by Anne Weale
From her window, she could see the pool which, although not illuminated by underwater lights at this hour, was clearly visible under the full moon. But for the vapour rising from the surface of the water, it might have been a summer night. The sky was full of stars, and the garden was full of flowers—hibiscus, poinsettia, cassia, solandra, plumbago and a dozen others.
The motionless, vaporous surface of the pool had a fairy-tale air. It reminded her of the setting of a ballet which she and Emily had watched on television recently. She half expected to see a troop of sylphides emerge from the shadows of the Madagascar palms and begin to dance round the pool deck. It was that kind of magical night.
Suddenly she wanted to be out there, floating in the water, star-gazing.
Her bathing-suit was in the shower where she had hung it to dry after her final swim of the day. As she was about to put it on, she thought: Why do I need a bathing-suit? Nobody's going to see me. I can swim in my skin.
The house had more than one staircase. There were the main stairs which they had first used on the day of their arrival, and two other flights, one leading from the entrance hall to the master bedroom and her room, and a staircase, originally for servants' use, from the kitchen to Mrs Hardy's quarters.
She padded downstairs with bare feet and only slipped on her thongs when she reached the door to the patio. Although she was wrapped in her terry-cloth robe, the outside air made her shiver as she crossed the patio, passed through the shadowy loggia and followed the path to the pool.
Arriving at the shallow end, she noticed that, beyond and to one side of the deep end, the hot water in the jacuzzi was wreathed in denser clouds of vapour than the main pool. But as she tossed her robe over a sun-bed, she was in too much of a hurry to immerse herself to look closely in that direction.
She walked down the submerged steps with their central handrail and, when the water was up to her thighs, bent and launched herself forward as quietly as a water-bird gliding away from the bank of a pond.
Slowly she swam two lengths and then, in the centre of the pool, rolled on to her back and lay with her arms outstretched, looking up at the canopy of stars. As always, beauty evoked fragments of poetry.
Longfellow's
Silently one by one, in the infinite meadows of heaven
Blossomed the lovely stars, the forget-me-nots of the angels
Rossetti's
The blessed damozel leaned out
From the gold bar of Heaven;
Her eyes were deeper than the depth
Of waters stilled at even;
She had three lilies in her hand,
And the stars in her hair were seven.
The night air was cool on her face and on her still pale-skinned breasts which, when she lay with her spine straight, also floated clear of the surface, the nipples dilated by the chill. She adjusted her spine to immerse them, enjoying the freedom of being naked, wishing she could always swim like this.
'Do you make a habit of skinny-dipping in the small hours?'
The mocking male voice rang out from somewhere behind her, making her slack body jerk in a convulsive and panic-stricken movement to bring herself upright and turn to see who had spoken.
He was by the side of the pool, wearing a long white robe with a hood hanging from the shoulders. Just for an instant, with his arms crossed inside the wide sleeves, he looked like a tall monk standing there.
Then she recognised him. Emily's uncle.
When after a few moments she had failed to utter any sound but a horrified gasp, he said what the Immigration officer had said to Emily.
'Cat got your tongue?'
Still petrified with dismay at her appalling predicament—confronted, stark naked, by the last man on earth she would have wished to catch her in that condition—she longed for the pool to become a bottomless lake in which she could sink and never surface. Instead of which it seemed, all at once, to have shrunk to the size and transparency of a small goldfish bowl.
'Young women who trespass on private property at night have to take the consequences,' he told her.
Before her paralysed wits had grasped what he meant to do, he had stripped off his robe and plunged in. Seconds later he surfaced, beside her.
'Which in this case is—this.'
As he spoke, he pulled her against him. As he finished speaking, he kissed her.
It was not a prolonged or passionate kiss; merely a vigorous buss on her startled lips. But it was her first kiss and coming from him, of all people, a shattering experience.
She felt her bare breasts pressed against his muscular chest. She felt his powerful arms round her. She felt the warmth and unexpected softness of his mouth.
They were all sensations which shocked her; like violent jolts of electricity. The most shocking of all was when, as he raised his head but continued to hold her against him—where they were was within his depth and his feet were firmly planted on the bottom—she felt a change in his body which, inexperienced as she was, she recognised as a sign that holding her was beginning to arouse him.
That panicked her, and she struggled to free herself. When he wouldn't release her, she pounded his chest with her clenched fists.
'Let me go... let me go!' she demanded furiously. Then, hearing the note of hysteria in her voice, she forced herself to stop fighting him and said, very clearly and coldly, 'If you don't let me go, I'll scream for help, Mr Gardiner.'
This was more effective. He didn't let her go, but he did stop the unequal wrestling match during which he had not only kept her his unwilling captive but contrived to caress a good deal of her squirming body. Holding her by the upper arms with the same steely grip she had undergone once before, he stared into her face.
'Do I know you?'
'Of course you know me, you oaf! I'm Summer Roberts... Emily's tutor. Who else would you expect to find here?'
'Well, I'll be damned,' he said blankly. 'I thought you'd sneaked over from the campus.' He began to laugh.
'You're bruising my arms,' she said icily.
His fingers slackened. At last she was free to retreat to the side of the pool where the shape of her body would be hidden from him. Was he also naked? His sudden plunge into the water had been so swift and unexpected that she wasn't sure if she had seen a very brief bathing slip, or if it had been his body hair which had made a dark triangle at the top of his thighs.
The thought of being in a swimming pool with a naked man in a state of semi-arousal was intensely disturbing. That, having no idea who she was, he could feel an incipient desire for her, exacerbated her dislike of the man. She didn't think him capable of rape but, as he had already demonstrated, he was capable of almost every outrage short of rape. The sooner she was out of his way, her bedroom door securely locked, the better she would like it. But she wasn't going to leave the pool while he was watching her, thus giving him as good a view of her backside as he had already had of the front of her.
He said, 'You haven't answered my question. Do you make a habit of skinny-dipping at night?' Before she could answer, he went on with mock severity, 'I'm not sure I approve. It isn't the behaviour I expected when I entrusted my niece to you. You appeared, at that time, to be rather a prudish young woman. Not the sort to get up to these antics.'
Ignoring this raillery, she said, 'I've never swum at night before, and I wish very much I hadn't tried it tonight. Now I'd like to go back to the house, but not with you gawking at me. If you have any decency at all—'
'I'll avert my eyes or, better still, make myself scarce.'
He turned away from her. A couple of strokes took him across to the far side. She watched him grasp the tiled rim and pull himself upwards. He wasn't wearing a bathing-suit! She could see the paler skin of his buttocks as he swung himself on to the deck and bent to pick up his robe. He put it on with his back to her. Then, tying the white rope-like sash, he stepped into a pair of slides and began to walk round the pool in the direction of the house.
She let o
ut a breath of relief. He was going. The ordeal was over.
But no—it wasn't. When he came to her robe, he checked. Taking it from the chair where she had left it, he turned to face her.
'But you didn't avert your eyes, did you?' he said derisively.
He shook out the robe and held it, like a man holding a woman's coat for her.
'Out you come. There's no need to be embarrassed. From what I've seen of it already, you now have an excellent figure. You can't be too rich or too thin is okay as a motto for men, but a woman needs curves here and there.'
Summer knew that what she should have done was to rush for her robe at the same time he went for his. Fool that she was, by delaying she had played into his hands. Now, enveloped in his ankle-length robe, he was probably as warm as she was and certainly a great deal better covered. She was as naked as Eve except for the cover afforded by the moonlit water.
'Yes, you're right,' he said, reading her mind. 'I can stand here for longer than you can remain cowering there.'
'What a swine you are,' she said bitterly, goaded past caring that tomorrow he might sack her.
He clicked his tongue disapprovingly. 'Not the way to speak to your employer, but I daresay I'll overlook it—if you don't keep me waiting too much longer.'
At that moment, she hated him more than she had at Cranmere. Her loathing and detestation reached the point where she thought: Oh, sod him! And, on that note of defiance, swam into the shallows and walked briskly up the steps. Let him see her naked. Let him look—if it gave him any satisfaction.
Thrusting her arms into the sleeves of her robe, she drew it around her and fastened the terry-cloth belt. Winding a towel round her head and stepping into her thongs, she would have marched swiftly away had his hand not fallen on her shoulder.
'I want to talk to you,' he said.
'Can't it wait until the morning?'
'No. If you go to bed now, you won't sleep. You're too wound up,' he said calmly. 'You can make me some coffee.'
'When did you arrive? Why didn't you let us know you were coming?' she asked coldly, as they walked to the house.
'I prefer to arrive unannounced. It keeps my staff on their toes. As I have a key, and my bed here is always made up, it wasn't necessary to disturb Mrs Hardy. I flew into Tampa two hours ago. A taxi brought me to the gate. I thought fifteen minutes in the jacuzzi would relax me and help me to sleep. Then a magnificent Amazon—with both breasts intact—appeared on the scene, and I didn't feel tired any more,' he told her, with laughter in his voice.
Summer was not amused. She said, 'Your voice will wake Mrs Hardy and possibly alarm her.'
He said nothing more until they were inside the house. Then, when she would have attempted to bolt up the stairs, he blocked her escape, saying softly, 'I didn't eat on the plane. You can scramble some eggs for me—if you know how.'
She was tempted to answer, 'No, I don't. Scramble them yourself.' But she guessed he was sure to find out she was a competent cook, and would make her pay for the lie.
Seething, she said, 'Very well, but first I'd like to get dressed.'
'You're respectably covered as you are. Don't worry: the knowledge that you're naked under that robe won't drive me to do anything you wouldn't like,' he said dryly.
She glowered at him, hating his complete self-assurance, longing to defy him. He might have discarded his title, but he still had the droit de seigneur attitude which had been making life hell for women through the centuries from Norman serving wenches to Victorian housemaids.
Straight-backed, but inwardly quivering with reaction to what she had been through, she stalked to the kitchen.
'How many eggs do you want scrambled?' she asked him frigidly.
'Four, please. I'll make the coffee.'
Obviously he knew his way around the kitchen. He didn't have to ask her where to find the paper filters for the automatic coffee maker, or how to use the machine. As the water began to drip into the jug, he leaned his hips against a worktop, folded his arms across his chest, and watched her performing her task.
Summer found it unnerving to be under such close surveillance. Her hair, only roughly dried and finger-combed, was hanging in damp rat's-tails. Never having had the figure to go without a bra—a style which she didn't intend to ape when she was slim—she was acutely conscious of her unconstricted breasts. Fortunately her beach robe was now too big for her, forming folds which were some help in concealing her still too ample curves from him.
'How long are you staying?' she asked, hoping it would be a fleeting visit.
'I'm not sure. A week, I hope. It's some while since I had a break down here. Three months in Florida has certainly done wonders for you. As you just found out, you're unrecognisable.'
She flushed. She would have liked to say cuttingly, 'You mean you wouldn't describe me as "as fat as a pig" now?'
But dearly as she would have liked to discomfit him, she knew she would never be able to fling his brutal words back at him. There might be other ways of revenging herself for that terrible humiliation, but the things he had said about her were sealed away in her mind; words she would never forget, but would never repeat to anyone. Not if she lived to be ninety!
'Has Emily undergone a similar sea-change?' he asked.
'She's looking healthier, yes. But then everyone looks healthier when they're tanned—even chronic invalids,' she said, thinking of some of the old people she had seen around.
He himself was as deeply tanned as when they had parted from him in London. Skiing at Gstaad and, since then, spending some time in California, had maintained his Indian-dark colouring.
'Yes, it can be illusory,' he agreed. 'But obviously not in your case. There's a sparkle in your eye and an air of vitality about you which you didn't have in England.'
She wanted to snap 'Save your compliments', but she said nothing, silently hating him.
She had already laid a place at the breakfast counter for him. Now she warmed a plate by placing it upside down over one of the burners, buttered the toast ejected by the toaster and piled on the fluffy, moist eggs.
At one time preparing the food for him would have made her feel ravenous. But tonight, perhaps because of the vivid dream she had had earlier, it didn't.
'Thank you. That looks good,' he said, as she set the dish on the place-that.
She poured coffee into a pottery mug and put it beside him, with a jug of the milk she had heated while cooking the eggs.
'So tonight was your first experience of one of the more harmless American teenage escapades—midnight skinny-dipping,' he remarked, apparently determined not to let her forget it.
'And my last. If you don't mind, I'll go to bed now. I have to be up early.'
'You're going somewhere tomorrow?'
'No, I always get up early. I have a swim before breakfast—or I have been doing so up to now. But if that's the time you like to use the pool, I'll alter my swimming times.'
'Or take care to have a chaperone,' he suggested, with an amused glance. 'I'm not likely to make a pass at you if there's someone else around, am I?'
A flush brought an apricot tinge to her golden skin. She glared at him, grey eyes stormy.
'I hope you won't make another in any circumstances, Mr Gardiner'—emphasising her reversion to formality.
'I can't guarantee that I won't. It depends how much provocation you offer me,' he said, cutting into the toast and beginning to eat.
She hadn't noticed before that, in spite of his admiration for and commitment to the American way of life, he still ate in the English way, keeping the fork in the left hand instead of transferring it to the right hand as Mrs Hardy and the Antonios did. Perhaps by the age of seventeen such habits were too deeply ingrained to be changed.
'I shan't offer any, I assure you,' she informed him vehemently.
'What does that mean?' he asked. 'That you don't fancy me, or that you've found yourself a boy-friend?'
She lifted her chin which her loss of w
eight was revealing as a firmly-shaped feature with more than a hint of determination, even obstinacy, in its form.
'It means that if you want me to remain Emily's tutor, you won't subject me to harassment,' she said, with a level look. 'I won't put up with it, Mr Gardiner. I shall leave.'
'Don't you think you're making a mountain out of a molehill? I mistook you for an attractive trespasser and imposed a penalty—one kiss. That hardly constitutes sexual harassment of an employee.'
He had been speaking seriously, with a trace of impatience. Now the laughter returned to his eyes. 'I've never found it necessary to harass women to satisfy my sexual needs. It tends to be the other way round. They harass me. Not because they desire me,' he added sardonically. 'It's my financial position which lights the lust in their eyes.'
She was not used to such plain-speaking. Sex was a subject never mentioned by her aunt except in the form of warnings about never talking to strange men. Fortunately, Summer's fundamental attitude to sex had been formed by growing up with parents who adored each other. With a father like Tom Roberts, no one subsequently could have convinced her that men as a sex were aggressive, predatory or basically hostile to women. She knew that not all were as generously, tenderly loving as her father. But he was her standard; not the threatening male figure projected by Miss Ewing's warnings.
Nevertheless, she had lived under her aunt's influence for too long not to be embarrassed by her employer's frank reference to his sexual needs. He spoke as if, for him, sex had no emotional connotation but was a physical appetite like hunger and thirst which, when it occurred, he would satisfy as straightforwardly as he had asked her to cook him some eggs.
She noticed that the front of his robe had loosened, showing the hard bronzed chest she had beaten with her fists with as little effect as if she had been pummelling rock. Like Skip's, his chest wasn't hairy. In contrast to the fleecy white terry, it had the slight sheen of polished hide. She averted her eyes.