‘Floods? Up here on the top of a thumping great hill?’
‘You’d be surprised how flooded the creek can get. We’re high enough to collect any raincloud that’s crossing Northland so we have to watch it carefully.’
The telephone rang. As he answered it Minerva started to get to her feet, but he shook his head. His hair gleamed golden in the light of the businesslike lamp above the desk. ‘Frank—what—? Where is he?’
The telephone quacked on. Nick frowned, staring into space, his eyes as clear and cold as shards of diamond. ‘No, I’m having afternoon tea. I’ll finish that, then go. I don’t care if he is wet!’ He hung up.
Minerva tried to look blank as though Frank and his wetness didn’t interest her in the least.
‘Frank is the other stockman,’ he said blandly, reaching for a muffin. Strong white teeth bit into it. Minerva knew she was an excellent cook, but she held her breath as he ate it, only relaxing when he said somewhat thickly, ‘This is delicious.’
‘Thank you.’ Curiosity overcame discretion. ‘Why is Frank wet?’
‘Today’s his day off and he’s been down at the pub since it opened. He decided not to drive his car home, so he started to walk. That was the manager’s wife. She’s just come back from shopping and picking up the kids at school. She offered Frank a ride, but he said he wasn’t fit to be in the car with children. Which is true—he’s drunk. So I’ll have to pick him up before the idiot gets run over.’
Minerva’s astonishment showed in her expression.
‘Good help is hard to get,’ he said shortly. ‘It’s the isolation.’
Clearly he had a paternalistic attitude towards his workers. No doubt the less ambitious liked it. It would have irked Minerva no end, but then, she had fought for her independence. Ruth had been horrified when she’d insisted on training as a chef. Her stepmother was a darling, but she was a little snobbish, and the thought of a member of her family working ‘as a servant’ had been hard to swallow.
Had Minerva taken Ruth’s tempting bait, sweetened with love and security, comfort and laughter, she would have stayed at home in a nice, safe job that didn’t take any of her energies, until she married. Like Stella.
‘The isolation?’ she asked now. ‘What isolation, for heaven’s sake?’
Nick leaned back in his chair and looked at her as though the slight snap in her voice intrigued him. ‘You don’t think you’ll mind the isolation?’
‘We’re only about twenty kilometres from Kerikeri. I don’t call that isolated.’
‘It’s a state of mind rather than a distance,’ he said.
Something in his voice caught Minerva’s attention. Hidden beneath the cool, distancing tone was a thread of intensity, a cryptic combination that sent small shocks along her nerve-ends. She looked up at an expressionless face, into eyes that seemed transparent as well-water, at a mouth relaxed into a crooked half-smile, yet she felt some unfathomable force beating through that enigmatic composure like the throb of a distant drum.
‘Yes, I suppose you’re right,’ she said quietly, more to fill the pulsing silence than to make a point. ‘My idea of isolation is somewhere the mail doesn’t go.’
Dark brows were raised. ‘We get it six times a week,’ he said, dead-pan.
‘How about your television reception?’
‘Perfect.’
‘And you’ve got power and water, as well as at least two bookshops in Kerikeri. A cinema, too. I don’t think you’re isolated at all. This is civilisation compared to some of the places I’ve been.’
His smile was ironic, almost mocking. ‘How adaptable you are. Where have you been?’
‘Oh, all around,’ she said vaguely, and picked up her cup and saucer again. People who boasted of their travels were complete bores.
He nodded, the dazzling eyes holding hers for a second until he reached for another muffin.
‘I’d better get back to the kitchen,’ she said, getting to her feet. He looked at her as though he knew she was retreating, and that slightly lop-sided mouth twisted.
‘Thank you again,’ he said as he rose. He waited until she was at the door before saying lightly, ‘Minerva?’
She looked over her shoulder. ‘Yes?’
‘Welcome to Spanish Castle.’
It almost sounded like a warning. She asked quickly, ‘Why Spanish? I can see the Castle, but it doesn’t look any more like a Spanish castle than an English one.’
‘Have you never heard of castles in Spain? Airy, insubstantial, glamorous illusions that fade with the hard light of day? You dream about your castle in Spain, but you never get it. A hundred and fifty years ago Nicholas Peveril came here with a woman he stole. He was happy for a little while, but he always knew her husband would find them. Which he did, after she’d spent two years in Nicholas’s bed and given him a son.’
‘He stole her?’
‘Remind me to tell you the whole story one day.’ That infuriating indifference had returned.
He nodded dismissively and turned back to the work he had been doing when she came in, his lean, strong hand moving decisively in the margin, the black writing standing out stark and very clear against the white paper.
‘Oh, by the way,’ he said without looking at her, ‘you’d better ring your parents to let them know where you are. If I know Ruth, she’ll have made you promise to ring every day, anyway.’
‘She tried,’ she said ironically. ‘You know Ruth. Five years of looking after myself count for nothing when I land in New Zealand, possibly the safest place in the world.’
‘Unfortunately, we’ve not been able to buck the trends. There are murderers and rapists here too,’ he said calmly.
‘I know. And sometimes there’s a person whose only mistake is being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But all the telephone calls home are not going to make any difference, so I keep telling Ruth. So far I haven’t been able to convince her! I will ring her tonight, even if it’s only to make her feel happier. Thanks.’
He left almost immediately on his mission of mercy, so Minerva was able to relax as she peeled the ends of a fat bunch of asparagus, freshly cut from a garden somewhere close by.
It was strange in the big house by herself, with only Penelope, relaxed on the chair, for company. Accustomed to locks and keys and guards, to the strict security of a world gone mad, Minerva wondered at the man who would leave a total stranger here among so many beautiful things, and apparently not worry in the least about it.
She could have been a complete opportunist; she needn’t really be Stella’s sister. Nick obviously hadn’t recognised her. She was surprised to find that this hurt, a tiny niggling ache, and recognised it for the danger signal it was.
Nick Peveril might be a cold fish, but he was a very attractive cold fish, with far more than his share of a profound male magnetism that seemed to have absolutely nothing to do with character or worth. Purely physical...
And perhaps he wasn’t so cold, after all. If anyone had asked her she wouldn’t have believed that he would drive through the rain to pick up his drunk stockman.
He arrived back within the hour, but stayed in the office. Minerva gave a final look around the kitchen, satisfied herself that her preparations for the meal were well under control, and went upstairs to shower and change.
Fortunately, in spite of the fact that she had planned to stay in motels and eat mostly takeaways, she had brought two all-purpose, almost uncrushable dresses that rolled