These Golden Pleasures

by Valerie Sherwood

  “If I had married you instead of Denby,” she smiled, “you’d have appreciated me.”

  “You know,” he said meditatively, “I was always afraid to make love to Allison. She was so little, so fragile, I was afraid I’d hurt her. With you it’s different.”

  She moved restlessly beneath him. Allison ... Of course, it was too much to hope that the ghost of Allison was exorcised.

  “You’re very good for me, Roxanne,” he said humbly. “I’m very grateful.”

  She moved again beneath him, and he slid away from her, leaned on one shoulder as she turned over on her side, the curving line of her naked back presenting itself to him. Something akin to jealousy beat in her breast. She didn’t want him to be grateful, she wanted him to love her. Consummately. Passionately. She wanted him to make her love him by sheer force of will ... so she could forget. . . .

  She realized that that was unfair. So, when he said, “You’re so lovely,” his voice muffled as he planted a kiss on the satiny shoulder that rose in a soft impish mound toward him, she turned to face him, eyes wide and luminous.

  “I’m glad, Leighton,” she said softly. “I want to be lovely for you—and to make you happy.”

  The glow on his face rewarded her simple gesture as he pulled her to him. Luxuriously, savoring each moment, they made love again. In wonder, Roxanne shared his joy. She realized that she represented a loved pet to him, a joyous plaything, to be humored and cared for and cherished. For a woman who had struggled through four years of a hellish marriage, and who had endured all the travails of the Klondike and Nome, it was a bewildering and delightful experience.

  At last, he eased away from her and she turned to look at him affectionately. His huge body was stretched out, his feet hanging over the edge of the too-short bunk. Her head pillowed on his muscular shoulder, she considered his mighty arms, the broad deep expanse of his chest with its light frosting of golden hair, the lean hard stomach and loins and sleek heavy-muscled limbs.

  His eyes opened to regard her. “I haven’t had a woman since Allison,” he said. “For a long time I felt they weren’t for me.” He reached out a big hand and smoothed back her hair and smiled into her face, and she felt a warm glow steal over her body. “You’ve broken my run of bad luck, Roxanne. You’ve made me whole again.”

  Later, when he slept, Roxanne rose and went to the porthole. What had Allison wanted? she asked herself, puzzled. Ambition . . . Leighton said that was what drove Allison. But Allison had sought the arms of other men. And after tonight that seemed strange to Roxanne, for surely Leighton’s lovemaking was like himself, whole-souled and ardent and warm—he was enough for any woman.

  Determinedly, as the days went by, Roxanne forced herself not to think of Rhodes. She was Leighton’s now. She would cleave to him.

  Their steamer did not seek the path of the inland waterway down Canada’s rugged coast. Instead they plowed through the drifting ice of Norton Sound and out into the cold Bering Sea. The first port they touched—in a driving rain—was Dutch Harbor on the Island of Unalaska, where the Aleutian chain began, and so into the broad Pacific on the long journey south to Seattle. On its way south their steamer also called at Vancouver Island, and it was there that Roxanne and Leighton left it.

  Leighton told her, at last, about the inflammatory newspaper article in which she had been called a murderess. Law was coming fast to Nome, and he feared for her. She had been tried and convicted in the newspapers for the murder of her husband and one Lars Nelgren. Perhaps she could escape that, but there was also this business of the woman in the States, Mary Willis, that had been dredged up.

  “I’ve killed no one,” Roxanne told Leighton with a stricken look. “You know I’d never have hurt Denby. As for Mary Willis, I did impersonate her after her death when I needed a job so badly, but I never harmed her.”

  “I know you’d never harm anyone,” said Leighton gently. “But we can’t be too careful. Your name might be recognized in the States right now. There might be some unpleasantness.”

  He meant she might be jailed, tried, convicted—hanged. She drew a ragged breath and looked out at the serene blue ocean. It wasn’t what you did, she perceived anew, it was what people believed you did that mattered. For that, they would bring you down. Sadly, she realized that it also meant she must become an exile. She might never see her own country again.

  Within a week, they were on their way again. They had transferred their baggage which included the glamorous new wardrobe Leighton had purchased for her in the shops of Vancouver to a ship bound across the wild reaches of the Pacific. They steamed toward the sunset and that lovely gateway to the mysterious Far East, lying midway between India and China—Singapore.

  She would like Singapore, Leighton predicted. A jolly town; he was well known there. He had been there with his father before he had married Allison. People there might know he was married but they had never met Allison. Roxanne was relieved to hear it, and felt a stirring of pride when she discovered that, as he had on the way south from Nome, Leighton had taken separate staterooms for their journey across the Pacific. He was protecting her reputation, she realized. Dear Leighton, she would sometimes think, Leighton, who had hurried to Nome to save her from jail or worse. Bless him for it! She would reach out to him then and hold him close.

  She told herself she didn’t care that he could never marry her. She asked only that he love her and be true to her. To Roxanne the difference was absolute.

  During their crossing, they mixed very little with the other passengers, holding themselves aloof—from each other as well as from the general public, eating even at separate tables. And although Leighton was dignified, even courtly, in his treatment of her in public, in the privacy of her stateroom at night he was a roguish lover. Slowly, through his lovemaking she began to understand him. He was a man hurt so deeply that it had left a hole in his heart—a hole in his affections which should have been filled by a wife, children. Her own relationship with Leighton, she felt, was a healing scar tissue that eased the pain of an old wound. Sometimes on cool nights when the sea air coursed through the stateroom, he wooed her as a woman, with tenderness. At other times he played with her delightedly, roguishly, as if she were a child—until, remembering she was his mistress and belonged to him wholly, he clasped her in firm arms and took her with urgency.

  It was a beautiful Pacific crossing. Calm, healing, in every way. In the private world of their stateroom she felt they were both sixteen again when Leighton gamboled with her like a kitten, and they both abandoned themselves to joy and a love as innocent as any first love.

  Though under the laws of God and man Leighton belonged to another woman, to Roxanne he was husband, father, lover. In her contentment she began to feel dreamily that she was in love with him, that they could build a new life together.

  Part Two:

  Singapore 1900—1903

  Chapter 32

  Singapore was, as Leighton had predicted it would be, a constant round of gaiety, garden parties and balls for the international contingent. At the magnificent Raffles Hotel—named for the redoubtable Sir Stamford Raffles of the British East India Company—Leighton took a room for himself and a suite for Mrs. Barrington, the independent young widow with whom he had struck up an acquaintance during their voyage to the Far East.

  As a beautiful and soft-spoken expatriate, vouched for in the diplomatic set by the well-liked and socially impeccable Leighton Clarke, Roxanne found herself sought after in circles that would have closed ranks and excluded her back in Baltimore. She reveled in it, and Leighton enjoyed her childlike delight at being launched into the social set. In elegant, welcoming homes she waltzed with diplomats and dignified civil servants and handsome British naval officers stationed on warships anchored nearby—for Singapore was a giant British naval base. On manicured lawns resplendent with flowers, she chatted with diplomatic wives dressed in sweeping hats and daintily patterned chiffon dresses. On cool shaded verandahs she took tea with
officialdom. Her progress a triumph, Roxanne made her way beside the ever-popular Leighton with aplomb.

  For his elegantly gowned blond beauty, Leighton had concocted a romantic background that was difficult for the prying to check. Child of wealthy parents whose private yacht had sunk in the Mediterranean, Roxanne had been a lonely little girl brought up in cloistered surroundings by an elderly recluse in a Southern city. She had married, briefly, tragically, and her young husband had been killed. To solace herself, she had taken this trip to the Far East and, by great good fortune, Leighton had met her—and was showing her about Singapore, a city he knew so well. Everyone accepted the story. Or if they did not, they kept quiet. For the beautiful blond with the elegant figure and sparkling sapphire eyes was welcome everywhere—as was her handsome escort.

  Roxanne was enchanted when Leighton, tired of surreptitious visits to her hotel room and nervous lest this pleasant habit attract unfavorable attention, found for her a small two-story house with a balcony overlooking the sea. The rooms were large and airy with thick plastered walls painted white. Leighton kept it abloom with huge bunches of the orchids and gladiolas that abounded on the island. Daily he called for her decorously in a carriage and squired her about the city whose architecture was almost as diverse as its population: big tropical-looking houses overrun with vines, Chinese bungalows set behind waving palms, and interesting Malay houses built on stilts, as well as the more staid government buildings and shops, the handsome Raffles Hotel, and the colorful tinkling Chinatown.

  Along with its other ethnic groups, including Bugis and Malays, Singapore had a burgeoning Chinese population. Roxanne had a staff of four Chinese servants for her small house, and when Leighton dined with her—which was often—they ate Cantonese food prepared by a cook who knew no English, who bowed Mandarin style whenever he saw Roxanne, and who received his instructions via a bilingual housekeeper who moved about the house on tiny bound feet conveying Roxanne’s orders.

  Leighton was very discreet about his visits to her. All of Singapore knew he was in love with the charming American widow, but only the shrewd guessed he was sleeping with her. Leighton’s manner was impeccable as he squired her through long receiving lines at Government House, stood about with her at garden parties, introduced her to cricket matches and polo—and played croquet with her on manicured lawns. They caused heads to turn enviously, the golden giant and his golden lady, when he whirled her across the dance floors at many a ball. Attired in the lovely gowns he had bought for her in Vancouver or in the even more elegant gowns she had had made in Singapore of exotic sheer silks that came by ship from India and China, Roxanne was stunningly beautiful.

  Roxanne never tired of accompanying Leighton about the sultry exotic city. From a minaret in the Sultan Mohammed Mosque on North Bridge Road near Arab Street she heard for the first time a muezzin calling the faithful to prayer. By rickshaw they visited Chinese temples with exquisite names—the Lotus Mountain Temple, the Monkey God Temple, the Temple of Heavenly Happiness. And came home to excellent meals served by the efficient Chinese servants, and to spend languorous nights in a big bed rustling with silks. Making love there, as the soft wind from the South China Sea blew across the great port city.

  She felt happy with Leighton—and safe.

  Leighton, she had discovered, was very wealthy. He lived on a semi-annual stipend from a trust fund left by a maternal grandmother, which was paid regularly to his bank in Singapore. Because he had starved along with them in the Klondike whenever the hunting brought no game, Roxanne had thought him poor as herself, but she now knew it was only the difficulty of receiving money in the Klondike that had held up his flow of funds. In Singapore, he spent money lavishly, purchasing for her small house handsome dark carved Chinese furniture and interesting jades and Chinese silks and sumptuous Chinese rugs that were everywhere in the city, one of the world’s busiest ports.

  To Roxanne it was a kind of Cinderella dream come true. Although her true relationship with Leighton was clandestine and would have shocked her well-bred preening hostesses, she was enjoying the kind of social season that would have delighted a young debutante. Sometimes she thought of Clarissa in Baltimore, with her round of parties and balls, and laughed to herself. But memories of Baltimore brought her achingly back to Rhodes, and she would stop laughing, and the pain of an old, old knife would turn again in her heart. At those moments she would hurry off to ask Leighton with a fierce gaiety about his plans for their day.

  They celebrated the Chinese New Year amid jostling crowds and papier-mache dragons and exploding firecrackers. And when Leighton went tiger hunting to Johore she remained faithful, awaiting him in the house by the sea—even though roguish eyes and contemplative glances were cast at her daily by the handsome British Army and Navy officers who were ever in Singapore. Roxanne paid them no heed because, although neither law nor church had blessed it, she felt her relationship with Leighton was a marriage, and she had vowed in her restless heart to be faithful to him.

  Sometimes in the big bed on nights when the sultry air was stirred by the soft winds and the silken hangings rustled at the balcony windows, she would open her eyes and find Leighton leaning over on an elbow looking at her with a gentle smile in his eyes, and she would feel a warm glow, knowing that she had made him happy. At moments, the far-off shadow of his wife Allison still haunted them, but for the most part Roxanne was optimistic. Eventually, she told herself confidently, someday lovely spirited Allison would wish to marry her lover. In far-off America Allison would divorce Leighton, and then he would be able to marry again. They would leave this jangling foreign city and return to the States. They would have a house somewhere and a brace of blond, blue-eyed children. When in her dreams she got that far, Roxanne would laugh at herself, and tell herself ruefully that today was enough.

  For she had found comfort for her bruised heart in Leighton’s encompassing arms and a regal yet lighthearted life by his side. For Leighton treated her with respect; he treated her as a wife.

  And if he never read her the letters that reached him occasionally from Washington, if when he received them he cancelled his social engagements and shut himself in his hotel room for the better part of a day and came back to her looking grimmer and older—well, we all have things in our past, she counseled herself. Leighton had loved his young wife too well, and the pain of her betrayal could still reach him half across the world.

  Roxanne always knew when those letters came. She tried to be gentle with him then, and understanding—seeing to it that the Chinese cook prepared Leighton’s favorite dinner, served his favorite wine. And after dinner, when the night wind blew cool across their balcony and rustled the light curtains, Roxanne would change into a favorite negligee of delicate blue silk from India, tissue thin. She would take him in her arms and try to make him forget, as he had helped her to forget, that other world that had hurt them both.

  And always the next day he was the old Leighton, smiling, debonair, with a tenderness in his gaze that was its own reward.

  They lived together in Singapore more than two wonderful years, years in which Roxanne could almost believe she had never been unhappy, never been poor. With Leighton beside her, she skimmed the surface of life. All was glitter with no looming tomorrow.

  The blow, when it fell, caught her unaware. Leighton, who had planned to take her to an afternoon cricket match, sent word that something had come up and he would be along later. Roxanne shrugged and waited. She waited all afternoon, through a dinner that congealed on the table. At last she heard a creak as the front door opened to admit him, and flew downstairs to meet him in the cool shadowy downstairs hall. She thought he looked tired and hastened to take his hat before the servant could.

  “It’s too hot for all this running about,” she said, lovingly smoothing back the golden hair from his damp forehead. “Remember only the mad go out in the noonday sun—and from the look of you, you’ve been out all day!” She preened a little, displaying her lovely bustlin
e through the shimmering jade silk, of her negligee. “I’ve had a bath and a lovely nap while I waited. . . She gazed provocatively up at him through her lashes and took his hand to lead him upstairs.

  “Roxanne.” His voice stayed her, and a spasm of pain crossed his face. “Send the servants away.”

  She clapped her hands, heard a door close, and looked at him wonderingly, for the first time feeling alarm. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a letter, changed his mind and put it back. His expression was irresolute. Her alarm grew. Something was very wrong ... he was looking at her queerly. Tension mounted inside her as she waited.

  “I’ve got to go back, Roxanne.” His voice rang loud and harsh in the shadowed hall.

  “Back?” She was bewildered.

  “To Washington. Allison has had an accident. There’s been an auto smashup. He was driving.” He, she guessed, was Allison’s lover. “He was drunk and he hit a train. He’s dead.”

  “And Allison?”

  “She’s expected to live, but she’ll never walk again. Oh, God, Roxanne, she was always so bright, so active. And now—my sister writes that she won’t eat, won’t talk to people, keeps saying she wants to die. Nobody knows what to do. She needs me, Roxanne. She never needed me before, but she’ll need me now.”

  Roxanne’s thoughts were chaotic. Leighton’s haggard face pleaded with her to understand. She looked down, past the shimmering green folds of her gown and studied the floor tiles. His desperation was a felt thing. She had no real hold on Leighton, she could not ask him to stay. Nor could she go with him. In Washington she would only be an embarrassment to him. Whatever they had had between them was over now. It was over the moment he heard his Allison needed him.

  He seized her hand. His voice was anguished. “Allison—she’s like a child, Roxanne, little and helpless. I couldn't desert her now. . . .