Tom appeared quite concerned about her lack of colour and Sarah found herself meekly allowing him to shoo her on home. Overwork, he said; the strain of doing two jobs at once. He would square it with Julie.
At home she roamed restlessly around the house, wishing it was possible to go to bed and pull the covers up over her head and summon up those calm, uncomplicated days so recent, yet so far behind her.
She dragged herself into the bathroom and was horrified when she looked in the mirror. A wraith! Dark, burning eyes in a white face. No wonder Tom guessed. Her hot eyes felt dry and sore, her mouth parched, her body feverish, as if pain had absorbed all the moisture from her system.
Maybe it wasn't love, she thought desperately. Maybe it was infatuation, hormonal imbalance—something you could take pills for. All she had to do was hold out until the end of the week, until Max left. Plod on, endure, hide the pain—she was good at doing that. Could she trust Tom? Yes. He understood, he was sorry for her. Curious he might be, but not Cruel, not like Max would be if he ever found out. He would laugh, his triumph complete; he would delight in making her suffer. And she would suffer enough without his help. The two things she wanted most in the world right now were the two things he would never give her. His love, and his trust.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
'I don't believe this!'
In a luxury suite at the Intercontinental Hotel Sarah confronted a tall, lean, hazel-eyed man over the remains of a luncheon trolley. She was gripped by an uncanny sense of déjà vu ; this had happened to her before, a little over a month ago. Was the nightmare going to begin all over again?
'You can't—' She stopped, a hand lifting to her heavy head, mesmerised by that familiar expression of hauteur, by the quizzical lift of the brow.
'Can't?' Slowly. Exploring the new word. 'Are there laws in this country of which I am unaware? Are you not a free agent?'
'Of course—I—' Sarah put a hand over her heart. It was beating at an alarming rate. 'But you can't possibly ask me to work for you on the basis of four days' acquaintance! It's not—'
'My dear child,' Sir Richard Wilde looked deeply pained, one thin hand lifting languidly from the arm of his chair, 'if you're going to work for me you must learn to stop thinking in clichéd terms. Originality is my trademark. One must not allow oneself to be hidebound by convention, it stifles creative thinking. It is because I have acted on intuitive decisions that I am where I am today. Would you have me abandon my formula for success now, on your behalf?'
'No . . . no, of course not,' said Sarah hurriedly, still finding the conversation difficult to believe. She had received a casual job offer once before, from a member of the same family—one which, not surprisingly, had never been renewed. She doubted that Sir Richard would deliberately mislead her, but over the past few days she had learned something of his penchant for whimsicality. 'But there is a question of suitability—'
'Ahh.' Shoulders moved expressively under the dark velvet jacket. 'I would never have brought the subject up if I did not think you were suitable,' he said, dismissing the point with his own unique brand of logic. 'And you wear my clothes so well; I knew as soon as I saw your photographs that if we ever met we would be . . . sympathetic'
He had said as much on his first visit to the Rags offices. Sarah, though having had plenty of time to prepare herself, had still been winded by his likeness to Max, and flustered by having her hand kissed instead of shaken.
'You do not have to introduce her,' he had told Julie, who had brought him in from the airport. 'I recognised her at once. But that is not mine,' frowning at Sarah's apricot voile dress, 'and you have lost weight.'
'I'm dieting,' Sarah had lied. She couldn't very well have said, 'I'm pining for your son.'
'It does not suit you,' she was informed, with an exquisite disregard for tact. 'You have height, you need the proportions to match. If you lose any more weight my clothes, which make you look so chic, will be useless to you. An ill-fitting garment is an abomination, do you not think?' ,
It was skilfully phrased so that in agreeing to the last Sarah was agreeing to the whole. Sir Richard Wilde, she had since discovered, was adept at getting people to agree with him. Not that it made any difference, for if they did not, he ignored them.
'Looking good in your designs is unavoidable,' Sarah pulled herself back to the present, sitting earnestly forward in her chair. 'And it's scarcely a recommendation for a personal assistant.'
'For me it is. You will be constantly at my side; of necessity you must be a discreet advertisement for my talent.'
'But, I have no experience—'
'I should soon give you that. Tell me,' he changed tack with disarming smoothness, 'are these . . . trivialities an attempt to hide from me the real reason for your refusal?'
'What?' Sarah only just prevented herself from leaping to her feet in shock.
'Do you have a personal dislike of me?' came the bland reply. 'I had the impression that you had enjoyed the last few days, in spite of your reluctance to oblige me. Was I wrong?'
His observance disconcerted her. She had been greatly reluctant, too aware of the poignancy of the situation. Every now and then an intonation, a turn of the head, a phrase would strike a responsive chord and she would be shaken by helpless, hopeless longing. However, she had been given little choice. When Julie had heard that Sir Richard's private secretary had suffered an attack of food poisoning the evening they arrived in Auckland she had immediately offered Jane's services.
'No, no.' Sir Richard had dismissed the possibility with an imperious wave. 'I cannot work with a stranger. Sarah will do—we are already acquainted by proxy. Do you take shorthand?' And when she nodded slowly. 'Good. That is settled.'
A complete autocrat, but a charmer. He had a grasshopper mind and an uneven temper which he made valiant efforts to control for Sarah's benefit. She was surprised by his thoughtfulness, the small considerations he gave her, and disarmed by his elegant manners. Max had called him a despot, but he was a benevolent despot and not half as formidable as his son had suggested. But then, she thought bitterly, Max's judgements about people had not proved infallible.
Sir Richard was a formidable showman, though. He had been delighted at the stir he had created by deciding to come to New Zealand for the Images preview and it had taken little persuasion from Julie to get him to say a few light and witty words at the christening party for the new Rags & Riches, held the following day.
Sarah had obediently trailed everywhere after him, jotting down his constant flow of ideas and memos to himself and to his staff", and watched in awe as he effortlessly extracted every ounce of publicity from his brief visit. Controversial comment and bons mots were scattered in a manner carefully calculated to reach a maximum audience. Sir Richard seemed to positively encourage the pursuit of journalists and photographers.
'Fame, wealth, success—these things I have sought all my life,' he told Sarah confidently. 'In my younger days I struggled against poverty and anonymity in a fiercely competitive field. It took more than just talent to achieve my aims. Why should I now seek to hide from fortune? —that is the action of the weak, the insecure. Privacy —bah! Only what is inside the head and the heart is private, the rest is window-dressing—meant to be seen.'