Bride's Dilemma

by Violet Winspear

  “There are no ghosts in my past, Tina,” he murmured. “My heart would like to be filled with you—only you.”

  What was he saying? What was he doing? She came alive to the fact that he had eased her back on to her beach-jacket and that his wide, brown shoulders were blocking the sun, that for seconds on end had she lain like this, aware of him, and yet unaware that it was as a lover that he was speaking and acting.

  “No,” her hands pressed against his shoulders and she fought him off, “you mustn’t, Dacier!” She scrambled clear of him, snatched up her jacket and fled to the steps that led upwards and home. She had mounted about five of them, when, thrusting back her tumbling hair, she saw someone confronting her—lean, grim-faced, carved in stone against the wild frangipani that cascaded down the cliff wall.

  “John!” She gazed at him in stunned horror, immediately realizing that from here he would have looked down upon Dacier’s broad back as he leant over her own passive figure. It could only have looked like a love scene!

  “Aren't you going to invite the boy-friend for lunch?” he crisped, his eyes like blue stones in that dark mask of a face. “I mean, let's extend to him the hospitality of the dining room as well.”

  Tina, too stricken for speech, heard a crunch behind her as Dacier mounted the steps. “You must not misconstrue what you have just seen, Trecarrel,” he said. “We were talking, nothing more.”

  “The indications were that it was an absorbing —conservation.” John had never looked more savage and biting, and as he swept a look of sheer contempt over Tina, she shrank for instinctive protection against Dacier’s bulk—an action that triggered John to further sarcasm. “If the pair of you must indulge in clandestine thrills, then you’d better do it where I or my servants are not likely to overlook the proceedings. Or has the affair reached a stage where the pair of you are beyond controlling your feelings?”

  “John—how dare you say that!” Tina gasped, violated by the conclusion to which he had jumped. “I won’t be accused in this way—it’s uncalled-for!”

  “My dear,” he leant forward with glittering eyes, “even with your husband you don’t get sociable in such a relaxed position . . . my God, it’s the reverse, isn’t it?”

  His scorn lashed, and like a small animal driven by sheer pain she clawed him in return. “Not all of us want love affairs with other people, so don’t go judging me by your own standards,” she retorted.

  He stared, bitterly, straight down into her eyes. The blood drained away from under his tan and his face had a carved, livid look, then he swung on his heel and leapt up the steps, stumbling once as though his left leg almost let him down. Tina gave a small cry, unaware when she saw that, then he had gone and she was turning anguished eyes to Dacier.

  “I—I never meant to say that to him,” she whispered.

  Dacier gripped her elbows with large, warm hands. “Poor little one, what can I say to help you? This man with the scarred heart that still bleeds is the one you love, eh?”

  “I wonder if it can be love?” she sighed. “It feels more like hell on earth.”

  “Tina,” his fingers tightened on her arms, “is this marriage not a normal one? You understand that it can be annulled if that is the case.”

  “I know.” She spoke tiredly and wished to be alone with her wounds and her regrets. It was all over now, this strange dream of happiness at which she had clutched as one does a drifting leaf in the fall, holding it tight, wishing with all youth’s ardor, only to find it crumbling to brittle little pieces. “Yes, I know, Dacier. I daresay that will happen now.”

  He said no more until they readied the headland, holding her hand and helping her to mount the wide steps. Then they stood outlined against the clear blue sky, a man and a girl in all their promising youth who might have looked like sweethearts to a casual observer. The trade wind blew the fine strands of hair in a loop about Tina’s neck, and as she disentangled them she remembered so clearly another headland above a sea that was not a burning sapphire. She remembered a long shadow falling across the windswept grass and a voice saying: “Stand just as you are, gazing out to sea as though the realization of a dream awaits you on the other side of the horizon . . .”

  She shivered, and Dacier must have thought she was looking ahead in trepidation. Strangely enough there was no fear in her, only a defeated hopelessness, a void, a feeling that the inevitable had come to pass.

  “Come with me, now,” Dader said, his fingers warm over the breakable bones of her shoulders. “It is plain from what I have just seen of John Trecarrel that he’s a man with a fierce temper, and I feel afraid for you, mignonne.”

  Tina’s eyes clung to Dacier’s, a catch in her throat when she recalled John’s passionate loss of control the evening he had bruised her with his lips and his hands. She had thought, then, that he was furious enough to kill her, yet with that loyalty which is part of feminine love she said, lightly: “Oh, I don’t suppose he’ll beat me.”

  “I was not thinking of a—beating, ma chère.” Dacier’s deep, gay voice was changed and ominous, while a cloud rolled over the face of the sun and the brightness died for a long moment, like a wiped out smile.

  “You’re referring to John’s first wife, aren’t you, Dacier?” Tina spoke sharply. “It’s true she died in strange circumstances, but John wasn’t— he wasn’t entirely to blame for that. I—I suppose you’ve been listening to Paula’s distorted side of the story?”

  “Paula talks, I listen, but I draw my own conclusions,” he replied quietly. “I would say that Joanna deliberately sought death and that it was hushed up by friends of the Trecarrels.”

  “John almost died himself, did Paula tell you that?” Tina was husky with emotion, and as the sun blossomed hotly again it was as though she stood in a flood of revelation. Words re-echoed in her mind, John demanding of her, their first night at Blue Water, that she give him peace, not nagging suspicions about other women. Ralph insinuating that Joanna was possessive to the point where it was no longer normal. Rachel Courtney backing up this statement on the cay when she had said that Joanna seemed helplessly appealing . . . and unable to share a man with his work.

  Joanna hadn’t wanted to share John with anything ... anyone ... at any time. She had made his life such a hell of suspicion and demands that Paula’s silky, mocking provocation would have drawn him like a magnet. But it hadn’t been love which he had felt for her. It had been a man, as he had thought, with an adult woman.

  “The Carrish cousins possessed my husband and tore him down the middle, like tigresses!” Tina gasped. She shot an anguished glance towards Blue Water House, whose great roof showed through the trees of the garden. She wanted to run to John, to give him all that he hadn’t found before in his search for love . . .

  “You want to dash again like a—a moth into flame,” Dacier murmured whimsically. “And that is love, eh, a pain we cannot keep away from.” His hands slipped from her shoulders. “Go to him, mignonne, try to remedy the damage. If you need —a friend, I shall be waiting at my hotel.”

  “Thank you, Dacier.” She smiled at him, then swung her beach-jacket over her shoulder, the touchingly jaunty action of a soldier going into action. “I’ll be seeing you.”

  She walked away from him, the big man who might have loved her without ever hurting her, along the path that led to John. Her heart had little hope to feed on, but she loved him and she was going to tell him so. If, after that, he still wished her to go, she would set her teeth and go.

  She entered the fan-cooled hall of the house and ran upstairs to her room. She stood still a moment, listening for a movement from John’s room, but everything was strangely webbed in silence. Hot and sticky from the beach, she took a quick tepid shower, then slipped into a lightly pleated cream silk dress. She brushed her hair and French-pleated it, then put on a dash of lipstick, for there was little color under her light honey tan. The enormity of separation from John might be gaping ahead of her, yet she had to force herself to
calmness and go downstairs. The rosewood clock chimed as she walked past it, silvery on the quietness, and she breathed the scent of the syringa she had arranged yesterday in an antique vase on the hall table. She was conscious again of the waiting stillness in possession of the house, and with her hand on the knob of the dining room door she stole a glance at the splendidly carved double staircase —did someone watch unseen from that pool of ruby on the landing, lips already curved in a smile of victory?

  Tina’s skin prickled clammily, and apprehension quickened in her when she entered the dining room. It was empty, and there was only one place laid for lunch!

  She pressed the service-bell and when Nathaniel came in she almost wept her relief at seeing his seamed face and familiar grey-haired dignity. The house, after all, hadn’t been taken over by ghosts !

  In his soft, polite voice the old manservant told her that Massa John had gone somewhere in his car about half an hour ago. “He say not to lay his place for lunch, ma’am.”

  “All right, Nathaniel.” She managed a smile. "I’ll make do with salad and not bother with dessert.”

  He withdrew from the room and quietly closed the door, leaving her alone to pick at the food on her plate, the honey-panelled room loud with questions. Coffee was brought to her and she drank fit too hot and too quickly, little snakes of perspiration trickling down her back as she paced about, unable to relax, her heart like lead in her breast.

  She kept thinking of Paula Carrish, deadly certain that if she were to go to the phone in the hall and dial Ralph’s number, he would confirm the horrible suspicion that John had gone to the plantation, that he was with Paula, the woman to whom he had turned before!

  Tina’s hands came together in unconscious supplication and she found herself crossing the hall to the staircase. She mounted to the gallery and came awake like a sleepwalker outside the door of John’s studio. She turned the handle and felt the cool air of the room waft against her skin, saw the pallid sculptures with their secret eyes, breathed the moist clay mingling with the nutty fragrance of pipe tobacco.

  She left the door ajar behind her and moved over to his work bench, where she touched the tools he had been handling that morning. Her fingers crept to the damp edges of the cloth draping the figure he had been working on since their return from Barbados. He had not told her whether it was a man or a woman, and whenever she had probed he had smiled and told her she must await the final unveiling.

  She might not be here for that, and, heart thumping, she lifted back the damp muslin and she stated, slow hot tears filling her eyes so that through a wavering mist she gazed at the figure of a girl with windblown hair encircling her slender neck, thin, crane-like limbs, straining forward as though to see over the rim of girlhood into the well of womanhood. It was beautiful, not because she was beautiful, but made so by something John had put into it, a poised magic, a quality that transferred a quite ordinary girl into hope, life, promise ...

  “Oh, John!” she whispered, her eyes wet with tears, face to face with the girl John had found and wanted and then lost in the wife who had questioned every kiss, every caress. The girl on the cliff—herself!

  But why hadn't he told her? Why hadn’t he said...

  Then with a gasp she swung to face the door, hearing the click of a high heel, breathing a sweet, expensive perfume. A cloud of dark bronze hair framed a cream-skinned face, a thin red mouth slashed the cream, and dark brows winged above jade-green eyes. There was no mistaking that sleek silhouette, and Tina’s heart went thump. Paula—here! Had John brought her back with him?

  Paula's high heels clicked again on the parquet. She carried a beige bag, her long legs were webbed in sensuous dark nylons, and she wore one of those silk sheaths that suited her so well. It was leaf-green and perfect with her coloring. “Did I startle you, sweetie?” she drawled. “You looked at me just now as though I were a ghost who had walked in on you. Well, the door was open and I—” she broke off and her jade eyes settled on John’s unfinished sculpture of Tina. There was no mistaking the subject, the features, the limbs and even the pose, which Tina had a way of unconsciously assuming. Youth; unsure, leggy yet graceful, needing so much to be wanted.

  “So you’ve been posing for John?” Paula said.

  “N—not exactly. He’s working from sketches.”

  “It’s quite inspired, isn’t it? Might turn out to be one of the best pieces he’s ever worked on.” Paula stretched a long hand to the figure, so suddenly that her action created a threat, a glint of unholy glee in her eyes as Tina moved quickly to protect the precious thing. “Leave it alone!” she ordered. “You’ll mark it.”

  “My, we are touchy,” Paula laughed silkily. “As though I’d damage anything belonging to John! You don’t really think I would, surely?”

  “I think you make your own rules, regardless of who gets hurt.” The retort was out of Tina’s mouth before she could stop it.

  “Really?” The green eyes narrowed. “You don’t like me, do you, Tina? Well, it's mutual; dislike usually is. Whereas love and hate are in bondage to each other. The hairline in between is often so indistinguishable that we're hardly sure whether we’re aflame with one or the other. On the other hand there’s no mistaking dislike, it’s almost a taste in the mouth, and I never had much of a taste for milk and honey. Nor did John, therefore it’s no surprise to me that he’s grown bored after nibbling your sweet surface and finding only bread underneath.”

  Paula studied Tina under painted lashes, the tensing of her body against John’s work bench, the way her hands clenched the sides of her dress. “You were a fool, you know, to marry John. He’s years too old for you, past the age for the kisses in the moonlight that stir you young things. Then again—but perhaps I shouldn’t be too frank— unles you’d like me to be quite open about things?” “We might as well let our hair right down,” Tina agreed, feeling herself on the edge of a landslide, reckless of falling, knowing she had been building up false hopes just because John made a sculpture of her. That Paula was here, and obviously aware that Tina and he had quarrelled, was confirmation that he had gone to her and talked and agreed that the women had better clear the air between them, that he was sick and tired of the whole business. That was how he had looked on the beach steps when he had swung away from her, bitter and tired and as though he never wanted to see her again.

  The other woman wandered about the studio, touching things, smiling secretly as though she were recalling the occasions when she had modelled for John. She paused in front of a faceless, half-finished Greek sculpture, then she turned and said to Tina: “You’re a novice, a schoolgirl. You’ve nothing to give a man like John.”

  “H—he married me,” Tina fought back.

  “Oh, that!” Paula dismissed the absurdity with a sweep of her hand. “Have you ever heard the Greek legend about there being only one true love for each man and woman? It’s true, you know, and all the obstacles in the world won’t stop them from coming together in the end.” She stood there looking at Tina, superbly groomed, chiselled out of stone shot through with strange fires. “You asked for frankness, so I’ll be frank, my dear. John loves me, and half a dozen marriages wouldn’t ever keep him from me.”

  Tina had gone white to her hairline, her lips and nostrils were chalky. “Why,” she asked, “did John marry me?”

  “Oh, the answer to that is quite simple,” Paula drawled. “Under that piratical exterior of his, John is a bit of a Puritan. He doesn’t like affairs, and he needed a whip to lash my back. He blames me, poor foolish darling, for Joanna’s death. Naturally I had nothing to do with it, but for years that suspicion has stood between us. He’s hurt me, Tina, in more ways than one, but that’s love, isn’t it? If we’re afraid of getting hurt, we shouldn’t play with fire, but how many of us can help grabbing those pretty coals ?”

  Paula blew on her fingertips, smiled her secret smile, and looked the embodiment of a woman who was close at last to getting what she had always wanted. She looked Tina
over, the young body that had grown less angular in the weeks she had been here, the pale skin that was faintly honeyed, the wood-smoke eyes dark in this moment with the pain of shattered hopes. “You know,” Paula drawled, “Dacier d’Andremont is quite taken with you, and he’s lots richer than John. Why don’t you latch on to him?”

  “I don’t happen to want him,” Tina retorted. “I love John.”

  “Too bad. I’ve heard he has a fabulous home on Martinique, Bellecombe I think he calls it, and you’re much more his type than you ever were John's. Johnny’s a complex person; moody, difficult, passionate. Can’t you see for yourself that he and I are a pair?”

  Tina nodded tiredly. Oh, how tired she was. She wanted to flop across her bed, to weep, to sleep, and then to go. She glanced round the studio in a kind of daze. “Where is John?” she asked, tears of longing and loss making her speak thickly.

  “I’m here, honey,” said his voice, and in through the door he walked. Tina stared at him blindly. No, she couldn't bear any more—she couldn’t face both of them and hear it all again, that she was out and Paula was in. She fled to the door, but he stepped in front of her.

  “Let me go!” she gasped. “Paula’s told me everything—there’s no more to talk about.”

  “I think there is, Tina.” His voice was deep, dark, compelling, and she looked up at him. “There’s quite a lot to talk about, my love.”

  My love! She went weak with the shock of it, and then his arm had latched her to his side, tightly, and above her head she heard him say crisply to Paula: “I’ve been outside the door listening fascinated to the lying tale you’ve been spinning this child. It nearly came off a second time, didn’t it, but after chatting with Ralph for a while I began to get the oddest feeling that you might have come over here to start on Tina. Maybe it was Ralph’s restlessness—the poor guy knows you pretty well, doesn’t he? He knows that years ago you lied to Joanna about that crazy friendship I struck up with you, which I’ve regretted ever since, which was never the love affair you wanted. I didn’t love you then, and I don’t love you now. Whatever it was that attracted me— well, it died years ago. It died when Jo died.” Paula, taut as a lance, gazed back at him with the glittering green eyes of a tigress. She was passionate with fury, her scarlet mouth suddenly lashing at him with words of hate—hate, not love.