But the whoops and cries from the beach were enticing. She wanted to walk over to the edge of the cliff and look.

‘To Ruby’s?’ Pierce asked. ‘To the macramé?’

‘I can find somewhere. I’m not exactly friendless.’

‘I’m sure you’re not.’ He hesitated, looking across the road as well. The kids’ voices floated up, delirious with excitement. ‘We need to go and see…’

‘You need to go and see.’

‘We both need,’ he said, suddenly decisive. ‘You’ve just promised you’ll sleep in the kids’ wing, and I don’t see you breaking that promise.’ He put his hands on her forearms, fixing her to the spot. ‘Shanni, you suggested this. This was your idea, and it’s a fantastic one. I employed you to look after my kids and you’re doing just that in bringing them here. You’ve had a rotten time in London-anyone can see that. You’ve also been a lot sicker with your influenza than these kids have been with their chicken pox.’

‘How do you know?’

‘You’re washed out.’

‘I am not!’

‘And you have bigger shadows under your eyes than I do. The accommodation here is booked for two adults and five children. I intend to play with the kids and do some work. I think you should spend the next two weeks lying on the beach getting your colour back.’

‘I am not washed out.’

‘So you normally look like Susie’s moaning and clanking Lady of the Castle?’

‘I…’ She floundered, wishing for a mirror. Or an exit. ‘I don’t. I’m sure I don’t.’

He grinned. ‘You’re sure you normally don’t look as pale and wan as this? That’s what I thought. You’ve two weeks at the beach. Get used to it. Now…You don’t happen to remember what case we packed our swimming gear in?’

‘The red one.’

‘There you go, then. You’re useful already. Let’s go join the troops. Oh, and Shanni…’

‘What?’ she said, trying to figure whether she was being railroaded against her wishes or whether she really did want to stay.

He placed his finger on her lips. The movement was so unexpected she took a step back.

‘The kiss last night,’ he said, and he was smiling. ‘I’m not taking it seriously, so neither should you.’

She shouldn’t be here.

Shanni lay in the dark in her fabulous bedroom and stared at the moonlit ceiling, wondering what on earth she was doing, staying in a castle for disadvantaged children.

Things had moved so fast in the last few weeks she felt…weird. One moment she was running a struggling but hip art gallery in London, the next she was recuperating from flu in a castle on the coast of New South Wales. She had a velvet canopy over her bed. She was surrounded by gold embossed wallpaper. There was a fireplace at the end of the room so big and so ornate it looked like a work of art in its own right. The bathroom down the end of the hall had a picture of QueenVictoria staring sternly down at her, a chandelier hung from the ceiling and an aspidistra dangled over the cistern.

She’d giggled when she’d seen the picture first, but when she’d gone back later Queen Vic’s matriarchal stare had seemed disapproving.

‘I’ll make a donation and pay my keep,’ she’d told the monarch, but Victoria’s disapproval had only seemed to deepen.

She could go and stay with Ruby. She was sure Pierce would sign Ruby’s dratted consent form.

Or she could camp on Jules’s floor.

But for how long?

And suddenly it all seemed overwhelming. Grey and heavy and hard.

It had all happened too fast. Finding Mike and his horrible floozy had been dramatic and sordid, and she’d been too ill with influenza to think straight. But strangely now, in this fabulous bedroom, with five needy kids within calling distance, with Pierce just down the hall, it was the first time she’d seen clearly the mess her life was in.

She was twenty-eight years old-twenty-nine in three weeks. She’d lost her gallery and her apartment. She had no money and no career.

‘And no one will employ me,’ she whispered. ‘I’m qualified as a curator of an art gallery, yet the only one I’ve ever owned went bust. Some qualification. I’ll never get another job as a curator and I know it.

‘Maybe a provincial gallery…’

‘It’s too small a world. Mike will have bad-mouthed me, and he has powerful friends. I lost my head and my career’s kaput.’

She sniffed.

‘Don’t you dare cry,’ she told herself. ‘Not’

‘Shanni?’

It was a child’s voice. Hauled out of the indulgence of a good sob, Shanni made do with a bigger sniff and sat up in bed. She reached for the bedside lamp. Or should she make that the bedside chandelier? There was more crystal here than in the royal Palace of Versailles. Imitation crystal, she told herself. Susie had given them a grand tour, giggling at the ostentatious furnishings. ‘Deidre thought it was a hoot, making this place as kitsch as she could. Don’t you just love Ernst and Eric?’

Ernst and Eric were the two suits of armour guarding the stairs. Made in Japan.

‘Ersnt and Eric are the Loganaich keepers of secrets,’ Susie had told them, deeply earnest as she introduced the children to the suits. ‘Anything you say to these guys, they’ll take it to the grave.’

But right now Wendy seemed to want a warmer audience than two tin warriors. ‘Shanni, are you asleep?’ Her voice was trembling.

‘Nope,’ Shanni said, sniffing again and trying to sound cheerful. ‘I’m sitting in my royal bed waiting for a few minions to cater to my every whim. And my whim is that you talk to me.’ As Wendy ventured tentatively into the room, Shanni tossed back her covers and moved to one side. ‘Come on in. It’s warm in here.’

Wendy didn’t need two invitations. She practically bolted over to the bed, dived in and pulled the covers to her chin.

‘Hey,’ Shanni said, startled. ‘You’re not scared of ghosts, are you?’

‘N…no.’

‘Well, what?’

‘I had…a dream. I thought it was real.’

She was trembling all over. Shanni’s self-absorption disappeared in an instant.

She should have slept with the girls tonight, she thought, but Wendy and Abby had chosen a room just above her head, a turret with two bower windows and a bed in each bower. The girls had taken one look and whooped with joy, and there was only room for two. The boys had a similar room on the other side of the turret. Shanni’s and Pierce’s bedrooms were right underneath, so they could hear anyone call. Pierce had Bessy in a crib in his room and Shanni was in solitary splendour.

But it had felt wrong, Shanni thought as she hugged the little girl close. Why? What was she thinking? That she ought to be closer to these kids?

‘Problem?’

She glanced up and Pierce was in the doorway. He was still in jeans and pullover.

What was he doing, wandering the castle at night, still dressed at this hour? He must be tuned to the kids with extrasensory perception, she thought, to have heard Wendy’s soft call.

‘Wendy’s here,’ she said.

‘Wendy…’

Wendy was about as close to Shanni as it was possible to get, huddled under the bedclothes, her whole body shaking.

‘Nightmares,’ Shanni said, and Pierce winced.

‘Again.’ He took a couple of steps into the room and Wendy shrank tighter against Shanni.

‘No…’

Pierce stopped as if struck. ‘Hell, Wendy.’

‘Don’t swear,’ Shanni said automatically. ‘Hey, Wendy it’s only Pierce.’

The child was shaking so much Shanni was starting to be seriously worried.

‘Go away,’ Wendy whispered. ‘I don’t need…’

‘She’s had these nightmares before,’ Pierce said, staying where he was. ‘They’re awful, but she never lets me near. I took her to a child psychologist but she won’t talk about them.’

‘Nightmares are ghastly,’ Shanni said.

‘I know.’ Pierce looked lost, Shanni thought. And suddenly, she thought, he did know. This man had had his nightmares, too. Was he still having them?

‘What was your nightmare about?’ she asked Wendy, hugging her close.

A fierce shake of her head was the only response.

‘I used to have nightmares about frogs.’ Shanni grimaced. ‘Great, big slimy frogs. Frogs taking over the world. Horrid.’

‘Frogs are cute,’ Wendy whispered.

‘Not my frogs.’

Silence.

‘And I bet you had nightmares too,’ she said to Pierce. ‘What were your nightmares about?’

The silence lengthened.

‘I don’t…’ he said at last, and Shanni sighed.

‘So if we sent you to a child psychologist you wouldn’t tell us yours either?’

‘This is Wendy we’re talking about.’

‘It is.’ She hugged the little girl so tight she felt their ribs collide. Wendy was too thin. A waif.

‘Wendy, we need to talk about this,’ Pierce said heavily. ‘I know you’re scared. I know the dark seems awfully lonely.’ He hesitated. ‘Once upon a time I felt like that.’

‘Maybe sometimes you still do,’ Shanni whispered. ‘Sometimes we all do.’

‘No.’

‘Grown ups are sometimes scared, too,’ she told Wendy. ‘The thing to do is to talk about it. Honest. I talked to my mum after my frog nightmares, and she took me to the zoo and we learned all about frogs. We learned that the world’s biggest frog is the Goliath, and it’s bigger than my dad’s foot. Which is pretty huge. But it still only eats insects. Mum took me to a pond on our friend’s farm and we collected frog eggs. Dad dug a pond in the garden and we filled it with all the things frogs love. The eggs hatched into tadpoles and the tadpoles turned into frogs. I called them names like Hoppit and Cassidy. So then I started dreaming about real frogs, and my nightmares just…stopped.’

‘Your parents loved you,’ Pierce said softly.

‘They abandoned Susie Belle,’ Shanni retorted. ‘My beautiful doll,’ she explained to Wendy. ‘Let’s not be too nice about my parents. Wendy, what are your nightmares about?’