Robyn Donald – Iceberg (2 page)

Probably. She didn't resemble him at all and he'd not spoken to her as if she was any sort of relation.

She appeared men, carrying a tray set for coffee. Set only for one, Linnet was pleased to see.

When she had gone he said without expression, ‘I have to go now. Please make yourself at home until Bronwyn

arrives. Anna will give you lunch.'

'Thank you.' She spoke in a stifled voice, feeling a sudden tiredness which robbed her of the energy question

him or even to wonder why he had taken such an instant dislike to her.

She couldn't care less, she told herself after he had gone. It was not quite true, but it helped.

Oddly enough after the coffee she slept, waking up only when a trolley loaded with food was wheeled into the

room by the silent Anna, who apparently was going to make quite sure that she didn't sully any more of the

place than she had to!

‘May I use the bathroom?'

The older woman nodded. 'Yes, of course. I'll show you where it is.'

It was by the front door, a marbled dream of a room in soft golds and blues with all the necessary offices and

the sort of soap which delicately scented the air. Linnet peered at herself in the mirror, her mouth forming an O

of distress at the horrid sight she saw there. Tumbled red hair surrounded a face with features which were

sharpened by tiredness and pain, a gentle mouth hardened by-the severe self-control she had imposed on herself

for— how long now? Three months, she supposed. Ever since she had realised that David Perry was falling in

love with her mother, and not with her.

Well, it was past now. They were married, David and her young laughing-mother, and she had hidden her

anguish, danced at the wedding and then fled to New Zealand, unable to bear their radiant happiness.

From the frying pan into the fire, she thought somberly. She had hoped that Bronwyn would give her shelter for

as long as she needed to find a job and a place of her own.

After the reception she had just endured she had the strong conviction that me sooner, she became independent

and moved out of Justin Doyle's orbit the better it would be for her.

But why should he take such an instantaneous dislike to her? Perhaps he just didn't like redheads, she told

herself, adding rather severely that it mattered, not a whit what he thought of her. Perhaps he feared she

intended to sponge en Bronwyn. Well, he'd learn soon enough that he was wrong.

The meal was delicious, a salad with baby tomatoes and a quiche, frothy and redolent of cheese and onions and

cream. In spite of her dour exterior Anna was a superb cook. But after the meal Linnet felt restless, her healthy

young body needing exercise.

Prowling the room for half an hour was no help, so she went off in search of the housekeeper, following her

ears down a side corridor to find her in an enormous kitchen very luxuriously appointed, kneading bread.

She looked up, saw Linnet in the doorway and frowned, asking curtly, 'Yes?'

'I'm going for a walk,' Linnet replied just as rudely.

‘Up the street. I’ll be back about four.’

Which only proved that if two could play at that game one of them usually felt guilty. Linnet left swiftly, red

about the ears, making her way through the house to the front door, and thence, hands plunged into the pockets

of her jacket, down the sealed drive to the street.

Suburbia was pretty, she decided, especially this part of suburbia, tucked away on the northern side of one of

the small volcanic cones Auckland was famous for. The jaunty shout of spring was gone, but the gardens were

bright with summer flowers richer and more subtle— Sweet Williams, irises and snapdragons, roses and daisy

bushes and South African proteas with their bright cone-shaped blooms. The road was canopied there by

jacarandas and the sweetly scented yellow Australian frangipani, delicate kowhai and sturdy karaka, variegated

pohutukawa and five-fingers, and in the shady places beneath them the glowing jewel-colours of impatiens and

cinerarias.

Keenly alive to beauty of any sort, Linnet especially loved gardens; slowly, as she walked, the heavy load of

pain which had weighed her spirits down for the last few months began to lift. It had been a good idea, this, new

beginning in her own home country, she was sure, in spite of
the inauspicious start.

If only Bronwyn didn't hold a grudge for that desertion so many years ago! She sighed, remembering her-sister's

hatred of her stepmother, Linnet's mother, who had been then-father's second wife. The desire to spare her

mother pain had kept her from probing into the reasons for their flight eight years ago from their. home, but she

was not stupid, and occasionally there had been hints enough to make it clear that Bronwyn was one of them.

And their father, that silent, taciturn man who had been so absorbed in his career as an accountant that he had

come home late from the office, eaten dinner ... then retired to his study with more work.

After eight years Linnet could barely remember him; she had seen so little of him. It seemed a pity to be twenty

and
unable to remember your father. There
was n
o resemblance between them. Linnet got her red hair and her

gold eyes from her mother. Only her name Eiluned commemorate her father's Welsh mother formed any link

between them, and all of her friends, as well as her mother, called her Linnet now.

Unconsciously her fingers clenched into a fist in the pockets of her jacket. David Perry had told her—oh, so

gently, when she had blurted out the reality of her love for
him—that she saw him as a substitute father. Perhaps

he was right, but he was her first real love after the infatuations and .flirtations of adolescence, and the necessity

of pretending joy for her mother had strained her courage and will to the limit.

'It's over,' she said to herself, speaking firmly to prevent the tears which filled her eyes from spilling over. And

one good dung about that humiliating confession to David; he would see to it that her mother did not wonder

and worry about her too much. No doubt he was relieved to come back from his honeymoon and find her letter.

For one horrible moment she thought that she was going to break down and bawl in the street. A swift glance

around revealed that she was the only person in sight. She had walked a mile or so to a small row of shops on

the opposite side of the road from a painted concrete building which had the words 'Kent Street Library' picked

out in black above the doors.

Blowing her nose, Linnet made across the road and climbed the steps into the hushed, expectant atmosphere of

the library. She would look for work in the newspaper. The search would redirect her thoughts to a more

profitable direction.

An hour later she emerged, went across to the stationer's shop and bought a pen, a pad and some envelopes.

Then she returned1 to the library to compose a letter applying for the position of librarian at the Kent Street

Branch.

Feeling ridiculously furtive and rather guilty, she made a fair copy, addressed the envelope, then
ran
outside

and put it in the postbox, her cheeks flushed with a fugitive colour which made her look very young, again her

-fingers crossed as earnestly as any child asking for a wish.

"Bronwyn was waiting for her when she arrived back, a small, dark woman, slim, elegantly clothed, with eyes

of startling blue and a mouth which hid secrets.

'A cable might have been a good idea,' she commented after the initial greetings.

'I didn't really think,' Linnet confessed, feeling guilty.

'Not to worry. But I'll bet you were a shock to Justin.'

'Not as much as the place was to me.'

There was a short silence, then Bronwyn picked up her bag, saying, 'Well, let's adjourn to the flat, shall we?'

‘I’ll go and thank the housekeeper.'

'Anna? O.K., do that. I hope she looked after you well.'

Almost as if Bronwyn were the lady of the house.

Linnet tracked Anna down in the kitchen, proffered thanks which were received with cold courtesy, then

rejoined Bronwyn in the small sitting room, where her sister was-standing staring at the painting of the old

woman.

'Beautiful, isn't it?' Linnet murmured.

'It's a Clark.'

'Bobby Clark?'

Bronwyn nodded, 'Yes. He didn't want-to sell it, but what Justin wants, Justin gets—even if it's the favourite

painting of the famous Bobby Clark. Come on.'

The flat was at the back of the section, separated from the enormous double garage of the main house by a high

wall and its own smaller garage, inhabited at the moment by a sports car painted bright red.

'It pays to advertise,' Bronwyn told her flippantly, observing Linnet's glance at the car. 'Come on in and I'll get

you a drink. I need something a little stronger than coffee, but I'll make that for you if you want it. Or there's an

assortment of other stuff.'

The 'other stuff5 inhabited a cupboard in a scrubbed pine dresser in the dining room. Linnet stared at the array of

bottles, said, ‘Sherry, please,' and watched as her sister poured it into a crystal glass, then made herself a gin and

tonic.

'Well—here's to luck," she said, and then, 'Come into the sitting room. It's through here.'

It was a small room, furnished very conventionally with chairs and sofa of dark brown velvet and not much

else.

'It looks like a motel, I know,' said Bronwyn, her blue eyes very shrewd as they rested on Linnet's expressive

countenance, 'but it does me. Now, sit down and tell me exactly why you're here.'

Linnet told her, even the humiliating experience of having fallen in love with the man who was to be her

stepfather. Bronwyn listened carefully, her expression giving nothing away.

When Linnet's clear tones faded she nodded. 'Yes, getting away was probably the best thing to do. But you've

created one hell of a problem by turning up here, you know.'

Chilled by the objectiveness of this remark, Linnet shifted uneasily in her chair. 'Why does Mr Doyle dislike me

so?' she asked.

'Perceptive of you. Because he thinks you're being nasty to me—to whit, claiming one half of Dad's estate.'

Linnet stared.
'What?'

Shrugging offhandedly, her sister sipped her drink. 'Well, I wasn't to know you were going to turn up. And it

was more convenient for me to stay here.'

'What on earth are you talking about?'

'Justin Doyle, mainly. I intend to marry him.'

Linnet shot a cautious glance across the room, met the cool mockery of her sister's eyes and said,-'Obviously

there's a connection, but I can't find it. Mind explaining?'

'Not in the least. I first met Justin just after Dad died. He heads Doyle's Corporation, which has a finger in lots

of pies; Dad had dealings with them. Justin came to offer help and suggest I sell the place to him.' Bronwyn

took another sip of her drink, went on reflectively, "You've seen him. What did you think of him?’

'Ah—well—' Linnet squirmed. 'He’s good-looking—a bit too handsome, if anything.'

'And?'

'He has all that it takes.'

Bronwyn smiled. 'It's not like you to be inarticulate; if I remember correctly as a child you 'used to talk

constantly. So I presume that he had exactly the same effect on you as he doer on most women. Me, too. That

aura of power really got me. The attraction was mutual, I could see,' she glanced complacently down at her

superb figure. 'Mind you, he's had plenty of other loves, so 1 knew I had to come up with something different. I

did.'

'And that was?' Linnet spoke quietly, aware that this was a sister she had never known existed, a woman with

brains to make the most of her beauty and a cool calculation which was, in its way, as frightening as the leashed

violence she' had sensed behind -
the
magnificently controlled mask Justin Doyle presented to the world. She

should be angry with Bronwyn, but she was not; fascinated would be a more appropriate word.

'Marriage, my dear. He married a child of eighteen about ten years ago and it was the most horrendous mistake.

I've been showing him for the past six months that I would be the perfect wife for him.'

Linnet frowned. 'What happened to his first wife?'

'Dead.' Her sister's shoulders lifted, 'An accident, so they said, but local rumour, hath it that she committed

suicide. She's irrelevant, except as the experience affected Justin.'

Repelled by the calm dismissal of the tragedy, Linnet stared across the room, noting the thick white eyelids "

which made Bronwyn's trick of half-hiding her eyes as she talked so effective.

'I'm shocking you,' her sister observed after a moment. 'Do you dunk I'm unprincipled and hard?'

'You sound it'

Then listen to this,' she leaned forward, speaking with a conviction which seared itself into Linnet's brain. 'I

want Justin as I've wanted no other man before, and I intend to make him happy.'

'You'd better!' Linnet returned with a glimmer of humour, trying to ease the tension. 'He doesn't strike me as the

sort of man who takes philosophically to disappointment.'

Bronwyn's eyes widened so that for a moment she looked frightened. 'You're right, of course. Believe me, I've

thought it out very carefully.' She took another tiny sip at her drink.

'Well, to continue. When he bought the place I was desperate for a way to stay close to him. I knew I had to; he

wanted me, but not enough to pursue me. I had to stick around and there were no houses for sale anywhere near.