A Masterful Man

freight.'

'But you must have known that when I rang,' Davina pointed out, suddenly feeling a cold, sinking sensation.

The girl looked confused, miserable, then blurted out, 'The thing is, Mr Warwick left strict instructions that we weren't to fly you out in any circumstances, only I didn't know it when I took your call-Sam,' she called over her shoulder, 'could you come out, please? I think I need help.'

Sam turned out to be the airport manager and he looked both sheepish and harassed.

'Is this true?' Davina demanded coldly.

' 'Fraid so, Mrs Hastings.'

'But you don't even work for him! There's absolutely nothing you can do to stop me going on another flight on another airline-he doesn't own the airport!'

'That's what I told him,' Sam said eagerly but his face fell. 'There is no other flight today, though. We put on a couple of extras this morning to clear the backlog but- that's it. Incidentally,' he added, as a plane zoomed into view down the strip, 'that's Mr Warwick, he's just landed. So you can have it out with him.'

Davina closed her eyes, feeling about as trapped as she'd ever felt. Where to run? Where to hide? On Lord Howe? Nowhere…

'Then will you tell him that I'm waiting for him in the Land Rover-as I've no doubt you'll tell him everything else,' she said sardonically and swung away on her heel.

Mount Gower and Lidgbird had never been more beautiful, with some lazy cloud touching their peaks as she looked at them from the place she'd first photographed them.

Steve had come out of the terminal with his face grim and set and simply climbed into the Land Rover, slammed the door and driven them off. Not home, she'd prayed and indeed, he'd turned off the road and driven across the grass to the point above Lovers' Bay, as she now knew it was called.

'OK,' he said through his teeth, as the engine died. 'Want to go first? I presume you're going to tell me all the stupid, cowardly reasons you've come up with as a bar to us being right for each other.'

Davina took a breath and tried to control the anger that rushed through her but it was useless. 'No,' she said tautly, 'but I'm going to ask you this-how dare you do that to me?'

'Because I know you too well, Davina. You're still wearing your crown of thorns and loving it-do you think I couldn't see it? God knows what triggered it today but something as sure as hell did. I can only assume you've been moralising on things, such as…' He held up a hand and ticked off his fingers, and it was the most curiously insulting gesture she'd seen for a time. 'It's too soon, it's too awkward because of Lavinia, Loretta, Candice, Mary, probably, and the devil alone knows who else you have in mind. It's too… physical?' He glanced at her with so much irony in his eyes she flinched, and he went on with searing mockery. 'Too hot to last-is that what you think, Davina? You're going to have to go a long way before you find a man who will fall in love with you without wanting to sleep with you, my dear, and possibly even a longer way before you find a man you want to sleep with as much as you like to do it with me.'

She gasped and went white before she could speak, he said, 'Sound a bit crude to you? Believe me, it's true, and I think you should know better than most what a crucial thing it is in a marriage. You didn't exactly practise passive resistance with me. You didn't, for example, seem to mind it when I-'

'Stop,' she whispered, still white to her lips. 'If you expect me to believe a marriage to you could last when you can say things like those you've just said to me, you're mad!'

'Not mad, just a realist,' he said quite gently. 'You want me to tell you we'll love each other madly until the day we die? Well, there's no way I can prove it and you can't either and we could prolong this argument for six months and still be unable to prove it. But to run away because it's a possibility we mightn't? Well, you know what I think that is.'

'Yes. And I have to tell you I'm happy to be a stupid coward, Steve, and I'm going to go.' She stared at him, her mouth set, her eyes angry and determined. 'I told you once before about the aversion I have to any man dominating me the way you're attempting to, and whether I have that aversion rightly or wrongly is not the point. The point is I can't stand it and again, whether I like to go to bed with you or not doesn't change that. But the most important point of all is that, when you know a marriage is unlikely to last even six months because of it, you'd be crazy to even contemplate it.'

'All right,' he said abruptly and switched on the engine. 'You've got it.' He drove the Land Rover round in an arc towards the road, so fast that she clutched the door.

'Where?' she said furiously. 'Would you mind telling me that?'

'Wherever the hell you want to go. The plane I just landed in is going back to the mainland, and you can go with it. Actually, Pete is the pilot. Remember Pete? Now, doesn't that add quite a twist to our little saga, Davina?'

She could have hit him, but there was worse to come.

At the airport he was coldly businesslike as he arranged for Davina's departure, and he totally ignored everyone's unspoken embarrassment. Then he stood back and said with a dry smile and quite audibly to all in earshot, 'You were an excellent housekeeper, Davina. It's a pity we didn't just confine ourselves to that, isn't it? Remember me when you're lying alone in bed at night.'

She stared into his eyes disbelievingly, then turned away and walked out on to the tarmac.

CHAPTER NINE

It was with the greatest effort of will that Davina presented a normal image to her mother when she arrived at the flat they shared in Sydney that evening.

'Davina! Darling, I didn't expect you home yet. Has something gone wrong? Not my letter-'

'No.' She kissed her mother and looked round the familiar flat with a sigh of relief. 'No, it was just one of those impossible jobs. I…walked out.'

Her mother grimaced. 'It must have been bad for you to do that; you're usually so competent, and not only at housekeeping but handling these people-but you know, I do wish you'd think of doing something else. It's… not much of a life. What did you think of the island, by the way? Plenty to photograph?'

'Oh, it's a paradise in that respect,' she said with the barest tremor. 'Do you know, Mum, I've got the feeling that that will be my last job as a temporary housekeeper? I don't quite know how, but I'm going to concentrate on photography for a while. I've saved a bit in the last few years so-who knows, you might be looking at another Cecil Beaton. In the meantime, there must be jobs as-fashion photographers et cetera.'

'I'll help you look,' her mother said eagerly. Then she sobered. 'About Darren-'

'Don't worry about him, he can't hurt me now,' Davina said, and turned away.

Her mother hesitated but didn't persist.

But that night when Davina went to bed, she closed her door and stared around at her room and at all the photos pinned to the wall, and wondered if she had the simple will to gather together a portfolio and try to hawk her wares around the picture libraries and agencies. Whether she had the energy to seek commissions or jobs as a staff photographer, whether she could turn her flair to something like fashion, whether she was only ever destined to be a passionate amateur…whether she didn't feel like dying.

She sat on her bed and dropped her face into her hands. And discovered that no amount of telling herself that Steve Warwick was impossible to the point of being hateful at times, could do something as essentially dictatorial as what he'd done, had been brutally frank enough to make her doubt he could truly fall in love with anyone, no amount of it quite stilled the small murmur within that she was both stupid and a coward. Nor could it conquer the numb, barren feeling that was creeping up in her. And she wondered how her anger could drain away like this…

It was the next night that the memories attacked her. Lying alone in bed, she remembered his last words and was flooded with cameos of the times they'd been together, such as the morning after the night at the cottage when she'd told him about her father and Darren…

She'd wakened first, seen that he was still sleeping deeply and eased herself out of bed without waking him. She'd pulled on a T-shirt and shorts and slipped out to breathe in the clear, rain-washed air, the smell of damp