She must have slept. When she felt a hand on her shoulder, shaking her awake, she was immediately conscious that something was missing. She looked sleepily around, searching for a reason for her sense of loss, and when Lars Breckling's fair head nodded smilingly towards the porthole realization came. The noisy roar of the engines had stopped: they had arrived. Laughing and full of good cheer, they all made haste to disembark. Comfort beckoned: baths, luxurious beds, good food and a change into more conventional clothing were only a short walk away and now they had actually arrived they could hardly wait to sample them. But before they set off towards the hotel, the señor addressed them. Standing on the craft's apron, he looked down at their excited faces and smiled briefly as he informed them,
'I don't want to delay you from the pleasures of civilization, but I have to remind you, in case,' he stressed, 'some of you should fall into bed and decide to stay there, that a dinner is being given at the hotel this evening, in our honour, and I hope you will all be there. As all the dignitaries of the town will be present, I'm afraid dress will be formal.' When a groan of dismay rose from the men, he went on to deride them, 'It will do you good, gentlemen, to be thrown in at the deep end, as it were. I do not wish to send back to your families a horde of savages!' Then, amid a storm of good-natured jeering, he jumped down from the apron and began leading the way to the hotel.
Tina was appalled by the reminder. Her first light steps faltered to a slow crawl, attuned to the slow feeling of dread she had experienced at his invitation; an invitation given lightly but which was undoubtedly a command. She had thought herself free at last of his presence; had stepped ashore confident that she need not, if she kept to her room, ever see him again before leaving for England. But now she would have to steel her to sit through what would doubtless be a long-drawn-out dinner with the chance of every stray glance being met by twin blue rapiers that pierced her heart as painfully as steel. She must find a way out. A headache might do the trick, she decided - it would hardly be necessary to lie because her head was throbbing sickeningly and the thought of food disgusted her.
By the time she reached the hotel her headache had reached migraine proportions and her room with its air-conditioning and green-shaded windows represented blessed sanctuary. She searched around for aspirin, then after swallowing two with a glass of water, she cast off her small, dusty boots before stretching out on the bed with a heartfelt sigh of relief. She closed her eyes to woo sleep, but sleep would not come. Determinedly, she tried to keep her mind blank, empty of disturbing thoughts, but almost without realizing it she was drawn back to the happiest day she had ever spent with the señor, in the heart of the forest when he had spoken so vividly of his home and of his plans. She shied away from dwelling upon his delicate probing for information about her own background and upon the way she had deliberately lied in order to allay his suspicions. What might his reaction have been if she had chosen that moment to confess her deception? Was it possible that he had known, even then, that she was not the real Chris Donnelly and had been trying to disarm her, hoping to lead her into a confession? But no, she stirred restlessly, he could not possibly have known. He must have lied to Inez. There was no possible way he could have found out - his reason for saying he was aware of her deception must have been a desire to refute Inez's assertion that he had been made to look a fool. No man likes to appear at a disadvantage - especially not in front of the woman he plans to marry.
She gave a sigh that was more a moan of pain.
Impatient with herself for mooning over a man who hardly knew she existed, she dragged her weary body from the bed and decided to chase away her depression by doing something positive, like having a bath. A luxurious soak in perfumed water with lots of lather and huge soft towels to dry off on was just what she needed; perhaps afterwards she would be able to sleep.
But instead of inducing sleep her lukewarm bath left her feeling refreshed to the point of restlessness. She wandered around her bedroom with the minimum of cool underwear caressing her slim body and finally crossed over to the wardrobe where the one evening dress her aunt had insisted upon her bringing hung in all its tempting glory. It was a beautiful dress, a short, slim-skirted cocktail dress of rich-looking cream brocade with a close-fitting bodice heavily embroidered with gold thread. Although the material looked richly substantial, it was in reality light and cool to wear - an ideal dress for a dinner party in the tropics. She indulged herself for a moment by imagining the effect on the señor of seeing her for the first time in such finery. She had not realized, until she had discarded them, how sick she had become of the drill trousers and jackets she had worn during the trip and when she picked up the dainty gold sandals that accompanied the dress and compared them with the heavy boots that lay on the floor the contrast was so incongruous she began to giggle.
The sound startled her. It seemed a long time since she had last felt laughter bubbling up inside of her. The repressive quality of the señor's displeasure combined with Inez's supercilious manner, which always managed to make her feel gauche and unsophisticated, had put a damper on her youthful spirits. But she was only just twenty, and the natural resilience of youth began to assert itself. Her headache had gone and with it the desire for sleep. Besides that, a yearning was growing within her to have one last night of the señor's company - not much to ask, she considered, when the memory of it would have to last her a lifetime. Her pulses quickened and optimism filled her with the effervescence of champagne. Quickly, she decided. She would make tonight a lasting memory of the man she loved. She would go - and hang the consequences!
She was ready long before eight, the time dinner was scheduled to be served, but she felt too nervous to face going downstairs alone to join the others in the cocktail lounge for pre-dinner drinks. Half a dozen times, as she paced her room, she changed her mind about going and when a knock sounded upon her door and a voice called out, 'Tina, are you ready?' she felt a compulsion to plead her previously thought out excuse of a headache and to ask her caller to go away. But when the voice came again, cheerfully imperative: 'Tina, hurry up, everyone's waiting for you!' she knew she would have to go.
Hastily she grabbed her evening bag and ran to open the door. Felix Grilly stood on the threshold holding a beribboned cellophane box in his hand, but even as he thrust it towards her his mouth dropped open with surprise and the jovial words of greeting he was ready to utter were swallowed up in a great gasp of astonishment. Tina was nonplussed by his reaction. She was satisfied that her appearance was as festive as she could make it, but was naturally unaware of the impact she had made upon the man who had grown so used to seeing her in the neat, workmanlike garb of the explorer. His eyes travelled slowly from her burnished crown of hair, its fiery beauty contained in a very sophisticated French pleat highlighted by an ornament of brilliants, then took in with a sense of delight the slim poise of her charming figure. Finally he lingered with aesthetic pleasure upon the fragile curve of her nylon-clad ankles and dainty gold-shod feet.
'Will I do?' she pleaded nervously.
He gulped in a deep breath. 'Do?' he repeated vacantly. Then, pulling himself together with an effort, he scorned the understatement. 'Tina my love, you're a goddess who deserves adoration, and I'm willing to bet there won't be a man present tonight who won't give it! I can't wait to get down there with you and see the rest of the fellows fall at your feet!' He smiled, a broad mischievous grin of anticipation, then remembered his gift 'We thought you might like this corsage,' his grin faded to a rueful smile, 'but these poor orchids are going to look pretty insipid if you wear them. Perhaps you'd better leave them here in your room.'
'Oh, no!' With an involuntary cry of dissent she reached for the box. 'I wouldn't dream of it! Thank you for being so very thoughtful, Felix.' She felt both touched and protected by this evidence of the men's regard, and her gratitude for the gift showed in her blush of genuine pleasure when she unfastened the ribbons and lifted the fiery-coloured orchids from their nest of da
mp fern. Felix waited patiently until she was satisfied that the spray was placed exactly right, then he held out his arm proudly and bowed, 'May I have the pleasure of escorting you downstairs, my dear?' She took a deep breath and smilingly accepted.
Felix absolutely wallowed in the storm of amazement that greeted their appearance. Without exception, the men, who were lounging on their chairs desultorily chatting, jerked to upright attention at the sight of Tina framed in the doorway on Felix's arm. Their vocabulary was not extensive, it consisted mostly of, 'Cor!', 'I say!', or, 'Bless my soul!', but their accompanying expressions of delighted surprise were most gratifying. Even while revelling in the rush of attention she received, Tina's eyes swept the room, searching for the señor. When she was convinced that neither he nor Inez was present, she relaxed and began to enjoy to the full all the unaccustomed flattery. Although light-hearted fun, the men's attempts at flirtation boosted her confidence - so much so that when the señor and Inez entered the room just a few minutes before they were all to be presented to the V.I.P.S she was able to withstand their inspection with far less trepidation than she had nerved herself to.
Inez glittered. Her dress was long, a superb sheath fashioned out of silver lame. It had a deep plunging neckline and, except for two thin straps, it left her creamy shoulders bare. The necklace she wore matched the diamonds that glittered against her black hair and when she reached out to accept a drink, similar stones sparkled from rings on her fingers. But when her eyes fell upon Tina, they glittered brightest of all. She raked her from head to toe with a hard anger that compressed her lips to a thin line before turning with deliberate malice to cut her dead.
Tina's confidence faltered. Instinctively, she looked to the señor, but she could have run from the room when he, too, flicked her a cool look, then turned without a word to devote his attention to something Inez was saying. Manfully, she swallowed the lump in her throat and tried not to show the hurt she was feeling, but the men - who were not as obtuse as they pretended - rallied around her with unspoken sympathy and began vying with each other to chase away the shadows from her eyes. Their outrageous remarks, voiced with an infectious gaiety, would allow no hint of depression to encroach, and it was upon this cloud of exuberance that she was carried through the ceremonies before dinner and then through the dinner itself. Not once was she given time to brood upon the hurtful incident, and by the time the dinner was almost over, all that remained to remind her of her lacerated feelings was a dull throb of hurt that, although content at the moment to remain in abeyance, she knew would increase in momentum and begin torturing her with remembrance once she was alone in her room.
It was well after dinner when Theo made his appearance. A circle had been cleared for dancing and the band had just finished their first number when an exclamation from Felix caused Tina to follow the direction of his eyes. Theo stood in the doorway, swaying slightly, surveying the gathering with a smouldering look of contempt. His mottled face and glazed eyes evidenced that his addiction to alcohol had been well gratified, and Tina felt a thrill of fear when his searching eyes halted when they found her, then lingered slowly over her body like the touch of dirty fingers. When he began his lurching progress across the room towards her, she whitened and swung round with a mute appeal to the men for help. The band began to play and, sizing up the situation instantly, they rose in a concerted rush to ask her to dance. Anders Breckling claimed her, and she was swept triumphantly on to the floor before Theo could reach her side.
Gratitude towards Anders for his timely rescue made her smile sweeter than she knew, and she was surprised and a little nonplussed when the tall Swede caught her close and began murmuring in her ear. She could not rebuff him, even though she was terribly conscious of the amused looks being directed towards them from other couples on the floor, but when Lars suddenly appeared and tapped his brother on the shoulder, intent upon cutting in, the relief was tremendous. Lars' behaviour set the pattern for the rest of the evening. Determined to keep Theo at bay, the men claimed her in strict rotation, making certain that she was not left alone for one minute during the intervals and thereby thwarting every move Theo made towards her. They could not have known of the revulsion she felt for him, but the very fact that he had kept sullenly aloof from everyone, especially Tina, during the latter part of the trip home had made them suspicious of his intentions. Theo had never been popular, and this factor alone was enough to make the men determined to put a spoke in his wheel.
They were so successful that, as the evening progressed, she felt able to relax and was even too much occupied to experience more than a fleeting pang of hurt at the señor's obvious preoccupation with Inez. He had danced almost exclusively with her during the evening, except for one or two duty dances, and had not ventured from the company of the local dignitaries since their introduction before dinner. She realized that he had his duty to do, but Tina felt sure it was only her presence that prevented him from joining their party.
She was standing idly watching the dancers while she waited for Joseph Rogers to return with drinks, when a hand clasped her arm from behind and Theo's slurred voice spoke close in her ear.
'Got you at last!' He swung her round to face him. 'C'mon, I wanna dance with you.' He staggered even as he spoke and Tina pulled away from him in disgust.
'I have no intention of dancing with you!' she refused sharply. 'I don't want even to talk to you, so go away and leave me alone, please!'
Too late, she saw that persuasion would have served better. A dull red tide of colour ran swiftly under his skin as her contemptuous words brought back vividly to his mind the humiliation he had laboured under since the señor had thrashed him. For a man of his disposition, the knowledge that he had been belittled and exposed as a coward was ample excuse for seeking solace from a bottle, and from that source too had come his sense of aggrieved injustice and a false belief that a few words of blandishment in Tina's ear would suffice to reinstate him in her good graces. But her look of disgust and her sharp rejection of him belied this belief entirely, so that even while she watched, the ingratiating grin on his coarse lips changed to a sneer of anger.
Roughly he pulled her towards the dance floor, overruling her objection with brute force. She could not make a scene, but her head swivelled around to send a plea for help towards the table where the men were sitting, completely unaware of her dilemma. Her frightened eyes showed that their view of her was obscured by a crowd of chatting strangers, so she bit her lip hard and willed herself not to cry out when Theo pulled her into his arms and forced her to dance. She closed her eyes and tried to resign herself to silently suffering his too tight hold and his overpowering whisky-laden breath, but they had not progressed farther than a couple of steps when an incredibly glacial voice directed Theo,
'I'll take over from here, Branston. Señorita Donnelly will finish this dance with me!'
Tina had no clear idea of how it happened, but a second later Theo was surrounded by a boisterous crowd of men, seemingly intent upon claiming his company, and he was being led, or half pushed, towards the bar before his vicious answer could be heard by the surrounding dancers. Her deliverance was so swift, the action so smooth, she was left trembling before the grim-faced señor, unable to believe she was free. But when his hand encircled her waist and he led her smoothly into the dance she was swiftly disabused of her sense of relief when he asked with unrestrained fury,
'Must you always play with fire? Haven't you yet learned that Branston is not to be trusted?'
Her head jerked up. Did he think she had sought Theo's company? Surely she had shown plainly enough that she wanted nothing further to do with him, that he disgusted, even frightened her? Her lips parted to indignantly challenge his assertion, but the wrathful words died into a strangled gasp when she met the blaze in his turbulent blue eyes. Never before had she seen him so tempestuously angry!
The music ended suddenly with a crescendo of sound that was curiously symbolic, and her numbed body made no ef
fort to resist when, instead of escorting her back to her companions, he led her firmly through the open French windows and outside into the deserted gardens. He did not stop until they were so far from the house the music sounded only in the distant background. In the darkness, surrounded by black masses of shrubs against which his white dinner jacket showed up the breadth of his shoulders, she waited with indrawn breath for his anger to sear. She did not have long to wait. With biting disdain, he condemned her,
'Now that you have seen the havoc your foolish behaviour has caused, perhaps you will have sense enough to act with more discretion and avoid tantalizing every man in your vicinity! I am getting rather tired of having to disentangle you from situations you are unable to handle, and would suggest that in future you leave the art of flirtation to older women who are more capable of controlling the passions they arouse!'
Tina felt as if she had received a body blow.
'Flirtations ...? But I haven't... wouldn't... Oh, how dare you!' She stamped her foot, frustratingly unable to find words to explain that the men's actions that evening had hidden a very real kindness. She was certain his accusation was his way of revenging himself against the similar accusation she had ranged against him, and her annoyance made her unwary.
'Your remark explains a lot, señor,' she flared sarcastically, 'now I understand your attachment to the señora. Obviously, you feel safe with her and are sure your attentions will not be misconstrued!'
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