Island of escape (6 page)

`Oh, forget about that,' he said. 'I mean you can have it your way. You can housekeep for me—cook for the shearers. Come to Warrianda, anyhow, and we'll see how you can handle it. For all I know, you might be quite useless.'

`I'm not,' she retorted. 'I'm a good housekeeper.'

`Trustworthy too?' he said mockingly.

`Don't worry, I won't cheat you over your accounts.'

`You'll come, then? You're seriously interested?'

She licked her top lip nervously. Hadn't she told herself she didn't want to see this green-eyed monster again? Didn't she want to forget everything about him? And wouldn't it be crazy, knowing what she did about him, voluntarily to work under his roof? Yet if it was as she wanted it, if she was to be no more than his housekeeper—then why not? At least it was a way out of her dilemma. Almost as she reasoned with herself, she was telling him, 'Yes, of course I'm seriously interested. In the work,' she added.

`Of course,' he said without the trace of a smile. `Then be ready to leave tomorrow after lunch, will you? I have one or two things to deal with in the morning, so it will be safest to make it then.'

Ellis nodded, and without saying any more he went. She drew a deep breath. She didn't know what she'd done or why she'd done it, and she knew she'd never acted with such reckless lack of logic in all her life.

She switched off the light and went down to the Birdcage Bar.

It was funny, she reflected later, how easy it was to tell Jake she'd got a job on Flinders Island. She told it as though it was all so normal and ordinary, yet if Jake had known what had really gone on in Steve Gascoyne's suite, he'd have been ropeable.

`What kind of a fellow is he?' Jake asked.

She'd told him, lying as though it were second nature to her, that Mr Gascoyne had declined to join them for a drink and sent his apologies. 'He's not feeling terribly sociable. His aunt—the one who used to housekeep for him—has just died.'

Thank heaven they didn't see Steve. In the Birdcage

Bar, Ellis had a brandy and lime with the feeling she really needed it. Then they left the Bar with its long glittering silver and glass rods and its exotic murals of naked females to take the elevator up to the top of the tower and the plush splendour of the revolving restaurant. There, with the night-time panorama of Hobart Town spinning slowly around them—the shadow of Mount Wellington, the lights of the city, the glimmering water of Sandy Bay and the delicate curve of light that was the new Tasman Bridge—Ellis told Jake falsely that yes, she liked Mr Gascoyne, he was a very pleasant man, and he was very grateful to have someone to take over the household tasks and the feeding of the shearers.

`I'll be able to see Martin too,' she added with a
light heartedness
that even in her own ears rang true, and she sipped white wine and ate her lobster Thermidor and was glad of the soft lights. She was amazed at how calm and reassuring she sounded and a little ashamed at the trusting way Jake believed every word she said as she whitewashed the character of the man she knew in her heart she should not be trusting—and in fact didn't.

`Well, I guess I can leave you with an easy mind, Ellis love,' said Jake. 'You've got what you wanted, but I'll admit I'm disappointed to be losing you. I know you and Pat would hit it off, and I've been enjoying the experience of having a beautiful young daughter. It could go on
forever
as far as I'm concerned,' he added, smiling at her across the table. 'But at least I've helped you over the worst of your heartache, haven't I? You're quite chirpy tonight—and you're looking wonderful. I hope I'm to meet this sheep farmer before I leave, by the way.'

`Oh, I think so,' she lied. 'In the morning before you

go. He—he'd like to meet you too.' She had a strong idea that Jake wouldn't want to trust her to a man like Steve Gascoyne. He would be a lot happier if he retained the image of the kind-hearted, slightly harassed countryman she had tried to get across, and she trembled inwardly at the thought of what she was about to do. There was just no way she could convince herself she was being sensible. She wasn't. She just had to have a job, that was all. She was more or less being pushed into it by circumstances.

In the morning, for once, she and Jake breakfasted together in the Coffee Shoppe, and she told him without batting an eyelid that Mr Gascoyne had had to go out early to complete some business. Later, as she saw to his packing while he settled their account downstairs, she reflected somewhat uncomfortably on her behaviour. Steve Gascoyne, she knew, would not be in the least surprised by it. He'd see it merely as a form of the cheating and double-dealing he expected from the female sex.

Ellis went out to the taxi to see Jake off, and before they parted he insisted on giving her a very handsome sum of money, and remarked he was disappointed not to meet her farmer after all.

`Yes, it's a shame—you'd like him,' said Ellis, and blushed inwardly to hear herself. What on earth was happening to her? She supposed it was simply that she knew she was doing something foolish, yet she had had no alternative, and she could regard it more or less as a stopgap until she found something more suitable. But away at the back of her mind she knew that something had happened to her when Steve Gascoyne had kissed her the way he had. She had felt so humiliated and ashamed, and yet—

She stared out at the glittering waters of the Bay and

the boats rocking there. No, she told herself severely, she couldn't possibly want to experience that again. And anyway, it wouldn't happen. Steve Gascoyne had given in. He had seen it her way. She was to be his housekeeper and nothing more. He was going to have to find another woman to take into his bed and he knew it. She had left him in no doubt whatsoever about that.

NOT so many hours later she discovered how wrong she was, as she sat beside Steve Gascoyne in his own small plane, looking down on the last of Tasmania before they flew over Banks Strait.

It had been a surprise to her when, having arranged to meet her in the foyer at a certain hour after lunch, he had broken the news to her that they would be flying to Flinders straight from Hobart, and that he would be the pilot. He was dressed casually in a dark red silk shirt and pale beige trousers, and she was bound to admit to herself that he looked impressive. She hadn't seen him in daylight before, and he had a decidedly rugged look with the thick black and silver of his hair slightly ruffled and his green eyes crinkled against the sun. His tan, away from the artificial lights of the hotel, no longer looked theatrically unreal, but was a clear indication that he spent a great deal of his time in the open. In fact, it began to seem possible to Ellis that he was, after all, a farmer instead of a sophisticated man about town.

She had chosen to wear the simplest of dresses in soft ivory-coloured cotton, with a violet scarf at the neck. Her legs were bare and she wore sandals that were casual rather than dressy. She hoped she had struck a happy medium and that he wouldn't make any sneering remarks about lamb's clothing.

During the first part of the flight she tried to imagine what it would be like at Warrianda, and she felt a nervous trembling inside her. Who, she wondered for the

first time—and was amazed at her stupidity in not thinking of this before—would be there, in the house, apart from herself and Steve Gascoyne? Jan's letters home had been all about herself and Steve with the odd bit of news about Martin, and Ellis racked her brains in vain trying to recall people she had mentioned. Whitemark, she knew, was the main town, and Martin spent some of his time at the Interstate Hotel there, but really she was abysmally—and a little disturbingly —ignorant about the set-up at Warrianda.

Well, it was too late for regrets now. The patchwork paddocks and the wooded mountains of Tasmania were receding, there was the long froth of a white beach and then the lovely pale green waters of Banks Strait were down below. The plane seemed to hover, smooth and steady, and the engine hummed. Ellis had never been in such a small plane before and the day was so smooth and sunny it was incredible. She glanced at the man beside her, but he seemed totally withdrawn and unaware of her, and on his face was a brooding look that made her feel strangely cut off from him. He was an absolute stranger, and, disturbed, she looked away from him and down below where there were now tiny islands scattered on the blue-green water, bare and wild-looking with rocky shores, some of them no more than great jagged rocks, all but washed over by the sea.

She, had just about brought herself to the point of breaking through that moody silence of Steve Gascoyne's to ask him brightly to tell her something about Warrianda, when his green eyes flicked to her face and he said, 'Those are the first small islands of the Furneaux Group. If you know your Australian history, you'll remember that they were discovered by Tobias Furneaux in
1773
, when his ship was separated from Captain Cook's Endeavour by a storm. Down there—do

you see the island with the beach shaped like a crescent moon?—and the silver roof among the trees? That's my island.'

`Your island?' She looked at him in faint alarm. 'But we're not—'

`No, we're not going there now, I'm not doing that to you,' he said, and sent her a dark look. 'I run cattle there, and of necessity I make periodic visits. I named it Disillusion Island, and I spent two years of my life there.'

There was something brooding in his tone that made her catch her breath, and the exclamation that it was not a happy name was stifled even as it sprang to her lips. Why had he named it Disillusion Island? she wondered, but she didn't dare to ask. Instead she said determinedly though a certain nervousness shook her voice, 'You—you haven't told me anything about Warrianda, Mr Gascoyne.'

He glanced at her swiftly, and the qualities she knew were back in his face—the harshness, the
worldliness
, the cynicism.

`You'd better call me Steve,' he remarked. 'Your cousin did. As for Warrianda, haven't you heard all about it from Jan?'

`I've hardly heard a thing,' she admitted. 'We—we shan't be alone, shall we?'

She flinched at his mocking laughter.

`You don't even know that?'

No, I don't,' she said shortly. She felt a fool and she clenched her fists angrily. 'Who else lives in your house now your aunt's—gone?' she asked as he didn't offer any information. She hoped she wasn't letting herself in for some mammoth task, like feeding a mob of men every day. Though if she had to do it, then she would. She had to resist a sudden inner impulse to say, 'Take

me back—I don't want to come after all ! ' It was hardly something you could say to someone who was piloting a small plane.

`My brother Charles .and his wife,' she heard him telling her briefly, and she felt a new shock of surprise. Why should anyone be needed to do housekeeping if there was already a woman at the homestead? Before she had a chance to ask him that question, he added, `I'll be introducing you as my fiancée, by the way.'

`You certainly won't ! ' she exclaimed indignantly, unable to believe her ears. 'I haven't agreed to that, and you know it. You—you said you were offering me a different proposition—that it would be the way I wanted it.'

`I have offered you a different proposition—and it is the way you wanted it, more or less,' he said infuriatingly. 'The original idea—and I thought it was yours too—seemed to be that you should be my wife and share my bed.' He glanced at her, his dark brows raised. 'I've excused you from marriage, haven't I?'

She met his eyes and her cheeks grew hot. 'And from

`Sharing my bed?' he finished for her. 'Well, there's a spare room at the homestead.'

`You talk about women cheating,' she muttered between her teeth after a long moment when wild thoughts chased each other confusedly through her mind. She had to get out of this—the whole thing was becoming utterly preposterous. 'Your brother will never believe you've got engaged again so soon anyhow,' she told him scornfully.

`Oh, I think he will. It was pretty obvious I had plans to marry when Jan was around,' he said carelessly.

`You're utterly cold-blooded,' Ellis said after a moment.

`Do you really believe that?' He turned and looked fully into her eyes, and she felt her heart come into her throat. She knew very well what he was referring to, and a feeling of shame almost choked her, as she shrank away from a glance that somehow seemed to see her naked. 'Neither of us is exactly cold-blooded,' he said reminiscently. 'We'll have very little trouble convincing anyone of our ardour.'

`You're—odious,' she said in a low voice. 'But you're not getting away with it. I shall flatly contradict you if you say we're engaged.'

He smiled disagreeably. 'You think they're more likely to believe you're the new housekeeper, do you? Well, I don't know exactly how old you are, Ellis, but you look no more than eighteen or so, and in case you're not aware of it, you're a very sexy little thing as well, in your pretty dress, with your pretty legs and those long flirty eyelashes. I'd be deceiving you if I allowed you to believe you could persuade the population of Flinders that you're no more to me than a housekeeper.'

Ellis couldn't think of a thing to say. She didn't think she was at all sexy, but all the same she had the wit to realise there must be something in what he implied people would think about their relationship. For a mad moment she wished she had never allowed Jake to persuade her to go to the hairdresser, or to spend all that money on clothes for her. She wished she looked just the way she had when she was keeping house for Uncle Bill. All the same, she was not going to pretend to be engaged to Steve Gascoyne, not for any reason on earth, and that was that.