A Masterful Man. Lindsay Armstrong
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He said nothing for a moment then he murmured, ‘You see me quite dashed, Mrs Hastings—by the way, did I mention that Lord Howe has the southernmost coral reef in the world?’
They eyed each other until he added, ‘Besides which, we have Ball’s Pyramid only a dozen or so miles south of the island—now that is certainly worth photographing.’
‘What on earth...?’ Davina bit her lip.
‘Is Ball’s Pyramid? A sheer, pointed, eroded stack of rock that is the world’s tallest monolith and it floats out of the ocean like a castle in a fairy-tale.’
‘Does one have to be a fairy to get to it?’
He grinned. ‘Not at all; one takes a boat or you can fly over it. I happen to have a couple of boats,’ he added modestly.
‘Boats, bikes, airlines,’ Davina muttered and sat down suddenly. ‘I gather your troublesome female relatives have not yet arrived?’
‘No. You have three days of—relative peace.’
‘Why did you get me here so early?’ she queried.
‘Well now, seeing as I was expecting a competent motherly middle-aged type, you can’t really accuse me of any nefarious intentions, can you, Mrs Hastings?’ His eyes mocked her.
‘Then why?’ Davina said angrily.
‘Simply so you would have a chance to acclimatise before you were expected to deal with them.’
She picked up her drink and sipped it distractedly.
‘You have your own quarters, incidentally,’ he said after a time. ‘Would you like me to show you them before you make your final decision?’
* * *
One of the buildings behind the house was a chalet-type edifice which turned out to be a small but luxurious self-contained unit. There was a bedroom with a double bed, furnished in toning shades of smoky blue, a matching blue bathroom and a combined kitchenette and living-area with cane furniture, terracotta tiles on the floor, ivory blinds and soft sage-green walls. Everything, from the Sheridan bed-linen to the bathroom fittings, the quality of paint, enamel and tiling work, the co-ordination of colours was of an exceptionally high quality and standard. There was even a wall-phone.
Davina looked around with raised eyebrows.
‘You’re impressed, Mrs Hastings?’ S. Warwick remarked.
‘Very nice,’ she contrived to say equitably. ‘Very House & Garden, in fact.’
‘Is that a compliment or the opposite?’ he enquired.
Davina shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘Just a bit of a surprise, perhaps. It looks more like a guest-house than staff quarters.’
‘It doubles as either.’
‘Well...’ She didn’t go on.
‘I await your decision with bated breath, Mrs Hastings,’ he said with irony after several moments.
They faced each other across the living-area and Davina discovered two things. That she would like nothing more than to tell him to go to hell, but that she couldn’t quite bring herself to do it.
‘Tell me something,’ she said a little huskily as this dawned on her. ‘What happens if I do turn out to be—exotic but quite useless?’
He smiled, just a bare twisting of his lips, his eyes remained a cool, watchful, curiously mocking hazel, and he said, ‘I would pack you back to the mainland very swiftly, Mrs Hastings—but you aren’t, are you?’
Davina licked her lips because she sensed an odd sort of tension between them that she couldn’t quite define. ‘How can you know, though?’
‘I’ll just have to rely on my intuition. In fact,’ he said drily, ‘I wouldn’t be at all surprised if you were extremely competent—’
‘That’s a change of heart!’ She flashed him a cutting little look.
‘And intelligent,’ he went on, unperturbed, ‘and that is quite a waste, doing what you’re doing with your life. I’d also be very surprised if you were a—frigid bitch, Mrs Hastings, but if you care to continue to masquerade as one, so long as it gets my job done, you’re welcome to it.’
Davina gasped then paled slightly as she suddenly realised that this powerful, worldly man who could switch from insulting her with lazy mockery to malice aforethought incensed her, yet his attitude puzzled her... Why? she wondered numbly. I would have hated him if he’d made the traditional pass; I have to hate him as it is for...everything else; why should it be at all important to prove to him that I’m...anything?
‘Mrs Hastings?’ S. Warwick said, and added with sudden impatience, ‘Look, if you really don’t want the job, I’ll send you back first thing tomorrow morning and they’ll just have to find a replacement. It’s up to you,’ he added curtly. ‘We’ve been—’ he glanced at his watch ‘—fencing with each other for over an hour now and I’m getting tired of it. Yes or no?’
The effect of this was to wipe away all other thoughts from Davina’s mind other than that he was the most arrogant bastard... ‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘I’ll stay.’ And might just as well have said, So do your damnedest...
He raised his eyes ceilingwards. ‘I might have known!’
‘And what might you have known, Mr Warwick?’ she asked through her teeth.
‘That all the foregoing was entirely unnecessary. Women,’ he said scathingly, ‘have to be the most entirely unstraightforward creatures—God alone knows why!’
Davina held on to her temper by the narrowest margin. ‘Oh, I suspect,’ she said sweetly, although her eyes were an icy violet, ‘that it’s what we have to put up with from men that does it. I mean to say, in the space of a couple of hours I’ve gone from being suspected of wanting to take my clothes off at the first opportunity to—’
He laughed. All of a sudden he relaxed, the tension went out of his broad shoulders and the furious impatience drained from his expression. ‘I excelled myself there, I’m afraid,’ he said wryly.
She could have hit him; she was visited by the most intense anger she’d ever experienced and to make matters worse that keen hazel gaze missed none of it—and Davina passed suddenly from rage to fear. I must be mad, she thought. This man...is dangerous. He incites altogether too much emotion in me even if it is rage and hatred. I should have said no...
‘You still can, Mrs Hastings,’ he murmured, and her eyes widened.
‘D-do what?’ she asked unsteadily, hoping and praying that he hadn’t read her mind.
‘Tell me to go to hell,’ he said softly. ‘In fact, I’m wondering why you didn’t. Care to enlighten me?’
‘Yes.’ She attempted to pull herself together. ‘I think I was hoping to prove something to you—’
‘Well, that’s fine with me,’ he broke in, ‘so long as it isn’t...anything to do with the taking off of your clothes.’
‘Do you know,’ she managed to say almost thoughtfully, she wasn’t sure how, ‘your preoccupation with that subject leads me to wonder about you, but you will really just have to accept my guarantee on the subject; I can say no more.’ And she kept her gaze supremely steady as it rested on him.
‘OK.’ He shrugged. ‘I guess if I expect you to take me on trust, I shouldn’t mind doing the same.’ He smiled suddenly and it was quite a devastating smile, full of life and wry humour, and with a further shaft of fear Davina realised that S. Warwick could be a devastatingly attractive man when he chose. ‘Unfortunately,’ he added, ‘I have to go out, I have a meeting, but that might give you the opportunity to potter around by yourself and get to know