'But I should imagine you have a flair for it anyway.' He put his knife and fork together and pushed his plate away. 'That was absolutely delicious.'

'I do enjoy cooking,' Davina agreed as she did the same and picked up her glass. But as he offered to top it up she said, 'No, no more, thank you. I was going to make a pudding but ran out of time. I've prepared a cheese-board and fruit instead.'

'That'll be fine but don't rush. How come the chips came to be down?' He looked at her quite seriously across the table.

Davina looked away and finished the last of her wine. 'I'd rather not go into that.'

'Sometimes it helps,' he commented.

'With a perfect stranger? I doubt it.'

'We're not exactly perfect strangers. On the other hand, strangers can have a less-biased view of things.'

'Why do you really want to know?' she said, at last. 'Anyway, it's nothing earth-shattering and I'm quite happy the way I am, believe it or not.' She smiled faintly.

He lay back in his chair and regarded her thoughtfully. 'Marriage to someone who thought you were a frigid bitch, which, incidentally, we've now proved you're not, must have been a bit devastating.'

A faint smile lit Davina's eyes. 'I think it was more devastating for him than it was for me.'

Steve Warwick took his time digesting this. 'So, it was an act?' he said at last.

'Not entirely. He certainly didn't turn me on-for want of a more elegant phrase.'

'Were you forced into marrying him?' 'I was… conned,' Davina said meditatively, then she sighed. 'You remind me of the Spanish Inquisition in velvet gloves. So, if it will set your mind at rest, my father was faced with the prospect of bankruptcy, my ex-husband was the guy who could either bring it all about or save him, I was the price he asked to take the latter course. There you are.' She smiled at Steve Warwick but not with her eyes. 'You have it in a nutshell.' 'And after you'd done the deed you discovered it wasn't all that simple?' he queried perceptively after a moment.

'After I'd done the deed I discovered… well, eventually, that my parents were still going to go bankrupt.'

'He reneged, in other words?'

She shrugged. 'He was one of the crop of entrepreneurial millionaires who popped up all over Australia at the time with about as much substance to them as a pack of cards. He crashed like a pack of cards too,' she said dispassionately.

Steve Warwick acknowledged this phenomenon with a grimace and a faint frown in his eyes and Davina knew he was trying to place the name and she held her breath for a moment but all he said was, 'So he conned your father as well?'

Davina traced a pattern on the tablecloth with her finger. 'My father was desperate. So was my mother- desperate about how it was all affecting my father's health, and right to be. He died of a heart attack.'

'I'm sorry. Was that when you-released yourself from the marriage?'

'Yes, more or less.'

'How old were you when you got conned into this marriage?'

'Twenty,' she said briefly. 'How old was he?'

'Forty. But a very fit and young-looking forty, I'll give him that.'

'How did you first come to his notice?' Davina narrowed her eyes and glanced at him coolly. 'At a ball.'

'Where else?' Steve Warwick murmured, looking wry. 'What do you mean?'

'My dear Davina, you in a ballgown…' He shrugged. She closed her eyes for a moment and remembered the gown. It had been black and strapless and had fitted her like a glove. She'd also worn long white gloves with it and a choker of pearls… And she remembered the sick feeling that had started to grow in the pit of her stomach as she'd realised her mistake, that she'd have been far better off to wear sackcloth and ashes rather than display herself in a ballgown to a man who stripped her naked with world-weary, cynical brown eyes in a way that left no doubt he meant to have her in his bed by hook or by crook.

She stood up abruptly. 'Yes, well, there you have it, Mr Warwick, but I'm afraid "show and tell" time is over. I'll bring the cheese.'

'So you've hated all men ever since?' he queried softly, making no physical effort to detain her, but managing to do so all the same.

'Yes,' she said through her teeth but added, 'I certainly don't trust them and if you're about to lecture me on the folly of making sweeping generalisations like that, please don't waste your time or mine!'

'I wouldn't dream of it!' He stood up. 'A lot of people prefer to enjoy their misery.'

Davina stilled with her hands around the silver platter, and was briefly tempted to hurl the remains of the roast at him. She said instead, coldly, 'But I'm not miserable, that's what you don't seem to understand. Not all women can only find fulfilment in the arms of some man, and before you take that the wrong way-'

'I wouldn't dream of doing that, either,' he said with his lips quirking, 'but before this discussion gets out of hand, I think I'll forgo the pleasures of your cheese-board if you'll forgive me-I have some work to do- but I wouldn't say no to a cup of coffee. I'll be in the study'

Davina stared at his tall frame with narrowed, frustrated eyes as he walked away, and counted to ten beneath her breath.

They had no further conversation that evening, beyond the basics, and she retired to her chalet feeling thankful but curiously wrought-up. It took a while to fall asleep.

'Have the rest of the day off, Davina.'

It was nine-thirty in the morning, a beautiful cloudless morning with sunlight sparkling on the sea.

'Oh, that's not-'

'Look, just do it,' Steve Warwick said irritably as he stood in the kitchen doorway juggling his car-keys. It had been obvious from their first encounter of the day at breakfast that he was not in a good mood-at least, he'd been terse and preoccupied. 'You might not get another opportunity,' he continued, 'and from the look of the place it's all hunkydory.' He looked around, but not as if his clean, gleaming home gave him much pleasure. 'I'm eating out tonight, anyway.'

'Well…'

'And lunching out,' he said sardonically and added, 'If you would care to have a precise timetable of my movements today, I'm also-'

'Don't bother,' Davina said shortly and turned away to hide the anger in her eyes.

'It is what you wanted to know yesterday, however,' he said cuttingly.

She swung back to him, her violet eyes cool and ironic now, as she said, 'Only in the interests of doing my job, Mr Warwick. You could go to…the moon today, for all I care.'

'And you can go to hell too, Mrs Hastings, which is what you really wished for me,' he replied and walked away leaving Davina with her mouth open for two reasons. Because he was right; she had been sorely tempted to tell him to go to a hotter nether region and because it was unbelievable how things had a habit of boiling up between them…

Not, she thought, as she sat down at the kitchen table rather suddenly, that I could be accused of starting the hostilities today. It's really no wonder he hasn't married, he's got to be the most temperamental man, it surely can't just be me that arouses this reaction? Can it?

She stared at nothing for about two minutes, then shook herself and tried to direct her thoughts elsewhere-such as what she was going to do with the day. And she remembered a little booklet she'd found in her chalet called The Rambler's Guide to Lord Howe, and went to get it.

Which was how, half an hour later with some sandwiches, a drink and her camera packed into a back-pack, she embarked on the Goat House walk up Mount Lidgbird. She'd chosen it because it was described as the next best thing to climbing Mount Gower, which you couldn't do without a guide, and because it sounded too taxing for an eight-year-old. Halfway up, she saw that they were right. It was very steep, the path was very narrow and littered with roots, it was slightly slippery from the rain of two days ago and, because of the dense foliage and cover, she felt almost as if she were exploring some Amazonian rain forest. It was difficult to find anywhere to stand her tripod, so rough was the terrain, but anyway the lack of light was a problem so she contented herself with simply getting to the top.

But once out of the forest, with the grey, bare, basalt upper cliffs of Mount Lidgbird before her, it became intensely worth the effort. She stopped for lunch beneath those eerie cliffs, perched on a clump of grass at an acute angle and admired the northward view of Lord Howe as it lay literally at her feet. The crescent-shaped lagoon side of the island with its turquoise water towards Malabar and Mount Eliza and the rocky, bay-studded eastern side. She could pick out Steve Warwick's house and the airstrip and Intermediate and Transit Hills in between. She could see birds wheeling over the wrinkled blue of the ocean and hear them calling.

She consulted her rambler's guide before making the final assault on the actual Goat House cave and then climbed and edged and hung on by her finger nails until she made it. She discovered the view was even better from the shallow cave in the cliffside but the stench of goat manure was rather overpowering, although there was not a goat to be seen. She stopped to take some photos before edging round on a tiny path with a sheer drop beneath her until she gasped with sheer delight as Ball's Pyramid to the south-east came into view, floating just like a storybook castle in a sea of pale blue shimmering ocean.

It then became necessary to find a niche where she could sit in some comfort and get her tripod set securely. That done, not exactly comfortably but the best she could manage, she lost herself in trying to capture the marvellous spectacle spread out before her. And when she'd finally filmed enough of Ball's Pyramid and the western side of Lord Howe and the birds wheeling and patrolling the cliffs, she consulted her guide again and turned her attention to some of the plants only found at this altitude like the mountain rose and bush orchid, the island apple and pumpkin tree, most of which were sturdy, twiggy and squat as befitted their station in life-clinging to the side of an exposed mountain.