“Yes, this is Tina.” There was no more of that wounding mockery in his voice, and he even smiled down briefly into Tina’s eyes. In front of Rachel Courtney, who was obviously an old and valued friend, he wanted them to appear a normal, honeymooning couple. “Honey, meet Rachel, one of the nicest people in the West Indies,” he said.
“How do you do, Miss Courtney?” Tina held out her hand, which was taken in two big ringed hands and soundly squeezed.
“We don't go in for ceremony on Orange Coral Cay,” boomed Rachel. “Call me by my first name, dear child, it makes me feel young. H’m you’re surprisingly young, aren’t you, and a bit on the timid side? Don’t know what I was expecting, someone modern and flashy, I suppose.”
“I thought you knew me better than that, Rachel,” John laughed.
“Ah, but you’re at a funny age, dear boy, and likely to get entangled with a smart, brittle piece now you’ve got silver in your hair. Don’t think because I never got off the shelf that I know nothing about men.” Again she looked Tina over and commented, with a shake of her grey head. “When I think of the lumber I was forced to wear when I was a girl! Woollen underpants and a flannel petticoat, a top petty of moire with a flounce, a stiff corset, a spencer, black stockings— how times have changed. All the goods are on display these days.”
“Yes, now we know what we’re getting for our money—though it’s true we can still be fooled,” John added, near to Tina’s ear as he bent to give the basset-hound an affectionate cuff.
She winced at the dig, and as she followed their hostess into the sun porch she wondered at her own ability to love so deeply a man who had never really cared for her. Gone was that transient affection she had aroused in him back in England. Shattered her dream of turning it to love.
Chapter Seven
A FAN purred steadily in the sun porch, but the air wasn’t cooled, it was just circulated heat. Tina cradled a long glass of an exotic concoction squeezed from passionfruits and chilled by fragments of diamond-bright ice; her rattan chair faced towards the garden so that she didn’t have to look at John each time she raised her eyes. Through the tamarind trees glinted a triangle of blue-green ocean—tormentingly blue-green—and she longed to plunge to her ear-tips in water and cool off her perspiring skin. Her shoulder throbbed, her heart ached, and it was sheer willpower that prodded her to conversational efforts.
There was no getting away from the fact that she liked Rachel Courtney, who possessed a happy quality of making people feel at home, but this particular afternoon Tina wasn’t in the mood for anyone’s company except her own. She wanted to wallow in the misery that locked her as palpably as the heat the stormy sun was shedding over everything.
The plants and flowers stood motionless as plastic creations, while lizards lay on the crazy paving like petrified images. The basset-hound was now sprawled in the shade beside John’s chair, his jowl propped on one of the large sandals. John had slung his jacket over the porch rail, and as he chatted with Rachel he looked entirely relaxed —also very attractive—in a short-sleeved tan silk shirt.
“Has Liza taken to her new mother?” Rachel wanted to know.
“Amazingly so,” John drawled, while Tina numbly wondered what the child’s reaction would be when her ‘new mother’ departed from Ste. Monique.
“I hope the pair of you have plans to give your Liza a sister or brother,” Rachel went blithely on. “Having had my own life rather messed up by being an only child, I’m on the side of sensiblesized families.” The ringed fingers played with a rope of crystals. “As Johnny knows, Tina, I wouldn’t leave my ailing father long ago to marry a Canadian rancher, the only man who ever mattered to me. I’ve never put all the blame on my father for the sacrifice I made, but I’ve often regretted the fact that I had no sisters or brothers who could have eased my father’s loneliness had I married. His health wouldn’t permit him to travel at that time and he dreaded being left on his own. Ah well, it does no good to rake over dead ashes. It’s best to let them sift away with the winds of time—but now and again a spark blows back to bring a tear or two.”
Then Rachel broke into a cheery smile and gave Tina’s knee a squeeze. “You must fill Blue Water House with some lively youngsters, my dear. The place has stood empty and waiting too long.”
Tina caught her bottom lip between her teeth— the lip that was still tender from those ruthless kisses last night—and couldn’t help glancing at John for his reaction to what Rachel had said. His face was dark and impassive, his blue eyes resting upon her a cool, cynical look that made her feel awful, as though she had betrayed him. Yet surely the betrayal had been his? When he had hauled her into his arms, he had been driven not by a need of her, his wife, but by a hunger for the woman whose name he had locked between their lips during those savage kisses.
Savage... yet thrilling to remember, tightening the nerves under Tina’s rib-cage so that she caught her breath. If only she could have felt that he was kissing her like that because it was she who charged him to such emotion . . .
Why had he not married Paula? Could he possibly suspect that she had had something to do with Joanna’s death? How terrible for John if true! Tina moistened her dry mouth with her drink, then set aside the glass because her wrist was shaking, her skin clammy. The cocoa plants, the poincianas and hortensias, were surging together into a blaze of color, while the voices beside her were fading away down a tunnel. As she realized that she was coming over faint, she did the usual panicky thing—rose to her feet. At once the gaily patterned porch floor wavered towards her, but before she felt its impact a pair of arms closed strong and hard around her. A voice spoke her name in a tone of alarm, then she went out like a light.
She revived on a bed, the ammonia of smelling-salts stinging her nostrils, and the bolster of Rachel’s bosom supporting her. “Wh—what a silly thing to do,” she murmured.
“Rest easy, dear child,” came Rachel’s soothing voice, “and take another sniff or two at my smelling bottle. There, are you beginning to feel a little better?”
“Yes, th—thanks.” Never in her life before had Tina passed out like that, and she felt shaken and scared. Rachel gave her a drink of water, then went over to the window and lowered the blind.
“You aren’t used to the kind of heat we’re getting today, dear child,” she said, but as she returned to the foot of the big bedstead, with its tall posts surmounted by carved pineapples, she was looking at Tina with twinkles in her eyes. “You’re a bride, of course, and I could go jumping to a more pleasant conclusion. Is there any chance that you threw that faint because you’re starting a family?”
Tina shook her head in such an emphatic fashion that Rachel raised her eyebrows. “Well, you know best, my dear. Not nervous about producing an infant, are you?”
“Not in the least, Rachel.” To hide what might be showing in her eyes, the longing for such an occurrence and the pain of knowing it was not to be, Tina turned to up-end a pillow, against which she rested her languid body. She didn’t like this lassitude, for though she wasn’t physically tough, she had a healthy constitution. It was doubtless the heat combined with emotional worry which had caused her to flake out. “Did John carry me up here?” she asked.
Rachel nodded and re-seated herself on the bed beside Tina. “Have you anything on your mind you’d like to get off it?” she demanded frankly. "I know Johnny can be close-mouthed when he likes, and if there are things he won’t talk about, then I might be able to provide a few answers. It would be only human of you, Tina, to be curious about his first wife.”
Tina’s fingers clenched the lace bedspread, then in a driven way she broke into a question. “Was her death an accident, Rachel?”
“You want me to be quite frank?”
“Please!”
“I think a spat with her cousin led to her death.”
“Oh, Rachel!” Tina shuddered from head to toe, and clearly as though she had been on that yacht she saw Joanna leap over the side, driven to he
r premature death by things Paula had revealed about her association with John. By a cruel quirk of fate he had been on the beach that morning and he had seen his wife plunge into the sea. He must have known that Paula was the indirect cause of her death, yet he had protected her and kept quiet. His reason for doing so was so apparent that Tina could hardly bear the torment of it.
“Let the dead ashes sift away, my dear,” Rachel advised, pressing a large, warm hand over Tina’s left one, white-knuckled and winking its rubies as it clenched and unclenched. “Help Johnny to find a fresh happiness.”
But he made his own past misery, Tina clamored to reply. He let himself get tangled up with Paula ...
“I knew Joanna well,” Rachel said quietly. “She was vividly attractive and at the same time she seemed helplessly appealing. She was the type a young and artistic man would be drawn to, and she was desperately attached to him. Love is always a precarious state of heart and mind when it’s a total dependence upon another person for every scrap of joy and happiness. It can eat away at the fabric of marriage, and if Johnny’s first marriage went wrong, the blame can’t be laid entirely at his door. A man gives half of himself to his work, the other half to his wife, and the wisest women accept this. Some are not so wise.”
“Joanna wasn’t?” Tina murmured.
“Unfortunately not, dear child.”
“A—and because of that he—he had an affair with Paula?” The angles of Tina’s face sharpened as she put the question that must now receive an answer.
Rachel shrugged her heavy shoulders and pursed her lips. There was a silence filled with the cat-purr of a fan and the thudding of Tina’s heart. “I’ve seen a lot of life, my dear,” Rachel said, “and I’ve learned not to judge the mistakes of others. In one way or another we pay for them, and if Johnny ever felt anything for Paula Carrish he has paid for it and put it out of his life. Passion is an exotic but quick-dying flower. Love is the evergreen, if treated with a care that does not smother it, and it goes on and on, come rain or shine. If that’s how you care for Johnny, then don’t let anything crush it out of existence.”
“W—what if he doesn’t care quite so much for me?” Tina asked.
Rachel’s eyes searched the pale, troubled face framed in the bamboo-straight hair. “Love often springs from need, my dear, and Johnny must need you, otherwise he wouldn’t have married you.” The big, kindly woman patted Tina’s cheek, then heaved herself to her feet. “Have a little rest, it will do you good.”
After she had gone from the big, dim room with its smell of crushed lavender, old black walnut, and sundried linen, Tina lay in her lassitude staring at the ceiling, the faint breeze from the fan cooling her throat and forehead. Could Rachel be right about John needing her? Was there still hope for them, even now, when they were poised on the razor-edge of a parting? He must care about hurting Liza, and to deprive her of the mother she so obviously needed would be sheer heartlessness. And he wasn’t heartless. He had loved Joanna until her possessiveness had driven him from her.
Love, surely the most painful and inexplicable emotion in the world. Something you couldn’t grasp, yet tangible enough to stab the heart as it was stabbing Tina’s right now. Sometimes stronger than you were, so that you hurt the very people you would die for.
John had known why Joanna had wanted to die. He had tried to stop it from happening, and afterwards he had protected Paula, but in so doing he had also protected his wife’s name. If she had leapt intentionally from that yacht to the rocks and the sea, then she had taken her own life. Better, far better, to call it an accident and not let Liza grow up with the stigma of a maternal suicide hanging over her.
Tina’s breast rose on a shaky sigh. In an agony of apprehension at what John intended doing; tearless and yet grieving, she drifted off to sleep.
She awoke a couple of hours later to find the dark bedroom lit by flashes of lightning. Thunder roared and she could hear the pounding of tropical rain. So the storm had broken, which meant that John wouldn’t attempt the crossing back to Ste. Monique until the weather quietened down . . .
Then Tina sat up sharply. Unless he had gone home without her, leaving her in Rachel’s charge! Maybe until Monday, when he would return with her baggage and an air-fiight ticket! Nerves leaping, she slipped off the bed and was shown the door by a flare of steel-bright lightning. She turned the knob, stepped out on to the landing, and then stood motionless, relief nearly stopping her heart as a tall figure came towards her carrying an oil-lamp.
“I was just coming to see how you were feeling.” John was now quite close and gazing down at her with concerned eyes. “You still look washed out.”
“I’m all right,” she said. “The heat was a bit too much for me, that’s all. The air feels cooler now it’s started to rain.”
He nodded and still scanned her in the leaping light of the lamp in his hand. Her hair was in disarray from her prolonged nap, and she looked small, bemused and fragile outlined against the dark wood of the door. John put out his other hand and, inadvertently, touched the shoulder he had bruised with angry fingers. Tina winced before she could stop herself, and, his eyes gone narrow, he deliberately slipped the strap of her dress and bared her discolored skin.
“My doing?” His voice was made even harsher by a roll of thunder.
“I—I bruise easily,” she managed, putting up a hand and covering the marks. “How long has it been storming?”
“About an hour—look, Tina, I didn’t mean to hurt you—”
“I know.” Her throat moved painfully as she swallowed the lump that rose to it. “I made you furious with my—my silliness last night. You’re my husband. You have rights—”
“Rights!” He ground out the word. “God, the way we abuse them! I scared you sick, and all day it’s been on my conscience. I said things coming here that were mean and uncalled-for. Tina,” his fingers played with the ends of her hair, “if you want to go away Monday, then it’s okay by me. A marriage without love forces you to do nothing that you find—repellent.”
The blood seemed to drain from Tina’s heart as he said this, and she clutched wildly at her only valid excuse for begging a reprieve. “Liza would be so hurt if I went away,” she exclaimed.
“You want to stay for Liza’s sake, eh?” A brief smile cut lines in his face, but his eyes in the lamplight looked tired and sardonic. “You’ve grown to care for her, haven’t you ?”
“Very much.” Relief seeped back and warmed Tina's voice, lit a brightness in her eyes. “I didn’t enjoy much of a childhood myself and Liza’s become a sort of compensation for that. We—need each other, I think.”
She held her breath and waited for him to say that he, too, needed her, but instead he tweaked her hair and said in a dry voice: “You don’t have to look at me with such big and apprehensive eyes, Tina. If you stay at Blue Water I shan’t expect you to make any sacrifices.” He paused, and she was about to break into speech when he left her dumb by adding: “There are compensations for the taking on Ste. Monique, and I’ll not starve for— diversions. Now let’s go down before Rachel comes dragging up to find out what’s keeping us. We’re dining here, by the way. It would he madness to risk going home in the launch while this storm is blowing.”
Tina preceded him down the rather narrow stairway on legs that felt they didn’t belong to her. How could she help but guess what he had meant —that there was always a compensation for him in the seductive form of Paula Carrish!
Over a pot of China tea, without milk because it spoiled the smoky flavor, Rachel said she was delighted at the onset of the storm because it meant that Tina and John would now be sharing her usual lonely dinner.
An hour later she was beaming as she came bustling into the bedroom where Tina was combing her hair after a refreshing bath. Adjoining this room was a dressing-slot where John was tidying himself up. “Have you ever worn a sari, dear child?” Rachel wanted to know.
Tina surveyed the long silk slip and length of opalescent s
hantung which hung over her hostess’s arm. “Why, no,” she said, looking intrigued. “I think they’re very pretty.”
“I can’t lend you a dinner-gown of mine, it would look like a tent,” Rachel announced, “so I’m going to show you how to wear a sari. You have exactly the figure for it, a pert little bosom and a boyish bottom. Game, my child, to give that husband of yours a nice surprise?” She lowered her voice and winked at the adjoining door.
Tina met Rachel’s eyes and found it impossible to spoil this kindly woman’s fun by refusing to let herself be dolled up. With a smile of acquiescence she rose from the dressing-table bench and came over to finger the glimmering shantung. “How lovely! Is it the genuine article?” she asked.
“Absolutely. I lived in India when I was a girl. My father was a Government official there and that’s where he picked up the bug that ruined his health. I've always liked warm climates, that’s why I came to live here when he died. Now off with your dress, and I’ll show you how those wonderful-looking Indian girls make themselves even more attractive.”
Rachel’s rather primitive electricity had failed owing to the storm, and the bedroom in which Tina dressed was lit by a couple of oil-lamps. It could have been their leaping golden light that added a touch of mystery to her appearance, for when she was finally arrayed in the sari she found herself gazing into the mirror at a sylph-like stranger. A pulse hammered in her throat, for the exotic garment certainly did something for her. It went with her high cheekbones, strangely colored eyes, and pale hair whirled into a cone-shaped pleat.
“Very nice,” Rachel murmured, straightening a fold of the sari. “Do you like yourself?”
Tina would have been very unfeminine if she hadn’t liked the reflection at which she was gazing. “That saying about fine feathers certainly applies to me,” she laughed, a hand against the excited pulse in her throat.
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