The Colour Of Midnight

Perhaps no one was all that interested in why his wife had died, especially as he hadn’t been there when Stella swallowed her deadly mixture of pills.

Nick’s broad shoulders moved a fraction. ‘She adored my mother,’ he said calmly, as though this explained everything. ‘Now, about payment. Family or not,’ his voice turned sardonic, ‘I certainly don’t expect you to give up your holiday without making it worthwhile for you.’

Minerva lifted ironic eyes. ‘The family bit cuts both ways,’ she said lightly, hiding even from herself her instinctive rejection of the idea of taking money from him. ‘You don’t pay family for coming to the rescue. It isn’t done.’

The cold fire of his gaze held hers for a pulse-thudding moment. He meant to ride roughshod over her; she could see his intention as clearly as though he had spoken the words.

Then something changed his mind and his expression altered into the chilly impersonality she was beginning to dislike. With a narrow, sharp-edged smile, he said, ‘Very well.’

Oddly enough, she resented his easy capitulation. She had, she realised, looked forward to crossing swords with him. Something told her that he would be a good enemy, hard but just, and that there would be an intense exhilaration in battling him. Minerva rather enjoyed a fair fight; in that she was completely different from Stella, who had hated quarrels and been unable to cope with them.

It seemed suddenly disloyal to bandy words and fence for position with the man who had been instrumental in some way for her sister’s death. Her lips tightened. She said too loudly, ‘Well, that’s settled then. I’d better unpack.’

When he had left the room she stood for a moment, her eyes fixed on the door, before breathing out with a sudden, explosive sound. Then she walked across to the wide bed and sat down on it, her eyes troubled.

He was too much, too tall, too good-looking, with eyes that saw too much and a mouth that promised too much, and a voice that sent too many shivers down her spine. Yet that uncompromising dominance wasn’t entirely physical; even curbed by will-power, the dark force of his personality blazed forth with an indelible impact. No wonder Stella had been overwhelmed.

More than anything, Minerva wanted to understand her stepsister’s state of mind in those last months before her death. Oh, she hadn’t come up here deliberately to spy and poke and probe, but that had to be part of the reason she had turned off Highway 10 and headed up the hill. For a year Stella’s death had nagged at her, demanding that she do something about it, that she make someone suffer for it.

She needed to find out what had driven her stepsister to take that final, irrevocable step into the darkness. If they knew, Ruth and her father could pick up the threads of their lives and find some measure of serenity and acceptance.

Initially she had blamed Nick, but now it seemed fairly clear that like Ruth, like them all, he was living in one of the darker corners of hell.

Minerva sighed, looking around with a troubled frown.

Perhaps Stella should be allowed to rest in peace, that lovely phrase which promised so much.

Biting her lip, Minerva stared down at the faded hues of the Persian carpet, watching the wonderful coppery red and brilliant blue blur through her tears into a jumble of undefined hues.

What had been Stella’s thoughts during the last night she had spent here?

No one, she thought sadly, would ever know. Stella had made sure of that by not asking for help, by giving no reason. Sometimes Minerva wondered whether she would have made a difference; whether, if she’d been home, Stella would have confided in her.

Although Minerva was a year younger, she had been the stronger, treading through the minefields of adolescence with a light foot and comparative ease, whereas Stella had made hard weather of it.

When Stella got drunk it had been Minerva who had smuggled her into the house and dealt with the aftermath, just as she had coped the time Stella had tried marijuana. Later, realising that Stella had embarked on the first of a series of affairs, it was Minerva who had expostulated. Stella had listened, said airily that making love with someone you liked was no big deal, and not let Minerva’s reasoned arguments affect her behaviour at all.

In spite of her light-heartedness and her fragility, Stella had never been one for confidences. Minerva’s hands clenched on her lap as she fought guilt and pain and a wasteland of emotions. Why should she think that she might have made a difference if Ruth hadn’t seen anything, if Nick had been unable to help the woman he had married, the woman who had loved him so desperately? Although it hurt to accept that there was probably nothing she could have done, she had to, or risk spending the rest of her life haunted by regret.

It was time to let the past bury its dead.

Wearily, she went into the bathroom, a room of Victorian splendour, claw-footed bath and all, only modernised in the most essential ways. As warm and dry as the rest of the house, it breathed the same indefinable air of luxury.

Staring into the well-lit mirror, she saw no ghosts, just her own somewhat plain reflection, its only claims to beauty a heart-shaped face and a pair of large, dark blue eyes set in thick black lashes.

Stella had been a golden girl, with skin that tanned easily into a warm brilliance, set off by soft blue eyes and curly amber hair.

When Minerva was growing up she had hated her pallor and the sudden contrast of eyes and lashes and full, red mouth. After the affair with Paul she’d become reconciled to her lack of beauty. Her first and only romance had taught her that, when it came to looks versus character in women, looks won out every time.

Her hands fell to her side. Mouth twisting into a cynical little smile, she recalled unflinchingly Paul’s voice as he had pointed out her deficiencies in that department. She only had herself to blame; stupidly, she had pleaded with him to tell her why he was leaving. So he had.

‘Don’t you ever look at yourself in the mirror? You’re too thin, and you don’t make enough of what you have got—you dress as though you’re ashamed of being a woman.’

Stung, she had countered, ‘Just because I don’t wear plunging necklines—’

‘Well, darling, you haven’t got anything to plunge to, have you? Nice enough in their little way, but it’s a very little way, isn’t it?’

She understood now that he had been angry because she had forced him to justify his betrayal, but then his acid irritation had humiliated her.

He had looked at her white face and said shamefacedly, ‘I’m sorry, Minerva, I don’t want to hurt you, we’ve had some good times together, but when I saw Cass again, I knew that—well, that’s all they were, good times.’

She had thought Paul loved her as much as she loved him. Lord, but she’d been green, too green to realise that Paul had been using her to make his girlfriend jealous. Even more than his casual dismissal of her physical attributes and the lovemaking they had shared, she’d been wounded by her own stupidity.

The humiliation had long gone; within three months his pretty, voluptuous Cass had dumped him for a tall footballer. Now Minerva knew he’d been immature and cruelly spoilt, but the whole episode had left her with a cynicism that her life cooking meals for the rich had intensified.

Oh, she believed in love; only death had severed her father’s love for her mother, and his second marriage was truly happy, too. But if and when she married it would not be under the spell of a chemistry so intense she mistook it for love.

‘Never,’ she said, shaking her head.

The forgotten locks of hair moved in a rippling mass. She pulled a face at the determined woman in the mirror and set to tidying herself. Her long-fingered hands moved swiftly, pinning the strands to the back of her head. Although the style was severely practical, just as practical as her hands and her skills, it made her look older and more severe.

That, she thought as she turned to make the bed, was how she was. Her hard-won peace of mind was not going to be in jeopardy because the man who had married Stella looked like a fallen angel.

When Nick came into the kitchen just before half-past four, Minerva was taking a tray of muffins from the oven. Acutely aware of his burnished glance, she flicked them on to a wire rack and covered them with a cloth.

His smile, swift and brilliant as a lightning flash, seared through her. ‘Are those for afternoon tea? They smell good.’

Something moved in the pit of her stomach, primeval, intense. ‘Yes,’ she said shortly.

The telephone interrupted. He answered it, asked a couple of questions, said, ‘I’ll ring you back in five minutes when I’ve got the information,’ and hung up, asking, ‘Is the tea made?’

‘No, I’ve only just put the kettle on.’

‘In that case, can you bring it to the office?’

‘Yes, of course.’

The office was a large room with a very intimidating computer set-up. Minerva, who had a novice’s fear of technology, put the tray down on one corner of the desk well away from it, and turned to go.

Nick was reading something at the desk, his lean hand making quick notes in the margin. Apart from calling ‘Come in,’ when she knocked, he hadn’t looked up. But as she moved away, he asked absently, ‘Why is there only one cup and saucer?’

‘Well, I—’

He lifted his head, his eyes narrowing. ‘Go and get another cup for yourself.’

Another direct order, and one that he didn’t expect to be disobeyed. He didn’t seem to realise that she might prefer some privacy. Minerva hesitated.

There was no warmth in his eyes, yet she thought they lingered a moment on her mouth. ‘Minerva,’ he said softly, ‘you’re here as a member of the family who is helping out, not as a hired hand. You said so, remember.’

She returned defensively, ‘After five years of being very much the hired help, being a member of the family is going to take a bit of getting used to.’

‘Get used to it,’ he commanded as she turned to leave the room. ‘You’re doing both Helen and me a favour.’

When she returned he was still scribbling notes in the margin, but as she came into the room he put his pen down and stood up, waiting for her to sit down.

‘Have you got yourself organised?’ he asked quite pleasantly.

‘Oh, yes.’ Far too aware of him, she poured the tea and set the pot down. In spite of his superficial pleasantness there was something curiously implacable about Nick Peveril.

‘Can you cope with the menu for the dinner?’

‘That’s no problem.’ She could cope with an infinitely more elaborate menu than the one Helen had made out, but she wasn’t going to tell him that. It sounded too much like boasting, and he wasn’t her employer; she didn’t have to impress him with her skill. She said, ‘I’ll need some help, though. I can cook it, but I’m not going to be able to serve a sit-down meal for twenty people by myself.’

‘That’s all organised. Jillian Howard’s going to be here all of Friday and Saturday; she’ll help in the kitchen with the dinner, and the two high-school sons of the head shepherd will serve at table.’

Minerva knew she looked taken aback. Composing her expression, she asked, ‘Do they know what they’re doing?’

‘Yes, they’ve done it before. I prefer to get people who are working on the station to help out.’

It sounded very worthy, although Minerva caught herself wondering whether they were too intimidated by the man to refuse.

‘You, of course, will eat with us,’ he said, so blandly that she wondered for one heart-stopping moment whether he was able to read her thoughts.

She frowned. ‘It will make things more difficult,’ she warned.

His brows lifted slightly. ‘Too difficult?’

‘Well, no,’ she admitted.

‘Good. I’d like you to act as my hostess.’

‘Oh, but—’ Minerva’s eyes met his. She could read nothing in their depths, but her protest died before Genevieve Chatswood’s name fell from her unruly tongue.

‘That’s settled, then. Is there anything else you want to know?’ he asked politely.

She shook her head. ‘Not at the moment, no.’

Leaning forward, he said, ‘I know I more or less dumped you in it, and I’m damned grateful. Helen wouldn’t have gone if you hadn’t agreed, and, to be honest, I didn’t like the sound of her daughter’s condition.’

Minerva said quietly, ‘I hope she’s all right. As for the other—well, it was good luck that I happened to be here. Perhaps it was meant.’

‘Or perhaps just coincidence,’ he countered, sounding very slightly bored. ‘Do you like what you’ve seen of the north so far?’

‘All I’ve seen so far,’ she told him acidly, ‘is rain. I left Auckland on a glorious day, but as soon as I reached the Brynderwyn Hills the rain set in, and it’s been raining on and off ever since.’

‘Well, you would come up in spring. Look at it this way—things can only get better. Last summer was such a dreary one we’re hoping for a good warm season this year. That’s if Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines doesn’t blow again.’

‘I thought farmers hated lovely dry summers,’ she said contrarily.

‘Who said anything about dry? A summer with no wind and at least an inch of rain each week will do us fine. Although there’s always the possibility of facial eczema then, of course.’

Minerva smiled. ‘I knew there had to be some catch,’ she teased. ‘Farmers are notorious for never being happy.’

‘Only because so much can go wrong when you’re at the mercy of the weather,’ he parried, a glint of amusement softening his features. ‘Cyclones, hailstorms, floods—’

‘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 up into no space at all. They were hardly glamorous, but they’d do. She eyed them both. One was the soft, clear ice-pink that suited her so well, the other the axiomatic little black dress. Deciding on the black, she hung it in the bathroom while she showered so the steam could smooth out its few creases. It was ready when, after putting on the lipstick and blusher that was all she used, she got into it.

Nick gave her a glass of sherry before dinner; they talked of her parents and her half-brother Kane, who was enjoying himself enormously at the same boarding-school Nick had attended, then found themselves discussing the implications of a book that had startled New Zealand. It was pleasant and low-key, and Minerva didn’t drink all of her sherry, yet she felt as though it had been champagne. Tiny bubbles of excitement fizzed softly through her bloodstream.

They ate in the morning-room off the kitchen, a room that moonlighted as a sitting-room too, for there were comfortable chairs at one end, and a set of cabinets and shelves that held books and pretty things as well as a television and an imposing stereo and CD player. The billionaire had been a stereo buff; Minerva noticed that the name on the speakers was the one on the huge affairs in the yacht.

Over dinner they spoke of generalities, nothing personal. Nick’s conversation revealed an incisive brain and a crisply unsentimental outlook which Minerva rather liked. She enjoyed the way he put her on her mettle.

Afterwards he helped carry the dishes into the kitchen, stacked the dishwasher while she made coffee, and told her that she was to feel free to watch television or play music if she wanted to. Unfortunately he wasn’t going to be able to stay with her; he had more work to get through.

Minerva found herself wondering if the detachment she found so off-putting was merely a front he assumed. Intuition, that subliminal reading of unnoticeable signs and intonations, made her suspect him of being a man of strong emotions and intense desires.

Of course she could be wrong. Perhaps he was simply ice through and through, and poor Stella had frozen to death.

She drank her coffee with him, and when he had gone back to the office rang her parents in their hotel in Seattle.

‘You’re where?’ Ruth asked.

‘Spanish Castle.’ She was glad Nick had left the room, because there was a note of betraying self-consciousness in her voice that galled her. ‘I dropped in to see Mr—Nick, just as his housekeeper was called away on a family emergency. She didn’t think she could go because Nick’s having a group of very high-powered Brazilian officials to dinner on Saturday, so Nick co-opted me.’

‘That’s sweet of you,’ Ruth said with satisfaction. ‘But talk about a busman’s holiday!’

‘I do like cooking, you know.’

‘Just as well, isn’t it. Darling, is Nick there with you?’

Absently, Minerva shook her head. ‘No, he’s working in his office.’