by Anne Mather
For a moment he stared at her, his hand raised almost disbelievingly to the injury. And then he reacted as she had done, ruthlessly delivering a painful slap to the side of her face.
‘Mum!’
The door to the bungalow had opened without their becoming aware of it, and now Robert stood motionless in the doorway, staring at them through dazed, accusing eyes.
At once Logan turned aside from Charlotte, raking back his hair much as Robert himself might have done, confronting the boy with evident regret.
‘I’m sorry you had to see that, son,’ he said wearily, and her heart plunged at his casual use of the word that to him had no meaning. He glanced round at Charlotte, but she avoided his gaze, her eyes watering from the blow on her cheek. ‘Your mother and I—well, we had some unfinished business—–’
Charlotte had thought Robert’s immobility was due to fear or apprehension, but now she realised how wrong she had been. He was pale, it was true, but with anger, not alarm. Gathering his forces, he charged at the man who had so abused his mother, kicking and punching at him with all the wiry strength he possessed.
Logan held him at bay without too much difficulty, but still Robert managed to kick out with his bare feet, and quickly Charlotte intervened. ‘Robert!’ she cried, grasping his arm and trying to drag him away from Logan. ‘It’s all right. It’s all right! Please—stop this before someone gets hurt!’
It was difficult, but eventually she separated them, shaking Robert gently, forgetting her own pain, both mental and physical, in an attempt to reassure the boy. ‘Listen to me,’ she exclaimed, forcing him to look at her. ‘You don’t understand …’
‘I don’t want to!’ retorted Robert, half tearfully now, as emotion got the better of valour. His lips trembled. ‘If I was older, he wouldn’t dare to touch you!’
‘That’s true,’ agreed Logan heavily, behind him. ‘I wouldn’t. I’m sorry, Robert. I promise you, it won’t happen again.’
The boy tore himself away from his mother and faced the man fearlessly. Watching them, Charlotte was appalled at how alike they were. ‘You bet it won’t!’ he muttered childishly, and Logan’s eyes sought and found hers above her son’s head.
‘I’ll show you the rest of the bungalow,’ he said, in a curiously flat voice, but Charlotte declined.
Drawing herself up to her full height, which in cork-soled sandals was a couple of inches more, she said: ‘We can manage, thank you. We shan’t need your assistance.’
Logan inclined his head wearily. ‘As you wish.’ He turned towards the door, and she wondered why her victory suddenly felt so much like defeat. ‘There are provisions in the kitchen, and the meal my man, Carlos, prepared for you earlier is in the refrigerator. The sanitary arrangements are, I think, self-explanatory.’ He paused, one hand on the lintel. ‘Carlos will fetch your cases from the car, and I will see you both in the morning.’
Charlotte nodded, but Robert muttered: ‘Not if we see you first!’ in a distinctly audible undertone.
Logan’s look narrowed. ‘If you need—anything else, my house is just a dozen yards away along the beach,’ he added quietly, and stepped through the door. ‘Goodnight.’
Robert turned his back and said nothing, but Charlotte acknowledged his farewell with a quick nod, going to the door as he crossed the verandah, and closing it securely behind him. There was a key and she turned it, uncaring whether or not he heard her.
CHAPTER THREE
IT was the sea that awakened her, the persistent sound of the surf breaking on the jaws of the reef a hundred yards away. It was not an unpleasing sound, but it was sufficiently unusual to someone used to the sounds of traffic to disturb the light slumber she had fallen into just before dawn. She lifted her wrist reluctantly, and the broad square face of the masculine watch she wore swam into focus. Six-thirty, she read resignedly. Still too early to get up really, and besides, was she in such a hurry to start the day?
Sun was filtering through the window shutters, dust motes floating in the shafts of light it created. They settled on the square oak dressing table and matching chest of drawers, and on the heavy carved doors of the wardrobe. Apart from these items, and the amply proportioned bed, there wasn’t much else in the room, and the night before she had done no more than unpack Robert’s pyjamas and her nightgown after Carlos had delivered their cases. Not that sleeping attire was absolutely essential, she thought wryly. She had spent the night on the top of the covers, but without her cotton nightgown she might well have found some use for the quilt beneath her.
With a sigh, she sat up and swung her feet to the floor, her toes curling into the woolly rug beside the bed. Immediately her reflection was thrown back at her from the long, if somewhat pitted, mirrors on the wardrobe doors, and she pulled a face at herself as she rose to her feet. The streaked honey-brown hair, which during the day she wore either in a chignon or coiled on top of her head, tumbled about her shoulders from its centre parting. Matthew used to tell her the styles she wore gave her features a Madonna-like innocence, but she wondered what Logan would say to that. She had worn her hair loose in the days when she had known him, and although she was unaware of the fact, with her hair loose about her shoulders, she looked very little older now than she had done then. Life had left her curiously untouched by experience, and her brief affair with Logan had been overshadowed until now by the presence of the child.
Charlotte sighed again, lifting her arms and holding the heavy hair up from her neck. The action lifted her breasts, too, and their pointed fullness was outlined against the thin cotton of her nightgown. For a moment she had a sensuous, wanton beauty, and then she dropped her arms again and turned abruptly away, embarrassed by the intimate trend of her thoughts. Throughout her marriage to Matthew, she had avoided any reminder of what the relationship between a man and a woman could be, but it was impossible to consider the events of the day before without remembering her relationship with Logan, and speculating on what might have been.
She padded across to the window, and thrusting open the shutters gazed out on the vista of sea and sand that awaited her. The sky was translucent, feathered with clouds that had the opacity of mother-of-pearl, the horizon misty gold and indistinct. Nearer at hand, sand crabs scuttled sideways towards the water, and overhead a hawk hung motionless before dropping like a stone to trap its prey. It was a familiar yet an alien world, possessing so much that she understood, and so much that she did not.
She thought unhappily about the previous evening. It had not been a comfortable few hours. After Logan’s departure, Robert had become silent and morose, and she had known he naturally resented the possibility that there might be something else going on about which he knew nothing. It awakened all her fears about him asking about his real father, and her facile explanation that Logan and Matthew had disliked one another had sounded feeble even to her ears. Robert was nobody’s fool, and in consequence he had shown little interest in the rest of the bungalow, and eaten sparingly of the delicious chicken salad she had found in the refrigerator.
But how could she explain her relationship to Logan Kennedy without either telling the truth, which was unthinkable, or involving herself in a tissue of lies and evasions? And why did Logan despise her so for marrying Matthew? What was it to him, after all? Surely she was the one who had most to feel resentful about. Her fingers probed the still tender skin of her cheek, where his hand had connected, and she shivered. The Logan she remembered had not been so ruthless. On the contrary, the strength he had possessed had been tempered with gentleness, a quality of which Charlotte had known little in her lifetime.
Which brought her to another point: if Logan had known who she was before she came to San Cristobal, why hadn’t he stopped her from coming? It didn’t make sense, and the knowledge that she was obliged to spend four weeks on the island before terminating her contract filled her with alarm. Her relationship with Robert had always been so good. Yet now she was in a position to put that relationship in jeopardy
—in more ways than one …
Heaving a sigh, she turned away from the window, surveying the room behind her with troubled eyes. There was still Lisette Fabergé to consider. Exactly what was her relationship with Logan? It was all very well for him to explain that her husband was dead and that she had no one else, but where did they go from there? And when it was obvious that she turned to him for guidance in everything, wasn’t it reasonable to assume that sooner or later he would marry her?
Charlotte’s nerve-endings tightened. It didn’t matter to her what Logan Kennedy should choose to do, she told herself angrily. He had walked out on her eleven years ago, and just because now he was showing masculine hostility at the knowledge that she had quickly found someone else to replace him, there was no reason for her to get involved. But she was involved, a small voice inside her taunted stubbornly. Nevertheless somehow she had to persuade Robert that in spite of their eventful arrival, ultimately the situation was as expected. How ludicrous that sounded, she thought bitterly, realising it would take more than her reassurance to convince her son.
The sound of metal falling on to rubber tiles alerted her to the fact that in spite of the early hour, Robert was already about. Without stopping to dress, she stepped into her mules, and opened the bedroom door. Robert’s bedroom, which was across the hall from her own, was empty, and she padded along the passage to find him.
The kitchen door stood wide and the kettle was almost boiling. Robert, in blue cotton pyjama trousers, was busily setting cups and saucers on a tray, and guessing he meant to surprise her, Charlotte would have drawn back. But the sound of her mules attracted his attention, and he spun round to face her, a slightly shamefaced expression marring his lean features. His black hair flopped untidily over his forehead, and as he lifted his hand to push it back, she could see all the bones of his rib-cage through his pale skin.
‘I—er—I was just making some tea,’ he offered, gesturing towards the tray. ‘Did you—did you sleep well?’
Charlotte moved into the room, glancing round casually at the colour-washed walls and steel units. ‘Did you?’ she countered gently, and he pushed his jaw forward childishly.
‘Not very,’ he mumbled, and then, as the kettle boiled, turned away to make the tea. When the teapot was sitting squarely on the tray beside the cream jug and sugar basin, he added, in a muffled tone: ‘I wish we’d never come here!’
Charlotte sighed, and came round the table which stood in the middle of the floor to get close to him. ‘Do you, Robert?’ she asked softly. ‘Do you really?’
He looked up at her miserably. ‘I didn’t—not at first. I was looking forward to it. All the boys back home said they wished they could come and live in the West Indies, and yesterday morning, when we sailed from Tortola, it was super! It really was.’
‘Then?’
‘That man—Kennedy. He spoilt it.’
Charlotte found herself compelled to ask: ‘Don’t you like him?’
Robert shrugged his bony shoulders. ‘I did—to begin with. I mean,’ he went on, as if to justify himself, ‘his job is jolly interesting, isn’t it? And he knows such a lot about the islands—everything. I was looking forward to talking to him some more—maybe even learning about underwater biology and diving.’
Charlotte shook her head, but she found she could not allow Logan’s son to dismiss his father out of hand. ‘Listen, love,’ she said, looking down at him, her hands resting lightly on his shoulders, ‘nothing has changed. Not so far as you are concerned—–’
‘Yes, it has!’
‘No!’ She squeezed his shoulders more tightly. ‘Robert, what you saw—what you shouldn’t have seen—yesterday has nothing to do with you. What’s between—Mr Kennedy and me has no bearing on your relationship with him.’
‘Of course it does.’
‘Why?’
Robert stared at her. ‘You’re my mother. No one’s going to hit you while I’m around and get away with it.’
‘Oh, love …’ Charlotte felt a ridiculous lump come into her throat, and for once he made no protest when she hugged him. Then she drew back and looked at him again. ‘Robert, you must try to be realistic. Ours is an adult world, and some things can’t be explained. But believe me when I say you shouldn’t prejudge a situation.’
‘You mean, you deserved his slapping you?’
‘Well, I slapped him first,’ admitted Charlotte reluctantly.
‘You did?’ Robert uttered a boyish whoop. ‘Hell, I’d like to have seen that!’
Charlotte shifted impatiently. ‘Maybe you would, but I’d be glad if you’d moderate your language.’
‘Oh, Mum, everybody says hell these days!’
‘Do they?’
‘Sure.’
‘Americanisms, too, I suppose.’
Robert grinned, and a surge of relief swept over her at the knowledge that he didn’t appear to blame her, at least. ‘Where shall we have the tea? he asked, and she suggested they went into her bedroom as they had been accustomed to doing at High Clere.
Sitting cross-legged on her bed, however, Robert returned to the subject she most wanted to avoid. ‘How long is it since you’ve seen Mr Kennedy?’ he asked curiously.
Charlotte was glad of her teacup to disguise her expression, but she determined to get this over with, once and for all. ‘I—er—met him several years ago, in England,’ she replied slowly. ‘I told you that.’ She paused. ‘He and your father—–’
‘Matthew Derby was not my father!’
‘No. Well, as I was saying, they—they met through Matthew’s connections with the university.’
‘And he came to our—to High Clere?’
‘Yes.’
‘Did I meet him?’
Charlotte cleared her throat. ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, I—I expect you were in bed,’ she responded hastily, and despised herself for getting into this position. Finishing her tea, she slid off the bed, and walked across to the windows. ‘It’s a beautiful morning, isn’t it?’
There was silence for so long that eventually she had to turn and look at him, finding him watching her with curiously speculative eyes. Then he smiled, and the momentary chill she had experienced disappeared again.
‘Shall I start school straight away?’ he asked unexpectedly, and the simply question created another problem.
‘I—don’t know,’ she conceded, her dark brows ascending.
‘That’s one of the things we’ll have to find out.’
‘At home, the schools will soon be closing down for the summer holidays,’ Robert reminded her hopefully. ‘There doesn’t seem much point in starting something I’m not going to finish.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Will we be staying here after your probationary month is up?’ he explained.
Charlotte could feel the warm colour invading her cheeks. ‘What makes you ask that question?’
‘I don’t know,’ Robert shrugged. ‘Just last night—well, I heard you moving about in here long after we went to bed.’
Charlotte sighed. ‘As I haven’t even begun working for Madame Fabergé yet, how can I tell?’ she lied unhappily, and wished for once that Robert was no more than Philippe’s age, and therefore less apt to jump to the right conclusions. ‘Now, I think you’d better go. I want to get dressed.’
Robert got obediently off the bed and regarded her with narrow-eyed appraisal. ‘Are you going to tie up your hair?’
Charlotte spread her hands. ‘Does it matter?’
Robert shrugged, hauling up the pyjamas that hung loosely on his hips. ‘Just, I was thinking—well, you’re about the same age as Philippe’s mother, aren’t you?’
‘Yes.’ Charlotte wondered what was coming next.
‘So I just thought that perhaps now that—that he’s dead, you might wear your hair loose for a change.’
‘In this climate? I think not.’
‘You look nicer with it loose. Younger.’
‘Yes. Well, being nursemaid to Philippe and Isabelle requires me to be efficient, that’s all, not glamorous,’ she declared tersely, and Robert made a conciliatory gesture as he went out of the room.
All the same, after she had bathed and made her bed, she did look long and critically at her hair before coiling it into the smooth chignon which curved back from her cheeks, concealing her ears, and resting neatly against the nape of her neck.
Clothes presented another problem. Somehow, she didn’t think Lisette Fabergé would expect her to wear a uniform, but on the other hand, she could hardly appear in another of the expensive models Matthew had bought her. She rummaged in her cases, discarding item after item, and eventually brought out a pair of purple cotton jeans and a matching shirt. They were not new. She had bought them a couple of years ago. But fortunately her figure had changed little, and apart from a slight shrinkage in the pants which made them rather tighter than she would have liked, they looked serviceable.
Robert, however, made her think differently when she appeared to prepare breakfast. ‘That’s better!’ he approved admiringly, prowling round her. ‘I always said you should wear trousers more of ten.’
Charlotte made an impatient gesture. ‘They’re working clothes, that’s all,’ she declared shortly. ‘Now what do you want to eat? There seems to be plenty of fruit. Do you want to try mango?’
They were seated at the kitchen table finishing their meal with toasted rolls and grapefruit marmalade when someone knocked at the verandah door. At once Charlotte’s tension returned, but when Robert went to answer it, she expelled her breath on a sigh when she saw the tall black man waiting outside.
‘Oh—good morning, Carlos,’ she called, putting down her coffee cup. ‘Come in.’
The black man was carrying a basket, and even before he put a foot over the threshold she could smell the delicious aroma of warm bread. ‘Mr Logan, he said you might like some fresh rolls, ma’am,’ he explained, setting the basket down on the table and drawing back the napkin to reveal the crusty brown croissants. ‘But it seems like you’ve had your breakfast.’