Mariam’s face wavered in a blur of tears, but the snap of her fingers was decisive, her contemptuous words rang clear.
‘Fool! Why don’t you stay? You know you are insanely in love with him!’
Mercifully, the children were still in the desert, so at least she was to be spared their tearful goodbyes. Alya had refused to be comforted, only a few moments ago she had run from the room in tears, unable to accept that Dove was actually leaving. Only one goodbye remained to be said. She would have been glad to prove right Mariam’s accusation of cowardice by dodging the last heartrending interview, but she knew she had to see Marc Blais just once more, to feast her eyes upon a face she would never be able to forget, hoping his last words would be kind so that in the barren years that lay ahead she might feel some small sense of warmth when she thought of him, have one lovely
memory that neither time nor distance could erode.
From outside in the courtyard she heard the revving of an engine—the Land Rover to which her luggage had already been transported was waiting to take her to the airstrip. She suppressed a sob, picked up her handbag, and made her way downstairs to the study.
The door stood slightly ajar, so without bothering to knock she slipped inside, closing it quietly behind her.
Marc’s back was turned towards her as, erect and very still, he stood gazing out of a window.
‘I’ve come ...’ Her voice was a mere whisper, so she cleared her throat and tried again. ‘I’ve come to say goodbye, and to promise that I will repay the money I owe you in small but regular instalments. It may take some time to clear the debt completely,’ she faltered. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’
Although she could tell by the stiffening of his shoulders that he had heard he did not turn round. The lean frame, toughened by the rigours of military training, remained tense—as rigidly alert as he had been trained to be during dangerous nights in the desert when one missed footfall, one second’s lapse of concentration, could have spelled disaster.
Dove found his silence unnerving. Drawing upon her small reserve of courage, she quivered, ‘My transport is waiting. Have you nothing to say to me before I go?’
Swiftly he wheeled, as if her words had acted as a bayonet in his back, showing forbidding features and a grim mouth with one corner pulled downward following the line of the jagged, pulsating scar. ‘The money is of no consequence,’ he dismissed darkly. ‘What is important,’ he continued in an unemotional tone, ‘is the fact that I owe you an apology which you would be quite in order to refuse because I realise now that my behaviour towards you has been unforgivable.’ He side-stepped a low brass coffee table to advance towards her, his eyes scanning her stunned face, penetrating, searching ...
For what? She wished she knew! A soaring of fear sent her backing away from him, fear that his tense nearness might be more than her nerves could cope with. ‘I think,’ carefully she picked her words, knowing how imperative it was that she should sound composed, ‘that neither of us has been faultless. The kindest thing we can say of one another, Marc, is that we were each in our own way ... prejudiced.’ ‘Marc?’ He seized upon her slip. Leaving a mere foot of space between them, he wondered aloud, ‘That is the first time you have called me by name. Why?’ he shot with such suddenness that she jerked. ‘Is it because only at this hour of departure are you able to feel more kindly towards me?’ ‘No one could ever feel kindly towards you,’ she replied a trifle bitterly, distrusting the angle of a hawklike head, poised as if to swoop.
He relaxed, yet kept her narrowly pinned in his sight. ‘Which would seem to imply that I must be an object of either love, hatred, or indifference.’ He might have been thinking aloud. ‘If you hated me,’ he continued slowly, ‘you would have left without saying goodbye. I know you are not indifferent,’ he paused as if curious about the swift rush of fire to her cheeks, then shocked her with the casually flung question, ‘Can there be any connection with love?’
Dove’s heart skipped a beat, then raced to make up for lost time. ‘Of course not!’ Fervently, she hoped that the tremble in her voice would pass for anger. Fingernails cut into her palms as she fought for control, urging herself to remember that at that very moment the Land Rover was being revved up by a driver anticipating her arrival and that with a little extra effort, just a few more seconds of composure, she would be able to walk from his presence without having betrayed her feelings.
The fierce denial seemed to have the required effect. He stepped away, then swung on his heel to resume his position by the window.
‘Then this really is goodbye, Dove.’
She turned towards the door, but was rooted to the spot, mesmerised by the sadness of a voice that continued, ‘I shall always remember you as I saw you the morning after our wedding—your small breasts, round as pomegranates, veiled in virgin white; creamy, unblemished skin; large, trusting eyes; the slender, curvaceous body I had held tightly in my arms all during a night so prolonged it seemed a miniature eternity. I promised you hell,’ he tossed across his shoulder, ‘so perhaps it was fitting that that promise should rebound upon my own head.’
A hot blush scorched her from head to toe—heat born of deep humiliation. Through clenched teeth she managed to accuse, ‘You’re never satisfied unless you’re tormenting me!’
He swung to face her, his eyes blazing. ‘Torment was a stranger to me until you introduced him—now we are close companions!’
She stared across the width of the room. He sounded as tortured as she felt! Yet she could be wrong—it was not in his nature to suffer, his role was that of the punisher! This could be a last attempt to break down her defences; defeat was unknown to him. He wanted her, but only as another medal to pin upon his chest as proof that once again he had been victorious.
In no way was she going to pander to his conceited male arrogance!
She wheeled towards the door. Her hand was actually turning the knob when she heard him call out—not a command, more an utterance of despair. ‘Dove, don’t go!’ She stiffened, unable to believe she had heard right, then heard a word so alien to his nature its sound ripped from his resentful throat. ‘Please!’
She had no idea who moved first, whether it was he to her or she to him, but only an infinitesimal second passed before she was in his arms sobbing her disbelief of his fiercely whispered words of love.
‘Amour de mon coeur!’ The endearment pierced her state of blissful euphoria. ‘Je me consume pour toi!’ A delicious trembling shot through her body when, with a hesitation she found more consoling than words, he impressed upon her upturned mouth the first kiss of tenderness they had ever shared. She revelled in an awkwardness that betrayed him a stranger to feminine appeal; gloried in his uncertainty as he struggled to cope with a situation completely new to him. In the past he had dispensed rough justice to her sex because he had considered women were deserving of nothing better, but now his passion was having to be leashed, his hard body held tightly in check lest the girl in his arms should become frightened, drowned by a dam-burst of passion.
Her unconditional surrender stretched his control to the limit. Her lips parted beneath his, returning fire with fire, her body sapped the strength from his as she clung to his rock-hard shoulders, utterly dependent upon his mercy,
trusting, trembling, eager to fulfil his every need.
Ragged, disjointed words tore from his lips. ‘Mon ange! Je t’adore! Words she felt were unique because though they might have been whispered by many men to many women she knew she was the first and only one to hear them from him. ‘How I love the delicious warmth of you,’ he breathed against her ear. ‘You are made for love, mon bijou. Is it love, this painful, searing flame that burns so ferociously through my body? Cool, adorable flower,’ he kissed her throat, her cheeks, her tender brow, turning her bones to water as he pleaded with rough humility, ‘Bear with me, sweet Dove. I, who have used passion only to mete out punishment, must be allowed time to learn of compassion. I feel a great, hungry desire, yet I a
m afraid— afraid of hurting you, of bruising your tender flesh or, worse still, your gentle heart. Bandits, cut-throats, renegades I can cope with, but you, my love, are a quantity so far unknown to me—your very fragility makes me a coward. Take a savage and teach him lessons of tenderness, mignonne, I promise to learn quickly.’
She found his humility confusing but extremely touching. Her whole heart went out to the man who seemed so uncertain, so alone, when he begged, ‘Tell me that you love me, ma petite Dove, tell me quickly, I need you so!’
‘I do love you, my darling,’ she quivered beneath the touch of lips questing, feather-light, over her eyelids. ‘So much so that something would have died inside of me if you’d let me go.’
‘Thank God!’ he murmured thickly, burying his face in her golden hair. ‘At last you have said the words I thought I was never destined to hear.’
Many kisses later she was lying quietly in his arms, feeling the rise and fall of his chest beneath her head, almost hypnotised by his powerfully beating heart— listening to the slow, steady rhythm that denoted a supremely contented male.
‘The driver of the Land Rover will have given me up,’ she sighed with beautiful inconsequence.
Marc almost stirred. ‘Not so. I told him a long while ago that he would not be needed.’ He sensed her sudden stillness.
‘I don’t understand,’ her brow wrinkled. ‘How could you possibly have known? ’
He tickled beneath her chin with a lazy finger. ‘I didn’t, I just hoped.’ Anticipating her demand for a more satisfactory explanation, he supplied, ‘We have Mariam to thank for our happiness, dear heart. I had left her presence only minutes before you came to me to say goodbye. During the short time I spent with her she stated very plainly her opinion of my method of courtship, stormed at me for my stupidity, then described frankly the tactics she considered I ought to adopt to get you into my arms. “Women of the West are very different from those of the East,” she scolded me, “they care nothing for riches or for comfort and ask only to be needed. So tell her she is essential to your happiness and she will stay”.’
‘As I had tried every method I could think of to reach your heart, mon ange, with, I might add, conspicuous lack of success, I decided to take Mariam’s advice. As no doubt you have noticed,’ he teased, ‘it worked!’
Dove shot upright, spitting fury. ‘Do you dare sit there and admit that you tricked me? That everything you’ve said during the past hour has been lies?’
He looked suddenly very serious. ‘No, I did not lie,’ he told her tightly, ‘but I would have done if I’d thought it necessary. I would have employed any means to keep you here for, believe me, there was no chance of my ever letting you go!’
She stared into his arrogant face, trying to reconcile his earlier humble pleas with the note of determination in his voice.
Suddenly impatient of the space between them, he pulled her back into his arms. ‘Don’t let’s fight, cherie. There will be times, no doubt, when we will, but not just yet!’ When she ignored his coaxing he shook her, showing a trace of his usual impatience. ‘Very well, I’ve admitted I acted on Mariam’s advice, and why not? Call me deceitful, underhanded—call me what you will —nothing you say can erase the hour we have just spent in each other’s arms, nor cancel your admission that you love me! We belong together, mon coeur, I will allow nothing to keep us apart!’
His lips stifled any protest she might have made, his kiss demanding, forceful, positive proof that humility was a myth so far as Marc Blais was concerned.
Without resistance, she melted against him. Passion had made her his slave, she had no strength to spare for anger.
He sighed, sensing the battle was won, yet his tone was as commanding as ever when he told her, ‘Tomorrow we will leave together for England. In my eyes we are already man and wife, but I am conscious that if ever I am to meet your honest look without a feeling of guilt I must stand with you in front of an altar, in the presence of your parents, and repeat vows of devotion that are already engraved upon my heart.’ His jaw jutted, the scar a tight fine of uncertainty. ‘Will you do that, Dove? Will you marry me?’
She leant to press her lips against the scar that was his barometer of pain. ‘Yes, my darling,’ she soothed, knowing that she was promising herself to a tough, arrogant, impatient Legionnaire. Knowing also that she would not want him any other way!
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