old hostility.
‘I won’t apologise for that,’ he said evenly. ‘George Seaton and I were only very distantly related on my mother’s side. He may well have not known of my existence—I certainly didn’t know of his. He didn’t leave the house to me by name, he simply deeded it to his closest surviving male blood-relative. Needless to say, my mother was not amused at being told she was no more than a mere twig on the family inheritance tree.’
She hadn’t known that. It certainly threw a different light on his behaviour. And, having found his parents, on the strength of their single, fleeting visit to Whitefield, even more frigid, hypercritical and self-orientated than their son, she could just imagine Denise Savage’s classically beautiful face frozen in an expression of Victorian affront at being confronted with the evidence of her unimportance in the male scheme of things.
A ghost of a smile widened Vanessa’s mouth. ‘He was an appalling old male chauvinist pig,’ she admitted with affectionate disapproval.
‘And yet he hired a female butler barely out of her teens?’
For once Vanessa didn’t freeze up at the delicate probe.
‘I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.’ And for all the wrong reasons, extremely sordid ones. ‘His previous butler had died after being with him for about fifty years. I don’t think he could bear the idea of setting another man in his place and I suppose I appealed to his sense of chivalry...’
‘Why do you say that?’
Her mouth twisted softly awry. ‘He felt sorry for me—’ She had almost forgotten whom she was talking to but a sudden shift in his alertness, causing light to flash like a warning signal off the lenses of his glasses, reminded her. ‘I was in between jobs at the time,’ she explained blandly.
‘Well, he certainly made sure you wouldn’t lose this one,’ Benedict commented. ‘A condition of my inheriting was that I retain the services of the existing butler for at least five years from the date of probate being granted...unless said butler voluntarily relinquished her duties.’
Vanessa’s eyes and mouth rounded in astonishment at the revelation. Then a rush of anger flushed her system and her mouth snapped. ‘But that first day—you threatened to get rid of me because I was a woman!’
‘Untrue. I simply suggested that you would not find me as congenial as the judge to work for, and that you would be happier elsewhere. And I think that “girl” might have been the word I actually used...’
‘Suggested nothing! You were deliberately insulting,’ Vanessa remembered bitterly. ‘You implied I couldn’t do the job because of my sex. You implied that I only had it because I had some kind of hold over a senile old man. The judge wasn’t senile and you knew it—the lawyer must have been perfectly clear about the validity of that will. You were trying to get me to quit!’ she realised explosively. ‘Well, I’m glad I refused!’
Not for the world would she tell him that it was cowardice that had held her back, not a determination to prove him wrong. Not even his slimy allegations could winkle her out of the safe little burrow she had dug for herself. Whitefield needed her and she needed Whitefield. Here she was known only by her name and her job, and not by her reputation.
‘And I wasn’t a girl, either!’ she finished angrily, determined to deny him on all counts. ‘I was twenty, and I’ve always been very mature for my age.’ It was what had been her downfall—her air of calm self-sufficiency combined with a body that, Everest-like, was a challenge to a particular kind of man simply because it was so majestically there. Such splendid isolation had cried out to be conquered...
‘You looked like one to me—a big, gangly girl, slow as a wet week, with a surly black adolescent glower and a habit of looking down your nose at me as if I were a lower form of life. No wonder I didn’t want to have you foisted upon me!’
She immediately felt thick and ungainly, all elbows and knees, the way she used to feel as an wildly overgrown teenager. It was a long time since anyone had made her so clumsily self-aware and she didn’t like it. Not at all. Unknowingly she gave him the same filthy black look that she had given him back then.
‘When you’re my size you can’t flit about like a humming bird,’ she gritted. ‘If I move carefully it’s because I have to calculate clearances that other women take for granted. I doubt if you’d want me blundering about among all these antiques. I’m not, and have never been, slow. Speed is not necessarily an indication of efficiency, you know. In time-and-motion terms, my way is a lot more energy-efficient than if I was rushing about creating a lot of hustle and bustle over tasks that can be performed simply and without fuss!’
If he recognised his favourite phrase being lobbed back in his face, he didn’t acknowledge it. Instead, her vehement lecture appeared to amuse him. She made a tentative move around him and he shifted his weight, blocking her path with the mere threat of further movement.
‘Mm, so I very quickly discovered. Why do you think I didn’t persist in my efforts to get rid of you? You don’t appear to exert yourself unduly and yet the work is always done and this house always runs like a well-oiled machine...’ If only he had seen her flying up the stairs that morning. Talk about exerting herself unduly! ‘If you had been other than supremely capable I’d never have left the supervision of the restorations in your hands. You’ve never violated that trust. I wasn’t criticising you just now, I was simply telling you what my first impressions of you were.’
‘Thank you, but I could have done without knowing,’ said Vanessa acidly, thinking that his trust would be summarily withdrawn if he knew the truth about her...not merely about last night but the whole ugly mess that had prompted the judge’s job offer and her ignominious flight from England.
She wondered what his reaction would be if she blurted it all out now. He would probably run the full gauntlet: shock, horror, distaste. She had seen it all before, from people far less fastidious than Benedict Savage, people who were supposed to have been her friends.
‘I thought it time to get it out in the open—so that I might begin to feel less like an interloper here.’
‘Interloper?’ Vanessa’s impatience got the better of her. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she told her employer. ‘The house belongs to you; you can’t be an interloper in your own home.’
A grim smile twitched his hard cheek. ‘Can’t you?’ His voice lifted from a barely audible irony to that familiar ironic crispness. ‘But then, this isn’t really my home, is it? If one counts a home as a family dwelling, or a residence one has a sentimental attachment to through regular use, I suppose you could call me effectively homeless. I don’t think I’ve spent more than a month at a time at the same address in the last five years.’
The faintly wistful self-derision in his words gave Vanessa a pang but she caught herself before she started feeling too sorry for him. The man was a millionaire for goodness’ sake; he had everything he could possibly want and he had the nerve to complain because his life wasn’t perfect! There were people in the world—in this country—who lived in cardboard cartons, or worse, and here he was complaining about having too many homes!
‘How absolutely frightful for you,’ she replied with a crispness that brought his head up with a jerk. ‘Jobless and homeless. No wonder you’re depressed. If I were you I’d be suicidal.’
‘If you were me you wouldn’t be having the problems I’m having,’ he said cryptically, after a tiny pause and an all-encompassing look that made her extremely nervous. ‘And I can’t envisage you ever taking the easy way out of your problems.
You’re the type to go down with all guns blazing.’
‘I don’t approve of firearms,’ she said primly, disturbed by the accuracy of his reading of her character.
‘We have something in common, then...other than sharing possession of this house. That is what we do, isn’t it, legal ownership not withstanding? You’re the one who really makes a home of this house; you’re the one who brings it to daily life, who imprints it with personality...’
Vanessa was aghast at the thought that her possessiveness about the house might be the object of amused speculation to others. It was her secret, her little piece of foolish whimsy. Her eyes were stony as she denied her weakness. ‘I enjoy seeing the house restored to some of its former glory but I’m the caretaker, that’s all. I’m just carrying out your orders.’
‘Since I’m hardly ever here to issue them that statement is highly debatable.’
Her eagerness to preserve the state of armed neutrality between them that had made it so easy to treat him as a cypher instead of a human being made her quick to sense criticism.
‘If you’re not satisfied with my work—’
‘I never said that. On the contrary, I’m delighted with the high standards you’ve maintained in trying circumstances. The restorations are turning out even better than I envisaged. After you’ve finished your bed-making I’ll get you to give me a tour to show me the progress...’
Although bringing him up to date with the work carried out in his absence was a familiar duty that she usually tackled with quiet pride, the thought of spending more time alone in his company while her nerves were still in such a jittery state made Vanessa quail. Fortunately she had a ready excuse at hand.
‘I’ve arranged for some members of the historical society to visit this morning. You did say you didn’t mind them being shown around in return for access to their records about the house. Perhaps they could tag along?’
He looked unenthused at the prospect. ‘Is Miss Fisher one of them?’
‘As a matter of fact, yes,’ Vanessa said innocently. The elderly lady, an archetypal twittering spinster, had taken a shine to the elusive new owner of Whitefield and would make a thorough nuisance of herself if she knew he was back in residence.
