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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] coffee. After lying awake even longer than she had last night, it was likely she would oversleep again. Last night ... it seemed unbelievable that Hawk hadn't entered her life until the last hours of the day before yesterday. When she went downstairs the next morning, the kitchen table was laid for breakfast for two, but he wasn't there. A few minutes later she saw him striding across the garden with what appeared to be several newspapers under his arm. Finding her in the kitchen, he said pleasantly, 'Good morning. I've been down to the Hub to pick up a New York Times.' 'Good morning.' She watched him unfold the bundle of newsprint and separate it into sections, arranging them in a neat row at the empty end of the large table. 'Take your pick,' he invited. 'I'm going to fry bacon and eggs.' Caroline had watched some television newscasts since her arrival, but she hadn't bought any papers. In England, when she spent the weekends at Thombridge Manor, there was a choice of Sunday papers to read, but none had more than three or four sections and a colour supplement. However, she soon realised that much of the bulk of this Sunday edition of the New York Times was either advertising material or news, such as sports, of no interest to her. By the time Hawk sat down to eat she had looked at the main news and was ready to hand over that section and look at another. For the most part they breakfasted in silence. It wasn't until they were clearing the table that he said suddenly, 'Let me get something straight. When you said last night you had spent the past five years resisting passes, did you mean you had never let anyone make love to you?' Before meeting him, she couldn't remember the last time she had blushed. Now, all at once, she was blushing as often as a self-conscious teenager. She nodded. 'Does that make me a freak?' 'Not a freak. It must be unusual particularly for a girl with your face and figure.' His glance skimmed her slender shape. 'You must have had to resist a hell of a lot of guys. Why? I'd like to know why.' 'I told you that last night I'm waiting for Mr Right,' she answered lightly. 'Do you expect him never to have slept with anyone else?' 'No .. . what happened before we met each other wouldn't be my concern. I'll wash the dishes this morning. Which of the ferries are you catching?' 'There's one which leaves at a quarter after eleven. I'll be back here soon after eight and we'll eat out tonight.' 'Todd may ask me to have dinner with him.' 'Tell him you're sorry but you and I have business to discuss. Which we will have. When a Nantucket woman demands to be taken seriously, it takes a braver man than I to defy her,' he said with a grin. 'After you'd gone to bed, I thought the situation over, and maybe a compromise is possible. But we'll thrash out the details over dinner at the Woodbox, which Todd says is one of the better restaurants. I'll reserve a table for the second sitting at a quarter of nine.' 'What sort of compromise had you in mind?' she asked warily. But Hawk was not to be drawn. After he had left the house, giving her an hour and a half to spare before Todd's arrival, she could not resist going up to the top floor to see which room he was using. All the doors on that floor were wide open, and several windows were propped on the lower notches of their sticks. The once-white muslin curtains-were stirring slightly in the breeze. In his room the curtains had been removed and put elsewhere. Caroline decided to take them all down and leave them to soak in cold water to loosen the accumulated grime which made them look grey. But before she tackled that task, she stood on the threshold of his room which was now swept and dusted. There were two small closets, probably full of the accumulated belongings of many generations. The hanging bag which seemed to be his only piece of luggage, and the clothes it had contained, were suspended from knobs attached to a long strip of wood spanning one wall. These hanging strips seemed to be a feature of the house. She had noticed them in other rooms and in the large walk-in closets. She was surprised to see that, as well as the clothes he had arrived in, he had brought a well-cut grey suit and a tropical dinner jacket. She would not have expected him to possess one. If she had thought about it, she would have assumed he would have a dress uniform for formal wear on the cruises; and that, when he was ashore, he would move in circles where a coat and tie in the evening were sufficiently formal. She had the impression that, in America, black tie events were confined to the very richest strata of society, stage and screen premieres, and political galas. Why Hawk should consider it necessary to bring a dinner jacket to Nantucket was a puzzle. Unless he was going somewhere else before rejoining Damaris at Baltimore. There were two books on the table by the bed. Although she felt she ought not to be looking round his room in his absence, Caroline succumbed to the temptation to see what they were. The uppermost volume had no dust jacket and looked as if it might be at least as old as she was. The title was Sailing Eagle. The author was Alan Villiers, a name which would have meant nothing to her before her visit to the town of Plymouth on the mainland. There, visiting the modern replica of Mayflower, she had learned that her master during the voyage from England to Plymouth had been an internationally famous mariner, Alan Villiers; a man who had gone to sea as a boy of sixteen and tried every kind of sea-life from Portuguese cod-fishing in the Arctic to trading between the Persian Gulf and Zanzibar. Clearly a man like that would be one of Hawk's heroes. But his interest in the other book was harder to understand. The title was Corporate Cultures: The Rites and Rituals of Corporate Life. Why he should want to read about that world was a puzzle. Unless the book had been left on board Damaris by some top-level executive and he had picked it up out of idle curiosity about the world of boardrooms and power struggles. She was wearing a bikini under her shorts and shirt when Todd came to pick her up. He had brought a map of the island so that she could see where they were going. 'As you'll notice, all the place names are Indian. Wauwi- n e t . .. Pocomo ... Madaket,' he said, as she spread it on her lap. 'There were Algonquin Indians here long before the first European settlers arrived. In 1659, two of the sachems or chiefs sold the rights to most of the land to an English colonist, Thomas Mayhew, and his son. They paid twelve pounds down and fourteen pounds the following summer. Which, incidentally, is a lot more than was paid for another Indian island Manhattan!' 'Are the names only names? Or do they have meanings?' she asked. 'Nantucket means The Faraway Island which, way back then, it was. Not any more. I think Yesterday's Island is more apt. That's the name of a souvenir newspaper which is given away free to visitors. I don't know who thought up that name for Nantucket, but it's certainly to adapt a French expression le nom juste. In many ways time has stood still here. In certain parts of town, you get the feeling that, if you closed your eyes, you might open them and find yourself back in the 1880s or the 1780s. It's a shame the place gets so crowded in July and August. It's nicer now, out of season.' Caroline was only half listening. 'Yesterday's Island ... where I want to spend my future,' she murmured dreamily, looking at the fine old houses on both sides of Pleasant Street which was their route out of town. She turned to Todd. 'By the way, after you left last night, Hawk and I had a verbal sparring match. This morning he said we might be able to reach a compromise. But he wouldn't tell me what he had in mind.' 'I don't know, but I can guess why he's gone to the Cape to see Mrs Wigan. For Emerald to buy all the stuff she took back with her, they must be loaded. [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |