Читать книгу: «A Marrying Man?»

CHAPTER ONE

GEORGIA NEWNHAM unlocked her front door, flung her mail down onto her hall table, threw her muddy coat and equally muddy riding boots down in disgust at the terrible weather and walked into her lounge in her socks. Her home was in fact a converted loft above a set of stables, not large but comfortable, with two bedrooms and a lounge separated from the country-style kitchen by a half-wall. It was all wood-panelled in the old-fashioned Queensland colonial manner, but furnished colourfully and luxuriously.

The last thing she had expected to see was an absolute stranger sitting peacefully on her tartan-covered sofa.

‘Who on earth are you?’ she demanded, missing a beat in her long-legged stride, but only one, before walking up to him.

The man stood, and turned out to be very tall—at least six feet four to her five feet ten. He had a thin face, she saw, not handsome but interesting…a face with a faint scar running from the outer left eyebrow to the temple, hair that was mid-brown, a pair of greeny, gold-flecked, oddly insolent eyes and a rather hard-looking mouth. He wore a tweed sports coat—a very fine, discreet tweed, but not new—with khaki trousers and a checked shirt open at the throat.

‘My apologies, Miss Newnham,’ he drawled, in a light voice with a decidedly masculine timbre. ‘I’m William Brady and—’

‘I don’t care if you’re William Shakespeare, Mr Brady,’ Georgia broke in angrily. ‘How dare you break into my house? If you’ve come to rob me let me warn you that my father is a barrister, my uncle is a judge and the Attorney-General happens to be my godfather!’

The stranger spoke again and the timbre of his voice struck her once more, and not only that; his cultured accent also held a sort of…what was it? she wondered. A dispassionate sort of irony?

‘I haven’t come to rob you, Miss Newnham,’ he said. ‘I’d hardly have stayed to introduce myself if that were the case.’ A corner of that well-cut mouth twisted and his hazel gaze slid down her figure leisurely, then came back to her cornflower-blue eyes with a mocking little salute in his own.

As it happened, Georgia was not new to this kind of masculine appreciation, which didn’t mean to say that she cared for it—and even less so as she realised that her drenched cotton blouse clearly showed the contours of her bra and breasts beneath it. Extremely shapely contours too, as she’d been given to understand by quite a large body of opinion. But that didn’t necessarily commend anything to her either. ‘Watch it, Mr Shakespeare,’ she said, through her teeth. ‘What have you come for? How do you know me when I don’t know you from a bar of soap, and how the hell did you get in?’

The last thing she was prepared for was the glint of amusement that came to those hazel eyes, and she said imperiously, ‘Now look here—’

‘My apologies again,’ William Brady murmured. ‘We haven’t met before, Miss Newnham; all my knowledge of you is from hearsay, but I would imagine it’s pretty accurate. As to how I got in—’ he produced a brass key from his pocket ‘—I used this.’

Georgia stared at it. ‘But all my keys are silver—’ she began.

‘Nevertheless, it worked.’

‘Well, I don’t understand!’ She put her hands on her hips and glared at him.

‘Perhaps you should take greater care with the keys you distribute, Miss Newnham,’ William Brady suggested coolly.

‘And perhaps you should take greater care with the things you say, Will,’ she flashed back. ‘What are you implying?’

‘That you may have retrieved your silver key from the—er—temporary owner of it, but not before he got it copied. Well, that’s one explanation, I guess.’

Georgia flung back her tousled mane of fair hair and opened her mouth, but her uninvited guest pipped her to the post.

‘Very effective, Miss Newnham,’ he drawled. ‘If you stamped your foot, you’d look remarkably similar to a spirited filly with a cream mane—have you one of those in your stable?’

Georgia breathed deeply and decided to change gear. ‘If you’ve come here for any purpose other than to insult me, Mr Shakespeare,’ she said, coolly and composedly, ‘would you please state your business? If not—don’t be offended if I call the police.’

The stranger eyed her narrowly for a long moment, then he said abruptly, ‘My business concerns Neil Dettweiler, Miss Newnham.’

Georgia’s eyes widened. ‘Neil? Oh, now it’s over, and you can tell him that—from the horse’s mouth,’ she added drily, but with the light of battle in her blue eyes. ‘I never want to see him again!’

‘That’s unfortunate, I’m afraid.’

‘Why? And what connection do you have with Neil?’ she demanded.

‘A—family interest and deep concern at this point in time, Miss Newnham. You see, he’s lying dangerously ill in a Sydney hospital after a car accident, and he’s asking for you.’

Georgia blinked. ‘Asking for me? Why?’

Those hazel eyes mocked her. ‘I think we both know that.’

‘No, I don’t,’ Georgia contradicted him. ‘I mean, I’m sorry to hear he’s ill—I wouldn’t wish anything drastic on him—but there’s no reason why he should be asking for me. After what I said to him on the last occasion we met, I’m sure I’m the last person he’d be asking for, in fact.’

‘What did you say to him?’ William Brady enquired evenly, but with an odd little undertone of menace.

‘I told him,’ Georgia said carefully, ‘that he was the last person on earth I would take my clothes off for.’

‘Bravo,’ William Brady said, then added, ‘What a pity you waited until he was thoroughly enslaved to make that declaration, though.’

‘I didn’t and he wasn’t.’ Georgia frowned. ‘There’s something going on here I don’t understand. Neil Dettweiler—who I met at a party, incidentally, and became fairly friendly with in a casual sort of way—expressed a desire to paint my portrait, you see, Mr Brady. He said I didn’t have that sort of chocolate-box prettiness that was so common but something much more…’ She stopped as William Brady quite pointedly examined her face for chocolate-box prettiness or otherwise.

After a moment during which she was curiously unable to string together any words, he said, ‘I see what he means—you’ve lovely skin, which you’ve obviously taken good care of, Miss Newnham, despite your occupation, and quite stunning eyes,’ he mused. ‘But no, not pretty, although well bred, rather patrician, in fact, good bone structure—interesting and quite memorable, I’m sure.’

‘Thank you.’ Georgia subjected him to an extremely arrogant and patrician look from her stunning eyes. ‘But, to get back to what I was saying, I agreed, and started to sit for him—which I have to say I found intolerably boring.’ She grimaced. ‘Be that as it may, he seemed quite sure I was Archibald Prize material, which would be a big coup for him. Only then, when the portrait was about halfway through, he became fixated with the idea that a full-length nude of me would be even more desirable.

‘That, Mr Shakespeare,’ Georgia said gently, ‘was when I made my declaration. Is it all clear to you now?’ she added sweetly.

‘Perfectly,’ he agreed. ‘And quite consistent with everything else I’ve heard about you, Miss Newnham. “A rare old breaker of hearts—not to mention other things,” someone described you as. Be that as it may, to use your own terminology, and although to my mind I’m not sure what he’s done to deserve the likes of you, tomorrow morning you’ll be flying down to Sydney with me to Neil’s bedside.

‘I hope I make myself plain,’ he said, coldly and pointedly. ‘Because I’d hate to have to indulge in any undignified brawling with you, Miss Newnham—but don’t imagine I wouldn’t.’

Georgia stared into his eyes for a long moment, and was stunned to see how angry and utterly contemptuous they were. It occurred to her that she was trapped in her loft with this well-spoken but angry man, who was not only a lot taller than she was but also possessed a lean, very fit kind of grace and a magnificently wide pair of shoulders…Trapped because there was only one exit and there was no one to call for help.

She said, almost thoughtfully, as the pause stretched, ‘Well, I don’t know about you, Will, but I’m cold, wet and starving. So you do whatever you like, but I intend to change and make a meal.’

‘What a good idea,’ William Brady murmured, and accepted with cool amusement the flash of fire that came his way from her eyes before she stalked into her bedroom.

‘There we are—reheated cannelloni. But the salad is fresh and the bread is home-made. Would you like wine, beer—whatever?’

Georgia had showered and changed into a fleecylined blue tracksuit, and had deliberately and defiantly put on a pair of old sheepskin slippers which she normally didn’t parade to the public but did wear on cold evenings at home alone. She’d also tied her hair back, and during all these preparations reviewed with growing chagrin her options for escape, only to decide there were none, for several reasons.

The bedrooms and bathroom in her loft were lit by means of skylights; those same skylights admitted air—but only with the aid of a long pole with a hook on the end. There were conventional windows in the lounge and kitchen area, with pretty, flower-studded window-boxes outside, but William Brady was sitting in the lounge, and while he wasn’t exactly exhibiting the air of someone guarding all such exits she had no doubt that he was. He was also sitting beside her desk, upon which resided her only telephone.

‘A glass of wine would be nice,’ he observed.

‘Please do the honours, then,’ Georgia invited politely, and gestured to her small wine rack. She’d set the table with a red and white checked cloth, matching napkins and a small bowl of flowers. She’d wrapped the warmed bread in a snowy napkin and the salad was colourful, tossed in a zesty dressing of her own making. She dished up the cannelloni as he chose and opened a bottle of Beaujolais.

‘This is very good,’ he murmured after tasting the cannelloni. ‘Did you make it yourself?’

‘Indeed I did,’ Georgia replied. ‘Whatever else men don’t deserve about me, they would have nothing to object to in my culinary expertise.’

‘Point taken, Miss Newnham.’

‘Yes, well…’ Georgia picked up her wineglass and studied the ruby depths. ‘Should we get back to the point? Your conviction, in other words, that I am the last of the great seductresses and that I callously spurned Neil Dettweiler. Do go on.’

He glanced at her briefly and continued to eat for a moment. Then he said, ‘Do people call you Blondie, Miss Newnham?’

‘Some do,’ she conceded. ‘My family, mainly. It’s not a courtesy I extend to a lot of people for the simple reason that it reminds me of when I was about four, which was when the name first came into existence. It’s something I’ve not been able to cure them of calling me on the odd occasion—my family, I mean. But I tell you what—you are giving me the absolute willies by persisting with Miss Newnham.’

‘Are you inviting me to call you Blondie?’

‘No,’ she said evenly, ‘Georgia will do. But what has this got to do with the price of eggs, Will?’

‘Just that Neil wrote to me about you—he used your nickname, and he’s still using it in his delirium.’

‘Neil never called me Blondie—’

‘Perhaps not to your face,’ William Brady said mildly. ‘But in his letter to me he described you as a blonde goddess and said he hadn’t realised what love was about until he met you. He mentioned that your background was impeccable and teeming with judges and barristers…’

He stopped and raised an ironic eyebrow at her as she made a disbelieving, inarticulate sound, then went on remorselessly, ‘Then, when I went through his things, what should I discover but your unfinished portrait? Whose name should be in his diary, heavily underscored, but yours—with one of your doorkeys?’

Georgia, who’d been staring at William Brady wide-eyed and with her mouth open, closed her mouth with a click. ‘This is…this is…I’m lost for words. No, I’m not. There’s got to be some terrible mistake. Other than the fact that Neil and I appear to you to have parted, why have you automatically assumed the blame for it lies at my door? Why, in other words, although you’ve never laid eyes on me before, am I such an object of contempt?’ Her eyes challenged him angrily.

He shrugged, fiddled with the stem of his wineglass, and she noticed with the periphery of her mind that he had long fingers and wore a battered old watch on a leather band that had seen better days. ‘I made some enquiries.’

‘Ah,’ Georgia said ironically. ‘Do tell me more!’

He lifted his hazel eyes and they met hers with that amusement she’d seen lurking in them before. ‘You have to admit you’re a colourful character, Georgia,’ he said wryly.

‘Go on,’ she commanded.

‘Well…’ He sat back. ‘Twenty-three, been to all the right schools and finishing schools, mixed in the right society, could ride almost before you could walk, were a show-jumper—those are the kind of things I came up with. Plus the fact that Daddy has never been able to deny you anything, apparently, including this little spread.’ He looked around. ‘Then there’s the reputation you seem to have acquired for being—stuck-up.’

She sat forward and propped her chin on her hands. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Several people.’

Georgia laughed. ‘I wonder if you researched any of my friends? It doesn’t sound like it to me.’

He narrowed his eyes. ‘You seem to be curiously unmoved by these allegations, Georgia,’ he said reflectively.

‘I am, mainly because they’re untrue, so perhaps I could set the record straight, Will?’ She eyed him, then continued without waiting for a reply, ‘I did do a bit of show-jumping in my teens, but it was never a career or an ongoing passion with me—just the kind of thing a lot of girls who love horses dabble in for a while.

‘And my father didn’t buy this place for me. I inherited it from my grandmother, as a matter of fact, but what I inherited was a ramshackle old set of stables on twenty acres of bush, whereas what you see today,’ she said proudly, ‘is the result of my own efforts.

‘Yes, I did borrow from my father for some of the improvements, but I’ve paid him back every cent and I’ve turned this place into a successful spelling farm where people know they can send their racehorses between campaigns to rest, be pampered and cared for excellently. In other words I’ve turned it into a thoroughly good business proposition. I support myself entirely from it and it has the added advantage of being something I love doing.’

‘I stand corrected,’ William Brady murmured, although he didn’t appear to be chastened in the slightest, as he proceeded to demonstrate. ‘What about the men you’ve been associated with?’

‘All those men I gave my doorkey to?’ Georgia said with genuine amusement in her eyes. ‘Don’t you believe a word of it, Will! I’m surprised someone didn’t tell you how frigid and stuck-up I am.’

‘So they didn’t represent a long line of affairs?’

‘Hardly any of them, Will. Hardly any of them,’ Georgia said gently, but for some reason a glint of anger was back in her eyes. Although she added lightly enough, ‘Nor was Neil Dettweiler in love with me, Will. I really would have known, and taken great pains to avoid it, you see. And do you honestly believe a man in love would want to exhibit his beloved in the altogether for the Archibald Prize?’ She put her head on one side and scanned him with rueful amusement.

But he laughed back at her. ‘It’s not such an insult, you know. For a man in love who also happens to be an artist—’

‘Possibly not,’ Georgia conceded. ‘I mean, to want to paint the portrait, but not the exhibiting bit—not the kind of man I would want to be in love with me, at any rate.’

‘Then do you have any explanation for your name being in his diary, your key amongst his things, for the way he’s asking for you?’ he asked drily.

Georgia stared at him and felt her skin prickle as she realised that this man simply didn’t believe her—and that on certain evidence which she simply couldn’t explain he was probably within his rights not to. ‘No, I can’t,’ she said baldly at last. ‘It’s a complete mystery to me.’

‘Would it be too difficult to work on the assumption that he hid this grand passion for you from you, Georgia?’

‘Do you mean…?’

‘Yes. Come to Sydney with me tomorrow morning. What have you got to lose?’

‘I’ve got horses—’

‘Do you have no one to help you with them? For a day or two?’

Georgia tightened her mouth, then looked at him coldly. ‘How do I know this isn’t some plot?’

‘What kind of plot? Oh, come now, Georgia—’ William Brady looked at her quizzically ‘—you’re really not my type. I thought you might have sensed that.’

‘Easy to say, Mr Shakespeare. Easy to say,’ Georgia taunted. ‘There’s no reason on earth, however, why I should believe a word of what you’ve said—in fact there are a few good reasons for me not to!’

He pulled a card from his pocket and handed it across the table to her. ‘Ring the hospital yourself.’

Georgia stared down at it then rose and walked to the desk. A few minutes later she put the phone down and turned back with a frown to William Brady.

‘Well?’

‘He’s in Intensive Care—they’re not making any predictions at the moment,’ she said slowly. ‘His mother’s with him—they offered to let me speak to her.’

‘If you wouldn’t mind I’ll give…his mother a call myself in a moment. In the meantime, will you come?’

‘But look,’ Georgia said in sudden genuine desperation, ‘what am I going to say to him if I do?’

William Brady got up, came round the table to her and said with chilling evenness, ‘My dear, I have no idea what is going on—if there’s a new man in your life or whatever—but would it be such an imposition to ask you to come up with some slight reassurance for a poor guy who is hanging between life and death and asking for you?’

‘It’s no good, I can’t sleep like this—look, I’ve told you I’ll come!’

The lights were out, Georgia was in her bed and William Brady was reclining on her tartan sofa, having declined the spare bedroom. It was raining, her bedroom door was open and she’d tossed and turned restlessly for the past hour. ‘You don’t have to treat me as if you’re my jailer,’ she added bitterly.

‘Count sheep,’ he suggested. ‘Or fences, triple gates, water jumps—whatever.’

‘If you really want me to be wide awake, that’s the way to do it, Will,’ she said with irony, and reached over to switch on her bedside lamp. In the weak light her bedroom’s glory, which had caused him to raise his eyebrows wryly earlier, was somewhat dimmed.

She’d used a mixture of cornflower-blue and ivory to decorate it: ivory carpet and cornflower-blue quilt, stitched and appliquéd with ivory flower-heads—it alone was a work of art. Her dressing table and wardrobe were lovely walnut pieces, there was a padded armchair and matching footstool with a magazine rack beside it, a glorious gold-framed print on the wall, of mountains and snow against a lavender sky, and a bowl of exquisite white roses on the dressing table.

‘From an admirer?’ William Brady had said on his way to the bathroom, which could only be reached via the bedroom.

‘You could say so,’ Georgia had replied airily. ‘It’s nothing to do with you, however.’

He had not replied.

Georgia plumped up her pillows angrily and surveyed her tormentor through the open bedroom door. He’d taken off his jacket and shoes but otherwise remained clothed, and he seemed perfectly comfortable and at home on her sofa beneath one of her spare blankets, with his hands folded behind his head.

Not only comfortable but serene, even, she thought darkly, so that you could almost forget that steely little glint he’d had in his eye when he’d told her the bedroom door would remain open for the night. Not to mention all the other things he’d said to her.

‘Tell me about yourself, Will,’ she said, arranging herself comfortably with her arms folded on top of her bedclothes. ‘What do you do for a living? What kind of women do appeal to you—are you married to one, for example? Why do I get the feeling you’re a bit of a dry stick who lives in an ivory tower and feels he can afford to throw stones? Those kind of things.’

He chuckled. ‘I’m not married, I’m a journalist, I certainly don’t live in an ivory tower and I probably like my women a little less flamboyant and a bit more tractable than you. So far as throwing stones goes, I’ve only relayed to you tonight the things people have told me about you.’

‘Flamboyant,’ Georgia mused. ‘Am I really?’

‘Well, you’re certainly not a little mouse of a girl. One only needs eyes to see that but I have it on good authority as well.’

‘Will, didn’t it strike you as being just a teeny bit sneaky—going around behind my back like this? Or are you that kind of journalist?’

‘All journalists have their ways and means,’ he said, and left it at that.

‘Would it interest you to know that I thoroughly despise your ways and means? That I—’

‘Now, Georgia, don’t work yourself up again,’ he advised. ‘It really can have no relevance what you think of me, or vice versa.’

‘Is that so? What if I did an about-face on the subject of your beloved Neil Dettweiler?’

‘Are you contemplating it?’

‘No. You must be a very good friend of his, Will,’ she said thoughtfully, ‘to go to all this trouble.’ And she stopped briefly with a frown creasing her forehead. ‘What did you mean by a family interest? He never said a word about you.’

There was a minute’s silence, then he said, ‘He happens to be my half-brother. Georgia, we have a very early start tomorrow…’ He stopped, and to her surprise she saw him get up and come towards the bedroom.

‘Now look here…’ she said fiercely, sitting up.

‘Calm yourself, my dear Miss Newnham,’ he said, with more deadly amusement glinting in his hazel eyes as he came right up to the bed. ‘You’d be the last person who was in any danger of being taken against her will by me. But I am going to do this.’

Their eyes locked as he reached for the lamp, and in the moment before he switched it off she read again that cool contempt in his eyes, and for the strangest reason discovered herself feeling young, hotheaded and a nuisance. All of which effectively silenced her as the lamp went off.

She wasn’t sure when she drifted off to sleep but it was some time in the middle of some curious thoughts about William Brady—a man who despised her, who was totally unaffected by her, but a man…

She woke to the sound of rain on the roof and the sight of weak morning light coming in and someone bending over her. She said drowsily, ‘David…?’