A Reluctant Mistress Page 18

  ‘The slimy old toad!’ she exclaimed.

  ‘I shut him up,’ he said indifferently, ‘but I bought Pukekahu partly because of your laugh.’

  ‘Not to pay Dean back?’

  She felt his crooked smile. ‘Oh, that too. I was still hung up on taking everything away from him that I could.’

  Fear crawled across her tentative hope on slimy feet. No, she thought; I will not let Dean’s insinuations smirch what Clay and I have. ‘And now?’

  ‘Now it doesn’t seem important at all.’ He seemed to be thinking as he went, as though he was facing up to this for the first time. ‘I wanted Pukekahu because Olivia loved it. She used to tell me all about it, about how happy she’d been there. I couldn’t believe that she’d left it to Dean when she knew—she had to know—he wouldn’t value it. He hated her almost as much as he hates me.’

  During that long, gruelling afternoon, Natalia had thought a lot about his mother’s astonishing decision. ‘What would have happened if she’d left Pukekahu to you?’

  After a moment he said, ‘I’d have worked it, of course.’

  ‘Without capital?’

  He paused, then said, ‘I’d have made a success of it eventually.’

  ‘But even before Dean did his best to run it into the ground it was in a mess, wasn’t it? Olivia’s father—old Mr Freeman—was in real financial trouble long before he died.’

  ‘I’d have brought it back into full production.’ He sounded impatient. ‘Olivia must have known I’d do that for her, if for no other reason.’

  Natalia nodded. ‘Of course she knew you’d have been loyal enough to stick it out to the end, and you’d eventually have made a go of it.’ It was impossible to imagine Clay failing, once he’d set his formidable will to a project. ‘But it had been neglected for over twenty years, and you’d have been trapped in exactly the same situation I was at Xanadu. Debts, and no money. Olivia was a farmer’s daughter, a farmer’s wife—she understood what lack of capital does to a farmer. And if she’d left both Pukekahu and the money to you, what would have happened?’

  Clay didn’t answer for so long she wondered whether he’d fallen asleep. Eventually he said in a low, harsh voice, ‘My stepfather would have contested the will. He told me it was only the fact that the money she’d left to me came from a family trust—so he couldn’t get his hands on it in any case—that stopped him from doing that. And he thought he had the better of it, anyway—he knew what Pukekahu meant to me.’

  ‘Exactly,’ Natalia said, convinced now that she was right. Speaking urgently, she went on, ‘By leaving the station to Dean, she made sure you kept the money and didn’t waste it on lawyer’s fees fighting to keep Pukekahu. Clay, she knew you, and she loved you. She knew you’d use the legacy of money to make a life for yourself. That’s why she left Pukekahu to Dean—so that you had the chance to follow your own dreams, not be tied to hers.’ She hesitated, then said into the cool darkness, ‘That’s an awe-inspiring gift. I wish I’d known her.’

  Another long silence, until he said in a rough, shaken voice, ‘You could be right. She told me just before she died that she’d left things so that I’d never have to go cap in hand to anyone.’

  ‘She gave you the chance to be whatever you wanted to be, and the freedom to do whatever you wanted,’ Natalia said.

  ‘Unlike your father.’ His tone was even, without inflection.

  She said quietly, ‘Unlike my father. He didn’t intend to die, of course—’

  ‘But he didn’t give you any chance to follow your own star.’

  ‘No,’ she said in a muffled voice.

  Clay’s arms contracted around her. Into her hair he said with difficulty, ‘I think you’re right about Olivia. And she might have meant to explain it before she died, but when it came it was sudden, and I was at boarding school. I should have trusted her. What I saw as her treachery ate into me, made me doubt her love—but she’d have known what my stepfather was likely to do. She had no illusions about him, or Dean.’ He kissed her. ‘Thank you.’

  Her body stirred; she kissed him back and smiled sadly into the darkness as she felt him respond. Did she love him enough to stay with him?

  Would he ever trust a woman? He’d been let down so often—by his birth mother, by the mother of his heart—could he learn to trust enough to love?

  His chest lifted in noiseless laughter. ‘If I’d come to Pukekahu then, I’d have known you fourteen years ago.’

  ‘I wasn’t there when I was nine,’ she returned drily. ‘And you wouldn’t have been interested anyway.’

  ‘I’ll bet I’d have noticed when you grew up. I’d have been your first lover.’

  ‘That’s an arrogant statement. Does it worry you that you weren’t?’

  He paused before saying quietly, ‘I wish I could say no, of course it doesn’t. It’s never bothered me with other women, but with you all sorts of primitive feelings surface.’ He slid a hand across her breasts, cupping them.

  ‘Very primitive,’ she managed to say as anticipation geared up a notch.

  ‘I’d like to have been your first and only lover, but I’m not crazily jealous of the boy you loved when you were eighteen.’ His voice was slow and reflective, as slow as the gentle movement of his thumbs across the heated peaks of her breasts.

  Natalia’s breath caught in her throat. Lazy fire coiled away from beneath his touch, flowed through nerve-cells, along the secret pathways of her body, stripping away everything but her need for him, for the powerful mastery of his body, for the intense pleasure only he could give her.

  Yet, exquisite though this was, she needed more from him than the sex.

  His voice deepened, became a little raw, a little rough. ‘Every time I look at you I have to stop myself from dragging you off to bed. Even when you were talking to Phil outside the land agent’s office in Bowden! It didn’t help when I discovered that as well as fuelling my hottest dreams you had a sharp tongue and an even sharper brain.’ He paused, then added, ‘I wanted you at the masquerade ball, but when I saw how hard you worked to pay a debt that wasn’t even morally yours because you didn’t want an elderly couple to suffer—that’s when I fell in love with you.’

  Her breath hurt in her lungs; she whispered, ‘I don’t believe you.’

  ‘I’m not surprised. It took me quite some time to accept that that’s what it is—love. At first I thought I was obsessed with a woman who slept with anyone she thought might help her out financially, or perhaps one who just enjoyed sex for sex’s sake.’

  His words battered her like a blunt instrument. ‘Then why did you offer to pay my debts?’ she asked gruffly. ‘Were you testing me?’

  He moved slightly in the warmth, his voice reflective. ‘I hated to see you working so hard. I wanted to snatch you up and take you away, shower you with everything you needed to make you happy, wrap you in silk and jewels and spoil you to death. By the time we went out to dinner at The Indies I didn’t care whether you loved me or simply saw me as a good bet. I’d have taken anything you offered. But you didn’t offer, although I knew damned well that you wanted me. Instead, you delivered a passionate little speech on how you wanted your freedom.’

  ‘I remember.’ She kissed his shoulder, trying to find the right way to tell him that it didn’t matter now, that the best sort of freedom would be to live with him and love him.

  Clay’s body tensed, but he continued, ‘The worst of it was, I could understand perfectly, but by that time I was beginning to realise that I wanted to tie you down and never let you go.’ Beneath the note of irony in his words there was a raw hunger that sent a frisson scudding down Natalia’s spine. ‘So when the thieves moved in, and Phil had his brainstorm and slashed off the capsicum plants, I was glad, because it meant I could take you away from it all.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so torn and desperate,’ she said. About a fortnight after they’d left for Auckland the police had rung to say they’d caught the thieves who’d stole
n the fencing materials and the computer—a wellorganised ring who preyed on farmers.

  Clay kissed her again, his hands still lightly brushing over her nipples. ‘I knew that, and I used it quite ruthlessly. I was determined to have you. I hoped that living with me would show you that you were a little bit in love with me. And until this morning I thought I was succeeding.’

  ‘You succeeded only too well,’ she told him dreamily.

  ‘Yet you took off this morning as though it meant nothing! When I got home—it seems a year ago!—I couldn’t believe you’d gone. Why, Natalia? Did you believe Dean when he said I only wanted you because he did too?’

  ‘As much as you did,’ she said. ‘Of course I didn’t. I left you because I’m hopelessly, irrevocably, wildly in love with you, and I thought you only wanted the better class of mistress I taunted you with when we first met. I felt as though we’d met with masks on, and we’d never really taken them off, and that if I couldn’t have everything it was safer to have nothing. In other words, I ran away like a coward.’

  ‘Would you have ever come back to me?’

  She hesitated, then, without any thought of qualification, gave him the surrender he wanted so much. ‘Yes. I love you. Leaving you tore my heart out.’

  He slid his questing hand down to her hip, stroked the satin skin on the inside of her thigh. After a moment he said thickly, ‘I wouldn’t have stopped looking until I’d found you. I need you so much. Nothing is worthwhile if you’re not with me, if I can’t come home to that wicked smile and those tantalising green eyes, if I don’t know that at the end of the day we’ll sit together and talk. Making love to you is undeserved heaven, but I value all the other things about you as much—your quick intelligence, your energy, your obstinate determination to do what you think is right, your rock-solid integrity. Natalia, sweet witch, marry me soon.’

  ‘Of course I’ll marry you,’ she said softly, her body lax and contented against his. She reached up and kissed the determined chin. ‘I think I fell in love with you when you carried me up the steps and told me I was like jasmine, beautiful and a survivor.’

  ‘Speaking of flowers, how bad is your allergy to wasps?’

  ‘I have to take the pills with me wherever I go, but I’m usually very careful—except when my brain is being scrambled by the man next door.’ She kissed him again, shivering when his arms tightened around her. ‘Thank heavens you saw me on television.’

  ‘Mmm. When I found you’d gone I went berserk. I called the police and a detective agency, and demanded that they start looking for you straight away.’ He nuzzled her cheek, found the corner of her mouth and kissed it. ‘Then I saw you on the news and burnt up the road getting there. Fortunately for my sanity I’d already worked out that if I couldn’t find you I’d have to fly across to see your friend Liz and plead with her to tell me where you were.’

  ‘She’d probably have spilled the beans,’ Natalia said, laughing a little wryly. ‘She thinks you’re gorgeous.’

  ‘Hmm. She’s very protective of you.’ But his voice was smooth and amused. It altered, however, when he said, ‘What do you want to do after we’re married? Go to university? Live in the country? Get your own business?’

  ‘What I should do,’ she said vengefully, ‘is go back to Bowden and set up as a land agent next to that wretched Sam Phillips. If he hadn’t been such a nasty old gossip you wouldn’t have thought I was a reincarnation of Cleopatra.’

  He laughed. ‘Oh, I think I would have.’ He paused, then said quietly, ‘I didn’t know it then, but I don’t think I had much faith in women until I met you.’

  ‘I’m not surprised.’ Natalia hugged him suddenly. ‘Your birth mother’s cruelty must have affected you, and then she died; it’s a kind of betrayal, isn’t it, when your parent dies? And then you thought Olivia had betrayed you all over again, leaving Pukekahu to Dean. You don’t get over those things quickly, or easily.’

  Clay said unevenly, ‘I didn’t get over them until I met you and discovered that there were women who kept the faith, who lived up to their responsibilities.’

  When she kissed his eyes, her mouth found damp lashes. A shaft of emotion, slightly maternal for the child he’d been, wholly adult for the man he was now, transfixed her. She whispered, ‘I love you so much.’

  ‘And I love you, with all that I am, all that I’ll ever be.’

  All barriers down, they lay locked in the silent communion of a close embrace, until Clay said, ‘Listen.’

  She listened, and realised that the rain had eased, and a small wind was making its way around the corners of the building. ‘The wind’s changed,’ she said, a sudden blaze of joy bursting through her.

  ‘Mmm.’ He sounded lazy and replete. ‘Do you want to take that botany degree you planned at school?’

  She shook her head. ‘I love drawing the plants, not studying them.’

  ‘Now that,’ he said thoughtfully, ‘you could do if you travelled with me—I move around quite a lot. You could be as independent as you liked, provided you came back to me each night.’

  It sounded like heaven. ‘I’d like that.’

  ‘Good. There’s no hurry, but I think your talent for drawing will show you the right path for you. Where do you want to live?’

  She hesitated, then asked, ‘How about Pukekahu?’

  ‘We could,’ he said. And, with the astuteness that sometimes made her just a little afraid of him, he added, ‘By the way, Phil’s gone. He’s got a job on a sheep station in the South Island high country.’

  ‘Did you organise it?’

  ‘In a way.’

  ‘I hope he’s all right,’ she said.

  ‘He’ll be fine. He just needs time to get over you.’ Clay kissed her properly, then to her outrage settled her back in his arms. ‘Get some more sleep.’

  ‘Why?’ She stretched languorously, rubbing herself lightly against him. ‘I don’t think I need sleep.’

  ‘You must be exhausted. The muscles on your back were really knotted.’

  She sighed elaborately. ‘I believe the best way to work stiffness out of muscles is to use them again.’

  ‘How could I have forgotten?’ he said with silky distinctness, and bent his head to whisper dark words of passion in her ear.

  Natalia abandoned herself to the mindless tide of desire. Outside the rain had begun again, but now it fell quietly, gently, and in the darkened bedroom they made love with all the promise and joy of a future filled with summer.

  EPILOGUE

  EVERY year in spring, when the gardens around the homestead were hung with roses and starred with daylilies and irises and the first gardenias, the Beauchamps held a special garden party on the wide lawns of Pukekahu for close friends. It was always a joyous occasion, and this time especially so; Liz was back from England.

  But then, Clay thought, waking soon after dawn, it was always a joyous occasion to wake next to his wife.

  He turned his head, smiling at the tumble of black curls on Natalia’s pillow. Eyes still closed, she responded to his movement, snuggling into his waiting arms.

  She did it every morning, as though even in her deepest sleep she was aware of him. He listened to the steady beat of her heart under his hand, felt the tiny flexions of her muscles as she stumbled into wakefulness.

  After a while she muttered, ‘Darling,’ into his chest.

  ‘Good morning,’ he said, smoothing back one defiant curl to kiss her ear. ‘Do you realise it’s exactly two years, three months and one week since I managed to persuade you to give up your freedom for me?’

  He loved it when she laughed. A secret, smoky little sound, it went right to the roots of his being, warming some cold part of him that never quite believed his luck.

  ‘A wonderful two years, three months and one week,’ she murmured, stretching seductively against him. ‘I think we can say that this is one physical attraction that’s lasted, don’t you?’

  Lasted? ‘It feels that way,’ he said grav
ely, cupping the smooth, warm, soft curve of her breast. ‘Happy, Ms Artist?’

  Soon after they’d married, Clay had introduced his wife to close friends, one of whom worked for a publisher. Entranced by the sketches Natalia had done, he’d mentioned them to his boss. Serendipitously, they’d been exactly what was wanted for a picture book, so she and the author, the mother of three children, had co-operated for a frustrating, exhilarating, enjoyable few months. The book had come out just in time for the Christmas market.

  Her mouth tilted in the enchanting, seductively mischievous smile she reserved only for him. ‘More than happy, darling,’ she said, her voice a little huskier than usual.

  ‘So am I. You look,’ Clay said, ‘infinitely more beautiful than when we first made love in this room.’ He kissed a certain spot on her shoulder that drove her crazy, but didn’t follow through. Instead, he lifted his head to look around. ‘Mind you,’ he said, ‘the room looks infinitely more beautiful than it did then too.’

  ‘Because you were determined to have your ivory and green room,’ Natalia said through a yawn. ‘I’m so glad we decided not to demolish the homestead. Whenever I come into this room I look around and remember the first time I slept here. A new house just wouldn’t bring back the same memories.’

  It had cost far more to rebuild and renovate the homestead than it would have to build a modern house of the same size. ‘My one act of sentiment,’ Clay said lightly.

  ‘What about the jasmine?’

  The jasmine still flourished, much to the disapproval of the married couple who kept the gardens in manicured condition. ‘It keeps the house together,’ he said. ‘Besides, I remember carrying you up the steps the night we first made love, with the jasmine scenting the air.’

  Yawning, Natalia kissed his shoulder, then bit it in gentle contemplation. ‘Two acts of sentiment,’ she murmured against his skin.