Deception (8 page)

'Haven't
you got anything but a pair of jeans?' he count
ered,
his eyes lowering to that part of her anatomy which
her blue jeans covered
too closely.

She
didn't care for the way his glance lingered on her long, slender legs, the neat
but provocative curves below
her narrow waist. His glance had
nothing suggestive about

it, but it missed nothing. 'No—well
   
' she began, trying

to
get rid of the peculiar heat in her throat, a heat which
also
affected her suddenly trembling limbs.

He
had no patience to wait until she could articulate
clearly.
'It's no good looking for excuses,' he snapped,
'where none exist.
I don't want any housekeeper of mine
going around looking
like a mixed-up teenager. In those
you look about seventeen,
instead of,' he frowned as he
paused, 'did you say twenty-nine?'

Reluctantly
she nodded her head this time. 'I under
stand. Ill see what I can find.'

'Well,
get me that whisky.' He wasn't a man to soften his
blows with a kind word
in between.

Obediently
Thea turned towards the cupboard where he
told her he kept it.
Logan Murray was a stranger, one she
found impossible to
recall from childhood memories. He
had such a high-handed
manner about him, such a curt
enunciation that even his voice mtde
her feel tense. No
wonder he was so alone. Would any woman be
able to cope
with him?

Yet,
as she watched fascinated as he swilled down more
whisky
than she thought good for him, she suspected there
might be no shortage
of women willing to take on the
master of
Drumlarig. Logan Murray had a certain—appeal,
his looks and figure assured her of that. He also
had a hard
vitality which not even
his present illness could disguise.
To
many women he might prove irresistible and Thea was
inclined to suspect that, if he felt like it, he
wouldn't be above amusing himself with them. But he might be cap
able of being utterly callous, her intuition
warned, when
he tired of them.

'Now,'
he said, the thump of the much depleted whisky
bottle startling
her as he set it down, 'I might be able to
make the bathroom. If I
can manage to shave it might be
enough to prevent
Stewart sending for the undertaker.'

He
had ignored the glass she had given him, drinking the
whisky
straight from the bottle. Fascinated, she watched him wipe his mouth with the
back of his hand. 'Do you really think you should go to the bathroom?' she
began,
then
paused, colour flooding her cheeks.

His
brows rose ironically. 'For a girl—well, you're
scarcely
that at twenty-nine—a woman, I should say, with
nursing
experience, you seem unbelievably innocent!'

Equally
unbelievably he appeared to be laughing at her!
A flare of temper
replaced Thea's embarrassment. He didn't
have to endow everyone
with the same level of experience
as himself! Til get back
to the kitchen, then, and see to
your lunch. I can't be in
two places at once!' In a rather
muddled fashion, she
attempted to escape with dignity, but
when he suddenly began
throwing off his bedclothes she
took one apprehensive
look at him and fled.

Doctor
Stewart, who reminded Thea vaguely of the
older doctor in a TV
series her grandmother had been fond
of watching, arrived an
hour later. By this time she had
finished all the
breakfast dishes and generally tidied up. It
hadn't been necessary
to discover if she could still milk a
cow as Murray's shepherd
arrived and said he would do
the inbye jobs. Which meant, he
explained, when she asked
him, the tasks to be done around the
steading and fields surrounding the house. He didn't seem too alarmed to learn
that Logan was ill

'I
thought he might be, when he wasn't up on the hill
this
morning. He didn't look over grand yesterday.' Duncan
only
looked surprised when Thea told him she was the new
housekeeper,
but he merely nodded his head, making no
verbal comment.

Martha
explained that Duncan was the one man whom
Murray employed, and he
lived in an old farmhouse on the moors. On the rare occasion when Murray had
'the
fever' Duncan always knew and came down. Such devotion
seemed
to Thea extraordinary. Did Duncan get paid, she wondered, or was he too
expected to labour for next to
nothing?

Forgetting
that Murray had asked her to wear something
more in keeping with her
position, she went to meet the
doctor, but was surprised to find him
already halfway over
the hall. She greeted him politely.

His
thick, bushy brows shot up when he saw her and
stayed there,
instead of reverting to their natural position
when she
introduced herself. 'Dear me,' he muttered dryly,
'what
did you say was the matter with him?'

Implying
as he did that Murray's mind must be affected
to have taken her
on, Thea stared at the doctor coldly. 'I
don't know what's the
matter with him, doctor, but I be
lieve he's quite ill,
and I don't think he's much better this
morning, although he's
determined to get out of bed.'

'Yes,
well,' Stewart hummed a little, 'he's not a man to
stay
there any longer than he can help, and that's a fact.
We'll
just have to see what we can do, won't we. I'll go up
by myself, if you
don't mind.'

A
man of few words and an even more derogatory eye
than Murray! For a
moment Thea thought she had puzzled
the doctor, but she
couldn't be sure. She didn't seem to be
making a
very brilliant start. Obviously no one liked her
being here very much. Only Jamie, and even his trust
hadn't been fully won yet.

While
the doctor was upstairs she began thinking about lunch and was again dismayed
by the lack of ingredients.
'Will it be one of my jobs to buy the
provisions?' she asked
Martha, thinking she would soon have the
larder shelves
filled.

'Yes,
but he will tell you how much you can spend.'

Thea
digested this in silence. How devious! It was quite
apparent
that he would give her a small amount of money,
then complain
that she didn't shop economically. For that
matter, could she? Never
before had she had the responsibility of shopping for a family. Gran had
always taken care of that, along with her housekeeper. Now that Thea was a
housekeeper
herself, she found herself wishing she had
had more experience to
draw on. During the few months,
since Gran died and she
had been on her own, she had just
gone out and bought
whatever she had wanted, without
keeping any check on
what she spent. And it must have
cost her quite a packet,
she realised ruefully, recalling the
almost constant stream of
people who had dropped in—her
so-called friends, who
had brought their friends!

Doctor
Stewart rapped on the kitchen door on his way out. 'Your master will be better
off in bed,' he addressed
both Martha and Thea. 'Give him
plenty of warm, nourishing drinks, not whisky, and see if you can keep him
there.'

Because
Doctor Stewart still eyed her disapprovingly,
Thea retorted
with a sharpness which would have earned
an immediate rebuke from
her grandmother. 'If Mr Murray
doesn't want to stay in bed, I don't
think I could make him.
Not even if I sat on hint I'

'I'm
not asking you to do that, girl.'

Biting
her lip, Thea went hot with embarrassment. What on earth had made her come out
with anything so childish?
The doctor Wouldn't be impressed.
 

He
obviously wasn't. Refusing a cup of tea which she
contritely
offered, he turned abruptly. 'If you should need me again get in touch. My
daughter may call tomorrow.
Good day to you both.'

After
he had gone, Martha said nothing, as though there
was
nothing more to be said. Thea asked slowly, 'Does
Miss Stewart come here
often?'

'Whenever
she can find an excuse, and sometimes with
out one.'

Thea
regretted having asked. If she stayed it would be
part
of her duties, she supposed, to be pleasant to Logan
Murray's
friends when they called, so why should the
thought of Miss Stewart
calling be distasteful?

Quickly
she reached for the kettle and filled it, trying to get rid of the memory of
Logan's arms around her, his lips on hers. She couldn't possibly be feeling
possessive about him, after only a few hours! Yet his kisses, even given un
consciously,
had aroused curious emotions. When she closed
her eyes she
could still feel a kind of hot excitement swirl
ing
through her body, arousing a peculiar, unfamiliar yearn
ing which she couldn't
easily dismiss.

As
she spooned tea into the pot, she found it hard to
accept
that Logan Murray wasn't impressed by her. It was
much
too late, but she wondered if it would have made any
difference
if she had been honest with
htm
from the start. It
must
be her own fault that the opportunity had probably
passed
for ever. By coming here under false pretences, she
might
have made it impossible ever to tell him the truth.

For
his lunch she wished she had had fish or a chicken,
but
she could find nothing like that. In the end she made
him
an egg custard which, as she was a naturally good cook,
looked
very nice. Confident of her ability in this sphere at
least,
she carried it up to him. The tray might look rather
bare, but she had
taken great pains over it.

'Take it away!' he groaned harshly, as she set it down
beside him. 'If you'd had any sense at all you'd have
known
I don't feel like eating anything.'

'It's
all I could find,' she snapped back, hating him, 'but
it will do you good.'

'Hand
me that bottle of whisky,' Logan ordered, 'if you can find where that fool of a
doctor's put it. It'll get me out
of here faster than anything else.'

Thea
didn't move, neither did she remove the tray.
'Doctor Stewart
wouldn't approve, I'm sure.'

'You
mean you don't?' He shot her a sour glance. When
she didn't reply,
he added coldly, 'John's a good enough
doctor, but he should
know better than to preach to me.
He knows as well as I do
that I haven't time to wait for the
more conventional methods to work.'

'You
mean you'd rather stick to the method you enjoy,'
Thea
rejoined, with a matching coldness. 'What's the good
of
having doctors if we aren't prepared to follow their ad
vice?'

'You
sent for him, Miss Andrews, not me, remember?' he
retorted
savagely. 'And I shouldn't set myself up as a
virtuous
teetotaller, if I were you, for you neither look the
part of that or
anything else.'

So
this was what women meant when they talked of men
being
unlivable with when they were ill! She could see
that Logan Murray
was no exception. He was obviously in
a smouldering, highly
inflammable mood. Maybe if she
tried to humour him?

'If
Miss Stewart is coming to see you, she mightn't like
it if the room's
smelling of alcohol.'

As
he was. about to raise himself from his pillows, Thea
saw
him pause. 'No woman comes here, Miss Andrews,
unless they're a
servant, like yourself. I've had enough of
women in my bedroom to
last me a lifetime. They're not
content just with a
man's body, they want his soul.'

'That's
none of my business!' Thea might have over
looked being
called a servant, in such tones, but the in
tended insult behind it
she could not. It was something she
wouldn't forget in a
hurry, even if for the moment she
must. 'Speaking
generally,' she exclaimed, thinking fleet
ingly of Jerry, 'men tend
to over-estimate their own charms. Unless you were ill, Miss Stewart probably
wouldn't dream
of coming up here.'