The Colour Of Midnight

‘A hundred and twenty years.

‘It doesn’t show its age.’

‘Spanish Castle has always been well-cared-for,’ the housekeeper said as though she’d been accused of neglecting her duty. ‘Would you like to come in here?’

She led Minerva into a small formal parlour decorated in the same sunny shades, although here the colours were less intense as befitted a room where people spent time rather than passed through.

‘Would you like a cup of tea while you’re waiting for Mr Peveril?’ Mrs Borrows asked punctiliously.

Minerva was already regretting her impulsive decision to drive up that long road from Kerikeri. The house might be welcoming but its inhabitants certainly weren’t. Still, she was here now; she’d have a cup of tea, exchange a few words with Nick Peveril, and then leave.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Her throaty voice was just as impersonally polite as the older woman’s.

She didn’t look around until the older woman had left. The little room could have been too stiff with its delicately formal seats and desk, but the pieces of furniture had the air of having lived so long together that they had settled into an amiable, comfortable companionship.

Outside the French windows an emerald lawn swept to a wide band of sheltering trees thickly planted at the base with rhododendrons and daphne, pieris and more roses. Minerva’s eyes lingered on one particularly glorious golden one until it was blotted out by a thick curtain of rain, heavy and implacable.

She turned away.

Almost immediately the housekeeper returned with a tray; she had barely set it down when her employer walked in, instantly dominating the small, decorous room.

It was the unexpectedness of his arrival that took Minerva’s breath away, nothing else. She hadn’t expected him so soon; he must have taken a short-cut. When her heart had slowed down a bit she realised that he probably wasn’t much taller than her father, only a couple of inches over six feet. But that air of cool authority, allied to the cool, inimical survey of his strange colourless eyes, made her feel small and defenceless.

‘Hello,’ she said, producing a polite smile.

‘So you found your way here.’ He was amazingly handsome, in a remote, arrogantly patrician manner. ‘Welcome to Spanish Castle. Helen, could I have a cup, too?’

‘I’ve put one there for you,’ the housekeeper said.

He looked at her. ‘Any call yet?’

‘No.’ The housekeeper looked excited and worried at the same time.

‘Let me know when it comes through,’ he said.

Smiling, she replied, ‘Yes, of course.’

No formality there, Minerva thought as the older woman left the room.

‘Would you like to pour? Mrs Borrows’s daughter is in labour in Christchurch,’ Nick Peveril explained. ‘It’s the first grandchild, so she’s very excited. How did you enjoy sailing the world on your billionaire’s yacht?’

‘He wasn’t my billionaire,’ Minerva said lightly, smiling with more than a little irony at the memory of the portly, harried man who’d spent no more than three weeks playing in his expensive state-of-the-art toy during the two years she had sailed on it. ‘I was merely the cook. I enjoyed it very much. Do you take milk?’

‘Thank you. No sugar.’

As he took the cup and saucer from her she noted his beautiful hands, strong with long, callused fingers, tanned like his face almost to copper. The sight of those hands dealing efficiently with the elegant china cup made something contract suddenly in Minerva’s stomach.

‘It seems an unusual career for a woman with all your advantages.’

At least he accepted that it was a career! Minerva gave the usual smile and the usual answer. ‘It’s my one talent, and I enjoy doing it.’

‘You don’t stay in any job for very long. Stella said that the longest you lasted was usually a year.’

‘I’m not into the old-retainer bit, so I sign short contracts,’ she said steadily, resenting his comment even though there hadn’t been a hint of censure in the deep voice. ‘That way I get to see the world and experience it a bit more intimately than a tourist does.’

‘You must really have enjoyed it to spend two years on the yacht.’

She had just joined the crew when Stella wrote to tell her she was getting married. Because of a glitch in the postal arrangements the letter hadn’t caught up with her until a month after the wedding. It hadn’t seemed worthwhile to come back then.

And she had been in the middle of the Atlantic, bucketing through a hurricane, when Stella suffered her lonely death. As soon as they reached land she had flown back, arriving too late for the funeral, but able to mourn with Ruth and her father and her half-brother Kane for a couple of weeks before flying back.

Minerva nodded. ‘The billionaire insisted on two-year contracts, and I wanted the job enough to make an exception for him.’

‘The great New Zealand overseas experience.’ He had a beautiful voice, rich and many-layered, but it had remarkably little expression: as little as his face, or the silver-grey eyes. They should have been translucent, but the polished metallic sheen successfully hid any emotion.

This withdrawn, reserved man had retired behind the formidable barricades of his self-sufficiency. Unease slithered the length of her spine, gathered in an unpleasant pool at the pit of her stomach.

‘I suppose it has to do with living on three small islands at the bottom of the map,’ she returned conversationally. ‘To get anywhere at all you have to fly for hours, so why not go the whole hog and see the rest of the world while you’re about it?’

His smile was cynical. ‘And broaden your insular mind.’

She lifted thin eyebrows. ‘Some people merely hone their prejudices.’

‘That’s astute of you.’

‘I suppose you’ve done a fair amount of travelling,’ she said, unable to decide whether he was being sarcastic or not.

‘Yes. But my most vivid memories are of the first time I was on my own. I came overland from India and hitch-hiked around Europe, spent six months in England, then went on one of those truck tours through Africa to Cape Town, before coming back across Canada and America.’

In any other man she would have thought she heard wistfulness in his tone, but it was impossible to think of this man as being wistful. He exuded a self-confidence so imposing and uncompromising that she was more than a little threatened by it.

‘Sounds fun,’ she said neutrally. He had changed from his farm clothes into a pair of well-tailored trousers and a fine cotton shirt. Few men in New Zealand had their shirts made for them, but Minerva was positive that this one had been cut especially to fit his broad shoulders and muscular arms.

It was difficult to imagine the man who lived in this house and wore those clothes backpacking around the world. She flicked a swift glance at his face. The angular features and straight mouth spoke of strength and uncompromising purpose. No matter how hard she tried she couldn’t envisage him as a carefree youth.

Her gaze dropped to her teacup as she was undermined by a sense of dislocation, a shifting of the foundations. Nick Peveril, with his impassive face and deliberate, guarded composure, bore no resemblance at all to the man of whom Stella had written so ecstatically.

When he spoke again Minerva’s cup rattled in its saucer. Watch what you’re doing, she scolded herself, setting it down on the table by her chair.

‘How long are you home for?’ he asked.

‘A month.’ A substantial bonus meant she could afford a lazy summer, but her plans for the future were going to need money, so it would join the rest of her savings.

‘And then what? Stella seemed to think that you intended to settle permanently here sooner or later.’

She shrugged. ‘One of these days I’m going to come back and open my own restaurant, but for the moment I like my life. I’ve been offered a job in the British Virgin Islands with an expatriate family.’

When he smiled one corner of his mouth lifted higher than the other. ‘You’ll be able to work on your tan,’ he said lightly. Something flickered in the frosty brilliance of his eyes.