by Susan Napier
His cheek turned to rub against her soft hair. 'No, I'm not. Why did you come up here if you suffer from vertigo?'
‘I don’t!' Her voice rose raggedly to deny the accusation of stupidity. 'Heights have never worried me before.'
'But then perhaps you've never been this high before on such a flimsy open staircase.'
Elizabeth moaned into his chest, hopeless tears dampening the white cotton pocket over his steady-beating heart.
‘I didn’t mean that kind of flimsy,' he said patiently. 'This lighthouse has stood the test of time. It is only dangerous if you are careless, and I am not a careless man.'
'You ran up... your leg...you could have slipped!' she accused shrilly. She refused to take her face out of its warm, comfortable human nest of security.
'You are filled with fear and yet you still find room to be frightened for me?' he said gently. ‘I know my capabilities, Beth, and I do have a very good head for heights.' He moved testingly.
'No!' Elizabeth locked her limbs instantly.
'Yes,' he said firmly. ‘I can’t carry you, Beth—if it were flat ground I could but my leg won’t take the strain of all these steps with your added weight. You'll have to do it yourself-'
‘I can’t!'
'Yes, you can. You're intelligent, you're young and healthy and sternly independent—all excellent qualifications for going up and down staircases.'
‘I'll fall.' She hated herself for being so weak but she couldn’t help her unreasoning fear.
He tipped her chin up with a firm hand, his stern gaze unrelenting as he studied her tear-washed cheeks. 'No, you won’t. Because I'll be in with you, holding your hand with each and every brave step.'
'There's not room for two of us,' she protested. 'Not side by side, no. So I'll be on the step below you.'
'Going down backwards?' Elizabeth was awe-stricken with fresh horror. 'No, I won’t let you-'
'You'd rather do it entirely by yourself?'
‘No!'
'Well, then...'
'Please, don’t make me do this...' she begged in a shaky whisper.
‘I won’t have to. You'll make yourself do it. Come on, chérie. Before someone else decides to come up...'
Pride warred with her fear. The thought of her pitiful exhibition of abject cowardice being witnessed by anyone else was almost enough to galvanise her frozen limbs— almost...
'Jack...'
He kissed her tear-salty lips. Kissed her with a hard, practised thoroughness until he felt her shock turn to angry confusion, then the tentative beginnings of response.
'Trust me...'
He kissed her again before she could react to his order, holding her very tightly, controlling both her response and his with an aggression that eased only when he raised his head.
‘I won’t let anything happen to you...' It was a statement of fact rather than a promise as he lowered his head again, smothering her doubts with relentless sensuality that heated her to the tips of her cold extremities.
With each kiss Elizabeth felt the hard knot in her stomach unravel a little further. It was an exercise in male dominance but also a demonstration of strength and certainty that she couldn’t help but feel grateful for. When he released her mouth for the last time she took an unsteady breath.
'All right, I'm ready...'
His eyes silvered with mockery. 'So am I, but we'd have to be acrobats to do anything about it here. Wait until I get you on top of me in bed, chérie, then I'll show you what real vertigo is!'
'My God, you're an arrogant animal,' she said, flushing with a combination of shock and embarrassment, not even noticing as he stepped down in front of her, holding both of her hands in one of his as the other firmly gripped the central rail.
'Thank you.' He held her angry eyes with the hypnotic power of his as he stepped down and drew her down the first step. Before the knowledge of what she had just done registered he murmured, 'Ever thought of entering a wet ‘I-shirt contest? You have such a superb natural advantage, your victory would be a walk-over.'
His chin was level with her breasts so that she couldn’t mistake the taunt. Embarrassment rapidly turned to rage. She glared at him as she advanced another two steps, searching for some equally insulting retort.
'Ever thought of having a haircut? I hear that the hotel salon does wonderful things with feminine tresses like yours.'
He was undismayed by the slur on his masculinity, probably because they both recognised its absurdity.
‘I thought you liked playing with my hair, chérie. It certainly gave you something to hold on to that day you were panting in my arms...'
Her eyes were violently purple as they locked with his, her hands tense in his solid grasp as they reached the first landing in the downward spiral.
‘I was not panting-'
'Moaning, then.'
They argued fiercely on the long, slow journey, she spitting fury even as she realised the deliberate purpose of his outrageous comments. He was doing an extremely good job of keeping her mind on what they were saying and off what they were doing, but he needn’t expect her to thank him for his methods!
Reaching the ground was a relief in more ways than one. She had realised during the second half of the descent that she had just given him a perfect opportunity to ruthlessly interrogate her and he hadn’t taken it. And if it had occurred to her then it would certainly have occurred to him.
She stared at him as he turned and took her fallen hat from the concerned lighthouse-keeper, reassuring him with a few low words. Why, if he was so suspicious of her, hadn’t he grabbed at the chance to use her fear against her?
When he turned back and saw the puzzlement in her eyes his understanding was astonishingly swift and comprehensive. The wry amusement with which he had turned away the lighthouse-keeper's concern hardened into a sardonic bitterness.
'You do not have much of an opinion of my character, do you, chérie? I am not so lost to principle that I believe the end always justifies the means. I was supposed to be one of the good guys out there in the big, wide, wicked world, remember?'
She thought of his dead lover, who had not had his scruples, and the price he had paid for her lack, and felt guilty for doubting him.
‘I—I don’t know how to thank you,' she said awkwardly, trying to make amends with her meekness. She still felt weak and wobbly, and was glad of the hand under her elbow as they stepped back out into the sunshine. ‘I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t come along...' Her stilted primness made it sound as if he had just been wandering by, rather than intently pursuing her, and his sardonic expression melted into a punishing grin.
'Just shows you the dangers of sneaking off on your own,' he murmured silkily, placing her hat back on her glossy head. 'And the necessity of accepting help when it's offered, instead of stubbornly trying to do everything by yourself. Don’t worry about thanking me, Beth; I'm sure I'll eventually think of some suitable way in which you can express your gratitude.'
She looked at him warily, half expecting him to start bombarding her with belated questions, but again he confounded her by escorting her back to her things on the beach, setting up one of the gaily striped umbrellas over her towel and fetching her a drink bristling with fruit and flowers, while he chatted inconsequentially about the history of the lighthouse and the marine life of the surrounding reef.
'What's in this?' Elizabeth asked, as she took the chilled glass he handed her, eyeing its pink-tinged contents doubtfully.
'Knock-out drops,' he said cheerfully. ‘I thought I'd render you unconscious, smuggle you aboard my yacht and sail off into the wide blue yonder so that I could ravish you at leisure.'
Elizabeth took a hurried gulp of the mildly alcoholic cocktail, terrified at how appealing his words sounded, and started to cough.
'Was that an act of faith, or eagerness, chérie?' He knelt on the sand beside her, his tall glass of beer tilting precariously as he slapped her back with what she thought unne
cessary force. Then, ignoring her spluttering, he rummaged in a white canvas bag that had appeared among her things and produced a bottle of sunblock lotion.
'Remove your clothes and lie down.'
Elizabeth wondered if the drink had gone straight to her head, or perhaps his faultless English had failed him for once.
‘I beg your pardon?'
‘I choose not to grant it...yet. Even under the umbrella you will burn if you don’t use cream. Your skin is so fine and pale.'
‘I'll keep my ‘I-shirt on-'
'Later, then, when we swim.'
Her vision went hazy at the thought of his hands massaging lotion into her sun-warmed flesh. She would certainly need the cool embrace of the water afterwards!
‘I—I've already had my swim...' Mesmerised, she watched him wedge his beer into the sand and unselfconsciously shed his own clothes to reveal the familiar blue swimming-trunks.
'And snorkelled over the reef?' He uncapped the lotion, poured it into his cupped hand and stroked it across his chest and belly.
'No, I-'
'You can come with me.'
As she watched his hands move over his body an indecent interpretation of his words popped into her mind. Oh, yes...
Swiftly she clamped down on the renegade thought. ‘I've never dived before...'
'And you don’t handle first times very well—yes, I remember you telling me,' he said, not seeming to notice her absorption with his actions. Dry-mouthed, she waited for him to ask her to do his back, knowing she couldn’t refuse without sounding ridiculously prudish.
To her chagrin he didn’t ask. He very deftly applied all the lotion himself, with a few minor contortions that had the effect of showing off some very impressive musculature. She couldn’t help her gaze drifting down to the scarred thigh almost touching hers.
'Do you want me to cover it up?' he asked.
Her eyes flashed to his face. Hers, still a little pale from her ordeal, pinkened under the shady brim of her hat as she saw that he, too, was recalling her instinctive response to his previous mention of his 'deformity'.
'No, of course not,' she said.
'You like my body?' He stretched out beside her, tucking his arms behind his head.
With difficulty she held his gaze coolly. 'What's not to like?' she murmured with a sophistication that she hoped matched his.
His smile was sultry. 'Damned with faint praise, hmm, Beth? Yours is magnificent. I don’t know why you hide it as if you are embarrassed to possess it.'
‘I’m not embarrassed.'
'Shy, then.'
He made her sound silly and immature. ‘I’m not shy, I just dislike being ogled simply because I'm... I'm...' 'Beautiful.'
'Big,' she corrected him flatly.
'Big?' he echoed, as if he didn’t understand the word.
'Too big,' she clarified, flushed and furious with him for cornering her into saying it.
Instead of mocking her, or making the suggestive remark she expected, he looked gravely into her defiant eyes.
'Of course you are too big—for a boy or a pre-pubescent girl. But why should you deny your femininity by forcing yourself into a strait-jacket of unnatural body shape? Your curves may be "unfashionable" in the model-girl sense but in the real world they are the quintessence of womanliness.
'As for "ogling", how else can we men express admiration for a woman except by looking? When I look at you I'm vividly aware of myself as male, and the fantasy that you might similarly enjoy looking at me is a deeply satisfying one...'
'Funny, I hadn’t tagged you for a feminist,' Elizabeth quipped weakly, suffused with glowing warmth at his sincerity.
His shrug was very French. ‘I like women. I don’t like labels; they are so confining. Yours, I think, you have clung to as a form of defence mechanism.'
'Against what?' she dared challenge him.
'Against men. Against yourself...'
The challenge instantly lost its savour. 'You talk in riddles.'
'You are a riddle.'
Her chin lifted. 'Not one you're going to solve.'
‘I’m well on the way already. I have learned some very interesting things about you from my well informed sources. You have never been married or engaged. You work for a happily married middle-aged professor in whom you have no romantic interest, and have an excellent reputation with the university. You also administrate your uncles' bookshop. You don’t seem to have time for any hobbies... except reading, therefore your life, although filled with people, is also oddly solitary. How am I doing so far, Lady Mystery?'
Far too well. Elizabeth instinctively sought to deny the dangerous rush of adrenalin through her veins at his challenge, and decided on defiant distraction, pulling off her ‘I-shirt and leaning back on her hands as a symbolic gesture of contempt for the suggestion that she had anything to hide.
He watched lazily as she applied the coconut-scented cream to her exposed skin, making her feel as if she was putting on an exhibition purely for his benefit—which she was, she admitted ruefully to herself, conscious of the forbidden pleasure of touching herself under his gaze.
Elizabeth allowed her fingers to linger caressingly over their task and instead of sunning herself in a pose that minimised her generous proportions she arched out contentedly, like a cat in the sun, and when she swam she didn’t come out as she had previously, with arms crossed protectively under her chest, but strolled up the beach with her hands swinging naturally at her sides and stood and patted herself dry with a brazen insouciance that made Jack groan and roll over on his stomach in a gesture more explicit than words.
Elizabeth knew that she was flirting with disaster by letting her guard down, but the shock in the lighthouse, followed by the woozy alcoholic counter-punch of the floral cocktail and the sensuously enervating effect of the blazing sun, warm sand and silky sea combined to invest the remainder of the day with a magic unreality that she gratefully accepted. Time slipped out of joint, aided by a very lazy, undemanding Jack Hawkwood who seemed as content as she to maintain a tacit truce.
He showed her how to snorkel and rescued her when she dived down to where the fish schooled so thickly that she got frighteningly lost in their abundance. He sat with her during the updated Amedée version of the traditional Melanesian 'bougna'—a feast of fish with taro and yams bathed in coconut milk and wrapped in banana leaves to cook on hot stones—and laughingly urged her on when she and some of the other guests were dragged up to perform in the equally traditional dance and song demonstration which followed.
Later, they drank coffee on the beach and watched while one of the attractive young dancers showed the many ways in which a pareau could be worn over a swimsuit, and Jack had insisted on buying one for her, teasing her when it fell off at her first attempt at tying it and coming to her aid with a deftness that made her fleetingly jealous.
By the end of the day, mellowed even further by a slight overdose of sun, Elizabeth didn’t turn a hair at the suggestion that she sail back with Jack rather than travel with the rest on the hydrofoil. She wanted to wring the last drop of pleasure from their unspoken truce.
A breeze had sprung up and with it a choppy sea, and the ride home was an exhilarating one, Elizabeth content, silently enjoying the sight of Jack exercising his mastery over the elements, his powerful legs braced against the deck, his shirtless torso glistening with spray as his muscles rippled at each pull and tug of the wheel.
The voyage ended all too soon, accompanied by an unpleasant shock that sobered Elizabeth suddenly and completely.
As he was handing her from the boat to the pier in front of the hotel, Jack casually let slip that he was lunching with his grandfather the next afternoon.
'Your grandfather?' Elizabeth's curiosity had mingled with a leap of hope that was strangely sour. His absence might give her the chance to make another assault on the fortress of St Clair! 'Does he live on the mainland?'
'My mother's father—and no, he l
ives right here on the Ile des Faucons. He's not in the best of health and I take my duty to him very seriously.'
‘Is your grandmother still alive?' Jack had already mentioned that his widowed mother had remarried some years before and was now living with her new family in Switzerland.
Jack crouched to check the knot on the mooring line. 'No, she was killed during the war and Grandpère was badly wounded. The family estate was literally devastated by fighting and most of their personal possessions were looted or destroyed. Fortunately the family's bankers were Swiss, so when Grandpère decided to abandon Europe along with his bad memories he had sufficient wealth to indulge his whim to recreate the beauty that the Germans had ransacked and destroyed.' He rose to his feet and turned to face Elizabeth, who was suddenly experiencing an awful presentiment of disaster.
'So actually the St Clair estate here is an almost perfect replica of the St Clair chateau near Lille as it was in its heyday—even down to its furnishings,' he finished.
Elizabeth couldn’t remember now what she had said to get away, but she hoped the reeling shock that had numbed her mind had also numbed her expression.
Jack Hawkwood could get her into the St Clair estate.
The thought had grown from a tiny fearful seed into a full-blown determination. If Alain St Clair was too ill to invite her into his well guarded citadel then Jack must be her invitation card.
‘I take my duty to him very seriously.' In other words Jack would probably take an extremely dim view of any perceived attempt to swindle a sick old man. What would his reaction be if he discovered that Elizabeth was carting around a chunk of his family's precious and—thanks to the Nazis—extremely rare personal heritage?
Somehow she didn’t think that it would be pleasant. He was already predisposed to distrust Elizabeth, and she couldn’t blame him. She needed time to smooth things over with his grandfather. If she could get him on her side then Jack would have to respect his wishes... and if she used Jack to get to his grandfather the old man might be more inclined to listen to a friend of his grandson's than the niece of two virtual strangers. There was a chance yet that the untidy ends of this unfortunate affair could all be wrapped up very quickly and neatly—providing she could think of a way to get Jack's unknowing co-operation...