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Then he felt a hand clasp his, the fingers tightening with fierce determination, drawing him closer. The waves fought back but the hand refused to yield to them. Suddenly he realised that two men were in the water with him, and were loading him onto a stretcher. Gradually the stretcher began to rise, taking him clear of the sea, lifting him to safety.
From somewhere a man’s voice said, ‘OK, I’ve got him. You can let go, Harry.’
And a woman replied, “No way. This one’s mine.’
Harry! That voice—
Shocked, he opened his eyes and saw Harriet’s face.
‘You,’ he whispered hoarsely.
Harriet was there, leaning close to ask, ‘Was there anyone else with you—anyone we still need to look for?’
‘No,’ he gasped. ‘I was alone.’
‘Good. Then we can go back. There’ll be an ambulance to take you to hospital.’
‘No, I must go home—my children—I’ve got to call them. Wait—’ he grasped her ‘—my cellphone went into the water. Let me use yours.’
‘I don’t have it here.’
‘Then I must call them from home.’
‘But the hospital will have—’
‘Not the hospital,’ he said stubbornly.
‘Gee, you’re an infuriating man!’ she exclaimed.
‘Yes, well, you should have left me in the water, shouldn’t you?’ he choked. ‘You had the right idea the first time.’
A coughing fit overtook him. Between them, Harriet and Walter got him under cover, and she stayed with him for the rest of the journey. He slumped in the seat, his eyes closed, on the verge of collapse. Watching him, Harriet was glad she hadn’t needed to answer his last remark. She wouldn’t have known how.
At the lifeboat station she helped him ashore, and there was another argument.
‘No hospital,’ he insisted. ‘I’m going home.’
‘Then I’ll take you,’ she said. ‘Walter—’
‘Don’t worry, I’ll do the report. You keep him safe.’
Darius was about to say that he would drive himself when he remembered that his car was a mile away. Besides, there was no arguing with this bossy woman.
Somehow, he stumbled into her car and sat with his eyes closed for the journey.
‘How did you manage to find me?’ he murmured. ‘I thought I was a goner.’
‘Kate raised the alarm. She said you left suddenly after you talked about the wind farm. Later, she went out and bumped into an old man she knows who works on the shore. He said he’d seen you leaving in your motorboat. When you didn’t return she tried to call you on your cellphone, but it was dead so she alerted the lifeboat station.’
Kate was waiting at the door when they arrived. Darius managed to stand up long enough to hug her.
‘Thank you,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I owe you my life.’
‘As long as you’re safe,’ Kate insisted. ‘Just come in and get warm.’
In the hall, he made straight for the phone.
‘Get changed,’ Harriet said urgently. ‘You’re soaking.’
‘No, I’ve got to call them first. They’ll be waiting.’ He’d been dialling as he spoke and now he said, ‘Mary? Yes, I know it’s late. I’m sorry, I got held up.’
From where she was standing, Harriet could hear a woman’s sharp voice on the other end, faint but clear.
‘You always get held up. The children went to bed crying because you didn’t keep your word, and that’s it. Enough is enough.’
‘Mary, listen—’
‘I’m not going to let you hurt them by putting them last again—’
‘It’s not like that—don’t hang up—’
Harriet couldn’t stand it any more. She snatched the phone from his hand and spoke loudly. ‘Mrs Falcon, please listen to me.’
‘Oh, you’re the girlfriend, I suppose?’
‘No, I’m not Mr Falcon’s girlfriend. I’m a member of the lifeboat crew that’s just taken him from the sea, barely in time to save his life.’
‘Oh, please, do you expect me to believe that?’
Harriet exploded with rage. ‘Yes, I do expect you to believe it because it’s true. If we’d got there just a few minutes later it would have been too late. You’re lucky he’s here and not at the bottom of the ocean.’ She handed the phone to Darius, who was staring as though he’d just seen an apparition. ‘Tell her,’ she commanded.
Dazed, he took the receiver and spoke into it. ‘Mary? Are you still there?—yes, it’s true what she said.’
A sense of propriety made Harriet back away in the direction of the kitchen but an overwhelming curiosity made her leave the door open just enough to eavesdrop.
‘Please fetch them,’ she heard him say. ‘Oh, they’ve come downstairs? Let me talk to them. Frankie—is that you? I’m sorry about the delay—I fell in the water but they pulled me out—I’m fine now. Put Mark on, let me try and talk to both of you at once.’
His tone had changed, becoming warm and caressing in a way Harriet wouldn’t have believed possible. Now she backed into the kitchen and shut the door, gratefully accepting a cup of tea from Kate.
‘He’ll go down with pneumonia if he doesn’t get changed soon,’ Kate observed worriedly.
‘Then we’ll have to be very firm with him,’ Harriet said.
‘Like you were just now.’ Kate’s tone was admiring. ‘He didn’t know what had hit him.’
‘I suppose he’ll be cross with me, but it can’t be helped.’
‘As long as we keep him safe,’ Kate agreed.
Harriet look at her curiously. ‘You sound as though you really care. But he can’t be very easy to work for.’
‘I’ll take him rather than the last fellow any day. Rancing just vanished, leaving me here for weeks. He never got in touch, never paid me—’
‘Didn’t pay you?’ Harriet echoed, aghast. ‘The lousy so-and-so. How did you live?’
‘I had a little saved, but I had to spend it all. I couldn’t contact him. Nothing. Then Mr Falcon walked in and said the place was his. I was still living here because I’ve got nowhere else to go. I thought he’d throw me out and bring in an army of posh servants, but he said he wanted me to stay and he paid me for all the weeks after Rancing left.’
‘He—paid you? But—’
‘I know. He didn’t have to. He didn’t owe me and I couldn’t believe it when he handed me the cash.’
Harriet stared, feeling as though the world had suddenly turned upside down. This couldn’t be true. Darius was a villain. That had been a settled fact in her mind. Until tonight—
‘Why didn’t you tell anyone?’ she asked.
‘Because he said not to. He’d be good and mad if he knew I’d told you now, so you’ll keep quiet, won’t you?’
‘Of course. I’m not even quite convinced.’
‘No, he said you wouldn’t be.’
‘He said what?’
‘Not at the time, but last night when I was making his supper, I mentioned it, asked if I could tell people, and he said that you especially must never know because you enjoyed seeing him as the devil and he didn’t want to spoil your fun.’
‘Oh, did he?’
There were no words for the unfamiliar sensation that shook her. Darius had looked into her mind and read it with a precision that was alarming. Or exciting. She wasn’t sure. One thing was certain. Everything she’d thought she knew about him was now in question. And the truth about his real nature was an even bigger question. The world had gone mad, taking her with it.
And what a journey that might be!
She recovered enough to say, ‘But if people knew he could be as generous as this they’d see him differently.’
‘Perhaps he doesn’t want them to,’ Kate said wisely.
That silenced Harriet. This was too much to take in all in one go. She needed space and solitude.
It was time to see how he was managing. Opening the door, they looked out into the hall and saw Darius sitting so still that they thought the call was ended, but then he said, ‘All right,’ in a hard voice.
After a pause he added, ‘You’d better go back to bed now—yes, all right. Goodbye.’
He set the phone down and leaned back against the wood, eyes closed, face exhausted. Something told Harriet the call hadn’t gone well.
‘Time for bed,’ Kate told him. ‘Shall we help you up the stairs?’
‘Thank you, but there’s no need,’ he growled.
He hauled himself slowly to his feet and began the weary trek, stair by stair, but waving the two women away if they seemed to get too close. They contented themselves with keeping a respectful distance, following him up and into his room, where he sat heavily on the bed.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘I can manage.’
‘No, you can’t,’ Harriet firmly. ‘If we leave now you’ll just stretch out and go to sleep in your freezing wet clothes. Next stop, pneumonia.’
‘Now, look—’
‘No, you look. I didn’t give up my evening to come out to sea and fetch you to have you throw your life away through carelessness. You’re going to take off those wet clothes and put on dry ones.’
Darius looked warily from one to the other, and seemed to decide against argument. His eyes closed and Harriet thought for a moment he would lose consciousness. But when he opened them again an incredible change seemed to come over him.
Astonished, Harriet saw a faint grin that might almost have been good-natured, or at least resigned. Then he shrugged.
‘I’m in your hands, ladies.’
He unbuttoned his own shirt and shrugged it off, then unzipped his trousers and stood while they removed them. Kate fetched towels and a bathrobe that Harriet helped him put on. He tried to draw the edges together before removing his underpants, but his grip was weak and they fell open at the crucial moment.
Harriet quickly averted her eyes, but not before she’d seen his nakedness. Just a brief glimpse, but it told her what she didn’t want to know, that his personal magnificence measured up to his reputation in business.
Hastily, she began opening drawers, asking, ‘Where are your pyjamas?’
‘I don’t have any. Sleeping in the nude is more comfortable.’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘Don’t you find that?’
‘I really wouldn’t know,’ she said primly. It was incredible to her that he’d chosen this moment to tease her. He was half dead, for pity’s sake! Did nothing crush him?
‘I’m making you a hot tea,’ she declared, ‘and when I come back I expect to find you in bed.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said meekly.
Now Harriet was sure she could see a gleam of humour far back in his eyes, but she couldn’t be sure.
‘I’ll leave you in Kate’s capable hands.’ Some defensive instinct made her add, ‘Don’t stand any nonsense from him, Kate.’
‘Don’t you worry,’ Kate said significantly.
‘Harriet!’ She turned at the door in response to Darius’s voice. ‘Thank you,’ he said quietly.
‘Don’t mention it.’
She departed hurriedly. Downstairs, she made the tea but only took it halfway up the stairs before calling Kate and handing it to her. Suddenly it was important to escape him, above all to escape his knowing look that said he would tease her if he wanted to, and what was she going to do about it?
There was nothing to be done, except get back home—a place of safety, where she knew what was what.
When she got there safety greeted her in the form of Phantom. As they snuggled down under the covers she discussed the matter with him, as she discussed everything.
‘What a night! Him of all people. And it seems he’s not like… Well, I don’t know what he’s like any more. He was nice to Kate, I’ll admit that. Maybe we were wrong about him. No, not we. Just me. You always liked him, didn’t you?
‘If you could have seen him getting undressed tonight. It was an honest accident—at least, I think it was. But what I saw was impressive and maybe he meant me to see and maybe he didn’t.
‘He ticks the boxes—great thighs, narrow hips and the rest—well, never mind. But Brad also ticked the boxes, and he knew he ticked them. A man like that wasn’t going to confine himself to me, was he? And he didn’t. So if His Majesty Falcon is expecting me to be impressed he can just think again.
