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Steve—real name Gunther Stevens, according to the formal language in Magnus’s will—had been her enemy from the moment they met. She had tried to get on with him for Magnus’s sake, but Steve had been determined not to help her bridge the gap. In the end the gulf had been so wide and so deep it was clear one of them would have to go. Even Magnus had to see that.
So why had he not seen that the will he had drawn up soon after his marriage could only lead to disaster?
“Magnus, Magnus…” Triss dropped her forehead into a supporting hand, leaning on the desk that had once been his. “My dear man, what were you thinking of?”
She was assailed by blinding panic—a sensation hauntingly familiar from the days after she had lost both her parents with brutal suddenness halfway through her teens. Magnus’s death had not been unexpected, but the sense of abandonment and fear, of being adrift in a hostile, or at best indifferent world, was almost as strong.
Salt stung her eyes, but at a tentative knock on the door she straightened, fiercely blinking the tears away. She had held up thus far, and too many people depended on her for her to give way now. She would have liked to crawl into some quiet corner and cry for hours. Instead, her voice strong and steady, she called, “Come in.”
A husky youth sauntered into the room, hands thrust into the pockets of baggy pants worn with a camouflage jacket.
“Yes, Piripi?”
“Me and the guys’re just wondrin’ if it’s okay to have a game.”
“A game?”
“Touch football.”
“You’re asking for permission?” Triss said, puzzled. “You know in free time you can play whatever you like.”
Piripi looked down at his shabby, thick-soled trainers. “Well, y’know, with Magnus, ah—” he swallowed “—you might think…” He looked up manfully. “It’s not like we don’t care, Triss…”
“I know you care,” Triss said gently. “Of course you do.”
Under their tough exteriors the boys had almost worshipped the man who had rescued them from various kinds of privation. And they treated Triss with a touching mixture of respect for her as Magnus’s wife and a sometimes bantering, sometimes confiding familiarity that they might have accorded to an older sister.
“Sitting around moping can’t help Magnus,” she told Piripi, “and he’d expect you all to get on with working hard and playing hard.”
That had been his philosophy for the school, although for himself the playing part had never come easily. “It’s been too quiet around here the last couple of days.”
Relieved, Piripi grinned, then wiped the grin away, evidently thinking it was unsuitable. He backed to the doorway and hesitated there. “You okay, Triss?”
His large brown eyes were concerned, so different from the barely concealed hostility in Steve’s inflexible gray stare. She only hoped he hadn’t known what an effort it had taken to give him back an unblinking stare of her own, concealing all sign of emotion—or weakness.
Tears threatened again at the boy’s delicacy and regard for her feelings, but she made herself smile reassuringly. “I’ll be fine, Piripi. Thank you for asking.”
The smile faded as he closed the door, but a small warming glow remained, easing a little the bleak sorrow that enveloped her. Not having any brothers or sisters of her own, at Kurakaha she’d found the closest thing to a family that she’d known since she was Piripi’s age, when her parents had been cruelly snatched from her. As she had been then, he and the others were bereft and bewildered, and probably scared. So was Triss, but she couldn’t let anyone know it.
Minutes later a whoop and a yell told her the boys were enjoying their game. It would do them good. They’d been unnaturally sober since she’d broken the news to them, and in the midst of her own sorrow her heart went out to them. Poised on the brink of manhood, in many ways they were still children.
Losing Magnus would leave a huge gap in their lives, but it was up to her to help them carry on as Magnus would have wished. Maybe his death would even strengthen their desire to live up to the standards he’d set.
As it should hers. Triss squared her shoulders and forced herself out of the chair. She didn’t have time for self-pity. There was still a lot to be done.
Three weeks later she received a short e-mail from Steve giving her a date for his return. Apparently a little over a month was enough time for him to sort out his affairs in America. Later he sent another note with his flight arrival time, adding that he should reach Kurakaha within an hour or two of touchdown.
Triss replied with an equally curt message saying she’d send Zed with the Kurakaha van to fetch him from the airport.
She had to hand it to him, he’d wasted no time taking up his new responsibilities. But her heart sank at the prospect of working with Steve, of having him in the same house. Huge though it was, they would inevitably see each other every day.
Maybe he’d get bored quickly and return to the high life he must have become accustomed to. With any luck he would soon see that he could leave the place in her care with a clear conscience. She had every intention of demonstrating just how much she and Kurakaha didn’t need him.
So it was a pity that he arrived in the middle of a crisis.
The boys had been released from their classes for the day and Triss was in what she still thought of as Magnus’s office, writing by hand necessary letters to people who had sent condolences and ignoring with a practiced ear the sounds of a rowdy game of some kind outside.
When the quality of the shouts and catcalls changed, it took a few seconds to register, but as soon as she recognized the difference she shoved her chair back and left the room at a run.
By the time she reached the grassy playing field at the rear of the house a tutor was sprinting toward the bunch of boys in the center of the field who appeared to be randomly attacking each other with fists and feet. The tutor tried to pull one from the mob and was felled by a punch to his nose. Bleeding, he crawled away from the kicking feet that threatened to trample him and sat up, fishing for a handkerchief.
Infusing her voice with as much authority as she could muster, Triss yelled at the combatants, “Stop it!”
They didn’t. The brawny seventeen-year-old Piripi had one of his slighter fellows in a headlock, and the victim’s face was going blue.
Triss grabbed at Piripi’s arm and shouted his name.
His grip eased when he recognized her, allowing the other boy to slip from his grasp. The boy rounded, wildly swinging a fist that missed its target, and Triss felt his knuckles connect with her cheekbone, sending her sprawling.
The sky seemed to revolve above her, her face had gone numb and for a moment she wasn’t sure what had happened.
Groggily she got to her knees. The tutor was on his feet, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his nose, and now offered her his other hand. “Are you all right?”
Triss shook him off impatiently. “The fire hose,” she gasped. “Piripi’s going to kill that kid!”
Piripi, in the midst of the melee, had his opponent on the ground and seemed intent on beating him to a pulp.
While the tutor ran for the hose, Triss threw herself at Piripi’s back, getting her arms around his throat from behind and screaming in his ear. “That’s enough! Stop it now!”
She felt the bunching of his shoulder muscles against her breasts, and wondered if he’d turn on her, but instead he went suddenly slack, breathing hard. Then she heard over all the grunts and yells a deep, definitely adult masculine voice demanding, “What the hell are you doing?” And strong hands grasped and pulled her away just before a hard, cold, drenching spray descended, instantly soaking her blue faux-silk blouse and linen skirt.
Piripi shot upright, squinting and raising an arm against the force of the water.
The hand about Triss’s arm jerked her aside and dragged her several yards from the still-struggling mob, leaving her there.
Wiping her eyes clear, through the spray she saw Steve haul up two wrestling boys from the ground and drive them apart, while Zed dealt with a couple of others, roaring at them to get their effing a’s out of there before he gave those same a’s the kicking their owners deserved.
Under the combined effect of two big, commanding men and the fire hose wielded by the tutor, the miniriot was quickly quelled. The tutor turned off the hose, and Zed, his brown eyes shooting fire, ordered the culprits off to their rooms to change into dry clothes and warned them they needn’t think this was the end of it.
Dragging wet hair off her face, Triss stood trying not to shiver, and when Steve approached her, his casual shirt and slacks also soaked, his hair darker than ever and sleeked to his head, she folded her arms about herself so that he wouldn’t notice how unsteady she felt.
The movement drew his eyes, and the flicker of his long lashes made her look down, flushing as she saw how the water had plastered the thin fabric to her breasts, outlining not only her low-cut lace bra but what was only too clearly underneath it.
“Sorry you walked into that,” she said, bringing his gaze back to her face.
“God knows what would have happened if we hadn’t,” Steve said. “What the hell did you think you were doing,” he reiterated, “jumping into the thick of it?”
“Preventing a possible murder,” Triss retorted. “Or manslaughter at the least. We were getting the situation under control.”
“It didn’t look under control to me.”
“I’m sure we’d have managed, but thanks for your help.”
“Managed how? By getting yourself beaten up?”
“They wouldn’t hurt me.”
One dark brow lifted slightly. “Then what’s this?” His voice had roughened, and he raised a hand, the pad of his thumb barely brushing her cheek just below her left eye before he dropped his hand and his eyes narrowed to metallic slits. “Who hit you?”
Maybe the injury was worse than she’d realized, because despite the lightness of his fleeting touch she felt her skin tingle. “An accident. It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“Thank you for your concern. Although I can’t imagine why you’re bothered.” It wasn’t as though he’d ever cared about her.
“I guess,” he drawled, “I picked up Magnus’s passion for perfection. I don’t like to see a beautiful thing damaged.”
The first time she’d ever heard anything like a compliment from him, although it hadn’t sounded like one. “Thank you,” she said, lacing her tone with irony to match his. “But I might remind you that I’m not a thing.”
Maybe the inclination of his head was an acknowledgment, certainly not an apology. His gaze returned to her sodden blouse. “You’d better change,” he said abruptly, “or when the boys see you again you might have another riot on your hands. Is that what started them off?”
Taken aback, Triss said, “I got wet when we turned the hose on them to stop the fight!”
“You don’t need to be wet to set adolescent hormones in motion. But then,” Steve added with a deadly mockery in his tone, “you’d know that, wouldn’t you?”
Not sure what he was getting at, except that he was baiting her, Triss opened her mouth to ask him just what he meant, but before she got the chance Zed joined them, wringing out the wet shirt he’d taken off. “What was that all about?” he asked Triss.
“I’ve no idea. I was in the office when I heard it start. Is Arthur all right?” She’d seen Zed take the tutor’s arm as he shuffled back to the house.
“He’ll live. Nothing broken.”
“Has this happened before?” Steve asked.
Zed shrugged. “There’s been the odd fight, you know how they are. They don’t usually all get into it at once.”
Triss said, “They’ve been through a trauma, and all of them have been trying to be on their best behavior for too long. They’re emotionally off balance.”
Steve looked at her sharply. “You can’t let them get away with it.”
Wearily she wiped a trickle of water from her forehead before it reached her eyes. The last couple of months had been no picnic for her either. “I’ll talk to them after dinner.”
“I’ll do it.”
Her head lifted. “No.” Did he think he could just walk in and take over? “They don’t know you.”
“They’re going to. I might as well introduce myself, and make it clear that from now on we don’t tolerate any violence.”
“We never have! I’m sure this won’t happen again.”
“I wouldn’t count on it. Young men are pack animals. They’ve lost their alpha male, and they need to know there’s someone around to take his place. Until they accept there’s a new chief there’s going to be a lot of testing going on.”
“And you’re telling me you’re going to be the new chief?” She didn’t even attempt to hide the sarcasm in her voice.
Steve leveled an iron-gray gaze at her. “I don’t say it’s a good thing, but it’s the way young males operate, especially in groups. Remember, I used to be one.”
“They’ve been perfectly fine with me!” In fact most of them had been rather sweetly protective. Although a couple of tutors had complained about a lack of attentiveness and decreased motivation, with the occasional outburst of defiance and foul language.
“You’re a woman,” Steve said, as though that explained everything.
“So?”
“The first phase is over. They won’t challenge you directly, but they’re getting restive, and the next step will be to see how far they can go.”
“Then I’ll deal with it.”
“We will deal with it,” Steve said. “We’re in this together, Triss.” In his tone she heard the rider, And I don’t like it any more than you do. “If they’re not given the message about who’s in charge here now, one of them will emerge as kingpin and we’ll have a hell of a job on our hands. They’re barely out of childhood and some of them are only half civilized.”
“You’ve been reading Lord of the Flies,” she accused, surprising a half smile out him.
“Not lately,” he said. “But we don’t want someone’s head stuck on a stake around here, and I’d certainly prefer it not to be mine—or yours. We have to make this work, Triss.”
He was right about that, she supposed. Zed gave an approving nod, and Triss sighed. The men were closing ranks. Magnus himself had believed that boys needed strong male role models. Perhaps that was why he had inexplicably failed to alter his will, despite the long estrangement between him and his protégé. “Do you think it’s a good idea,” she queried Steve, “to start your…tenure by giving them a telling off?”
“If I stand by while you do it, they’ll think I’m a wuss. Then we’ll both be in deep trouble.”
Unwillingly she capitulated with a small shrug, knowing that however unpalatable she found it, he was probably right. “I’m not the only one who needs a change of clothes,” she observed. Casting a glance over his own wet shirt and trousers, she couldn’t help noticing he looked as fit and leanly muscular as ever despite his presumably easy lifestyle. “We’ve put you in the annex.” It was a self-contained one-bedroom unit adjoining the main house. “I’ll take you—”
“I know where it is.”
Of course he did. “We’ll see you at dinner, then,” she said. “Six-thirty in the dining room.”
Triss and Magnus had always eaten together with the students and any tutors who chose to live in. Most of the current tutors preferred to commute from the city, and Arthur had taken his swollen nose home for his wife’s ministrations. Zed would be giving his children their evening meal in their own cottage while his wife fixed dinner at the house, helped by two of the boys rostered for kitchen duty.
One of the helpers looked the worse for wear, and all the boys were subdued. Triss saw that an extra hand in the kitchen was needed, and was ladling soup into bowls at the pass-through counter when Steve entered and took his place in the small queue.
“Thanks,” he said when she handed him a steaming bowl. “Anywhere?”
“Anywhere,” she confirmed. The tables were round, and as Magnus had made a point of sitting at a different place each evening, Triss had been relieved of any awkwardness over a special chair after his death.
She still missed his presence though, and was sure the boys did, too.
Steve chose a table and she assumed he was introducing himself, but before she sat down with her own bowl of soup at another table she rapped a spoon on the glass and waited for the subdued hum of talk to stop.
Some of the faces turned toward her were apprehensive, a few belligerent, and several showed swellings and bruises. She’d held an ice pack to her own cheekbone until it stung and then numbed, and used a cover-up makeup, but the spot was tender and slightly swollen.
“Some of you will have met Mr. Stevens,” she said, nodding toward Steve. At least a few had “met” him under less than friendly circumstances. “He’s a trustee of the House now, and he’ll be living here and helping out for a while.” She didn’t look to see what Steve made of that last bit. “I’m sure you’ll all make him welcome. After dinner he’d like to speak to you in the common room. So be there. Thanks.” They knew it was an order, not a matter of choice.
Triss didn’t have much appetite. The day had been stressful, and she discovered that her cheek throbbed when she chewed. She left the crusty bread on her plate and, after the soup, settled for potatoes, mashed carrots and gravy.
