Elizabeth was unable to hide her disapproval. It's not good for children always to get their own way.'
'I didn’t say I got always my own way. I said I never forgot my original desire. I allowed myself to be distracted, but never lost sight of the compromise involved.' His smile tipped cynically. 'To this day I don’t like to compromise.'
'Why doesn’t that surprise me?' murmured Elizabeth. No wonder he had taken his corporation from strength to strength. He had a determination, a will to win that was more evident with each passing moment, whether it be an argument, a woman, or a company.
That made him a possessive man. What if he found out that Elizabeth was here as the agent of someone who wished to take one of his possessions away from him— his mistress?
To Elizabeth's intense relief her disturbing thoughts weren’t given time to ripen into fears. Serena Corvell's pretence of indifference had lasted only as long as it took for her to realise that her behaviour had thrown the field wide open to a woman whom she had formerly regarded as no competition at all. She got up and strolled confidently across the deck to tease Jack into giving her a turn at the wheel, began talking to him in a low voice that made it clear that Elizabeth's presence was superfluous.
Instead of trying to intrude where she obviously wasn’t wanted Elizabeth retreated to the cabin to fetch her camera and casually took a few shots of the retreating mainland, the white sandy beaches curving into a sea that was now cobalt-blue under a totally cloudless sky. Just like the brochures, she thought wryly as she swivelled the lens and focused carefully on the couple at the wheel.
Serena Corvell had tied an expensive silk scarf over her sleek blonde head, leaving her flawless face exposed as she leaned closer to hear something of what Jack said. Their faces were nearly touching in profile as Elizabeth clicked the shutter. She felt strangely breathless as she framed another shot, and then another, nervous excitement running through her veins. Serena was laughing now, and Jack briefly put his hand over hers as it shifted on the wheel.
As Elizabeth clicked the shutter again Jack Hawkwood looked casually back at her, the movement undoubtedly blurring what would have been a perfect shot. The smile on his face died abruptly and Elizabeth jerkily turned and took a blind snap of the empty sea. She cursed herself for the betraying swiftness of her move. It would have been less suspicious to just take the shot. Sure enough, when she lowered her camera she could see out of the corner of her eye that he was still looking at her with that hawkish gaze.
A few seconds later he left Serena at the wheel and was offering to take a photograph of Elizabeth for her 'holiday album'.
'Oh, no, really—I prefer to take photos rather than be in them,' she stammered, clutching the camera tightly. 'I—I don’t photograph very well, you see-'
'I can see your problem,' Serena's malicious sympathy floated across the deck. "The camera doesn’t flatter the fuller figure, does it? Leave her alone, Jack, you're embarrassing the poor girl.'
So, not only was she fat, she wasn’t even a woman. Elizabeth found herself doing a slow burn at the unnecessary spite of the other woman's words. As if
Elizabeth would ever be a threat to a sophisticated woman like Serena, for goodness' sake! It was temper, rather than bravery, that prompted her to delay Jack's return to his mistress's side.
'There's a private estate on the island, isn’t there, as well as your hotel?'
His hesitation was so slight that she thought she must have imagined it.
'The St Clair estate, yes. What makes you ask?'
'Is it far away from the hotel?' She tried to make her question casual, eyes avoiding his so that he wouldn’t see the avidness of her interest.
'Nothing on the island is far from the hotel,' he said drily. 'It's only a few kilometres across.'
Was he being evasive? Or was it her over-active imagination? 'Someone mentioned that the house is worth a look, that it's like a transplanted French chateau...' Uncle Miles and Uncle Seymour had been very eloquent about the graceful villa in which old Monsieur St Clair resided—when they had exhausted the topic of the priceless book collection which had been the reason for their visit a few months before.
'It's very impressive.'
She took the unenthusiastic reply as uninterest. 'I'll be sure and go and see it, then...'
'I'm afraid that's not possible.'
Against her will her eyes darted anxiously to his. 'Not possible? Why not?'
'The estate is out of bounds to hotel guests.'
'Out of bounds, but why?'
'It's a private home, not a tourist attraction. Monsieur St Clair doesn’t care for casual visitors.'
Elizabeth was tempted to tell him that she wasn’t a casual visitor but she bit her tongue and turned away, pretending to be absorbed by the sight of seabirds skimming the calm wake of the yacht. Discretion must be her watchword, at least until she had had a chance to speak to Monsieur St Clair himself.
Unconsciously she touched the white shirt where it lay concealingly across the heavy, wrought-gold necklace, feeling again the faint chill of the shock she had experienced when Uncle Miles told her the unfortunate aftermath of their buying trip to the St Clair estate. She had known that Uncle Seymour was becoming prone to bouts of increasing eccentricity in old age, but she hadn’t realised that his magpie tendencies had developed into something more serious until Uncle Miles had shown her the evidence.
Uncle Seymour might not have actually stolen the necklace personally, but he had certainly kept it in the guilty knowledge that it was someone else's property. Monsieur Alain St Clair's to be exact.
The two crates of books which had been shipped to Lamb's Tales from the St Clair estate had contained, for the most part, the brothers' legitimate and documented purchases. But when Uncle Seymour had unpacked them he had found there were also three valuable first editions apparently included by mistake and an apparently worthless book that had contained, within its hollowed-out pages, the necklace that Elizabeth was now wearing. An antique necklace that was breathtakingly beautiful and obviously extremely valuable. Stamped on to the ornately carved clasp was an unmistakable mark of ownership—the St Clair family crest.