After a hasty goodbye Mrs Borrows ran across to the little aircraft and the door was swung shut behind her.
‘Hello, Nick,’ a laughing feminine voice said from behind. ‘The baby arrived, has it?’
He turned. ‘On its way,’ he said, that powerfully attractive smile crinkling the corners of his eyes.
The woman was one Genevieve Chatswood, thirtyish, smart in jeans and a Liberty print shirt with a navy woollen jersey over it, her slim feet in boots. As Nick made the introductions she eyed Minerva with cool but unmistakable interest.
‘Oh. Stella’s sister? You don’t look much alike.’
‘We were stepsisters,’ Minerva explained, trying to hide the note of resignation in her voice. ‘Her mother married my father.’
After a dismissive look Genevieve transferred her attention to the man beside her. Frowning, she asked, ‘Nick, if Mrs Borrows has had to go, what are you doing for Saturday night?’
‘Ah, that’s where the light hand of serendipity comes in,’ he said blandly. ‘Minerva will deal with it all. She’s a professional chef.’
‘How—fortunate,’ Genevieve said, her voice cooling rapidly. ‘Do you plan to stay long, Minerva?’
‘No.’ Minerva left it at that. She wasn’t going to answer questions from someone who had no right to ask them.
Nick said evenly, ‘Minerva is on holiday in the north. I hope to persuade her to stay on for a few days after the dinner.’ His enigmatic gaze rested a moment on Minerva’s shuttered face.
Genevieve’s green eyes narrowed a second, then opened wide. She flashed a smile at Nick. ‘Well, if you need any help, let me know, won’t you? I’d be quite happy to act as hostess for you again.’ The dazzling smile dimmed noticeably when it was transferred to Minerva. ‘I’d better go. I’ve just put ten boxes of orchids on the plane for Auckland; I’ve got to pick another fifty boxes to catch the flight to Japan tomorrow. See you Saturday!’
She strode away, confident, sure of her attraction and her competence. Minerva watched her departure thoughtfully. Genevieve Chatswood had lost no time in staking her claim. If that was the sort of woman Kerikeri bred, it was no wonder Stella had found it difficult to make friends.
Since knowing Stella she had learned to feel sorry for beautiful people. They never knew whether they were admired for their looks or for themselves.
Not that the man who walked with an easy, effortless gait around the front of the Range Rover seemed to suffer any such problems. Resenting quite irrationally that air of complete and invincible confidence, Minerva hid a cynical little smile as she fastened her seatbelt. Nick Peveril looked like a Regency buck, with all the type’s fabled pride and hauteur and air of self-contained assurance, as well as the elegance and savoir faire.
Perhaps he was too—too intense, too shut in on himself to have stepped from the pages of a Georgette Heyer novel. He was certainly a complex man, not a hearty, extroverted son of the soil.
However, he chose his accoutrements to fit his place in society. The Range Rover was exactly the right vehicle for the seriously rich pastoral aristocrat, and Spanish Castle the right setting. It was a pity the horse wasn’t black; it should rear all over the place, and be called Satan, or Demon, or Devil, and only ever be rideable by the lord of the house, but in spite of that it had looked the part perfectly.
Of course, the dog should be an aristocrat—a wolfhound, or some kind of hunting, shooting and fishing dog, instead of a black and white sheepdog. But it had added the right touch. You couldn’t have everything.
And in spite of his glacial demeanour, Nick made her more aware of her femininity than any other man since Paul Penn had seduced her when she was nineteen.
Which had to signal danger. Minerva looked straight ahead as he got in and switched on the engine.
Five silent minutes later he remarked casually, ‘You won’t have to do any of the housework. Helen has help three days a week from the wife of one of the stockmen. Just concentrate on the cooking.’
‘Oh, I’ll probably be able to manage a few light duties,’ she said, hiding the amusement in her tone with mildness.
He smiled. It was like the sun breaking through storm clouds. Lop-sided, slightly twisted it might be, but the fundamental detachment that seemed to be an integral part of his personality was temporarily in retreat when he smiled.
Her stomach clenched. When the armour he imposed over his emotions was breached he was gorgeous.
No wonder Stella had tumbled headlong into love with him. The thought sent a faint feeling of nausea through Minerva, as though by responding to that inscrutable, remote charm she had been disloyal to her stepsister.
Resting her head on the back of the seat, Minerva stared with unseeing, half-closed eyes at the rain-swept countryside, brooding yet again over Stella’s actions, wondering sickly what had driven her to take her own life.
There had been no reason for her to be depressed. She had had everything to live for; a husband she adored, a future that was shiny and sweet with the promise of happiness. She had been popular and loved, with an infectious, sparkling gaiety that attracted as much attention as her sultry, exotic beauty.
It was impossible to imagine Stella saving pills, stealing them from her mother and the housekeeper, hoarding them away in some horrible kind of squirrel’s cache until she had garnered enough to snuff out her life. She’d waited until Nick had gone away for three days, then swallowed them deliberately, carefully, until they were all gone. It was appalling, hideous, yet she had done it, and left them all bewildered.
The housekeeper had found her the next morning. That must have been Helen Borrows. No wonder she had looked so horrified when Minerva told her she was Mrs Peveril’s sister.
‘Suicide while the balance of her mind was disturbed’ had been the verdict at the inquest. Like Ruth, Minerva found this impossible to credit.
Stella had been so bright, so buoyantly high-spirited, so carefree as she flitted through her life. Oh, there had been moods. Stella’s glums, the family had called them, and joined in an unspoken conspiracy to jolly her out of them. But they had never been particularly intense.
At the inquest Mrs Borrows had said that she hadn’t noticed any signs of depression in the new Mrs Peveril, except that she seemed to be homesick and unable to settle in Northland. She had assumed it was because she didn’t like living in the country. Some people didn’t.
True enough. Yet Stella had seemed so in love with Nick that she would have lived anywhere just to be with him.
Admittedly, Stella hadn’t exactly had much staying power when it came to men. Had that swift, fierce, passion burned out so quickly?
No, her adoring, almost awed love for Nick had resounded through her letters. Yet something had gone wrong. The last communication Minerva had received had been written three months before her stepsister killed herself. By then her letters had become oddly remote, a mere record of events, as though Stella had been trying to hide her real feelings behind the words.
Minerva bit her lip. Meeting Nick, seeing Spanish Castle with her own eyes, had only added to the mystery.
CHAPTER TWO
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