Free Outsider by Sara Craven Page B

as you liked. You could have consulted me over your
    intuition about Watson, but that never occurred to you, did it?'
    Natalie's cheeks burned. She stared down at the strip of carpet. 'No.'
    Eliot said very wearily, 'Exactly. If your stepmother hadn't chanced to go
    into your room, you could have been very seriously assaulted. You could
    have been raped. And you can imagine the effect that would have had on
    Grantham's heart condition.'
    She bit her lip. 'You don't have to say all this. Beat- tie's already...'
    'Beattie couldn't be hard on you if she tried,' he said brusquely. 'And that's
    what you need. Just be thankful I'm confining myself to words alone. What
    I'm tempted to do is give you the bloody good hiding you so richly deserve.'
    'How dare you!' she said hoarsely.
    'Quite easily, sweetheart, believe me.' The whip flicked again. 'You're
    headstrong, Natalie. You like to take the bit between your teeth and run, and
    last night you nearly charged into disaster. And if it was just down to me, I'd
    probably let you,' he added dispassionately. 'But for your father's sake, and
    Beattie's, I can't allow it. So regard this as your final warning, lady. Do the
    work you're paid for, and don't meddle in what doesn't concern you.'
    'So I'm just the office girl,' she said unevenly.
    'For the present,' he agreed. 'Until you can prove your judgement can be
    trusted.'
    She flung her head up. 'And who says I have to trust you? The builders may
    have started on the new extension, but where are the horses which are going
    to fill it? We haven't been exactly stampeded by new owners since you
    joined us.'
    'Nor do we want to be,' he said calmly. 'Until the new boxes are built,
    anyway. But you don't have to worry, Natalie. The horses will come. Now,
    I'd better get on with those entries. If you could rustle up some coffee, I'd be
    grateful.'
    He didn't look up again, and after a moment she turned and left the room.
    She found she was breathing far too quickly, and her forehead and the palms
    of her hands felt damp and clammy. She leaned for a second against the bulk
    of the filing cabinet, trying to regain her equilibrium. If he'd shouted and
    sworn at her, she could have understood it better. She was used, after all, to
    weathering Grantham's storms. But Eliot's cool, almost laconic approach left
    her bewildered, and oddly crushed.
    She'd behaved like a complete fool, and he'd let her know it. And the only
    crumb of comfort she could derive from the whole wretched episode was
    that it seemed, at last, to have killed off any transient desire he might have
    felt for her stone dead.
    But somehow, even that was no longer the reassurance it would once have
    been, she thought with a little shaken sigh. And, on that discomfiting
    reflection, went to put the kettle on.

    Grantham seemed subdued in the weeks that followed. There were no more
    confrontations between Eliot and himself, however, to Natalie's relief. And
    Eliot's attitude towards herself had been as coolly professional and
    businesslike as she could have wished.
    But the last thing she expected was for Grantham to announce out of a blue
    sky that he and Beattie were going away the following weekend to visit
    Beattie's sister in Worcestershire.
    'She's been asking us to go for long enough,' he muttered. 'And it's unfair to
    Beattie to keep turning her invitations down.'
    Natalie stared at him. 'But there's racing at Lassiter Park next Saturday. We
    have three entries.'
    'Well, Eliot can manage.' Grantham didn't meet her eye. 'After all, what's the
    point of having a younger man as a partner if I can't relax—take things a bit
    easier sometimes, tell me that?'
    Natalie wasn't prepared to tell him anything at all. For the first time, it
    occurred to her that Grantham might seriously be considering a kind of
    semi-retirement. Up to then, she had believed that her father would hang on
    tooth and nail, fighting every inch of the way to retain control over what he
    still regarded as