by Неизвестный
‘God, but you’re sweet.’ His face pressed to her, and her body was arched over his arm so that her hair streamed against the black leather of the couch, a coolness under her nape and the heat of Paul’s mouth against her skin. ‘Merlin, slim, creamy Merlin, I’m glad you like to kiss.’
‘I—I like kissing you.’ she confessed. ‘I’ve never done anything with a man before.’
‘Incredible as it seems, I believe you,’ he laughed softly, with a kind of triumph that he, a blind man, could make a woman feel this way. ‘Yet you worked among doctors, some of whom are fearful Don Juans. How come you kept yourself so innocent?’
‘I had my ideals—oh, Paul!’ She shivered with pleasure as he moved his lips along the soft skin of her inner arm; even loving him she hadn’t dreamed that her response to him would he so exciting, so heavenly. Through her lashes her eyes shone like golden-brown stars.
‘And I happen to fit your idea of the ideal lover?’ he murmured, and a certain mockery had crept into his voice. ‘Can you really say that of a man who is unable to see what your eyes are like when he kisses you?’
This time his mouth took hers with a sudden roughness. His face and touch had become harsh, as if with frustration because he was denied the power and pleasure of seeing her face as she was kissed ... the helpless tilt to her head, like that of a flower on a wind-bent stalk, yielding to what was stronger and more ruthless.
This time Merlin could feel his lips bruising her, but she lay quiescent in his arms and let him rake the anger and frustration out of his system, using her to whip the memory of being told that a careless hand had made him blind.
Only he didn’t believe that it had been a careless hand ... he believed that it had been a deliberate one, and it had left a black despair and distrust in his heart. All he felt, all he could feel, was the physical hunger of a desire that wasn’t love.
But love had to counter-balance the fear in Merlin’s heart, and there under his hurting mouth she was again the victim ... pale, slim, offered up to this hostile blond god whom she had learned to love when he hadn’t even noticed that she was alive.
When he drew away from her, thrusting the hair from his brow, Merlin lay wearily against the leather and the stars in her eyes had been drowned out by the big tears that filled them. She couldn’t make him see again. She could not give him the one thing he wanted above everything. She could only give him love, and he didn’t really want it... he only wanted her slim, warm girl’s body.
As she watched him through wet eyes he ran his fingertips over the face of his watch, a specially made Vacheron Constantin on a wide strap, with raised numerals so he could braille the time. ‘The night is half over,’ he said, ‘and you must be devilishly tired. You are very quiet, meisje. Have I wearied you with my kisses?’
‘No,’ her voice was husky. ‘I’m yours, and that’s all there is to it, mynheer.’
‘My sacrificial lamb,’ he jeered softly. ‘Tomorrow I shall send for an old jeweller who lives down in the kampong and request that he bring an assortment of gems so we can have a ring made for you. Also he can see about some pearls for you to be married in—pearls, I think, will complement that skin of yours.’
‘You seem to have a fixation about my skin,’ she said tartly. ‘I might be covered in enormous freckles for all you know.’
‘You might indeed.’ He leaned forward and his fingers found her cheek and gave it a stroke. ‘When a man has to rely on touch in place of sight he gets quite good at it, and I’m quite sure that the tint and texture of your skin is pure, unadulterated cream, all the way to the bottom of the pastry. I intend to arrange our marriage right away. When I start touching you the voltage is likely to blow, and I’m rather impressed that in this age of birth pills and cheap sin, I have come upon a girl who has virtue. Yet you’re a passionate child, aren’t you?’ His fingertips slid to her lips and brailled them. ‘Did I hurt your mouth with my somewhat less than tender kisses?’
‘No—I’m all right.’
‘I can feel a dampness on your skin. Have you been crying?’
‘No.’
‘Don’t lie to me, meisje. I was angry, but not really with you—God, I don’t know!’ His face twisted. ‘Maybe I should send you away instead of marrying you! How can I tell what I might do to any woman since that bitch—I am sorry about the tears.’ He leaned lower and this time his lips were infinitely gentle on her mouth. ‘Merlin, you and I are trapped, for though I should let you go, the devil in me won’t slide open the bolt and let you fly away. I have tasted the cream on top of the confection and I want it all... and you want me, don’t you?’
‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I want you very much.’
‘Then it will suffice.’ He rose abruptly to his feet, towering over the couch where she lay in the glimmer of her kimono. ‘Come, it’s time you were in bed ... your own bed until I get that ring on your finger!’
But too much had happened, there had been too tremendous an upheaval for Merlin to fall asleep very easily. She tossed from side to side of her bed, disarranging the netting with her outflung arm, seeing Paul’s face vividly set against the darkness, feeling as if his arms were still around her, while all they had said to each other kept running through her mind, giving her no peace.
She drifted off to sleep near dawn, and when she awoke the houseboys were hammering away repairing shutters and windows and other damage the typhoon had caused. Out of all that torn darkness the morning had come in cascades of flame and gold, but it wasn’t until Merlin rose and dressed and went downstairs that she saw some of the havoc out in the compound.
Steam rose from the puddles as the sun climbed above the trees, brilliant butterflies and birds lay broken and dead in the mud, creepers lay twisted in their milky sap, and there was a crashed sandalwood tree that gave off a strong fragrance even as it lay there with its roots torn out of the ground. Great torn banana leaves were flung about like so many bedraggled flags, and the air was filled with the earthy scent of a thousand slaughtered flowers.
Merlin walked sadly in the garden, with its mud-spattered water-dock and leaf-choked lotus pool. And here a lovely sunshine tree had been felled, its golden bells filled with mud. Moths large as sparrows, lizards and giant crickets made no more sudden movements.
Sad as it all was, it could have been much worse, and when Merlin went to the kitchen she found the cook there making breakfast and was reassured that the people of the kampong had been quite all right down in the tea-sheds. At the height of the storm, he told her, a baby had been born and the mother was going to call the little boy Tofan, which meant typhoon.
‘You and tuan okay?’ He gave her a sudden impudent smile. ‘I see you make dinner for him. Him eat it all right?’
‘Tuan eat it fine.’ she replied, and suddenly felt heat in her cheeks as she remembered what Paul had said about the islanders regarding her as his nyai. It just hadn’t occurred to her, but now she realised that it was only natural that they should think such a thing. They didn’t know the meaning of the word platonic but had a simple philosophy that man and woman were made for each other as the sun was made to ripen the fruit.
Suddenly it swept over her in a breathtaking wave ... she and Paul were going to be married. He was going to arrange the wedding without delay, and she was filled with the breathless miracle of it. Paul’s wife, free to let loose the love that filled her heart.
‘The nonya look plenty happy,’ the cook remarked, cocking his head at her. ‘You enjoy the typhoon, all alone here with tuan?’
‘Who could enjoy that?’ She kept her eyes down and drank from the tea-bowl he had handed her. ‘And the tuan couldn’t be left all on his own, now could he? Trouble needs company, that’s why I stayed here at the house instead of going down to the tea-sheds with the others.’
‘All same, nonya not sorry to stay, eh? Big wind come and she cuddle up to the big boss.’ Suddenly the cook began to choke with laughter at the indignant look Merlin gave him. ‘Is all right,
mees, we all knowing because tuan tell his boy who shave him and pick out his shirt. Tuan go mainland with Lon, see priest about become suami of the nonya. We plenty pleased, I tell you. Big man should have wife and baji. Him much brave like harimau, but blind in eyes and need woman very much ... love take away some of the hurting, eh?’
Merlin’s eyes stung and she was moved by the simple honest words, and relieved that Paul had let his household staff know that she was to become their mistress. She hadn’t known how they would take it, and was happy that she wasn’t going to be resented. But the basic truth was that Paul did need her and these people realised it. They probably thought he was legalising their relationship, but she no longer minded being taken for his nyai. The status of wife was different and she could let it show that she cared for tuan Paul and wanted his happiness beyond anything.
‘I’m going to do my best,’ she said, ‘to take away the hurting. I’m glad none of you mind that he’s going to marry me.’
‘Why mind?’ The cook gave her a somewhat puzzled look. ‘You plenty nice girl, though liking to be called old woman. That English type joke? Or maybe wool over eyes of island people.’
Merlin couldn’t help a shamefaced smile. ‘A sort of joke,’ she said.
‘Very strange. Often older woman like to be thought younger, but not the other way round. You having makan pagi now? Nice bit of fish, eh?’
‘I think I could eat a horse—oh, sorry, Sengit, another idiotic bit of English humour.’
‘No, more sensible,’ he argued. ‘You eat and get pretty fat like my wife. Tuan like that. Plenty more to cuddle.’
Merlin smiled and sat down at the table to eat her breakfast. She was thrilled that Paul was going to the mainland today to set in motion the machinery of their marriage ... dared she believe that his eagerness had a little love in it?
There was no doubt in her own heart about her tremendous love for him, and she would use it with everything she had to make his darkness a little brighter. It would, it must, for it was like something molten running through her veins and tingling in her very bones; she had never felt so aware of being alive and expectant.
Was she just a little shameless? The smile deepened on her mouth. Perhaps she was, for she could hardly wait for the blissful certainty of belonging body and soul to Paul. It was a love that intensified the sheer excitement of what lay ahead of her, and she was going to hug it to her heart and pray that the past could be buried.
‘The fish get cold if nonya sit there dreaming about wedding,’ Sengit remarked, watching her with a knowing smile.
‘Sengit, is it tempting fate to be so—happy? Don’t your people say that it’s better to cast down the eyes in case the devil sees the joy in them?’
‘Maybe so,’ he nodded. ‘But you want happiness enough you get it, you want sorrow it comes.’
‘Who could want sorrow, Sengit?’
‘Tuan very much blind because of what a woman do to him—you afraid of that, mees. Sengit see you looking at him sometimes like young doe with tiger.’
‘I love him,’ she said quietly. ‘Even if he meant to kill me, I think I would still go on loving him.’
‘Doe with tiger, like I say. Now you eat makan pagi and not worry, just be happy like girl meant to be. You go to temple and see holy Buddha, that make peace in your heart.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said, but in the hours that followed it helped her more to go round the house tidying up after the upheaval of the storm. Paul had wished her a brief goodbye and said he would be back in the morning ... there had been a touch of constraint between them and he had gone to see about their marriage without kissing her.
CHAPTER SEVEN
The priest who was to perform the marriage was flown from the mainland in the helicopter, and the simple ceremony took place in the salon of the Tiger House. Afterwards the priest asked if he could have a few private words with the bride, and Paul left them alone together.
Somewhat nervously Merlin fingered the rings on her hand, a gold chiselled wedding band and a companion ring set with a glorious moonstone. Moon fire, the old gem-setter had called the stone, because it was such a flawless one that it reflected many shades of opalescent light when it was on the move on a woman’s hand.
‘I hope you don’t mind that I wished to have a few minutes alone with you?’ Father Lukas Adrian was not a lot older than Paul, but in his dark cassock and ivory-white reversed collar he seemed just a little severe.
‘Not at all, Father. I think I expected it.’
‘Ah, so we understand one another. You are a very young woman to be wedded to a blind man. You are not of his faith?’
Merlin shook her head. ‘I am Church of England, Father.’
‘You do realise, child, that the ceremony I have performed is a totally committed one? Until death.’
‘I suspected it.’ Much of the Dutch she had not understood and had been too nervous to be anything but automatic in her English responses to the vows.
‘Then you must love this young man very much indeed?’ Father Lukas spoke in a deep, rather beautiful voice that matched his appearance.
‘I love him with my life,’ she replied simply.
‘Let us hope so, young woman, for it isn’t going to be easy for you, being the wife of a vital, highly intelligent man who resents bitterly what fate has done to him and his brilliant career.’
‘A woman did it, Father.’
‘So you know about that?’ His eyes were fixed intently upon her face, a pale cameo set in the high collar of her dress. ‘Mynheer van Setan told you of this himself?’
Merlin hesitated. ‘Yes, he told me.’
‘But I think you knew of this in advance, before you came to Pulau-Indah? It may even have been your reason for coming, eh?’ Father Lukas’s eyes were too penetrating; he was far too wise and shrewd to accept a- fabrication, and Merlin had to confess that she had known certain things about Paul’s blindness before she came to the island.
‘You loved him then?’
‘I greatly admired him as a surgeon,’ she replied, ‘but it wasn’t until I grew to know him as a man that I fell deeply in love with him.’
‘Despite his—handicap? I am obliged to call it that, my child, because total blindness cannot be ignored by the person closest to the afflicted person. Your love will need to be a strong one because it will be tested many times. Are you prepared for that?’
‘I—I hope so.’
He frowned a little, allowing his eyes to assess her youth and obvious lack of worldliness. ‘If at any time you need counsel, then come and see me. The young islander, Lon, will bring you, and you can make the excuse of wishing to go shopping on the mainland.’ Abruptly his lean dark face relaxed into a smile. ‘A white lie never did too much harm, eh?’
‘I hope not, Father.’ Merlin returned his smile.
‘It is the deliberate lie that causes harm and sometimes a great deal of damage. Now I will go to your bridegroom and inform him that you eagerly await him.’
‘Thank you, Father Lukas, for your kindness.’
‘It isn’t too difficult to be kind to a girl who obviously cares that her blind husband find some ray of hope and joy in his darkness. Mynheer van Setan was an important man in his field, and now he has to search for a new way of life. You must help him find it. God bless you, child, and may your marriage bring you joy.’
The tall priest walked from the room, and Merlin’s legs felt so unsteady that she was glad to sink down on the couch, where she rested her cheek against the cool leather. She felt the pressure of her rings against her face, both of them a solid reassurance that she was now the wife of Paul van Setan, and hopefully prepared to face the future with him. It was the past that wouldn’t stop haunting her, though she felt certain Father Lukas would keep to himself any of the facts he might have discovered about her—that she had worked at the same hospital as Paul, using the surname of her stepfather but reverting to her baptismal name when she came to work for Paul. If th
e priest had read details of the tragedy he would assume like everyone else that she was the culprit and not the scapegoat. But he would also regard her marriage as sacrosanct and consider that in loving Paul she had found a way to make recompense in some small measure. Her marriage, he had warned, would not be an easy one; she had to face the fact that Paul was an embittered man.
Dear God, she had not expected it to be easy, she had only hoped that it might be a little loving. But Paul had been reserved and aloof throughout the wedding. service, and after sliding the gold ring on to her finger he had not bent his head to kiss her, and there she had stood with her face raised for his kiss and had felt as if icy fingers brushed her skin in place of those warm lips. He had gazed at the sunlight he couldn’t distinguish from darkness, while Father Lukas had concluded the words of the ceremony that bound her to this tall, grim, unresponsive bridegroom.
Merlin sighed and wondered if his manner had anything to do with the wire he had received from his cousin Hendrik. Paul hadn’t asked her to read it to him. Instead he and Lon had gone into the den while she waited in the hall in her simple wedding dress, feeling as if she had a rope around her neck instead of a string of large milky pearls.
When they emerged from the den Paul had said briefly that his cousin was delayed by the tea-brokers and would not be back in time to attend their wedding. He had not added that Hendrik sent his congratulations, which seemed to indicate that his cousin was outraged that in the weeks he had been on leave Paul had met, and arranged to marry, the woman hired to do his secretarial work. Hendrik must have assumed that she was a fast worker ... or did his omission of good wishes hold a darker motive?