by Robyn Donald
He gave her a teasing grin and sent another towards Oriel. In ten years’ time, she thought, he’s going to be falling over women wherever he goes. Young as he was, he had some of Blaize’s imperious attraction, the flagrant masculine charm that was so unfairly handed out to the deserving and undeserving alike.
She had felt it that morning. Her cheeks burned as she recalled those unsparing kisses, and her incandescent response. At least she hadn’t buckled at the knees; she had emerged with some sort of pride. It had been hard, though. Until then she had never understood how easy it would be to surrender, dragged under by a merciless current of passion and need.
From the grass at her feet Simon made a little exclamation and sat up. ‘It’s Mr Weatherall,’ he said, peering at the launch still halfway across the bay.
Sarah and Oriel squinted into the sun, following the line of his gaze. A dark man of medium height walked along the deck and disappeared into the deckhouse.
‘Who’s Mr Weatherall?’ Oriel asked.
‘Uncle Blaize’s personal assistant.’ Simon grinned and rolled over. ‘He’s nice, quiet, but he can play a neat game of squash and cricket.’
Having failed lamentably to show any signs of interest in either, Oriel was already familiar with Simon’s worship of both sports. She said amiably, ‘So he could steal ice-creams from little children and kick cats as a hobby, but he’d still be a nice man.-’
‘Yeah,’ Simon breathed cheekily. ‘Much nicer than dumb-bells who don’t know the difference between a squash racket and a cricket bat.’
She laughed. ‘I do so. If the man carrying it wears long white trousers it’s a cricket bat. If he wears shorts it’s a squash racket.’
Simon hooted and got to his feet as she began to pick up the paper and pencils they had been using. ‘Come on, Sarah,’ she said cheerfully, ‘let’s tidy up.’
‘Can I go with Simon to meet the boat?’
She nodded. ‘After we tidy up.’
‘You’ll be lucky,’ Simon teased. ‘Sarah never tidies up after herself.’
‘Do so!’
‘Nah, you don’t.’
The cheerful bickering continued while Sarah piled everything more or less neatly in the centre of the, table, then looked up at Oriel, who chuckled. ‘Yes,’ she said with resignation, ‘that will do.’
She held out her hand. Sarah looked surprised but took it happily enough, her warm, slightly sticky fingers nestling confidingly in Oriel’s. Had her previous governess ignored the child’s need for affectionate physical contact?
‘Mr Weatherall’ was a handsome man but strangely inconspicuous, as though he had spent all his life trying to fade into the background. Perhaps that was what working for Blaize did for people! However, he had a charming smile, one that came spontaneously when Oriel said, ‘Mr Weatherall, I presume?’
‘No, no,’ he said, holding out his hand. ‘That’s my line. Miss Oriel Radford, I presume?’
She shook hands, thinking wryly, So Blaize has contacted him about me. I wonder why. Then, with a flash of intuition, So that he could check me out, of course.
Well, naturally. He wasn’t to know that she was the person she said she was. Blaize had probably been the ‘target for all sorts of people, women as well as men, ever since he was as tall as Simon.
Thank heavens I’m not rich! she thought fervently.
A smile pinned to her face, she walked along the sun-warmed planks of the jetty, listening to the muted screech of the wheels on the trolley as Simon helped Kathy’s husband push it along. It was piled with boxes and bags, much, no doubt, of the food for the party in three days’ time.
Sarah clung to her hand, telling Blaize’s assistant about the changes in her life. Oriel liked the way he listened and spoke to the child, as though she were a responsible adult. Constantly devalued herself by a mother who didn't understand her, Oriel was acutely conscious of the same attitude in others. It made her prickly and antagonistic, but in this case there was no need. Mr Weatherall liked Sarah, and it showed.
‘…and Oriel’s not limping much today,’ Sarah wound down. ‘Her foot’s all funny colours under the bandages, but she told Uncle Blaize it doesn’t hurt much when he asked her this morning. I saw it when she was getting up.’
‘I’m glad you’re recovering quickly,’ J ames Weatherall said, his limpid eyes giving no hint of his enjoyment of Sarah's artless recital. ‘That was quite an experience you had. The last part of it must have been agonising.’
She shrugged. ‘Oh, it hurt, but I used a stick, and when it got too much I crawled. I was lucky, it could have been a lot worse. Someone had to do it-my cousin had a broken leg.’
His shrewd gaze softened. ‘Yes, so I understand. I’m glad to see you looking so well.’ His eyes moved from her face and his expression altered, not much, but enough to catch 0riel’s attention. She too looked ahead and saw Blaize standing, somehow ominously still, in the shade on the terrace, watching them.
He smiled as they came up, but there was no warmth in it. A tiny shard of ice slithered across her spine.
‘I see you two have introduced yourselves,’ was all he said. ‘James, come to the office with me, will you? There are a few things I want to get done right away.’
James Weatherall’s arrival coincided with two days of rain and the threat of yet another tropical storm. He and Blaize spent most of the time sequestered in the office, leaving Oriel to look after two children who found the constant soft drizzle and the heat extremely trying. Sarah was all right while she was doing her lessons, her determination to succeed preventing any thought of giving up, but after she had completed several jigsaws and all the wet-weather activities Oriel could dream up, she became petulant and began to quarrel with her brother.
He too was at a loose end, the manager’s children having gone to Auckland to visit some cousins. Banned from the kitchen after he had demolished a cold roast chicken Kathy had had other plans for, he mooched around gloomily. Not even television was of any use; the only thing he wanted to watch was the test cricket series, and that was rained out.
On the afternoon of the second day Oriel found both children bickering in real earnest, exchanging insults with a fervour that threatened to degenerate into a brawl. Firmly she said, ‘Right, that’s enough. We’re going swimming.’
Both stared at her, then Sarah pointed out, ‘It’s raining.’
‘So it is. So it won’t matter if we get wet, will it?’ Simon’s voice was scornful, but he looked pleased at the prospect.
Oriel flashed him a stern, minatory look. ‘It’s very warm-far too hot, in fact, and we all need the exercise.’
Grinning, they decided that, strange as it seemed, it had the makings of a good idea. Ten minutes later they met in the gazebo. Huddled into her towel, Sarah was pouting, but when she saw both Oriel and Simon drop their wraps and set off for the beach with identical expressions of anticipation, curiosity drove her to follow.
Oriel had taken the bandage off her foot that morning, and although the bruises were not a pretty sight, turning yellow and purple, the resultant freedom was worth it. She was now limping much less, although the wretched thing still swelled by the end of each day. Apparently the doctor’s forecast of at least a month before it was as good as ever was going to be correct.
Flattened by the gentle persistence of the rain, the sea was lukewarm, tiny waves running silently up the wet sand. Just as they reached the edge the rain eased and died, although a heavy mist was almost as wetting. The atmosphere was distinctly eerie, the house a dark, formless bulk, the beach a pale half-moon coming from and fading into mist with pohutukawa trees looming weirdly along it, the jetty a skeletal edifice where the water smoothed with oily languor between the piles.
‘No fooling,’ Oriel commanded in the sort of voice that no one could misunderstand. ‘And no diving. It would be far too easy to lose yourself in this.’
Awed by the steamy, mysterious ambience, both children stayed close by, speaking in low v
oices that were oddly muffled by the mist.
Simon said suddenly, ‘I feel as though a dinosaur might rise up out of the water beside us.’
Sarah gave a little squeak and looked around. ‘Oh, look, there’s its eye!’ she hissed, pointing to the diffused golden glow of a window in the house.
‘That’s the office.’ Simon rolled over on to his back, seeing how long he could stay floating without moving" anything. ‘Gosh, Uncle Blaize and Mr Weatherall have been busy! Perhaps they’re going to take someone over.’
Sarah trod water, her small paws dog-paddling slowly. ‘Are you going to work for Uncle Blaize when you grow up?’
Simon said magnificently, ‘Never. I’m going to be a professional cricketer, like Hadlee or Crowe.’
Given his passion for sport, this was a not unexpected answer. Oriel grinned. ‘What are you going to do?’ she asked Sarah.
‘I’m going to be a deep-sea diver. I can dive really well now-Uncle Blaize taught me.’
Oriel kissed the wet, earnest little face. ‘A great idea!’
Her charge gave a pleased little wriggle. ‘And I’m going to work on an oil rig and find pirates’ treasure.’
‘Good for you!’
Simon said, ‘The dinosaur’s closed its eyes. It’s gone to sleep.’
At Sarah’s shiver Oriel said briskly, ‘Come on, time to go in.’
For once, neither objected. As they neared the little summerhouse a tall figure loomed up out of the mist.
Oriel’s heart gave a sudden leap, but Sarah squealed, ‘Uncle Blaize, I thought you were a dinosaur!’ as she ran towards him.
He fended her off expertly. ‘Really? I have a long neck and scales?’
Giggling, Sarah shouted, ‘No, you’ve got big teeth and a yellow eye!’ and raced past him, running soundlessly across the wet grass after her brother.
Oriel started to follow them, but an imperative hand on her arm stopped her flight.
‘I like that bathing-suit,’ he said, and leaned forward and pulled the zip down an inch. ‘Have you missed me these last few days?’ he asked softly, his knuckles brushing the cool satin swell of her breast.
She jerked away. Fingers made clumsy by cold fumbled with the recalcitrant zip until she managed to haul it right up again.
‘No,’ she said icily, tensing as his glance travelled the entire length of her body, lingering, openly following the artful line of the black panel from the slight swell of her breasts to where it disappeared at the juncture of her thighs, admiring the smooth, wet length of her legs, then starting back again. 7
It was a deliberate attack on her self-possession, an intrusion of the most blatant sort, and she was angry, her eyes a searing, smoking blue.
‘I like it very much,’ he said, his voice modulated by the thick blanket of mist- so that they seemed to be cocooned in an intimate prison. ‘But I think perhaps you had better get another one. Simon is at an impressionable age-’
‘That’s sick,’ she said flatly. ‘Simon is a child.’
‘Really?’ He lifted his brows at her. ‘I can remember what it was like being fourteen-all those hormones surging around with no outlet. And James is impressionable too.’
Anyone less impressionable than the poker-faced personal assistant it would be hard to find. ‘I’ve never heard such nasty rubbish,’ she said scornfully.
‘But then you haven’t had much to do with men, or their inconvenient urges, have you?’
His eyes were on her breasts, and to her astonishment she felt a tingling, drawing sensation there, at once painful and exciting. Shame and embarrassment held her in a rigid grip.
‘How our bodies betray us,’ he said softly, lifting his eyes so that she could see the lick of flame heating the grey to a molten silver. ‘Infuriating, isn’t it‘? Behind us there are centuries of civilisation, of custom and restraint, of conditioning, and yet the basic urges lie in wait, needing only one of a multitude of tiny physical signs, and it all goes for nothing. You are young and very nicely packaged and female, I am a male whose hormones are still in production, and so we want to lie down together and make a baby. Because that’s what it’s for, Oriel, the complete sequence of romance and love, tinsel and lies and long, sizzling looks across the room. Just so that we can pass our genes on to the next generation. Poets have written immortal lines about it, romantics have died for it, and the whole thing is nature’s joke on a species that takes itself too seriously.’
She shivered, her eyes imprisoned by the stormy dazzle of his, all her secret fervours sabotaged by the complete cynicism in his words.
‘There's some excuse for you,’ he said quietly. ‘You’re young. But I’ve seen too much of it, I know how it works. And I’m not going to allow long, sleek limbs and a sweetly provocative smile, and eyes that turn smoky when they look at me, to send me off down that road.’
‘I don’t-they don’t-’ Her voice cracked, unable to articulate the thoughts that whirled around her brain.
‘Yes, you do. I do. We do.’ His hands shot out,‘ grabbed her and pulled her into the warmth of his body. His lips came to rest on her forehead. Against the soft, damp skin he said harshly, ‘I can feel your heart beating like a caged thing. So is mine, Oriel, and for the same reason.’
Something harsh and hot blocked her throat, but she swallowed it down and said with fierce determination, ‘I don’t want-I am not going to enter into any sort of relationship with you.’
‘I know that,’ he said coolly, kissing her eyelids closed. ‘You want marriage, all nice and legal, with a lifetime contract, your body as security.’
The stinging contempt in his voice wrenched her from the languor that paralysed her. She tried to swing free, but his grip tightened. Bemused, she lifted her lashes to meet eyes that held devi1’s fire. As his face came closer she tried to bite him, but his mouth crushed hers into silence and stillness, forcing her lips apart so that he could make himself master of the sweet, hidden depths. Speared by a pang of sensation, her body jerked, and a low, muffled little sound died stillborn in her throat. The hands that had been pushing him away tightened into fists on his shirt; she shuddered, and he lifted his head for a moment and whispered something, then bent again and gentled her mouth into returning his kiss.
It was shattering. Heat that sprang into life in the pit of her stomach became transmuted to a fiery need. She pressed against him, taking an angry delight in the hard masculinity of his body, hers throbbing, aching, pierced by hunger.
Her mouth shaped to his, taking and giving, glorying in the different textures, the different tastes. She thought she might die with desire, her whole being ravished by this intolerable delight, this feeling of urgency and need.
‘Oh, hell,’ he said against her lips. ‘Your mouth is like crushed silk, warm and throbbing. lt’s like kissing a flower. And your eyes... How did you reach twenty- three without losing your innocence when you’ve got eyes that promise all the delights of paradise, dark pleasures, secret, decadent sins that enslave a man, netting him in a cage of ecstasy until he’s drowned in it.
Racked by fever, she gasped when his hands slid down to her hips and pulled her into the hard cradle of his, her softness shocking against his hardness. Groaning, sighing, she rocked against him, so lost in the bewildering pleasure that she didn’t even realise he had pulled the zip right down until he kissed the throbbing flesh he had exposed, his mouth lingering with a magician’s enchantment over the slight curves.
The desperate hunger intensified into shimmering sensation, ravishing, ecstatic. She had never known that a man’s mouth could summon rapture so easily. The friendly mist swirled around, shielding them in swathes of drapery, cool on her skin, a tactile contrast to the heat of their bodies, the fire of his mouth on her breasts.
Simon’s voice echoed eerily. ‘Oriel? Oriel, where are you?’
She felt as though the world had crashed down on to her. Rigid with shock and shame, she lurched away from Blaize, only dimly realising that he had begu
n to set her free before she had heard the boy’s voice.
‘I won’t be a moment,’ she said. Her voice sounded surprisingly steady, but she drew a deep, quivering breath and turned blindly away.
‘OK.’ Simon’s voice faded; he was going back to the house.
She grabbed her towel and ran back in as though all the devils in hell were after her.
That night, safe at last in her bedroom, she looked at her arms and mouth with disgust. There were bruises on her skin, faint but obvious if you knew where-to look, and her mouth had the ripe contours that denoted thorough kissing.
Dragging the brush through her hair, she watched with unseeing eyes as the curls sprang into place. She hadn’t seen Blaize after that; he and James had shared dinner in the office, and she had eaten with the children, going up early to bed in a blue terror that he might emerge and she would have to face him.
Only to find that she had to face herself.
Hiding in her ‘room, she could remember the exact inflexions of his voice, the movement of his beautiful mouth as he had spoken, the cold cynicism of each word. And‘ every one of the heated, frantic moments she had spent in his arms, her moral standards banished into some hazy limbo while she let him do exactly what he wanted to do with the body he despised himself for wanting.
But not as much as she despised herself. She had melted-no, she had not melted, she had become aggressive and demanding, pressing herself against him like some wanton, shamelessly inciting him to take her, her mouth clinging to his in a duel that was heading in only one direction.
‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, turning the light off so she could no longer be tormented by the memories burning in her eyes. ‘What am I going to do?’
Her first instinct was to flee back to the safety of the life she had known previously, but of course she couldn’t, she had signed that contract. The next three months stretched out like eternity. Her heart ached at the damage she was going to wreak on Sarah, but self-preservation made only one course possible. She couldn't stay, not after this afternoon. Ruthlessly she banished the memory of the promise she had made to the child.