An Exception to His Rule

by Lindsay Armstrong

  His lips twisted. ‘So you did. Well—’ he drained his glass and stood up ‘—on that note I think I’ll leave you to your memories, Miss Livingstone, and I will take mine...somewhere else. Goodnight.’ And he patted her on the head, told Tottie to stay put, and strolled out.

  Harriet stared after him in a state of suspended animation. In other words, with her mouth open and her eyes huge and dark with disbelief.

  Was this his retaliation for what she’d done last night?

  Why did she feel disbelief, though? she found herself wondering. Because she’d been convinced he would react differently to what had been—talk about incendiary!—another incendiary statement she’d made.

  All the same, a true statement, she reasoned with herself. She was deadly afraid that once she gave in to Damien Wyatt she’d be hooked. She’d be on a roundabout, in love with a man who didn’t believe in love, who didn’t believe in marriage...

  As if she hadn’t had enough trauma in that direction.

  * * *

  Damien Wyatt, after checking his property over thoroughly, and making sure the cook was in no position to do any more damage, climbed the stairs and walked into his bedroom but he didn’t immediately go to bed. He didn’t even turn the light on.

  He stood instead at the open window and listened to the sea crashing onto the beach. From the sound of it, he judged it to be high tide or close to it. And he could see a tracing of phosphorous lying luminous on the beach as each wave receded.

  But he was only registering the phosphorous absently. He was thinking of Harriet Livingstone. He could see her in his mind’s eye, serving up her paella and her lemon meringue with that slim tall figure in daisy-patterned leggings and a white blouse.

  Thinking of her last night as she’d looked lovely enough to stir any man’s blood. And had danced in her own way, a way that was enough to tempt any man.

  And tonight, soaked to the skin and her hands and face blackened, then clean and neat again in jeans and a track top.

  Hearing her saying the kind of things women who were not naïve couldn’t say with a straight face—she was an all or nothing person in that direction. Sex and relationships, in other words. Accusing him of being too good in bed for her peace of mind...

  He fingered the curtain then turned away and threw himself down in an armchair. The room was still in darkness but there was a lamp on the table beside the armchair. He pressed the button and soft light radiated from under the silk shade. And the bedroom came alive in its blue and gold trappings.

  He’d inherited the master bedroom when his parents had passed away, although he hadn’t moved into it until he’d married, and it still reflected his mother’s taste. A four-poster bed, flocked wallpaper, tapestries—if it wasn’t a superbly comfortable bed he’d have left the grandeur of this bedroom, which made him think it should belong in a French chateau, to darkness and silence after he and Veronica had separated.

  Or, he mused, maybe it wasn’t only the bed. Perhaps he continued to use the room as a warning to himself never to forget the trauma and betrayal Veronica had brought to him.

  Maybe...

  But where to place Harriet Livingstone in his scheme of things?

  He moved restlessly. It was unfortunate but true, he had to admit, that he was extremely attracted to her, even if he couldn’t quite analyse why.

  What was more unfortunate about it was that he believed her when she said she wasn’t built for affairs. Why he believed her, he couldn’t say. Why he didn’t see it as a ploy on her behalf to tell him she was an all or nothing girl, a ploy to set him on fire physically in a manner of speaking, he couldn’t say either.

  But what he’d considered the natural progression from a spontaneous attraction that had gripped them both was now fraught with all sorts of dangers...

  It always had been from her point of view, he found himself conceding. She’d always known it was a road she couldn’t, or shouldn’t, travel.

  He’d always thought, he conceded too with an inward grimace, that he could break her down or win her over to something that was fulfilling, pleasant but not too deep—no, not too deep.

  ‘You’re a fool, Damien Wyatt,’ he told himself. ‘Too blind to see that she is that kind of girl—a genuinely all or nothing girl. A girl who could be devastated if you had a relationship but didn’t marry her—and now you’ve got to withdraw somehow.

  ‘Why would it be so impossible to marry her?’

  A pool of silence swallowed up his question.

  Because he didn’t believe he could trust any woman again? And therefore he didn’t want to inflict the worst of his cynicism on Harriet Livingstone?

  He stood up abruptly. The sooner he distanced himself from her the better.

  * * *

  Harriet, to her surprise, fell asleep as soon as her head touched the pillow and she slept deeply and dreamlessly the night of the fire.

  As she studied herself in the bathroom mirror the next morning she couldn’t help but notice that, despite that night of quality sleep, she looked tense. There seemed to be an undertone of worry to her expression.

  ‘Damien,’ she said softly to herself. ‘Things between us are—a worry, aren’t they? What am I going to do?’

  She left the bathroom and suddenly remembered her kitchen would be on call and the least she could do was have some coffee ready.

  * * *

  It was Isabel who arrived first, looking shocked.

  ‘Damien rang me earlier,’ she told Harriet, puffing a bit after climbing the stairs. ‘Thank heavens it didn’t spread. I should have done something about Cook before now,’ she added with a sigh. ‘Thanks for helping to put it out.’

  ‘I didn’t do much, other than pointing a hose. Would you like some coffee?’

  ‘Love some. I’m afraid you’re stuck with me for meals and I’m not much of a cook,’ Isabel confessed.

  ‘That’s OK. I enjoy it. In fact I was just going to cook some bacon and eggs for breakfast.’

  ‘Yum! I’ll stay put then.’

  ‘What about Damien?’ Harriet asked as she reached into the fridge for her breakfast ingredients.

  ‘Oh, he’s gone off again. Perth this time. Not sure when he’ll be back. He’s got some South African mining magnate he’s dealing with.’ Isabel waved a hand.

  ‘Oh,’ Harriet said.

  ‘Didn’t he mention it? I suppose he didn’t have time,’ Isabel continued without waiting for a response. ‘He’s left me screeds of instructions to do with the kitchen—you know, it did need renovating and modernising.’ Isabel chuckled.

  Harriet smiled as well, but it wasn’t really an amused smile.

  * * *

  ‘So.’

  It was late in the afternoon and she was sitting on a bench with Tottie beside her on a small headland just south of Heathcote homestead. It was an overcast day with a cool breeze that was lifting Tottie’s shaggy coat and causing the seagulls to plane on the thermals.

  They’d been for a long brisk walk and were on their way home now.

  ‘So,’ Harriet said again. ‘It’s all off, Tottie. Your master has walked away without a word and I should be celebrating because I’ve always—almost—known I was playing with fire just by being anywhere near him.’

  ‘I’m not—’ she put her arm around Tottie ‘—celebrating, though. I’m miserable. I feel abandoned. I feel hard done by because he can come and go while I’m stuck here because of his mother’s collection, because of Brett, not that I hold Brett responsible for anything...’

  She stared out over the silvery sea. It was a choppy seascape today with whitecaps that, if you knew anything about matters maritime, told you the breeze was running at about twenty knots.

  How did I know that? she wondered. Must have been amongst quite a lot of the
useless information I learnt from Dad. Is any information useless, though?

  She continued to stare out to sea and grimaced as she saw a yacht sailing south and riding the waves a bit like a rocking horse. Then she felt Tottie stiffen and saw her nose quiver as she tested the wind. The final giveaway as the big dog bounded to her feet was the joyful bark she reserved for one person and one person only—Damien.

  Harriet scrambled to her feet and there he was, climbing the headland towards them. Then she stood like a statue until he was right up to them and her eyes were wide and astonished because he wore a suit and a tie.

  ‘I thought...I thought you were in Perth,’ she stammered.

  ‘I had planned to be,’ he replied as he made a fuss of Tottie, ‘but something wouldn’t let me go.’

  ‘What?’ she asked huskily, her expression mystified.

  ‘You.’

  She blinked several times. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You once believed you owed me an explanation. I’ve come under the same compulsion.’

  He paused and loosened his tie and once again the way the breeze lifted his dark hair gave her goose bumps.

  ‘I thought it was best for us to—just cut this thing between us,’ he said then, his dark eyes resting on the riot of curls in her hair the wind had whipped up. ‘I thought that last night and right until I got to Sydney airport from Ballina this morning,’ he said dryly. ‘Then I changed my mind and flew back. Or, rather, it got changed for me by some arcane process I don’t quite understand, but anyway—’

  He stopped and looked around. ‘Do you want to hear this here or back down—?’

  ‘Here,’ she broke in.

  So they sat down on the bench and Tottie lay down at their feet with a look of pure contentment.

  ‘It’s about Veronica,’ he said. ‘She was, as Charlie insisted on putting it—’ he looked heavenwards ‘—just gorgeous. Not only that; she was bright. She ran her own IT consultancy business. We had an affair, then we got married.

  ‘I have to say,’ he went on thoughtfully, ‘that we fought as spectacularly as we did the opposite. But she wasn’t cut out to stay at home and run things like Isabel does. That was something I often found irritating and often—’ he shrugged ‘—held against her. Mind you, she had her own list of sins she held against me and, to be honest, the relationship was foundering. Then she discovered she was pregnant and, although she’d been rather secretive about it, I thought—it seemed to be a calming influence. I didn’t realise she was simply subdued and—worried.’

  Harriet looked down at her hands.

  ‘And the baby came, a boy, no problems, until he was about six months old. Then he was diagnosed with a blood disorder and both Veronica and I were tested to establish our blood groups et cetera. That’s when it emerged—’ Damien stared out to sea for a long moment ‘—that I wasn’t the baby’s father.’

  Harriet gasped.

  ‘As you say,’ he commented with some irony. ‘At least that was my first reaction. Of course, after that, things got...much more animated. Accusations running thick and fast, along the lines of Had she always been unfaithful? Coming from me, that one,’ he said. ‘To be answered along the lines of Who wouldn’t be unfaithful to someone as cold and bloody-minded as me? Hang on.’

  He retrieved his mobile from his pocket, glanced at it and switched it off.

  ‘So, as you can imagine, it was a shambles.’

  ‘Yes,’ Harriet breathed.

  ‘It became even more so,’ he said after a time.

  ‘How?’

  ‘It turned out she couldn’t be sure who the father was but she’d reasoned I was the best bet, financially, anyway.’

  Harriet put her hands to her face. ‘She was...was she...?’

  ‘She was promiscuous,’ he said. ‘That’s probably a polite way of putting it. Of course I’d known I wasn’t the first but it might be hard for you to imagine what it feels like to know you’ve been in a line of men even after the wedding, not to mention having some other man’s child palmed off on you.’

  ‘I’m surprised she kept the baby.’

  ‘So was I,’ he agreed, ‘but I think she saw it as some kind of a hold over me if things got really tough between us. In the normal course of events, we may never have discovered he wasn’t mine.’

  ‘What happened to him?’

  Damien stared out to sea. ‘I made Veronica find out who the father was and these days, with DNA testing—’ he shrugged ‘—you can do it and there’s no way it can be denied. So I divorced her.’ He stopped rather abruptly.

  ‘Did you...did you have any kind of affection for the baby, when you thought he was yours?’

  He frowned. ‘I don’t know if I had some premonition but no, not a lot. But I don’t know if it was simply that I’m just not good with babies. Actually, I felt more for the poor kid when I found out he wasn’t mine. And I’ve set up a trust for him and made sure that at least he’ll know who his father is. I also paid for the procedures and treatment he needed and of course Veronica got a generous settlement. End of story.’

  He got up and walked to the edge of the headland, staring out to sea with his hands pushed into his pockets and the breeze blowing his tie around.

  ‘Of course not the end of the story,’ he said over his shoulder and came back to sit down beside her.

  ‘I didn’t think it was,’ Harriet said quietly, ‘but—’

  ‘Look,’ he interrupted, ‘if you’re going to tell me it’s highly unlikely it could ever happen for me like that again, you’re right. The odds against it are enormous. I know that—intellectually. That doesn’t mean to say I can make myself believe it in my heart. That doesn’t mean to say I can bury all my cynicism, all my—’ he broke off and shrugged ‘—disbelief that I could have been taken for such a flat.’

  ‘Did you never suspect?’ Harriet asked curiously.

  ‘Sometimes. But she was good at diverting any doubts I may have had. And I’m not trying to say I was blameless myself. If anything was going to work for Veronica in a marriage, it was an anchorman. I could work that out, I could see,’ he said intensely, ‘that she was one of those high-powered people who often didn’t know how to come down from the heights. But I couldn’t...I—’ he closed his eyes briefly ‘—just got more and more irritated and difficult to live with.’

  Harriet looked across at him. His profile was rock-hard and she could see the tension in the set of his mouth and his shoulders. ‘How can you be sure you’re going to feel like this with another woman?’

  ‘I’ve had a couple of—’ he shrugged ‘—liaisons since then. They didn’t last. I didn’t want them to last because I felt stifled,’ he said. ‘I wanted to be free. I never, ever want to go through that kind of trauma again.’

  He paused then he said sardonically, ‘I would never have thought I was naïve going into marriage with Veronica; I certainly wasn’t afterwards. I kept looking for signs, pointers, indicators that I was being taken for a fool again so that those liaisons became a nightmare of mistrust.’

  He broke off and sighed. ‘And I keep thinking of the consequences and how one innocent child got caught up in it all. That’s why I’m better on my own. But I had to tell you this. Despite the fact that this attraction lies between us, it could never be more than that.’

  He put his hand over hers. ‘I’m sorry.’

  Harriet blinked away a tear. ‘That’s OK.’

  He paused then looked at her curiously. ‘You really don’t mind?’

  Harriet smiled, just a gentle curve of her mouth. ‘Yes, I do mind a bit but I always knew it couldn’t work for me, so—’

  ‘You’re still in love with—whoever he was?’

  Harriet considered and realised that until quite recently she might have believed that. Not any more,
however. But it made no difference now. There was no future for her with Damien Wyatt...

  She blinked several times as it hit her like a train all of a sudden that it mattered greatly to her to think there was no future for her with this man. He couldn’t have spelled it out more clearly.

  So, she thought, the tables have turned. I was the one who was eager to cut ‘things’ off between us; now I’m the one who...

  ‘Harriet?’

  ‘Uh—I don’t know. But, for my own reasons, I really don’t want to get involved like that again. You probably think I’m silly.’ She stopped and shrugged.

  There was a long silence. Then he said, ‘Tottie will be devastated.’

  Harriet smiled and blew her nose. ‘Well, I ought to get back to work. Do you—’ she hesitated ‘—do you want me to finish your mother’s things?’

  ‘Yes,’ he replied promptly. ‘I won’t be here—no, I’m not going to try to go to Perth again today, but tomorrow I will.’

  ‘Oh.’ Harriet jumped up with a hand to her mouth. ‘I’m cook tonight. I promised Isabel roast beef. Will you...?’ She looked a question at him.

  ‘Roast beef,’ he repeated, his dark eyes full of amusement. ‘Something else I can’t resist.’

  * * *

  Harriet’s roast beef was rare on the inside and dark brown on the outside. With it she served roast potatoes and pumpkin, green beans and a rich gravy.

  ‘Mmm, that was delicious,’ Isabel enthused as she put her knife and fork together. ‘A girl of many talents!’

  ‘She is,’ Damien agreed and raised his glass to Harriet. ‘If ever you need a job away from the job you do, you know where to come.’

  ‘Apart from anything else, we know you won’t burn down the kitchen,’ Isabel said mischievously.

  ‘On that subject, how is the gentleman—where is he?’ Damien asked.

  ‘I packed him off home to his wife and family today with three months’ pay and a couple of contacts, both restaurants where he’d be too busy to get drunk and lonely. That wouldn’t be sticky date pudding, by any chance?’ Isabel asked of Harriet with equal proportions of trepidation and longing in her voice.