The Colour Of Midnight

The Colour Of Midnight

Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For my mother, Iris Leabourn Hutching, who, forced by circumstances to give up some of her dreams, made sure that each of her six children got the chance to follow theirs. She kept her sense of humor and compassion intact through it all, and is the best cook in New Zealand, which is only one of the reasons her children love her.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

‘THERE should,’ Minerva Robertson muttered as she peered through the rain, ‘be signs on that signpost, damn it. Wretched vandals.’

Her voice, oddly deep for such a slight person, was tinged by a British accent, the inevitable outcome of two years spent as the cook on a yacht owned by a British billionaire and crewed by British sailors. Now back in New Zealand, she was working hard to get rid of it.

Unless she could work out which road she should take, she was going to have to go back. Somewhere, not too far away, was a huge sheep and cattle station called Spanish Castle. The place might, she thought with an irritation that was tinged with foreboding, as well be in Spain.

For the last five days she had slowly meandered north from Auckland, telling herself she was on holiday. At a loose end when her father and stepmother had left for a business trip to North America, she’d decided to see a little of New Zealand’s long northern peninsula. Even as close as Kerikeri, twenty kilometres or so away, she had had no intention of visiting the place where her stepsister had spent the last year of her life.

Until she’d seen the signpost. Spanish Castle, it had said, and pointed inland.

Without really making a conscious decision Minerva had followed that imperative finger.

Not, she thought now, switching warm air up on to the windscreen in an effort to clean the thick film of condensation from it, one of my better ideas.

Both roads looked equally dismal; both seemed to dwindle into pot-holed tracks beneath the huge, primeval presence of the kauri forest. If she hadn’t seen that signpost at the bottom of the hill she’d be wondering whether she’d taken a wrong turning somewhere.

As it was, she had to say out loud, ‘You know you’re on the right road, idiot. Spanish Castle is somewhere up here, down one of these hopeless-looking roads. And the weather is pure coincidence—in New Zealand it always rains in the spring!’

Muttering, she opened an umbrella and dashed through the merciless rain, skidding to a halt in the tangle of long, exceedingly wet grass that surrounded the base of the signpost. A few mustard-coloured splinters lurking coyly in the mud put paid to her idea of fitting the smashed signs to the jagged stumps and working out which road led where.

Gloomily, she turned back towards the car.

And gasped.

Unheard above the persistent drumming of raindrops on the umbrella, a man had solidified from the mist and the murk. Clad in a riding coat, he was on the back of a large grey horse; a black and white sheepdog lay in front of him over the shoulders of the horse. All three, dog, man, horse, were regarding her with an aloof surprise that wasn’t mitigated in the least by the slow, almost involuntary wag of the dog’s tail.

Minerva essayed a tentative smile, trying to forget that she hadn’t seen a house for the last three miles, and that around them were several thousand hectares of bush, sombre and dank and almost pathless.

As though on cue the rain eased off, then miraculously stopped. All she could hear was the distant rush of some stream and the faint drip of diverted raindrops in the bush.

‘Don’t wave that umbrella around,’ the man said curtly, the lean hand holding the reins moving slightly as the horse danced sideways. Almost immediately the animal subsided into stillness again, although it eyed her with the same wary caution as the man and the dog.

Even with rain trickling down the austere angles of his face, the rider emanated a controlled power and strength that was very intimidating.

Minerva’s hand clenched on the handle of the umbrella. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said gruffly, hoping that her nervousness didn’t show in her tone. ‘Can you tell me which road leads to Spanish Castle?’

He surveyed her with unnervingly pale eyes that looked through her rather than at her, although she was prepared to bet that nothing escaped his notice. He reminded her, she thought foolishly, of some grim conquistador viewing yet another country to be plundered, without passion, without even a rage for riches, to be looted and sacked simply because it was there.

The horse moved restlessly, flicking its ears. A shiver tightened Minerva’s skin. The man and his mount were taking on an almost mythic quality, remote, clothed in darkly shimmering veils of fantasy and legend. Even the dog, unnaturally sapient, looked like a being from another world!

‘It’s a cattle station around here somewhere,’ she said politely, striving to regain her normal pragmatic outlook. ‘It belongs to a Mr Peveril. Nick Peveril.’

‘I know who it belongs to.’ The even, darkly textured voice was toneless. ‘Why do you want to go there?’

Minerva’s indigo eyes glittered as her chin came up. ‘Is that any business of yours?’

He inclined his head, his gaze never leaving her heart-shaped face. ‘I think so. I own Spanish Castle.’

She should have known. She’d seen photographs, but the groom who had smiled back from the prints had looked completely different from this man. Of course, they were wedding photos. Everyone always looked happy in wedding photos.

‘Mr Peveril,’ she said, looking, she hoped, confident and in control, ‘I’m Minerva Robertson.’

His brows drew together. ‘Are you?’ he said without the slightest flicker of interest. ‘Am I expecting you?’

Something shrivelled inside her. ‘I’m Stella’s sister,’ she told him crisply.

The hand on the reins jerked; as the horse moved uneasily the dog turned its head and looked a moment up into the lean, harsh-featured face.

‘I see,’ Nick Peveril said.

How could Stella have married this cold fish?

Minerva said brightly, ‘I’m home from abroad and I decided to come north for a holiday, because Ruth and Dad are away.’

Ruth had mentioned Nick Peveril in passing, but how close they were Minerva didn’t know. He certainly wasn’t giving any clues; that hard, expressionless face didn’t alter as he nodded. She ploughed on with a touch of defiance, ‘I didn’t really intend to come here, but I saw the sign at the bottom of the hill so—well, here I am.’

The sound of her babbling disconcerted her so much that she stopped and took a horrified breath. Damn it, she wasn’t going to lose her composure just because Stella’s husband looked at her as though she was something revolting and slimy he’d found under a stone.

‘I’m sorry I was less than welcoming,’ he said, still in that level tone that revealed nothing. A whip-flick of cynicism robbed his smile of humour. ‘I had no idea you were back.’

‘I’ve been home for three weeks.’

He nodded, his eyes not leaving her face. ‘Spanish Castle’s only a couple of miles down the road to the left. You’ll see the gateposts. Left again inside, and follow the drive to the homestead. When you get there, tell Mrs Borrows who you are. Are you staying?’

‘No,’ she said too quickly. ‘I’m going to spend the night in Mangonui at the backpackers’ hostel there.’

He didn’t look relieved. He didn’t, she thought with a waspishness that surprised her, look anything except austere and impervious and infinitely remote.

‘I hope it’s not too inconvenient,’ she said sweetly, essaying a smile.

It didn’t evoke any response. Minerva was suddenly conscious that she wore no make-up at all and that her long ash-brown hair was probably hanging in strings down her back, dulled by the rain into an undistinguished mouse colour.

‘Not in the least. I’ll be there as soon as I can.’ An imperceptible signal propelled the big horse across the road and through a gate she hadn’t noticed. The horse turned; with a skill indicative of long practice, and a brutal economy of movement unhindered by the heavy riding coat, Stella’s widower bent and pushed the gate closed. Straightening, he lifted a hand in what might have been a mocking salute, then urged the horse forward again.

The mist swallowed them up, horse, dog and man, as though they had never existed.

Minerva stared stupidly after them until her stiff hands and wet feet recalled her to herself. So that was Nick Peveril! She shivered. He was—elemental, a fit denizen for this gloomy, rain-soaked landscape. Yet Stella had written glowingly of his laughter, his kindness and his fascinating sophistication.

There was nothing amusing, kind or sophisticated about this man. He was made of much more primal stuff. In spite of that pale horse, he looked like the dark lord of Hades himself. However, there was no need to surrender to the chill that crawled down her spine. She was no virginal Persephone, to be snapped up as a pretty trophy to brighten his gloomy kingdom.

It was Stella he had swept away in a whirlwind courtship that had lasted a bare month. In spite of her ravishing beauty and her affairs Stella had been oddly inexperienced and Nick Peveril was the first man she had ever loved.

Yet he had killed her as surely as if it had been one of those lean strong hands that had measured out the infamous combination of sedatives and tranquillisers and painkillers that had put an end to her twenty-six years of life.

Minerva wriggled back into the car, held the umbrella out of the door and shook it vigorously before thrusting it on to a plastic bag in the back. Turning around, she slammed the door shut and gripped the wheel, gazing ahead with eyes that stung.

Only then did she admit that the real reason she had taken the road to Spanish Castle was that she wanted to know what had gone wrong with her sister’s idyll.

Although almost a year had passed since Stella’s death, Minerva had come back to a house that still mourned. Oh, Ruth, Stella’s mother, smiled a lot, but her strenuously bright manner didn’t hide the fact that she was too thin, her carefully coiffed hair grey, her pretty face haggard. Minerva had been shocked and alarmed.

That night she had sat talking with her father long after Ruth had gone to bed, finally saying bluntly, ‘She hasn’t got over it, has she?’

‘No.’ Her father set down his glass of whisky; it was almost water, as it had been ever since Minerva was old enough to remember. A prosperous businessman, Brian Robertson was abstemious by nature. He’d used to tease Ruth by telling her he’d married her to provide a bit of drama to his boringly normal life. It didn’t look as though he had teased his wife for a long time.

Now he said heavily, ‘I don’t think she’ll ever get over it. She still cries every night.’ His mouth tightened. ‘She waits until she thinks I’m asleep and then she weeps into her pillow. It rips me to pieces. She feels so guilty, as though she failed Stella, and I can’t get her to understand that Stella was a grown woman, old enough to be responsible for her actions. Ruth thinks she should have seen what was happening.’

Minerva rubbed at the frown between her brows. ‘Poor Ruth.’

‘I’m worried,’ Brian said unnecessarily. ‘She’s slipping away from me. If only she knew why Stella killed herself!’

‘Nothing’s turned up? No other letter?’ She knew the answer, but she asked just the same.

‘No.’ Brian sipped his drink, his pleasant, good-looking face set in lines it hadn’t had a year before. ‘Just the note she left for Nick, and that told us nothing.’

Both were silent. ‘I’m so sorry’, Stella had scrawled with an unusual economy of words. ‘Please try to forgive me’.

‘What about Nick? He must have some inkling of what went wrong.’

‘He’s just as much in the dark as we are. It shattered him.’

‘He must know something.’

But her father shook his head. ‘He says he doesn’t, and I believe him.’

Her father was an acute judge of men, but now, as Minerva switched on the engine, she wondered. The man who had appeared out of the mist didn’t look as though he would balk at lying if it suited him. Had he lied about his wife’s state of mind?

Setting a jaw that gave definition and character to her rather indeterminate features, Minerva put the car in gear and drove carefully through the thinning mist.

Just inside the gates she stopped, looking to the right at the great pile of rock which a hundred years ago had given the first Nicholas Peveril the name for his land. The eroded neck of an ancient volcano, it reared high above the surrounding countryside. Cloud drifted low across the sheer rock faces, moving on invisible winds, parting to reveal trees clinging to clefts and fissures in the cliffs. Dramatic and awe-inspiring, it did look like the massive ruins of some gaunt castle of the giants.

A shiver of apprehension pulled the tiny hairs of Minerva’s skin upright.

‘Stop being so jittery and stupid,’ she told herself as she put the car in motion again. ‘You’ve seen Igor, and he wasn’t so bad. No obvious fangs, and a horse and a dog instead of bats!’

Nick Peveril was clearly a good farmer. The fences were in excellent repair, as were the various buildings, and the grass in the paddocks lay thick and lush in its spring growth.

He was also a good employer. The farm workers’ cottages were big, well-cared-for, and set in substantial gardens.

But the homestead was breathtaking, a huge double-storeyed building that must have been built by that first Nicholas, for it was a Victorian structure of weatherboards, with more than a hint of the severe, satisfying proportions of the Georgian style it had supplanted.

Shading the front veranda was a wistaria vine that was probably as old as the house. Its thick stems were hazed by bronzed, gleaming new growth, punctuated by fat buds silver in the rain.

A wide flight of wooden steps led up to the veranda. On either side of a glass-panelled front door French windows with panes of glass above stretched in ordered pairs down the side of the house. This was one nineteenth-century villa that wouldn’t be dark inside.

And the garden was like something out of a fairy-tale, a bower of skilfully contrasted form and colour, each glowing flower, each leaf, sprinkled by crystals of rain.

Minerva switched off the engine and got out. From somewhere around the back of the house a dog barked, warning the inhabitants that a stranger was near. Heavy, unsettling scent from the roses mingled with the rich perfume of a white rhododendron beside the steps. More roses, miniatures planted in clay pots, ascended on either side of the steps; as she moved between them perfume billowed into the moist air, adding to the mingled scents that drifted from the plants in the wide bed beneath the veranda.

Minerva’s nerves tingled. Holding herself very erect, smiling sardonically because it was ridiculous to imagine that the place was welcoming her, she walked to the door.

Before she had time to ring the bell or use the knocker the door opened. A middle-aged woman with a harassed expression looked enquiringly at her.

‘I’m Minerva Robertson,’ Minerva said, smiling. ‘Mrs Peveril’s sister.’

‘Mrs Pev— Oh!’ For a shocking moment the woman looked appalled.

‘I met Mr Peveril along the road,’ Minerva said smoothly, struggling to hide a fierce, corroding anger. ‘I’ve just called in. I’m on my way north.’

‘Oh. Yes, of course. Do come in.’ Collecting herself with an obvious effort, Mrs Borrows held the door open.

Minerva, who had some experience of old wooden houses, braced herself as she walked into a wide hall decorated in paper the rich gold of Jersey cream. But instead of the damp rawness she expected, the place was warm and dry.

The temperature was a definite bonus. It wasn’t a centrally heated stuffiness, more a gentle, all-pervading warmth that banished the bone-chilling dankness Minerva had experienced in other old houses.

Over the years she’d worked in the kitchens of several very expensively decorated houses. Some she had liked, some she had found soulless. The homestead at Spanish Castle had been decorated by someone with great skill and a definite empathy for Victorian architecture. Minerva’s gaze skimmed a splendid console table on a mellow Persian runner. Reflected in the gilt-framed Regency mirror above was a bunch of apricot and yellow and white old-fashioned roses in a silver vase, their sweetness almost unbearably evocative.

Beyond the table an elegant staircase ascended to the first floor. Gilt-framed pictures, mostly of an age in keeping with the house, were displayed carefully, and there were flowers everywhere.

‘This is beautiful,’ she said softly, looking around her with pleasure. ‘How old is it?’

‘A hundred and twenty years.

‘It doesn’t show its age.’

‘Spanish Castle has always been well-cared-for,’ the housekeeper said as though she’d been accused of neglecting her duty. ‘Would you like to come in here?’

She led Minerva into a small formal parlour decorated in the same sunny shades, although here the colours were less intense as befitted a room where people spent time rather than passed through.

‘Would you like a cup of tea while you’re waiting for Mr Peveril?’ Mrs Borrows asked punctiliously.

Minerva was already regretting her impulsive decision to drive up that long road from Kerikeri. The house might be welcoming but its inhabitants certainly weren’t. Still, she was here now; she’d have a cup of tea, exchange a few words with Nick Peveril, and then leave.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Her throaty voice was just as impersonally polite as the older woman’s.

She didn’t look around until the older woman had left. The little room could have been too stiff with its delicately formal seats and desk, but the pieces of furniture had the air of having lived so long together that they had settled into an amiable, comfortable companionship.

Outside the French windows an emerald lawn swept to a wide band of sheltering trees thickly planted at the base with rhododendrons and daphne, pieris and more roses. Minerva’s eyes lingered on one particularly glorious golden one until it was blotted out by a thick curtain of rain, heavy and implacable.

She turned away.

Almost immediately the housekeeper returned with a tray; she had barely set it down when her employer walked in, instantly dominating the small, decorous room.

It was the unexpectedness of his arrival that took Minerva’s breath away, nothing else. She hadn’t expected him so soon; he must have taken a short-cut. When her heart had slowed down a bit she realised that he probably wasn’t much taller than her father, only a couple of inches over six feet. But that air of cool authority, allied to the cool, inimical survey of his strange colourless eyes, made her feel small and defenceless.

‘Hello,’ she said, producing a polite smile.

‘So you found your way here.’ He was amazingly handsome, in a remote, arrogantly patrician manner. ‘Welcome to Spanish Castle. Helen, could I have a cup, too?’

‘I’ve put one there for you,’ the housekeeper said.

He looked at her. ‘Any call yet?’

‘No.’ The housekeeper looked excited and worried at the same time.

‘Let me know when it comes through,’ he said.

Smiling, she replied, ‘Yes, of course.’

No formality there, Minerva thought as the older woman left the room.

‘Would you like to pour? Mrs Borrows’s daughter is in labour in Christchurch,’ Nick Peveril explained. ‘It’s the first grandchild, so she’s very excited. How did you enjoy sailing the world on your billionaire’s yacht?’

‘He wasn’t my billionaire,’ Minerva said lightly, smiling with more than a little irony at the memory of the portly, harried man who’d spent no more than three weeks playing in his expensive state-of-the-art toy during the two years she had sailed on it. ‘I was merely the cook. I enjoyed it very much. Do you take milk?’

‘Thank you. No sugar.’

As he took the cup and saucer from her she noted his beautiful hands, strong with long, callused fingers, tanned like his face almost to copper. The sight of those hands dealing efficiently with the elegant china cup made something contract suddenly in Minerva’s stomach.

‘It seems an unusual career for a woman with all your advantages.’

At least he accepted that it was a career! Minerva gave the usual smile and the usual answer. ‘It’s my one talent, and I enjoy doing it.’

‘You don’t stay in any job for very long. Stella said that the longest you lasted was usually a year.’

‘I’m not into the old-retainer bit, so I sign short contracts,’ she said steadily, resenting his comment even though there hadn’t been a hint of censure in the deep voice. ‘That way I get to see the world and experience it a bit more intimately than a tourist does.’

‘You must really have enjoyed it to spend two years on the yacht.’

She had just joined the crew when Stella wrote to tell her she was getting married. Because of a glitch in the postal arrangements the letter hadn’t caught up with her until a month after the wedding. It hadn’t seemed worthwhile to come back then.

And she had been in the middle of the Atlantic, bucketing through a hurricane, when Stella suffered her lonely death. As soon as they reached land she had flown back, arriving too late for the funeral, but able to mourn with Ruth and her father and her half-brother Kane for a couple of weeks before flying back.

Minerva nodded. ‘The billionaire insisted on two-year contracts, and I wanted the job enough to make an exception for him.’

‘The great New Zealand overseas experience.’ He had a beautiful voice, rich and many-layered, but it had remarkably little expression: as little as his face, or the silver-grey eyes. They should have been translucent, but the polished metallic sheen successfully hid any emotion.

This withdrawn, reserved man had retired behind the formidable barricades of his self-sufficiency. Unease slithered the length of her spine, gathered in an unpleasant pool at the pit of her stomach.

‘I suppose it has to do with living on three small islands at the bottom of the map,’ she returned conversationally. ‘To get anywhere at all you have to fly for hours, so why not go the whole hog and see the rest of the world while you’re about it?’

His smile was cynical. ‘And broaden your insular mind.’

She lifted thin eyebrows. ‘Some people merely hone their prejudices.’

‘That’s astute of you.’

‘I suppose you’ve done a fair amount of travelling,’ she said, unable to decide whether he was being sarcastic or not.

‘Yes. But my most vivid memories are of the first time I was on my own. I came overland from India and hitch-hiked around Europe, spent six months in England, then went on one of those truck tours through Africa to Cape Town, before coming back across Canada and America.’

In any other man she would have thought she heard wistfulness in his tone, but it was impossible to think of this man as being wistful. He exuded a self-confidence so imposing and uncompromising that she was more than a little threatened by it.

‘Sounds fun,’ she said neutrally. He had changed from his farm clothes into a pair of well-tailored trousers and a fine cotton shirt. Few men in New Zealand had their shirts made for them, but Minerva was positive that this one had been cut especially to fit his broad shoulders and muscular arms.