Ten years and he still affected her this way. How stupid was that?
“Your mother…?” she inquired. When Mrs Donovan— Lady Donovan now, Rachel reminded herself—had said on the phone, “But of course we’ll pick you up in Auckland… No, you can’t struggle onto another bus to Donovan’s Falls with your luggage…and a computer, too, I suppose,” Rachel hadn’t thought “we” meant Bryn.
“She’s waiting for us at Rivermeadows,” he told her, “with coffee and cakes.”
Once they’d collected her luggage and were on their way out of the city in his gleamingly polished BMW, Rachel removed her gaze from the mesmeric, sun-sequined blue of the Waitemata harbour’s upper reaches alongside the motorway and said, “Thank you for picking me up. I hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you.”
“Not at all,” he replied with smooth politeness.
“But you don’t live at home—I mean, at Rivermeadows now, do you?” she queried, keeping anxiety from her voice. Hadn’t her mother said something about Pearl “rattling around alone in that huge house”?
“I have an apartment in the city,” he confirmed. “But since my father died I’ve been spending most weekends with my mother, and occasionally staying during the week. I suggested she move out of the place, but she seems attached to it.”
The Donovan estate had once been the centrepiece of a small, scattered rural community, but even before Rachel and her family left, it had become an island of green amongst creeping suburbia, not far from a busy motorway.
“It’s only half an hour or so from the city,” Rachel reminded him. “Does your mother still drive?” She recalled Pearl Donovan had adored her sporty little cherry-red car, sometimes driving in a manner that caused her husband and son to remonstrate, at which she only laughed, saying they had the common male prejudice about women drivers.
A frown appeared between Bryn’s brows. “She’s hardly left the house since my father died.” He paused, then said with a sort of absentminded reluctance in his tone, “Maybe having you there will be good for her.”
If he wasn’t overjoyed, it wouldn’t have been Rachel’s preferred choice, either. When her own mother, so pleased with herself, said she’d found the perfect temporary job for her newly arrived daughter, Rachel had to hide dismay on discovering it was at Rivermeadows.
She’d covered it by saying, “It’s…um…so far away from you and Dad.” To which her mother replied logically that it wasn’t nearly as far as America.
Unable to find a more convincing excuse, especially as the hourly rate was way beyond what she could expect from any other temporary position, Rachel saw no choice but to accept. She didn’t intend to sponge on her parents for months.
Hoping she’d mistaken Bryn’s decidedly unenthusiastic tone, she said, “I’m looking forward to seeing Rivermeadows again. I have some wonderful memories of it.”
He cast an unreadable glance at her that lingered for a tiny moment before he switched his attention back to the road.
Rachel turned to look out of the window, trying not to think about one particular memory, having sensibly persuaded herself that he’d have forgotten the incident entirely. It might have been a defining moment in her young life, but while she’d been a bedazzled teenager with an overflow of emotion, even back then Bryn was already a man, someone she’d always thought of as one of the grown-ups.
She said, “I was sorry to hear about your father.” Risking a quick look at Bryn, whose expression now appeared quite indifferent, she added, “I sent a card to your mother.”
He nodded. “His death was hard on her.”
The frown reappeared, and Rachel said softly, “You’re worried about her.”
“It’s that obvious?”
About to say, Only to people who care about you, she stopped herself. He’d think she was presuming on an old acquaintance, and rightly so. Devoutly she hoped he had never realised how closely she’d watched his every movement or expression for a whole year or more every time he came near.
Since then she’d become a different person, and maybe he had too. At twenty-five he’d been handed full responsibility for a new sector of the Donovan business, Overseas Development. And he’d run with it, done spectacularly well at bringing the Donovan name to the notice of international markets and establishing subsidiaries in several countries. Now he was in charge of the entire company. No wonder he gave the impression of a man who had the world securely in his fist and knew exactly how to wring from it every advantage.
The house was as Rachel remembered it, a beautifully preserved, dormered two-storey mansion of white-painted, Donovan-milled kauri timber, dating from the late nineteenth century. Its upper windows were flanked by dark green shutters, and a rather grand front veranda extended into a pillared portico.
Old oaks and puriris and the magnificent magnolia that bore huge creamy, fragrant cups of blossom, cast their benign shadows over the expansive lawn and gardens, and the half circle of the drive was still edged with lavender and roses.
Bryn stopped the car at the wide brick steps leading to the ornate front door sheltered by the portico. Almost immediately the door opened and Pearl Donovan, wearing a pale lemon, full-skirted dress, stood for a moment, then hurried down the steps. Rachel went to meet her and was enveloped in a warm, scented hug, her cheek kissed.
“How nice to see you!” Lady Donovan stepped back with her hands on Rachel’s shoulders to inspect her. “And you’ve grown so lovely! Isn’t she lovely, Bryn? Quite beautiful!”
Bryn, having removed Rachel’s luggage from the car, had his hands full, the laptop case slung over one shoulder. “Quite,” he said. “Where do I put her stuff?”
“The rose room,” his mother told him. “I’ll go and put on the kettle now, and when you’re settled, Rachel, we’ll have coffee on the terrace.”
Rachel followed Bryn up the staircase to one of the big, cool bedrooms. The door was ajar and Bryn pushed it wide with his shoulder, strode across the carpet to a carved rimu blanket box at the foot of the double bed covered in dusky-pink brocade, and deposited the suitcase on top of the box, the smaller bag holding her reference books on the floor. “Do you want your laptop on the desk?” he asked. “Although you’ll probably be working in the smoking room downstairs.”
It was many years, Rachel knew, since anyone had smoked in what was really a private library, but it retained its original name within the family.
She nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and Bryn placed the computer on an elegant walnut desk between long windows flanked by looped-back curtains that matched the bed cover.
He looked about at the faded pink cabbage roses that adorned the wallpaper. “I hope you’ll be comfortable,” he said. Obviously he wouldn’t have been.
Rachel laughed, bringing his gaze to her face. His mouth quirked in response, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled a little. “My mother’s right,” he said. “You have grown up beautiful.”
Then he looked away. “Your bathroom’s over there.” He nodded to a door on one side of the room. “You’ll have it to yourself. If you don’t find everything you need, I’m sure my mother will provide it. I’ll see you downstairs.”
He crossed to the door, hesitated a moment and turned. “Welcome back, Rachel.”
She heard his soft footfalls on the hall runner, then on the stairs, still muffled but faster, as though he were hurrying away from her.
After freshening up and exchanging her shoes for cool, flat-heeled sandals, Rachel went downstairs and crossed the big dining room to the French windows that led onto the brick-paved terrace.
Bryn and his mother were sitting at a glass-topped cane table. A large tray held cups and saucers and a china coffee