The Australian's Housekeeper Bride

by Armstrong, Lindsay

  ‘I don’t think those kind of feelings are always susceptible to what one should or should not do.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ he said sharply. ‘Look,’ he took hold, ‘to be perfectly honest I’d rather nobody knew. It’s the kind of nightmare situation you hope to hell you never have to divulge. That’s why…’ He stopped and shrugged. ‘That’s why I didn’t. Can you understand that, Rhiannon? He was my father.’

  She stared at him, pale to her lips. ‘Well, maybe, but in that case, why are you telling me now?’

  ‘The thought of you trying to befriend her—’ he stopped frustratedly ‘—suddenly brought to mind the fact that it could be a perfect tool for her to undermine us.’

  ‘You mean Andrea wouldn’t be above telling me what you’ve just told me?’

  ‘Perhaps not. She’s already taken one possibility to get back at me and turned it into a reality.’

  ‘How about—wanting you back?’ Rhiannon asked, wide-eyed and paler than pale now.

  ‘She hasn’t got a chance in hell,’ he said grimly. ‘She knows that but I wouldn’t put it past her to try to create maximum damage between us,’ he added cynically. ‘But look, we both knew we had experiences behind us that were unhappy and had changed us. Didn’t we?’

  ‘All the same—no.’ She stopped abruptly and closed her eyes briefly. ‘I can’t think straight but yes, I guess we have,’ she said bleakly and added, ‘Did you intend to tell me at all? I mean, if she hadn’t turned up?’

  ‘Yes. I always knew she’d turn up sooner or later.’

  ‘But you decided to wait until I was so—hooked, it mightn’t have made a difference?’ she challenged.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Her mind flew back to the conversation they’d had the day before. ‘I mean pregnant, maybe, not to mention indebted to you over my father—I am that already, although at least I still have a chance to repay you there, so—’

  ‘No,’ he said harshly and his fingers closed over her wrist. ‘I was hoping things would have fallen into place for us so completely it wouldn’t matter a row of beans. Incidentally, nothing’s changed my mind to the contrary. I see no reason why they can’t. Do you?’

  Rhiannon stared up at him and jumped as the house phone rang.

  He reached for it impatiently. ‘Yes, what is it?’ he barked down the line, not taking his eyes from Rhiannon’s face.

  She couldn’t tell the gist of the conversation from his monosyllables but he was clearly pressured when he put the phone down.

  ‘That was Matt. Mary’s been put into hospital with some virus they can’t identify so they’re taking no chances. Matt, understandably, wants to be with her but he’s due at an important conference tomorrow in Melbourne and he’s asked me to take his place—I’m the only one who can. Andrea is going down to see Mary now. I’ll have to leave tonight too in order to get the first flight tomorrow.’

  ‘You do understand, don’t you?’ he said later. ‘Although why the hell you won’t come with me is—’

  ‘No, Lee,’ Rhiannon said firmly as she helped him pack a bag. For some reason it had become paramount to her not to walk into yet another wall of Lee’s making.

  ‘Don’t forget I haven’t seen my father for nearly two weeks now, so I must do it.’

  ‘One condition, then—otherwise I’ll put a halter on you.’ He smiled fleetingly but not with particular amusement. ‘You don’t allow Andrea to come between us in your thoughts—in other words you don’t do anything silly until I get back.’

  She studied him coolly. ‘That’s not a good choice of words, Lee.’

  ‘Maybe not,’ he conceded, ‘but think of the Bloomfield and how we made love, because that’s what I’ll be thinking of. And missing you.’

  He took the pile of shirts out of her hand and tossed them on the bed so he could take her in his arms. ‘Missing you like hell,’ he said barely audibly, ‘and this.’

  He started to kiss her. She tried not to respond but he was too clever for her.

  He knew exactly how she liked it now and all the right buttons to push so that when he drew away she was shaken to the core with desire and horrified at the thought of being left alone.

  He observed the pulse fluttering wildly at the base of her throat and shadows in her eyes. ‘Will you change your mind?’

  It was with the greatest effort of will that she said, ‘No. But I’ll…miss you too.’

  Something flickered in his eyes but she couldn’t identify it and all he said was, ‘OK. Take care of yourself.’ Then he went on to practicalities.

  He told there was a mare in the stables she might like to ride, and since it was school holidays she might like to take Christy with her. He suggested, with a wicked little grin, that she might also like to do a bit of horse whispering with Poppy. He said if she needed to access her emails to use his computer in the library.

  He told her the blue Mercedes station wagon was now hers and he handed her a brand-new credit card in the name of Mrs Rhiannon Richardson. The limit on it made her eyes widen, it was so large.

  She hesitated then agreed to everything, although what she really felt like telling him was that she felt “bought”, but it wasn’t the time or place, and it probably wasn’t the correct sentiment anyway—more of a case that she’d sold herself…

  Rhiannon closed the front door on Lee and looked around. The house was suddenly huge and silent, almost scarily so. She swallowed then she reminded herself that Cliff and Christy were in the gardener’s cottage only a few hundred yards from the house, and she relaxed a little.

  She had a shower then made herself a light supper before, with a heartfelt yawn, taking herself to bed in Lee’s wing.

  But sleep was hard to come by.

  It was a bed that held some momentous memories for her and despite fresh bedlinen, Lee’s presence was almost tangible, so much so, it was hard to crystallise her dilemma against the power of those memories.

  Obviously an experience such as his had to have made him cynical and more so than just a love affair turned sour involving just the two of them.

  But if there was a secret hankering for Andrea he couldn’t quite kill despite denying it so strenuously, it was worse—much worse.

  It meant there was another zone he retreated to, as she’d sensed in their last morning on the Bloomfield, possibly even a private little hell for him.

  It meant no other woman would get anything but the crumbs…

  She turned her head on the pillow and grimaced. Pretty spectacular crumbs—her father taken care of, luxury, wonderful sex, but never the real core of the man, and to think that was what she had been afraid of revealing!

  No, she thought despairingly then. Maybe he’s right, maybe it is all over for him, it was a terrible thing to do—marry his father to get back at him.

  So why did she have this—this intuition, she asked herself, that the attraction between them wasn’t completely smashed to pieces? Because he’d been so determined to keep Andrea out of Southall, even to the extent of marrying a virtual stranger because he could never forgive her? But if he could never forgive her, was the hurt still there? And if the hurt was still there…

  She moved restlessly and transferred her thoughts to her own feelings.

  If their marriage had been a union between two scarred people, both genuinely not capable of falling in love, then time, the respect they shared, plus the attraction between them, might have secured it.

  If one of them had fallen madly in love, however, that was another matter altogether.

  She grimaced as she thought that thought and wondered who she was trying to kid with a clinical summation of the facts that sounded as if it had come out of a textbook.

  She had fallen in love with him—there was nothing clinical about the level of hurt she was experiencing to think that he hadn’t respected her or trusted her enough to tell her his innermost secret. Nothing clinical at all to imagine him with another woman she now knew in the flesh—and feel like
screaming…

  Was that why, she wondered suddenly, he’d introduced a fantasy element to their married life? Not only to help her over her own difficulties but also to remove it to another plane that Andrea Richardson had no part in?

  It was a bizarre thought but it troubled her obscurely and she thought back to their last conversation the night before they left the Bloomfield after they’d participated in sizzling upright sex.

  She’d had the strange feeling at the time that there was an undercurrent she’d missed. Was it his way of warning her that she might find herself on shaky ground one day, so hang on to these moments?

  She shook her head frustratedly and finally fell into a fitful sleep. Once, when she woke up, she cursed herself for refusing to go with Lee. Anything would have been better than lying alone and greatly fearful in his bed…

  Chapter 7

  Lee rang her early the next morning with a surprise request.

  He told her that Mary was resting fairly comfortably but her condition was still a bit of a mystery, so Matt and Andrea were staying in Brisbane. Then,

  ‘I know this is a bit like history repeating itself and dreadfully short notice, but I could be gone for a couple of days and it might—you might appreciate something to do,’ he said down the line. ‘Get the house ready for the memorial service.’

  ‘Me?’

  ‘Look, I’m sorry,’ he said intensely, ‘but there’s no way of putting it off now Andrea has spread the word and—it is the kind of thing you do superbly. I also, for my father’s sake, would like it to be a genuine and moving celebration of his life. There will also be pretty important people attending—at least one state premier.’

  ‘Of course,’ Rhiannon said quietly. ‘What does Andrea have to say, though?’

  ‘At least she’s been fairly organised but the house and the caterers she’s happy to leave up to you. And not only are you superb at it but it is your home, Rhiannon. Make that our home. One thing, though, do get in caterers. I don’t want you working your fingers to the bone and I’m sure there’ll be quite a crowd.’

  ‘I’ll do my best. How’s Melbourne?’

  ‘Funnily enough, it reminds me of the day four years ago when I met you.’

  ‘It’s pouring?’ she hazarded.

  ‘Proverbial cats and dogs. How are you?’

  ‘I’m fine. And, you’re right, it will give me something to do.’

  ‘All right. Listen, what are you wearing?’

  ‘I—’ Rhiannon looked down at herself ‘—jeans and a jumper, it’s a bit chilly.’

  ‘No pearls?’

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Pity. I might have had to put myself on the first plane home.’

  Rhiannon couldn’t help laughing softly and they talked for a few minutes more with no constraints until he told her his flight had been called.

  She drove down to see her father and aunt that morning.

  Before Lee’s call she’d primed herself to put on the greatest act of her life for her aunt and father, a glowing-bride act rather than the confused, unhappy person she’d become overnight.

  But after their conversation, she couldn’t help feeling somewhat reassured.

  Then the fact that Luke Fairfax was doing so well also helped. He was allowed up in a wheelchair and, although it was going to take extensive physio and other therapy to get him on his feet, he was cheerful—he was even playing his guitar and giving little impromptu concerts for other patients.

  Both he and Di enjoyed Rhiannon’s descriptions of her honeymoon and they both accepted without question the fact that she’d be really tied up over the next few days.

  She drove back to Southall in quite a positive frame of mind.

  Two days later, while Lee was still in Melbourne, Andrea came to lunch.

  She’d rung the day before to make sure it was convenient for Rhiannon, who had decided not to mention it to Lee in their phone conversations, and she arrived bearing a bottle of champagne wrapped and beribboned in gold foil paper and an orchid in a pot similarly wrapped.

  ‘Why, thank you!’ Rhiannon said. She’d taken some care with her appearance.

  She’d put on a fitted short-sleeved dress in a summery blue stretch fabric dotted with mauve flowers, and high blue sandals. She was lightly made up and her hair was smooth and shining and she was wearing her pearls.

  ‘We never did get to drink a toast,’ Andrea said. ‘And orchids are supposed to last for ever.’

  ‘Are they? How’s Mary?’ Rhiannon asked as she led the way to the veranda, where she’d set up a lunch table with a beautifully appliquéd cloth, the Flora Dora Mikasa china with its narrow black and gold rim and pink rosebuds, and some real pink rosebuds in a silver loving cup.

  It was a lovely day, there were birds singing in the garden and dragonflies hovering in the clear air.

  ‘They’re letting her go home tomorrow. All the tests for anything nasty that could affect the baby have been negative—they now think it was just a touch of flu.’

  ‘That’s good news.’ There was an open bottle of wine set in a silver cooler on the table.

  Rhiannon poured two glasses after a questioning look at Andrea, and they sat down. Sharon brought out the casserole Rhiannon had made of pork cutlets with an apple and cream sauce.

  ‘So,’ Rhiannon said after she’d served them, ‘you said we needed to talk. If you’d like to be more involved in the catering and so forth for the memorial service, that’s fine with me, Andrea.’

  ‘No, I wouldn’t.’ Andrea lifted her knife and fork. She wore slim cream linen trousers and gauzy grey and yellow blouse. ‘I have it on the evidence of my own eyes that you’re the person who can handle it best.’

  ‘Then?’

  ‘There’s no reason we can’t get to know each other a little, is there?’

  ‘Probably not but you sounded rather serious.’

  Andrea ate thoughtfully for a while, then, ‘Unless you are prepared to accept the view that I am the wicked stepmother.’

  Rhiannon considered for a moment. ‘No, I’m not. Things can happen between men and women that don’t make a lot of sense to others but they happen all the same.

  I do also think that men find it harder to cope when they lose a partner, in general—that’s why they often remarry or get into another relationship fairly soon. My own father is an exception, as it happens, but,’ she shrugged, ‘what was between you and Lee’s father has nothing to do with me.’

  Andrea stared at her as if she was making some judgements of her own. Finally she said, ‘Do you have any idea what it’s like to be treated as an outcast?’

  Rhiannon looked away. ‘Andrea, this really has nothing to do with me. I—Anyway—’

  ‘Do you have any idea what it’s like being accused of shortening Ross’s life?’

  Rhiannon looked shocked. ‘They haven’t said that, surely!’

  ‘No, but I’m sure Lee’s thought it, despite the fact that Ross had rheumatic fever as a child, which affected his heart, and he often joked that he never thought he’d make fifty, let alone sixty.’

  ‘He has, Lee—I mean, he allowed you to hold this memorial service,’ Rhiannon said carefully.

  ‘He couldn’t stop me.’ Andrea’s dark eyes flashed. ‘Don’t think I don’t know that I’ll be relegated as soon as it’s over, though. But I’m not prepared to accept it and I want you to tell him that.’

  ‘Why me?’ Rhiannon looked astounded.

  ‘It was a choice of you or Matt, to be honest. He’s never been quite as anti me as Lee. As for Lee himself, beyond absolute banalities, he’s like a brick wall.

  He even refuses, unless it’s absolutely necessary, to be in the same room with me.’

  Rhiannon opened her mouth to say she knew the brick-wall feeling but stopped herself in time. And she suddenly remembered Mary’s party and Lee’s insistence that she go as a guest—after he’d realised Andrea was to be a guest too? To counteract Andrea’s presence? she wondered now. T
hat probably made more sense than her social skills…

  ‘I think Matt would have been a better bet,’ she said slowly. ‘I’m so—new to the family.’

  ‘All the same, you must have some—’ Andrea smiled sketchily ‘—you must have some influence over Lee. That’s why I’d like you to tell him. As well as telling him he may think he can ignore me—’

  ‘But,’ Rhiannon interjected, and stopped abruptly.

  ‘I made his father very happy over the last years of his life whatever Lee might like to think, so there has to be a place for me.’

  Rhiannon blinked several times as she grappled with the issue.

  Andrea pushed her plate away, half-finished. ‘I’m sorry, it’s delicious, but I don’t seem to have much appetite. And I’m sorry to dump this on you, Rhiannon, but Lee has given me no choice. So would you please tell him that unless he sees things my way, I’m fully prepared to air some of the family’s dirty linen in public. He’ll know what I mean.’

  No choice? Rhiannon thought as she held Andrea’s dark gaze steadily. I find that hard to believe, so why are you doing this, Andrea?

  To make sure I know what happened just in case Lee has left me in ignorance? If so, that means you have another agenda, Andrea…Could it be in the nature of throwing a spanner in the works between me and Lee?

  She rubbed the bridge of her nose and said abruptly, ‘I’ll think about it. But I won’t be doing anything until after the memorial—and neither should you,’ she said definitely.

  Andrea lifted a dark eyebrow. ‘Not just a pretty face?’ she hazarded.

  ‘No,’ Rhiannon agreed coolly and composedly.

  ‘Very well.’ Andrea shrugged and finished her wine. ‘I must say, you do seem to be particularly competent.’

  Rhiannon let that one pass.

  ‘But for what it’s worth, I did make Ross happy,’ Andrea continued. ‘Yes, I may have married him on the rebound but he knew that, although not who it was. He also knew I was on my uppers at the time and,’ she gestured a little frustratedly, ‘I’m not good at handling that.’