by Неизвестный
‘No,’ the word broke from her and she half rose from the couch.
‘Sit down,’ he ordered, ‘and not miles away from me, but here, by me.’ He rapped the leather and Merlin gave him a petrified look. Then she flung a look at the door and estimated that she could reach it before he could ever catch her ... the next instant shock vibrated all through her, for with his acute senses he had guessed what she might do and he had reached out a long arm and had hold of her before she could jump to her feet. His clasp was uncaringly hurtful as he jerked her to where he sat and forced her down beside him; there he held her with one hand while his other found her face and almost roughly traced its contours, feeling across her temple, pausing where the tiny mole was set beside her left eye, then moving down the slender line of her cheek to her mouth. His fingertip traced the line of her lips, then moved to her shoulder, the side of her neck, where it suddenly wrapped steely fingers around that slim column.
‘What big eyes you have, little one, and a beauty mark to set them off.’
‘You’re being abominably cruel,’ she gasped. Why?’
‘Oh, don’t you think I’m justified?’
She stared into his blind eyes and her heart was a hammer beating under her breast. Oh God, did he know that her hand had held the eye-cup ... could he be remembering her in her blue nursing cape with the little chain across her throat, a small starched cap on her neatly restrained hair? His hand was around her throat right now and his thumb was against the pulse that beat there so madly.
‘Why are you so terrified?’ he drawled.
‘Because you’re being so—pitiless. I really meant you no harm.’
‘So you said before, and if I’ve become a stranger to pity where women are concerned, can you really blame me?’
He knew, thundered her heart. He had guessed, and was playing some terrible game of tiger and prey. Instinctively she sought to escape his hold on her, and instantly his other arm was around her and there was a sensual savagery to his smile as he pulled her to his chest. ‘Yes, this was how it was during the storm, eh? There are certain things that can’t be held back—the tide and the darkness, the roar of the storm, and the passion of a man.’
By passion she thought he meant uncontrollable anger, and she gave a little moan and tried again to pull away from him. ‘Stop that,’ he said, ‘and tell me a little more about yourself. Your hair, what sort of colour is it?’
‘M-my hair?’
‘Yes, this, like silk when I touch it, damn you!’
‘It’s a sort of—of brown, with streaks of gold, like a tortoiseshell cat.’
‘Really, and what about your eyes? They match your hair in colour?’
‘Yes, brown with flecks of a paler colour—amber, I suppose you would call it.’
‘Gold, and brown, like peridots, eh? More and more interesting.’
‘Oh, nothing so fanciful!’
‘How modest you are, for a girl who sounds as if she might be unusually attractive. Why the devil did you need to come to Pulau-Indah? Are the men of England even more blind than I am?’
‘I’m nothing out of the ordinary, and I wanted to travel —I told you. I—I wanted to stay here and you’d have sent me away had you known—I’m good at my work, you can’t deny that.’
‘I don’t deny it, but in playing your charade, you little fool, you must now have every adult on this island assuming you are my nyai, my kasih pada, whom I take to bed. Do I make myself crystal clear? The islanders are a simple people and they don’t complicate their sensual relationships. You live here under my roof, and you are a single girl, a nona, and I am a man—do you fondly suppose that a blind man hasn’t the normal feelings of other men and goes around with everything switched off, as the lights and the moon and the smiles of people are turned off for him? These people know me, and they would find it hard to believe that I had slept in this house without taking you to bed. Now has the penny dropped? Now have you got the ticket?’
Oh yes, the penny had dropped with a clang to the very bottom of her stomach, and she suddenly blushed uncontrollably, feeling as if her skin was on fire.
His nyai, his mistress, who pretended during the day that she was a plain and frigid spinster, but who at night let him come to her bed and make love to her.
‘But we know, you and I,’ she gasped, ‘that you’ve never —touched me. Oh, I never dreamed it was that—that you were so angry because of what people were thinking.’
‘Then what did you imagine was wrong with me?’
Her head spun and she felt faint with relief ... so that was it, a matter of propriety, and it was said that Dutch people were a very moral people. ‘Oh, does it matter?’ she asked. ‘So long as I can be your secretary.’
‘Do you honestly imagine that we can carry on as before, that I can have you under my roof and pretend to myself that you are a mature and unromantic woman, play-acting as the puritan spinster, shelved by men, and more interested in caressing the piano? That persona no longer has any relevance as far as I’m concerned ... what kind of a stick do you take me for?’
‘I’ve never taken you for a stick, mynheer.’ Her heart had sunk ... he meant to send her away, and it would be like wrenching out her very roots from their entanglement with Paul’s being. He had never had to make love to her to make her part of him, and now that it seemed safe to assume that he was unaware of her connection with his blindness, she wanted to fight to stay here.
‘Please, don’t send me away. I have nothing much to go back to, and I’ve grown to like this island so much.’
‘I have no intention of sending you away.’
‘What?’ Merlin couldn’t believe her ears. ‘But you just said.’
‘I said that things could not resume as they were. The charade is over and now you are going to have to face the consequences of playing such a game with an adult male.’ His hand slid down her spine, finding her hair and twining it around his fist. ‘Hair to your shoulders and eyes speckled like the turtle-shell, why should I not want you?’
Merlin’s heart seemed to turn over and she couldn’t believe that she had heard him say he wanted her.
‘I want you!’ Now he said it almost harshly. ‘Do I make myself clear? I want you. I’m sick and tired of stumbling around alone, my days like night and my nights as lonely as hell. I had you in my arms during the storm’s rage, and I felt a sudden storm raging in me, sweeping away the arguments with myself that I could only be a burden on a woman, drowning out the restraints I’ve imposed on myself because I shrank from being a mere object of pity to anyone. Yes, I want your silky hair against my skin, your mouth on mine blotting out the loneliness, your slim shape close to me, alive and young and warm, so I’ll know I’m still alive and not buried in some black hole in the ground!’
‘Oh, don’t—don’t!’ Merlin sank her face against him and shuddered.
‘Mustn’t I speak of such things?’
‘It’s awful to hear you speak of—death.’
‘There are times when blindness is awfully like it, in the depths of night, reaching out to nothing but blackness. I can’t take any more of that. I want to feel a woman in my arms, tight and close in the dark, softly moaning as I— love you.’
‘But you don’t love me.’ Merlin hadn’t meant to say it, but at heart she was a romantic and it wasn’t her that he wanted, just someone to be there making the night a little easier for him to get through.
‘In the name of heaven, what has that sentimental nonsense to do with us?’ He spoke impatiently. ‘When a girl decides that she has no more use for the big city and prefers to live on an island where life is half a century behind the times, then she is either running away from something, or is genuinely in search of the simple, basic, even primitive ways that have gone out of fashion in the modern world. If that is the case, and you wish to stay on this island, then you have only one means of doing so— by becoming my wife.’
His wife? Paul’s ... wife!
When she sa
t there speechless in the crook of his arm, he broke into a cynical smile. ‘I realise that the idea of marrying a blind man is hardly an appealing one, but I have never had much time for irregular arrangements, unlike my cousin Hendrik. I don’t imagine I would have married in the normal course of events, but you seem to have more patience than most with my kind of stumbling around, and as you so rightly said, celibacy has few rewards for the man or woman of normal feelings, and I haven’t lost my other faculties even if my eyes are useless. I have sufficient money for the two of us. I can afford you.’
Merlin winced ... he said that as if she were something he thought of buying. A toy for his pleasure!
Even so she felt elated by his proposal of marriage; she could even bear it that he had called love a lot of sentimental nonsense. It wasn’t love that he wished her to share, but the blackness of his nights when he might switch on a lamp just to know it was on and smoke a cheroot in the silence and loneliness of his bedroom.
She couldn’t deny him. She had too much warmth of heart, too much regret for her part in his tragedy, too much yearning to be part of him in whatever capacity he needed her.
‘Are you never going to speak?’ he asked. ‘Is silence your way of refusing me? Come, if you create suspense, you have to relieve it, or drive a man up the wall.’
Merlin moved in his arms with a whisper of silk and her face raised to him offered eyes and lips and the promise of passion that would reassure him that the darkness was alive and not part of the grave. ‘I’m willing to be your wife, mynheer.’
Then, though he had demanded an answer, he seemed the one struck into silence. For moments on end the suspense was Merlin’s, and then she felt the lift of his chest as he took a deep breath. ‘Lonely like me, is that it?’
‘Often. It isn’t a good feeling.’
‘There’s an oriental word for it, sabisha. Appropriate for a girl in a silk kimono. Have you any notion, I wonder, what it feels like for a blind man to have you in his arms? It could be a delirium, of course.’
She gave a little laugh and reached up to touch his forehead and that jag of blond hair. ‘Don’t get too lightheaded, mynheer. I’m not Miss World.’
‘You are silk and a divine softness, and the scent of you—‘ His arms clenched around her and his breath swept across her face. ‘I want you until the muscles cramp in my stomach—we shall have to arrange the wedding right away!’
‘We,’ she took the plunge, ‘we don’t have to wait for that, not if you—oh, you know what I mean.’
For a powerfully beating moment his arms were like a vice around her and his body was very still, like a tiger crouching. Then he slowly relaxed his hold on her. ‘No. I believe you’re a virgin and I won’t change that until we are married.’
‘Not many men of today would take that view,’ she said, quietly, and into her eyes as she looked at him there came a dazzling glow ... what if he did love her without knowing it himself? Surely he felt more than desire for her if he compelled himself to wait until everything was legal? She hungered to believe it, for so many men took what they wanted and didn’t care a straw that the girl gave herself because nature had made her more loving than any other creature on the face of the earth. It was part of everything called woman; a built-in trick of biology, but for a man ... even for Paul, it was the pleasure drive; the immolation in sheer sensual joy. Her eyes searched his face, with its fine, hard structure of bone under the clear, tanned skin, and he answered her as if he read her mind.
‘I come of a rather strict Dutch family. I was educated at a Jesuit school, where the discipline was strict and the cane a fact of learning. There is something on the edge of terror for boys who are tutored by the celibate priests; there is ritual in it, a planting of a belief in the dark powers as well as the pure ones. There is also bred a capacity for hard work, a need to make full use of one’s brain and sinew. That’s what haunts me. The dark powers took my sight and flung me on the beach. I possess only nostalgia for what I had ... that and a discipline I must hold on to or become the complete beachcomber.’
‘You will never be that,’ she said urgently. ‘You’ll find other things to do—perhaps another book?’
‘I want to use my hands,’ he groaned. ‘I lie awake at night—it’s that hellish wakefulness in the dark of the night that gets me down. You will be there, just as soon as we are married, and I warn you there’s a tiger howling in me.’
‘Sang Harimau,’ she murmured. ‘I shall have to learn not to be afraid of you.’
‘Are you truly afraid—ah, you don’t have to answer. I’ve felt it in you, especially tonight, but physical passion is a dangerous emotion and you woke it in me after months of atrophy. I have to say it, little one, but you deserve to pay the price.’
‘I—I’m only a woman, mynheer. Can I help that?’
‘No more than I can help being a blind man whom you fooled with your play-acting. Do you mind my blindness? Is it that which scares you, the idea of being my wife?’
‘Not really.’ Merlin knew very well what scared her, and even yet she was unsure of the working of his mind, trained long ago by the Jesuits, then later by the dedications of his supremely delicate type of surgery.
‘I-think it does. All the time we have talked I have felt a sort of fear in your body. I shan’t hurt you.’
‘I’m a woman and I know about pain.’ Merlin said it with a slight smile, for she ached with love even as he held her, the pressure of his arms like warm golden chains, binding her to a lover who might yet become her torturer.
‘Then what is really at the root of your fear?’ he asked, his voice low and deep. ‘The fact that it was a woman who caused my loss of sight; my loss of usefulness?’
‘Yes,’ her throat had gone dry. ‘Possibly.’
‘Why do you tremble—you aren’t that woman, are you?’
She had no words to form a coherent reply. A shock as from a dangerous wire had run its current right through her bones and she couldn’t suppress a low cry from her heart itself.
‘Come,’ he laughed softly, ‘I was only making a joke.’
But had it been a joke? Had she not caught a deadly note of meaning deep in his voice? Suddenly she felt a sense of perilous dream, as of being suspended on the lip of a towering ledge, with a long way to fall, all the way to hell itself. She had to face it. There was no easy way to heaven in marrying Paul, but there was a good chance of finding hell if he did connect her with the agony of seared eyes and the shattering terror of never seeing again.
‘I know what is wrong with you,’ he mocked softly. ‘You want all the usual romantic cliches and the promises of rapture. You want me to speak of love even if it’s a lie. What is love? I will tell you, meisje. It’s part of the sun, the sky, the sudden smile. It has nothing to do with the black world I inhabit, where there are no smiles, and no stars to relieve the eternal darkness. Love is seeing love in someone’s eyes. Love is seeing a face lit with warmth and wonder. How can I talk of love when I can never see the evidence of it?’
‘You might—feel it!’ she replied, her mouth twisted by pain from his almost brutal honesty ... that to speak of love to her would be a lie.
‘Do you plan to fake it for me, my consummate little actress?’
‘Must you say things like that, mynheer?’
‘It gives me a certain satisfaction to say them. You have played a highly dangerous game with a very disillusioned man.’
‘I only meant it for the best, Paul, and never for a moment did I think of you as a fool.’ She softened her voice. ‘Aren’t you going to forgive me?’
‘I am going to marry you.’ he said drily. ‘Does that not count as some sign of forgiveness?’
‘Marriage can mean different things to a man and a woman.’ Merlin hesitated. ‘When the novelty wears off you might start wishing you had stayed a bachelor. After all, a secretary can be dismissed with a minute’s notice, but a wife is rather more difficult to get rid of.’
‘You, meis
je, are the one who seems to have reservations. I do scare you ... is it the bitterness in me?’
‘I understand why you feel bitter and cheated. I’m not insensitive, mynheer.’
‘I agree, you are far from being insensitive. The blind develop an instinct about people, but all the same you had me fooled—or did I allow myself to be fooled because I would have sent you packing had I realised your true age. I would not have risked what has now come about, that I would want you, and out of pity you would agree to be wanted.’
‘It isn’t pity.’ she protested.
‘Oh, then what is it that makes a blind man so attractive to a girl?’
‘You’re still the same man you always were, except that your eyes have been hurt. I—I find you attractive.’ Her skin felt hot and Merlin waited with apprehension for him to jeer at her, but instead he looked strange, almost stricken, and his lips moved as if he couldn’t find the sardonic words that would have cut her down.
‘You—you’re a sentimental young idiot,’ he said finally. ‘You probably read too many romantic novels of the Ethel M. Dell variety, with the poor damned hero blighted of his limbs or his sight. It won’t always be romantic with me! I’ve one hell of a temper and I get impatient with having to be shaved and decently dressed by someone else, and of having my food laid out as if I’m a damn great baby. It won’t be all kisses and roses, Miss Lakeside.’
‘I know. There will be times when you’ll need a whipping-boy.’
‘You are no boy, meisje.’ A smile edged his mouth, subtle and also rather sensual. ‘You are very much a girl, as I discovered at the height of the storm. You have lovely skin, so smooth and supple it’s like running my hands through cream. Sweet heaven,’ his voice suddenly thickened, ‘I feel like a man who is coming out of prison. Let me—your lips, Merlin, I must kiss you!’
She put her lips to his and with a hunger that was just a little terrifying he crushed her breathlessly close to him, his mouth exploring her face, her throat, the slim warmth of her neck. His lips were firm yet with a certain fullness that was intensely pleasurable as he made her untutored mouth respond to his, urging open her lips and waking their sensitive nerves to a hunger that matched his own. Her arms locked themselves about his neck, and all of her was melting sensation as she felt his mouth moving down inside her kimono, caressing her until she gave way to a soft little moan.