Hardly enough to give her an insight into the man who owned them, she thought. There had been other men who had entered her life and departed, some at her request, a few on their own. But they all left something of themselves. This seemed to be a man who walked a lonely path, leaving nothing behind.
She stepped through the doorway into his sleeping quarters. The mirror above the sink in the bathroom behind was still fogged with steam, a sign that the occupant had recently bathed. She smelled a small whiff of men’s aftershave, and it produced a strange tingle in her stomach.
“Mr. Pitt,” she called out again, but not loudly. “Are you here?”
Then she saw the body laid out full length on the bed, arms loosely crossed over the chest as though he were lying in a coffin. She breathed a sigh of relief at seeing that his loins were covered by a bath towel. “I’m sorry,” she said very softly. “Forgive me for disturbing you.”
Pitt slept on without responding.
Her eyes traveled from his head to his feet. The black mass of curly hair was still damp and tousled. His eyebrows were thick, almost bushy, and came close to meeting above a straight nose. She guessed he was somewhere in the neighborhood of forty, though the craggy features, the tanned and weathered skin and chiseled, unyielding jawline made him seem older. Small wrinkles around the eyes and lips turned up, giving him the look of a man who was perpetually smiling. It was a strong face, the kind of face women are drawn to. He looked like a man of strength and determination, the kind of man who had seen the best of times and worst of times but never sidestepped whatever life threw at him.
The rest of his body was firm and smooth except for a dark patch of hair on his chest. The shoulders were broad, the stomach flat, the hips narrow. The muscles of his arms and legs were pronounced but not thick or bulging. The body was not powerful but tended on the wiry side, even rangy. There was a tenseness that suggested a spring that was waiting to uncoil. And then there were the scars. She couldn’t begin to imagine where they came from.
He did not seem cut from the same mold as the other men she had known. She hadn’t really loved any of them, sleeping with them out of curiosity and rebellion against her father more than passionate desire. Even when she became pregnant by a fellow student, she refused an abortion to spite her father and carried her twin sons to birth.
Now, staring down at the sleeping man in the bed, she felt a strange pleasure and power at standing over his nakedness. She lifted the lower edge of the towel, smiled devilishly to herself, and let it fall back in place. Maeve found Pitt immensely attractive and wanted him, yes, feverishly and shamelessly wanted him.
“See something you like, little sister,” came a quiet, husky voice from behind her.
Chagrined, Maeve spun and stared at Deirdre, who leaned casually against the doorway, smoking a cigarette.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded in a whisper.
“Keeping you from biting off more than you can chew.”
“Very funny.” In a motherly gesture, Maeve pulled the covers over Pitt’s body and tucked them under the mattress. Then she turned and physically pushed Deirdre into the anteroom before softly closing the bedroom door. “Why are you following me? Why didn’t you return to Australia with the other passengers?”
“I might ask the same of you, dear sister.”
“The ship’s scientists asked me to remain on board and make out a report of my experience with the death plague.”
“And I remained because I thought we might kiss and make up,” Deirdre said, drawing on her cigarette.
“There was a time I might have believed you. But not now.”
“I admit there were other considerations.”
“How did you manage to stay out of my sight during the weeks we were at sea?”
“Would you believe I remained in my cabin with an upset stomach?”
“That’s so much rot,” snapped Maeve. “You have the constitution of a horse. I’ve never known you to be sick.”
Deirdre looked around for an ashtray, and finding none, opened the cabin door and flipped her cigarette over the railing into the sea. “Aren’t you the least bit amazed at my miraculous survival?”
Maeve stared into her eyes, confused and uncertain. “You told everyone you were in the freezer.”
“Rather good timing, don’t you think?”
“You were incredibly lucky.”
“Luck had nothing to do with it,” Deirdre contradicted. “What about yourself? Didn’t it ever occur to you how you came to be in the whaling station caves at exactly the right moment?”
“What are you implying?”
“You don’t understand, do you?” Deirdre said as if scolding a naughty child. “Did you think Daddy was going to forgive and forget after you stormed out of his office, swearing never to see any one of us again? He especially went mad when he heard that you had legally changed your name to that of our great-great-great-grandmother. Fletcher, indeed. Since you left, he’s had your every movement observed from the time you entered Melbourne University until you were employed by Ruppert & Saunders.”
Maeve stared at her with anger and disbelief that faded as something began to dawn slowly in her mind. “He was that afraid that I would talk to the wrong people about his filthy business operations?”
“Whatever unorthodox means Daddy has used to further the family empire was for your benefit as well as Boudicca and myself.”
“Boudicca!” Maeve spat. “Our sister, the devil incarnate.”
“Think what you may,” Deirdre said impassively, “Boudicca has always had your best interests at heart.”
“If you believe that, you’re a bigger fool than I gave you credit for.”
“It was Boudicca who talked Daddy into sparing your life by insisting I go along on the voyage.”
“Sparing my life?” Maeve looked lost. “You’re not making sense.”
“Who do you think arranged for the ship’s captain to send you ashore with the first excursion?”
“You?”
“Me.”
“It was my turn to go ashore. The other lecturers and I worked in sequence.”
Deirdre shook her head. “If they had stuck to the proper schedule, you’d have been placed in charge of the second shore party that never got off the ship.”
“So what was your reasoning?”
“An act of timing,” said Deirdre, suddenly turning cold. “Daddy’s people calculated that the phenomenon would appear when the first shore party was safe inside the whaling station storage caves.”
Maeve felt the deck reeling beneath her feet, and the color drained out of her cheeks. “No way he could have predicted the terrible event,” she gasped.
“A smart man, our father,” Deirdre said calmly as if she were gossiping with a friend over the telephone. “If not for his advance planning, how do you think I knew when to lock myself in the ship’s freezer?”
“How could he possibly know when and where the plague would strike?” she asked skeptically.
“Our father,” Deirdre said, baring her teeth in a savage smile, “is not a stupid man.”
Maeve’s fury seethed throughout her body. “If he had any suspicions, he should have given a warning and averted the slaughter,” she snapped.
“Daddy has more important business than to fuss over a boatload of dismal tourists.”
“I swear before God I’ll see that you all pay for your callousness.”
“You’d betray the family?” Deirdre shrugged sarcastically, then answered her own question. “Yes, I believe you would.”
“Bet on it.”
“Never happen, not if you want to see your precious sons again.”
“Sean and Michael are where Father will never find them.”
“Call in the dogs if you have a mind to, but hiding the twins with that teacher in Perth was not really all that clever.”
“You’re bluffing.”
“Your flesh-and-blood sister, Boudicca, merely persuaded the teacher and his wife, the Hollenders as I recall
