by Неизвестный
It was unbelievable ... it was wonderful ... and the young nurse who looked after Merlin said she cried for a solid hour before they could get her to slowly turn off those streaming, thankful tears. After that she drank four cups of hot sweet tea, and they put her to bed in a hospital cot, carefully removing the torn dress from her slim pregnant body and pulling the covers to her chin. Her great eyes were like brown violas that had been drenched in a storm, and then she slept... they told her she slept for twenty-four hours.
It was Lon, that good friend of hers who seemed capable of anything he set his mind to, who went out shopping for her and brought back new lingerie and tights, a cream linen dress with eyelet embroidery in the collar, and a pair of T-strapped cream linen sandals. He returned her handbag to her, so she was able to hide some of her pallor behind a dash of make-up.
‘I’m scared, Lon,’ she said shakily. ‘What’s Paul going to say to me—I shall seem like a stranger to him.’
‘But a very lovely-looking one,’ Lon told her. He took her hands and kissed them, and he was watching her as she walked alone into the room where Paul was propped up in bed, waiting for her. For long moments they just looked at each other, then he held out his hand and she went to him, a quiver going all through her as his strong fingers closed on hers.
‘They told me my wife was coming to see me,’ he drawled. ‘Do I know you? Who are you?’
‘Me?’ She lifted his hand to her face. ‘Close your eyes and braille me.’
He did so, moving his beloved fingers over her features to her throat. ‘Ah yes, now I seem to have some recollection of this madly pretty creature who walks into my sickroom and gives me such a shock.’ He slowly opened his grey eyes and slowly smiled at her. He let his eyes travel every inch of her face, and then her figure, his gaze coming to rest on her waistline. ‘Mine as well?’ he murmured.
‘Do you really have to ask, tuanku?’ Merlin’s confidence was coming back to her, for never had Paul smiled like that... even with that heavily bandaged arm stump, he was looking ... wonderful. The nurse had combed his hair into that smooth weight across his strong brow, and his eyes ... his eyes looked as if they loved her
‘No, I don’t need to ask.’ His smile grew a shade wicked. ‘But I have to get used to having a lovely stranger for a wife, someone I know better in the dark than in the daylight. Ah, my senses told me you were like this, but I kept masking your face with someone else’s, didn’t I?’
‘Yes, Paul, but can’t we forget?’
‘No, we have to speak of it, for I’ve hurt you more than once in my blindness, and I don’t quite know how to repay you.’
‘My darling,’ she pressed his hand to her cheek, ‘I’m repaid a thousand times over. You can see again, and you saved my life. If you want me, what more could I want?’
‘To be made surpremely happy, and I intend to set about it as soon as they discharge me from this place. Ah, but it’s incredible to see your lovely face like a distant dream come true. You were the one they said hurt me— everything is clearer now—you never hurt me, of course, it was that other creature. Why did you never try to explain to me who you were?’
‘Would you have listened, Paul?’ She gave him a shaky smile. ‘You needed someone to whip, and you always kissed me afterwards. I understood and I loved you enough to take it. It would have been all right if you had killed me.’
‘That much?’ he groaned.
‘All the way, Paul, to heaven and hell.’
‘The hell of it is over, my sweet child, from now on it’s heaven all the way, I promise you. Won’t you kiss me? At the present time, dammit, I am having a bit of bother with this stump, but they tell me they are going to make me a new arm, and it had better be the sort I can put around you!’
Merlin leaned over and laid her lips to his; she saw him close his eyes as she kissed him and she knew he was recalling every detail of their life together on the island. His mouth clung to hers and his good arm locked itself about her waist ... about the baby they had made with love ... it had been love, as she had always hoped and known in the depths of her heart. He had loved her enough to live for her.
‘You are truly named Merlin,’ he breathed. ‘You have made magic for me—I have love, I have my sight, and soon, eh, I shall have a son or a daughter. How do I thank you, meisje?’
‘Loving someone, Paul, means never having to say thank you with words—just show me you love me and I’ll be so very happy.’
And Paul was there to witness another kind of miracle when his pretty, brown-haired daughter came into the world. But for a few days after the event he seemed on edge, a shadow of anxiety in his eyes ... a shadow that didn’t vanish until the baby suddenly opened her eyes and they were huge, golden-brown like Merlin’s. They dwelt on Paul and a tiny hand reached out to him and he kissed each one of the fragile fingers. ‘We shall call her Indah, for beautiful,’ he smiled at his wife. ‘Indah after an island where a tiger was wooed and tamed to the hand of a most charming young woman.’
‘Are you entirely tamed, my tiger?’ Merlin asked him, smiling.
‘Not when you smile at me, liefje. The tiger prowls again in my blood when you speak my name.’
‘Paul ... dearest Paul, I shall speak your name as often as possible.’
His eyes moved lovingly over her face and the baby nestling in her arms. ‘We shall visit our island in the autumn,’ he promised, ‘but soon I go back to being a working man. Regretfully my days as a surgeon are over, but now I can do what has always interested me, research into the rejection of skin and bone grafts. I can be of use again, my Merlin! I can be a protective husband to you and I can look after my daughter and ensure that she never wants for guidance and love. I am a very happy man this day, mijn vrouw. I thank God for what I have.’
The sun shone into the room and Merlin watched as Paul half-closed his eyes in sensuous appreciation of it.... able to see its golden wonder ... her tiger in the sun.