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‘Just as there was a threshold over and above which you couldn’t suspend disbelief, Nicky has his own thresholds?’
The only sound for a long moment was the water lapping against the jetty. Then the soft chink of crockery came from the direction of the kitchen and the lovely aroma of fresh coffee wafted on the air.
And Max Goodwin said, ‘You’re extraordinarily perceptive for a twenty-one-year-old with such a convent background. How come?’
Alex pushed her wine glass away and looked at him with the slightest hint of hauteur. ‘I wouldn’t put too much emphasis on my convent
background. I was reading widely, and discussing it with my parents, from an early age. You could say they gave me a classic education. Enough to know, anyway, that relationships come in all shapes and sizes. Besides which you only have to look at her to see the allure she possesses and you only have to listen to her to know there’s a passion, a fire in her, whether it’s misdirected or not.’
She paused for a moment. ‘And if you’ll forgive me for saying so, Mr Goodwin, one doesn’t have to know you for long to realize that if you don’t get what you want, your tolerance threshold is quite limited.’
‘Thank you,’ he said courteously. ‘You say that as if it’s something you’ve been dying to get off your chest. So that’s it,’ he added.
‘That’s what?’ She looked puzzled.
‘Feminine solidarity. You have me well and truly figured for the villain of the piece despite your wide and classical education.’
Alex was forced to wait as the housekeeper appeared to clear their dishes and bring a fruit bowl together with the coffee and some hot biscuits.
As she waited she reflected that it was not a judgement she would make, that he was the villain of the piece—she was fairly sure there were two sides to the story, and feminine solidarity was not something she indulged in mindlessly. But it also occurred to her that to have him think this might provide her with some camouflage.
She couldn’t quite bring herself to say it, though, so as she plucked a bloomy purple grape from the fruit bowl she simply shrugged.
‘So be it,’ he murmured, and raked his hand through his hair in a gesture of savage impatience.
For some reason Alex felt a smile tremble on her lips.
‘I don’t see anything amusing,’ he remarked cuttingly.
‘No. It’s just—’ she hesitated ‘—well, if you thought I’d been dying to get something off my chest, I thought I detected a heartfelt urge in you to say—women!’
He stared at her expressionlessly, his eyes dark and moody. Then the ghost of a smile touched them. ‘You were right.’ But the smile disappeared and any common amusement they might have shared was stillborn.
Alex laid her napkin on the table and wondered how to excuse herself.
‘Have you ever been in love?’ he said out of the blue and his sombre gaze captured hers.
‘No.’ She looked away as soon as she said the word and blinked. Why had it come out sounding curiously forlorn?
‘Or anywhere close to it?’ he persisted.
Unwillingly she returned her gaze to his. ‘Not really, but why do you want to know?’
He watched her narrowly, in silence, for a long moment. ‘Perhaps you should take into consideration, then, that even a classical education doesn’t quite prepare you for—’ he paused ‘—for the highs and the lows, not to mention the mysteries of it.’
She could think of nothing to say and it was he who excused himself.
He stood up. ‘I’m going to do some work, but please make use of the den—there’s a television in there as well as books—if you’d like. Goodnight.’
He turned and walked away to disappear inside.
Alex stared after him and found herself close to tears. His words, before he’d excused himself, had been even and quiet, but the lines of his face and the shadows in his eyes had revealed an inner tension, a torment even, that had to lead straight back to Cathy Spencer, and her heart bled for him.
It wouldn’t have been much consolation for Alex to know that she was right but also quite wrong.
Max Goodwin poured himself a brandy and closed himself into his study after he walked away from her. He sat down at his desk, threaded two fingers around the stem of the balloon glass and mentally examined several points that had arisen out of his conversation with Alex.
He thought of the highs and lows he’d experienced with Cathy Spencer and the scars they’d left him with. In the six years since he and Cathy had parted ways he’d allowed no woman to get really close to him despite telling himself time and again he was over it.
