Island of escape Read Online Free PDF Page B

repeated, her hand going nervously to the neck of her neat white blouse.
    `Yes. For both of us.' He took a chair facing her and stretched out long legs, muscular-looking in well-cut dark pants. 'Do you know what you remind me of at this instant?'
    He sounded amused, and though it was a purely rhetorical question she shook her head, and as if compelled glanced up to meet his eyes, then recoiled inwardly from their cynicism and worldliness.
    `You're like a little moonbird chick,' he said ruminatively. 'Sitting warm and well fed in its burrow happily unaware that at any tick of the clock someone will come along and scoop it up for dinner.' His wide mouth curv ed faintly in a mocking smile. B ut you're no innocent chick, are you, Ellis, so I'm not impressed. And it's good luck for you I haven't been fooled, or I might say no to your prettily put suggestion you should come over to Flinders to live with me.'
     
    Ellis stared at him, her mouth falling slightly open, her eyes wide. What on earth was he talking about? She asked the question aloud, and he ran impatient fingers through the thick black and silver of his hair.
    `My dear girl, your appearance would have thrown me. If I hadn't seen you living it up with your ageing Romeo, I'd have believed in you as the broken reed you made yourself out to be when you wrote to me. And my taste doesn't run to—innocents.'
    `To—to innocents ? Ellis repeated foolishly. 'What's that to do with—with keeping house, and—and cooking for the shearers?'
    `Not a thing,' he said laconically He raised one dark eyebrow and his eyes skimmed over her. 'But I'm hardly picturing you in that role. I'm envisaging you in my bed.'
    Ellis stifled a gasp and the colour rushed to her face. `I—I don't know what you mean,' she said huskily.
    `Of course you know what I mean. Your cousin was going to marry me and you offered to take her place.'
    `I didn't offer to take Jan's place !' she exclaimed hotly. 'I offered to—to do your housekeeping and cook for the shearers.'
    He looked slightly amused. 'Those shearers are really on your mind, aren't they? Well, that's great—but you had other things on your mind when you wrote to me that decidedly come-on letter I received this evening when I came back to the hotel.' He screwed up his eyes and leaned back in his chair. 'It was half past three in the morning, you said. You'd been lying sleepless in bed thinking of me and of how you and I should get together. Our hearts were broken, our lives were shattered—we needed each other. Jan had taken your man, why shouldn't you and I team up—do a swap, as it were.'
     
    Ellis's pulses were racing. She hadn't written those things ! But had she implied them? Crazily, she didn't know. It was all too possible—she had thought they needed each other; he needed a housekeeper, she needed a job. That was what she had meant, and she told him determinedly, even though her voice shook slightly, 'I meant we could team up in a—a certain way. I thought you needed a housekeeper, and as I needed a job, it was an opportunity. Or—or has your aunt come back? Jan said she'd been taken to hospital '
    His dark face grew sombre and his lips tightened. `No, my aunt hasn't come back. I attended her funeral two days ago, and I've been seeing to her affairs today.'.
    She caught her lower lip between her teeth. 'I'm sorry.'
    There was a moment of silence which she at least found awkward, then she said practically, deciding to forget the things he had said that had shocked her, 'I can be of use to you, then, Mr Gascoyne. I'm a responsible person, I assure you. I've kept house for my uncle for several years.' She stopped. The way he was looking at her she was mad to be trying to persuade him. He wasn't at all the kind of man she wanted to work for.
    He reached into the pocket of the dark coat he wore and produced cigarettes. He offered her one and when she declined it lit one for himself, doing it slowly, a thoughtful look on his hard,