Free Island of escape by Dorothy Cork Page B

was obvious. But none of that meant anything to Ellis, whatever it had meant to Jan.
    `I hope that is all you said,' he commented, letting her go. 'You didn't, by some slip of the tongue, tell her you were my new housekeeper?'
    `No, but I wish I had,' she retorted defiantly. 'And I did tell her I'd look after the shearers—if I'm still here. It's not very fair of you to leave everything to Leanne, especially when you promised you'd bring someone back, anyhow.'
     
    `I don't make promises of any kind to Leanne,' he said abruptly. 'She's one of those women who likes to carry the stockwhip, but I assure you she's not cracking it around my head. I'll get a new housekeeper in my own good time.'
    `You've got me,' Ellis pointed out.
    `I'm not interested in you in that way. You can do your little, bit around the homestead, but I've told you what I feel about you.'
    `What you feel about me?' she jeered. 'You—you don't feel anything.'
    `I want a wife,' he said.
    `I can't help that. Why should it be me?'
    `Why not?' He looked at her through half-closed eyes, and she was aware of a sort of tensed-up menace from him. She backed away till she was near the chest of drawers. He didn't move, but he didn't take his eyes off her.
    `You're available,' he said cynically after a moment. `You've been—disappointed in love. I think that's the phrase. You offered yourself in that letter you wrote to me. Remember? And now you're here. That's why you.'
    Ellis listened feeling her heart would leap out of her breast, its beating had become so agitated. She was here —and that was what was so inexplicable. She couldn't even explain it to herself. She couldn't understand how she'd been so gullible as to let him persuade her it would be all right, though when she thought of it, he hadn't actually done any persuading. He had flipped his fingers and she had come like the proverbial lamb —to the slaughter. She stared at Steve, her blue eyes wide and fearful, and she saw his long mouth curl upwards at the corners.
    He said, 'I want you because your looks please me,
     
    Ellis. Your voice pleases me too, when you're not spitting at me like a little cat. Quite apart from that, you have me persuaded that you're not purely ornamental. What more could a man want from a woman?'
    `Am I expected to feel flattered?' she demanded. `I'm really beginning to understand why Jan sent back your ring. You're—you're hardly any girl's idea of the ideal husband, Mr Gascoyne.'
    `Call me that just once more and I'll make you sorry for it,' he said very softly. 'Who's your ideal, anyhow, Ellis? The man who's doubtless now making love to my ex-fiancée?' He paused and she said nothing. 'I don't believe he set any fires alight in you—you're still a very frightened little virgin, aren't you?—hugging your robe around you as if I were about to ravish you ... Or is your ideal more along the lines of the old family friend who was consoling you so lavishly in Hobart? If you knew just a little more about the human male, you might be glad I've delivered you from his clutches. He'd barely begun to—play with you so far, is my guess, and believe me, you'll be a lot better off with me. A man his age is usually motivated more by lust than by passion when he gets a pretty little innocent like you down on his couch.'
    Ellis felt herself go white, but her eyes were blazing. She longed to smack this man in the face, but she hung on to her temper somehow as she stammered out, `Don't you dare to speak about Jake like that ! We—we don't have that sort of relationship. He—he's a good man. You're a warped character, Mr Gascoyne. You're the last man I'd ever want to—oh !'
    The rest of her sentence was lost as with a sudden movement he reached out and crushed her against the hardness of his body.
    `I warned you not to call me that,' he said into her
     
    hair, and then he forced her head up and his mouth found hers.
    She fought him this time, agonisingly conscious of the fact that she had