by Anne Weale
“You never know. You might become a rubber baron and have houses like that all over the country.”
“I’ve no particular desire to be rich,” he said. “The richest man I ever knew was also the most miserable. And his moneybags didn’t do him much good in a Japanese prison camp.”
“Was it very bad?” she asked hesitantly.
“It depended on one’s circumstances. It was roughest for the men who had families at home and didn’t know whether they’d been bombed to pieces. I hadn’t anybody to worry about, so it was just a matter of sticking it out.”
“Weren’t you engaged or anything?”
“No.”
“Don’t you like women, Jonathan?”
He tossed his cigarette into the water. “I like Miss Bray and I can just about put up with you.”
She saw that he was laughing at her. “Oh, why do you always tease me?” she said crossly.
He grinned. “Race you back to the beach.”
“It’s too hot,” Alex said.
“I’ll give you ten yards start.”
“I don’t need a start,” she said, on her mettle. Together they plunged into the sea, swimming neck and neck for twenty yards until Jonathan began to draw ahead. By the time her feet touched bottom he was halfway up the beach.
“Now I suppose you’re even crosser.” He tossed over her towel.
Alex shook her head, panting. She knew that she swam well. One of the few satisfactions in her school life had been that she could always leave the other girls behind in the swimming and diving competitions. But she was glad that Jonathan had beaten her. Why? It would not have given her any satisfaction to have lost a race to Tom Major.
She sat down to comb her hair.
“We’d better move into the shade of that rock or you’ll begin to burn.”
Jonathan gathered up their gear and moved up the beach to a patch of shadow cast by a dome-shaped boulder.
“I’m glad Miss Emmeline has met that nice old man,” Alex said. “It must be awfully lonely for her now that her brother is dead.” She brushed a fly off her leg. “I wonder why she never married.”
“Probably too busy.”
“Yes, I suppose so. But she’s such a darling. There must have been lots of men who wanted to marry her.”
“You seem very preoccupied with marriage. You aren’t planning to elope with Tom, are you?”
Alex laughed. “Tom’s only a boy.”
Jonathan raised an eyebrow. “I was under the impression that you were about the same age.”
“Oh yes, but Tom isn’t at all the kind of man I would want to marry,” she said definitely.
Her vehemence amused him.
“You’ve changed a lot since you came out,” he said. “You arrived looking like a typical English schoolgirl and now ... well, the plage at Nice would be a more appropriate setting.”
“How do people look on the plage at Nice?”
“Like cats fed exclusively on cream ... sleek, pleased with themselves, seductive.”
“Anyone would look pleased with herself here. It’s like the Garden of Eden.”
“In a couple of hours Eden will be a mass of mosquitoes,” said Jonathan laughing. “By the way, the receptionist tells me there is a ball on tomorrow night. I’ve asked for three tickets. You’ll meet all Penang’s young men.”
“And will all the belles of Penang be there?”
“The belles of Penang consist of army wives and the daughters of government officials hoping to find husbands.”
“How dull for you,” Alex said solemnly. “Perhaps tomorrow night a glamorous adventuress will turn up.”
“She’d probably be much too anxious to find a Chinese millionaire, to bother with a penniless planter,” he said dryly.
“How cynical you are.”
“It’s a characteristic of people of advancing years.”
“You talk as if I were a child.”
“Aren’t you?”
“Hardly. Lots of girls of my age are married.”
“I beg your pardon. You are a woman of the world.” He bent over and brushed her arm with his lips.
Alex blushed.
“Supposing I had kissed your mouth?”
“Oh ... shut up,” she said, hating him for being able to make her hands tremble, her legs turn to jelly.
She jumped to her feet and ran down the beach, wondering if she could have endured being kissed properly or if this choking excitement would have stopped her heart beating.
Jonathan watched her slim back retreating to the safety of the water’s edge and reached for the inevitable cigarette. He exhaled a thin plume of smoke and frowned. How quickly his earlier resolution had dissolved under the influence of sunlight and well-being and the shy golden eyes of the child. God, this had got to stop or he would be fool enough to fall in love with her, a hopeless contretemps. He picked up his towel and called to Alex that he was going to change.
Alex swam alone next morning while Jonathan attended to his business and Miss Bray and Colonel Liskard took coffee together in Georgetown. Jonathan did not return to the hotel for lunch and Miss Bray seemed unusually distracted. Alex bought a magazine in the lobby and went upstairs to rest in readiness for the evening.
The ball began at nine and they were dining beforehand. At five a boy brought a tea tray' to her room and Miss Emmeline looked in to say that Colonel Liskard would be joining them at dinner.
Alex lay back on her pillows and looked lovingly at the sari dress hanging on the back of the door, freshly ironed by a hotel amah. She wondered if Jonathan would notice it or if he would glance at her in that cold, stern way—almost as if he disliked her.
Soon after six o’clock she got off the bed to prepare leisurely for an evening that, as Miss Emmeline had remarked nostalgically at lunch, happened only once in a lifetime.
Her body tingling from a long cold shower, her face carefully made up, Alex took down the rose pink dress. Ah Bee had contrived a style that retained the graceful character of the sari. From a tight bodice a panel of silk floated over one shoulder, while the remaining eight yards of material were gathered into a voluminous crinoline that, weighted by the heavy silver border, swung out behind in a graceful fan.
Alex fastened the last hook and stood back from the mirror, experiencing for the first time that special sense of triumphant assurance that a beautiful dress can give to the homeliest of women.
She had sprayed her hair with fine gold dust and was fastening on pearl-drop earrings that had belonged to her mother, when Miss Bray knocked and entered.
The old lady, herself a regal figure in trailing gray lace and an old-fashioned jet choker, looked with pleasure at the young girl and wondered what Jonathan’s reaction would be.
“Charming, my dear,” she said. “Shall we go down?”
Jonathan and Colonel Liskard were waiting in the lounge and for a moment, as they stepped out of the lift, Alex deliberately hid behind Miss Emmeline. Then her chaperon stood aside and Alex stepped forward for her guardian’s approval.
CHAPTER SIX
Alex sat through dinner eating and drinking mechanically. If the meal had consisted of ship’s biscuits and cold tea she would not have noticed.
She knew now that the unfamiliar emotions of the past forty-eight hours had been the symptoms of love, and the delirium itself, most feverish in the first hours of discovery, had swept over her finally and completely in the moment, an hour ago, when Jonathan had risen to his feet in the lounge and, for an unguarded moment, his cold eyes had glinted with admiration.
Not the indulgent approval of a guardian for his pretty charge, but the undisguised homage of a man for a lovely and desirable woman. For the first time she felt the power of her youth and womanhood. Jonathan might pretend to be aloof and detached, but she knew now that it was not so. Under the surface he was like any other man, like Tom Major. No, not quite, for Tom was still a boy and Jonathan was a man. Flirting with Jonathan carried an element of danger
. He would not be content to hold her hand and murmur sweet nothings. Tom’s eyes had never blazed fire like that, had never swept over her hungrily.
It was the first time Alex had seen Jonathan in evening dress, the white jacket and black silk cummerbund setting off his powerful shoulders and narrow waist. Strength and virility were in every line of his lithe body and she felt the fascination of his stern profile, the dark tilted brows and commanding chin, like a magnetic current.
As dinner ended with coffee and liqueurs, Miss Emmeline became aware of the undercurrent in the evening’s festivities. Her shrewd old eyes flickered from Jonathan’s dark uncommunicative face to Alex’s delicately flushed cheeks and abstracted expression. Chuckling inwardly, she wondered if Edward Murray had foreseen this provocative eventuality.
“Well, Jonathan, you haven’t expressed an opinion of your ward’s grande toilette,” she said slyly.
“I don’t know much about fashion, but the general effect is very pleasant,” he said briefly.
You can do better than that, my lad, Miss Emmeline thought. His reaction to Alex’s first appearance had not escaped her.
“An English rose,” Colonel Liskard said. “I have seen some very beautiful Asian women, but they can’t hold a candle to a handsome Englishwoman.” He bowed gallantly to both women.
“I think we might adjourn to the ballroom,” Miss Emmeline suggested. “I am sure Alex doesn’t want to spend the evening gossiping, do you, my dear?”
On Colonel Liskard’s arm she led the way to the ballroom, already crowded with dancers and laughing, chatting groups. The colonel drew Jonathan into a discussion on the state of the rubber market, and before long Alex was carried off to dance by a succession of young men trading on a nodding acquaintance with her guardian to meet this glowing addition to Penang’s young set.
Soon the slender russet-haired girl, her rosy skirts whirling, was the cynosure of the ballroom.
“By George, that’s a pretty little thing,” said a man standing beside Jonathan in the bar. “Makes the Desborough beauty look like sour cream.”
Across the ballroom a tall young officer in the scarlet cummerbund and tight trousers of a cavalry regiment was bending to murmur in Alex’s ear. Jonathan’s face remained a bland mask, but a muscle at his jaw clenched and a short fat man knocking against him in the crowd was startled by the icy glare with which his apology was received.
The clock struck ten and then eleven and at midnight a cloud of colored balloons was released from the ceiling. While her partner joined in the resulting confusion, Alex glanced quickly around for Jonathan. At half-past twelve she still had not danced with him. From time to time during the evening she had glimpsed the familiar dark head over the crowd; once he was maneuvering a stout fuzzy-haired woman in tight green satin around the floor and later she had seen him talking to an air force officer.
Between dances she talked and laughed and sipped champagne, all the time thinking, when ... when ... ?
Then the music stopped and while three young men argued hotly over the right to partner her, Jonathan shouldered past them and swept her into a quickstep.
“Apparently the only way to secure your favors tonight is to shanghai you under my rivals’ noses,” he said teasingly, drawing her closer to steer through a knot of dancers. “How does it feel to be the belle of your first ball?”
“I have a horrid suspicion it’s only because of the shortage of women,” Alex said. “If this were England I would probably have spent the evening glued to the wall with people saying, ‘It doesn’t look as if Mr. Fraser is going to get rid of that girl this year.’ ”
“Even in Penang not everyone has such a successful debut into polite society,” he said. “A becoming dress, soft lights and sweet music, a stream of admiring young men begging for dances, champagne ... kisses...”
“Oh, not kisses,” she said lightly. “My makeup would be ruined, especially as they all seem to be growing mustaches.” It was a brave attempt at flippancy but as usual she could not control a foolish blush.
“But a kiss in a dark corner of the conservatory is essential. We haven’t a conservatory but I imagine the pergola would do.”
Before she realized what was happening, he had swung her through the tall French doors and onto the terrace. He let her go with a half bow and strolled across to the stone balustrade overlooking the moonlit gardens.
Resisting a temptation to run away, Alex sauntered after him, drawing the panel of silk around her shoulders more for reassurance than for protection from the balmy night air.
Jonathan lighted two cigarettes and passed one to her. The casual intimacy of the gesture riled her. Tonight she didn’t want to be reminded of their everyday relationship; she wanted him to put himself out to be amusing and attentive as her other partners had. A devil of mischief spurred her. She effected a shiver.
“Cold?”
“Yes, a little.”
He put a hand on her arm. Her skin was warm with no trace of goose bumps. He grinned to himself at the innocent guile. Let her take the consequences then.
“Come here.” Catching her wrist he drew her against him. “Or perhaps you would prefer to share the finale with young Stuart or Connor or the dashing Lancer lieutenant?”
“The finale?” Surely he must feel her pulse thumping under his fingers.
“This, of course.” He bent his head and kissed her.
Her lips fluttered beneath the light caress and what had begun as a game ended in a fierce embrace that left the girl trembling and breathless and the man bemused by the tantalizing sweetness of her mouth. He put her away from him, cursing the rash impulse, but the slender moon-silvered figure, the shining eyes, were too much for his resolve and with a groan he crushed her against him and buried his face in the sweet-smelling curve of her neck.
Night was already paling into dawn when Alex fell asleep. She dreamed she was in a sightless, soundless place where only the touch of mouth on mouth, heart against heart and urgent caressing hands had any meaning.
A dazzle of sunlight on the pillow woke her up. She showered and dressed, touching with happy reminiscence a crumpled fold of the pink ball dress as she passed the chair over which it hung.
Down in the foyer, the reception clerk signaled her. Miss Bray had gone out for the day and Mr. Fraser was at a business conference. He would be back for lunch. There had been telephone calls from Mr. Stuart and Lieutenant Allenson and this package had arrived. He dived under the counter and came up with a narrow white box.
Alex went over to a sofa, asked a waiter to bring her coffee and fruit, and opened the box. Inside was a spray of pink orchids and a card with John Harding written on it. She tried to remember who John was. The young naval officer with freckles, perhaps, or the serious boy with glasses.
The morning seemed interminable; yet, as the hands of the clock drew near to lunchtime she felt a tremor of panic at meeting him again. Perhaps they would spend the afternoon on the beach and she would see in his eyes all the things he had murmured in the darkness last night. Remembering the fierceness of his kisses her heart thudded.
At ten minutes to one she went to the downstairs cloakroom to freshen up. She was holding her wrists under the cold tap in the washroom when the door of the outer powder room swung open and two women entered, chattering in loud affected voices.
At first, eavesdropping because the loudness of their overrefined smoke-husky voices made it impossible not to listen in, Alex did not realize that the girl under discussion was herself.
“Not that it would be unusual if the guardian wasn’t quite young and wildly attractive,” one of them was saying. “You must have noticed him last night, Mavis. Very tall and dark. The aloof type.”
“Heavens, what an exciting situation.”
“Isn’t it? It seems he used to have a pretty lively reputation—always dashing over here and leaving the feminine population in a dither. I was staying with the Benedicts last year while John was in Hong Kong and at that time
he was having a terrific affair with a Chinese beauty—a cabaret singer I think she was. It was the talk of Georgetown.”
“It looked to me as if his little ward had fallen a victim to all that charm,” her friend said.
“Bad luck for her,” said the first woman. “Fraser’s type live by conquest. It’s rather wicked of him to bowl over such an infant. Tricky, too, I would have thought, when she’s living under his roof. However, I daresay she’ll survive, and at least in this country there are plenty of men to rebound on.” She laughed. “Finished, dear?” When they had gone in a wave of scented powder, Alex turned off the water and wiped her hands. She felt curiously sick and shaky.
Jonathan had expected to find her waiting for him. Instead a porter handed him a short penciled note. Puzzled, he read it through, his black brows drawing together in a scowl that persuaded the boy it would be better not to wait for a tip.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Miss Emmeline returned to the hotel after an enjoyable expedition with Colonel Liskard to find that Alex had gone to bed with a headache. Miss Emmeline, who was herself looking forward to an early night, saw nothing remarkable in this, but at breakfast the following morning she became aware of a tension, carefully overlaid with meticulous politeness, between Alex and Jonathan.
The next fortnight was a difficult one. Jonathan swallowed his meals and disappeared onto the estate. Alex hardly spoke and dark smudges under her eyes betrayed that she slept badly or cried herself to sleep. Just as Miss Emmeline had decided to tackle one or other of them and discover the cause of this marked estrangement, Jonathan received a letter from Duncan Oliver, an old friend who was traveling upcountry from Singapore and asked if he and his sister, recently arrived from England, could put up at the bungalow for a night or two on their way to Penang.
Alex disliked Joanna Oliver on sight. Had she admitted this she knew she would have been accused of sour grapes, for Joanna was one of those completely assured, spectacularly dressed creatures who contrive to make even their prettier sisters feel dowdy and plain.