Fortunately, this morning she was not due into the gallery until mid-morning, since they never did much business so early in the week.
The letter must be from Tip Travers, although why on earth the old Texan should be writing to her …
At his behest she had acted as his guide while he was in London, showing him most of the more famous sights. Once she got used to his abrasive manner she had enjoyed his company, although always firmly refusing the money he offered her in exchange for her time.
By the end of his week’s stay, a mutual respect had built up between them. She had told him about her parents’ death, and about her longing to return to the land, and he had told her about the massive ranch he owned near the Rio Grande; about the oil that had been found on it, and about the feud that had broken out between his sons because of it.
One of them had become president of the oil company and one of them had remained on the ranch, and as she listened to him, Natasha had known that, like her, Tip’s first love had been the land and his cattle.
Now both his sons were dead, and the oil company had passed into other hands. His grandson ran the ranch and, although nothing had been said, Natasha had noticed the way the old man’s face tightened with pain when he mentioned his family and she guessed that there were still many unresolved conflicts within it.
She had enjoyed his company and never once regretted giving up the week’s holiday she had intended to spend in Spain with her aunt and uncle to show him around, but she had certainly never expected to hear from him again. He had been a tough, gritty individual with no room for sentimentality in his make-up.
She opened the letter, the words blurring as she trembled in sudden shock.
It wasn’t from Tip, but from his lawyers, informing her that she was a beneficiary under the terms of his will, and requesting her to fly out to Texas to the family ranch where the full position would be explained to her.
She sat down, stricken with shock and sadness. Somehow she found it hard to accept that Tip was dead. He had seemed such a vital man, despite his heart condition. He had confided to her in a rare moment of weakness that he had no intentions of dying yet, because he still had too much to do …
‘There’s that grandson of mine …’
He had shaken his head, and again Natasha had sensed some sort of conflict between the two men. She wasn’t a fool. It was easy to see how hard Tip must be to live with. He had his own decided views on everything—many of them uncompromisingly harsh—but then he had lived a harsh life, fighting for most of it to hang on to what he considered to be rightfully his. His grandfather had carved the ranch out of nothing, sometimes quite literally fighting with his bare hands to hold on to it and pass it down through his family.
Allowances had to be made for such men, although she was the first to admit that living with him on a day-to-day basis could never be easy. She had winced sometimes to see and hear how he had treated the staff at his hotel. The American credo might stipulate that all men were equal, but those with money, it appeared, were more equal than those without.
And yet, despite it all, she had liked him. In many ways he had reminded her of her own grandfather, who had died when she was six years old. They had both possessed that same brand of toughness, of hardiness, and of love for their land.
Her sadness at his death increased the greyness of the cold summer’s day. She picked the letter up again, studying it idly. Texas … Even the word was exciting … punchy … She couldn’t imagine what he had left her, or why. He had not struck her as the overly sentimental type.
Initially, when she had rescued him from the taxi, he had tried to tip her, but the cool hauteur with which she refused his money had made him eye her with speculative interest.
Later, she had suspected that he had deliberately overplayed his weakness on that first occasion, because during the latter part of the week, he never once displayed any of the feebleness that had made it necessary for him to request her support back to his hotel.
Quite how she had come to agree to act as his guide while he was in London she had no real idea. He had told her that originally it had been the intention that his grandson would accompany him, but some last-minute hitch at the ranch had made this impossible, so he had come on alone, and despite his bravado and his loudness he had been lonely.
Yes, that was what had drawn her to him, she recognised. His loneliness. It was a state she had experienced too much to be able to turn her back on it in anyone else.
But to leave her something … It didn’t ring true somehow; it was too out of character … No, he had been too shrewd, too deeply enmeshed in his own sense of family and history to leave something to an outsider. That smacked too much of a sentimentality she knew he hadn’t possessed.
She couldn’t imagine what he had left her … Another frown wrinkled her forehead. Her skin was the colour of cream, and impossible to tan. When she went abroad she spent a fortune on barrier creams, and she had to wear a hat to stop herself from getting sunstroke.
She tapped the letter with one long forefinger. Of course, she could always refuse to go. In that event, her bequest would be forfeit …
It was a rather odd clause to include … There was even a provision for her air fare. She frowned again. She had been quite open with Tip about her financial situation. He knew that …
She blocked off the thought because, since it was associated with her parents’ death and the subsequent sale of the farm, she found it painful still.
Suffice it to say that if she did go to Texas she would pay her own way there, and Tip must surely have realised that … If she went … she couldn’t go! She had already decided to spend two of her four weeks’ holiday in Spain with her aunt and uncle—she hadn’t seen them for over twelve months, and had tentatively been considering Adam’s suggestion that she spend the other fortnight with him on a friend’s yacht, sailing round the Greek islands.
She ought to go. She owed Tip that much, surely? Or was she using his bequest as an excuse to delay making a decision about her relationship with Adam? In her heart of hearts she knew she was already regretting her promise to join him and his friends. It had been given in a moment of weakness and had left her with a panicky feeling of being pushed, albeit gently, in a direction she wasn’t sure she wanted to go.
Now she had the perfect escape route.
Yes, that was the answer. Fate had handed her the perfect excuse. She already knew deep down inside her that Adam wasn’t the one for her. This way she could let him know it more tactfully than if she simply handed in her notice and left. She enjoyed her work, but she knew it wasn’t taxing her to the full, wasn’t making the most use of the university degree she had expended so much time and effort in gaining. After university there had been the fine arts course in Italy, paid for as a twenty-first birthday present by her aunt and uncle. She had enjoyed that, and it had been her entrée into the arty world. London was full of young women like her, she thought in a moment of cynicism. Over-qualified for what they did … If she didn’t look the way she did, elegant and decorative, Adam would never have hired her, despite her impressive qualifications. She remembered her life in Cheshire and how the farmers’ wives had been cherished for their ability to work hard alongside their husbands, rather than for their looks, but even there certain taboos and rules had applied. A woman was supposed to fit in with her husband’s life-style rather than develop one of her own. A farmer’s wife who wanted to write, or to paint, would have gained scant approval among her peers. In so many ways men made the rules and women lived by them.
She moved restlessly round her small flat, unable to define exactly what was making her feel so restless. Maybe it was an echo of Tip’s outrageous tall tales of Texas, with its wide open skies and harsh landscape. It was a land that demanded much from its people, and a land she knew next to nothing about, and yet a land that held some mystical allure for her, which she couldn’t totally understand.