Someone was calling through a megaphone that it was time for all visitors to go ashore; and when Alexa, having dabbed fiercely at her eyes, had turned them on the man who was by some freak of fate her natural father, she caught his faintly caustic smile as he said in his usual bored voice: “Well, Alexandra Victoria, I can only say that for a short time you actually succeeded in surprising me, as well as adding a certain amount of intrigue into my otherwise quite boring existence. In fact, I have often thought of what might have happened if I’d ordered you gagged after you had played Lady Godiva and...bared your all, so to speak. Noble, my dear, noble! The Amazon come to the rescue of her mate. But then it’s too bad that most men who are not quite as depraved and lacking in illusions as I am, cannot accept such a gesture in the spirit it is meant. There was your lover, beaten and tortured by the wicked villain—and I am very good at that kind of thing, by the way. But he defends you and takes the blame upon himself, almost to the end, in fact. I do believe that if you had not revealed your— our—secret when you did, the idiot might have done something absolutely stupid and senseless in order to rescue you! But then, of course—and fortunately for both of you, I might add— you did the rescuing. And very well carried out too, with suspense to the last minute while the evil Marquess, like Bluebeard, slavers over his latest prospective victim. Ah, what energy, what planning and what scheming and, in fact, what a lot of trouble you put me to for nothing! But at least it shows you’ve got some modicum of sense left. Lovers should always part while they still love each other, I believe— before the gold is tarnished and turns to dross. So you and Nicholas will always love each other, and you will each compare the other loves that come along with the one perfect, bittersweet union. My God! I do believe I might even write a play some day, if my excesses do not catch up with me first and poor Nicholas willy-nilly finds himself the next Marquess of Newbury!”
Alexa had been by turns indignant, angry, wondering and—God help her now at this late stage—elated! She met Newbury’s raised eyebrow as he made her an old-fashioned bow and told him in a severe undertone: “You know you are a thoroughly corrupt, evil, wicked man; and you will probably end up getting the clap one day, which will put an end to your nasty goings on—and it would serve you right too. But all the same, I am glad that I have had the chance to understand some things about you. Good-bye—father!” Surprising herself more than she shocked Newbury, Alexa stood on her toes to give him a swift kiss on the cheek before he could brush her away, and stepped backward to stand against the rail and watch all the visitors leave. She had not expected Newbury to turn and wave to her and nor did he. But for a moment she had thought that he looked almost...frightened!
We’re all the same way, after all, Alexa thought, and turned lazily onto her side. Frightened to show feeling, frightened of feeling because it means exposing ourselves to pain.
“For heaven’s sake, Alexa! Haven’t you had enough sun for one day? And you know how slow you are about getting dressed these days. Please do hurry! Bridget already has your bath waiting for you, so you have no more excuse for dawdling.”
Hurry, hurry, hurry! Harriet was worse than a Company Sergeant Major ordering around the newest recruit in the regiment, but Alexa had to admit she needed it or she’d become far too lazy.
The house that had been Sir John’s house was hers now but she could sometimes feel his warmly understanding presence here. She had turned herself into a kind of recluse since she had come back to Ceylon, but it was really only because she so needed to lie naked under the sun again and to draw its warmth inside herself after all the months of deprivation when she had almost turned into—one of them! The kind of cold, judgmental, rigidly encased creatures who cared only for certain rules of etiquette and what convention decreed, with no thought at all for feelings. And now at last she understood what Nicholas had tried to tell her that night in the rain when she had told him bitterly how much she despised him even while he kept her warmly in his arms. That was one of the thoughts she could not bear when she recalled how narrow her mind had become and how stubbornly she had refused to see beyond herself and the tiny margins she had set for him— as well as herself. Margins that left no room for stretching or expanding or stepping out of those self-made boundaries. How could he have cared or continued to care for the self-righteous, unhearing prig she had let herself become? Well, no use crying over spilt milk, was there? And then Alexa started to laugh. Mrs. Langford! Good God, she had almost turned into a Mrs. Langford with a proverb or a motto to suit every occasion and every situation!
“Alexa! It would be the absolute height of bad manners, not to mention bad taste, to be late for dinner on an occasion such as this.”
“I’m ready—I’m coming—yes, at once!”
“The Governor and Mrs. Mackenzie have always been so kind to you and so fond of you. Just a little gratitude shown in return...” Aunt Harry had taken up her lecture as soon as they were in their carriage, and Alexa wondered idly why she felt so tense. But then, she had always been fond of the Mackenzies and of Mrs. Mackenzie in particular, and it was sad to think that the jovial, hospitable man she remembered so well was in such bad health that he had tendered his resignation as Governor of the Crown Colony of Ceylon and would be replaced by Sir Colin Campbell, who had been one of the Duke of Wellington’s aides.
How everything changed—especially people! “Now my dear Alexa, I know how much you detest anything so vulgar as name-dropping, but in this case you know how they are all longing to hear everything they can about England, so I do hope you’ll be gracious. And...” Why did she feel so strongly that this had all happened before? Deja vu! But she had suddenly had the feeling, because of her thoughts earlier, of course, and because of the last time she had sat in a carriage with Aunt Harriet on their way to the Queen’s House on the occasion of her eighteenth birthday celebration. There had even been a moon that night, like the moon that would be rising soon. Oh, but this was silly! Wishful thinking, pipe dreams. She or her other priggish self had said that once, Alexa thought, and then promptly closed her eyes to make a wish on the first star she saw. Venus, the evening star, named after the Roman goddess of love.
“Well, thank goodness we actually arrived here. Only five minutes early. That is quite excusable.”
Dinner had been planned for such an unusually early hour, Alexa found, because all of the children had begged to be allowed to dine with the grown-ups just this once— all seven sons and four daughters, a natural phenomenon that made Alexa positively blanch when Harriet sent her a speaking look. But in the end, dinner en famille did not turn out to be quite the ordeal she had expected it might be, and they spent a pleasantly informal evening playing charades and even silly games like Hide-and-Seek and Sardines, until one by one the children were either packed off to bed, or excused themselves politely if they were older.
“You’re not tired?” Alexa was asked considerately by Mrs. Mackenzie before being invited to take a turn about the gallery, and she felt a painful kind of throb when she remembered another night and another year. At least, she thought, they were polite enough not to ask inquisitive questions about her husband, Lord Embry, and where he might be while his wife was expecting their first child.
“Look, there’s the moon. Almost full, isn’t it?”
“I suppose we’ll miss the tropics in a way, but at least we’ll be home while the children are in school, and not so far away as this.”
Alexa leaned her elbows on the railing and looked out toward the ocean, barely able to make out the riding lights of the ship that had arrived late and would have to ride an anchor until morning. Deja vu again. Or was it merely yearning that swept her back to the newness and innocence of the past with its possibilities for fresh beginnings? She let the conversation of the others flow around her and past her until she heard herself sigh and then forced herself back to the present once more.
“Well, I suppose it’s the last dinner party I’ll give here at Queen’s House,” the G
overnor said, and puffed at his cigar. Mrs. Mackenzie, Alexa remembered suddenly, smoked a hookah. Hashish. It was quite fashionable with the older generation, and even with this one, she supposed.
Ah, she felt almost smothered by her memories! Deja vu—nostalgia—even the faint scent of sadness for what might have been, drifting up to her from the jasmine and honeysuckle and gardenias.
“We have your old room ready for you. Wanted this night to bring back memories of younger, happier times, you know, if you’ll forgive an old man’s fancifulness!”
No, Alexa thought. No... It would be too much; I cannot... And then suddenly she saw the faces turned towards her, watching her, and she said nothing. Why not? Whispered in her mind, in her ears, on the sighing rustle of the coconut palms bending before each tiny breath of a sea breeze. And in her pulses—racing, racing until she could hear them in her temples. Why not? Why not? She had wished on the first star and perhaps there was magic at work tonight, and she'd never know if magic was real unless she let herself be swept along with the tide of the night itself—let herself float on a dark, star-specked barge with the moon at its helm. Why not? And then—yes!
“Once upon a time...” There had been a fairy tale she’d read very long ago about six princesses who carried their dainty dancing slippers in their hands and crept out at night, past the watchdogs and past the guards the king had set, to find their princes and dance with them all night. This too had happened before, as the magic tide took her on her bare feet with a thin cotton camboy that covered her from her breasts to just below her knees, her only garment. Only this time Menika led the way and then held back, her teeth white against her copper skin in the moonlight. She murmured some soft words in Sinhalese that Alexa could hardly catch, although she thought she understood them—enough to know there was no translating them into English in her mind. The cotton cloth fell away from her body, from the swelling breasts and the gently burgeoning, rounded belly that last year had been as flat as a young athlete’s. But it didn’t matter. Wasn’t that one of the things she had learned at last? She was herself, Alexa, inside. And when she dived into the moving, silver peaked blackness of the Governor’s pool she swam underwater for a while and became, for some seconds perhaps, a mermaid—a wild child of the ocean with a golden comb for her hair that hung down past her breasts, and a silver tail to reflect the moon by on a magic night like this one when all the boundaries between reality and unreality could be dissolved by only a thought in one’s mind—and if that was strong enough it became reality. Believe. No doubts. Know what is real! And at the last second and her last breath she felt the beating and the movement of the water around her as she shot to the surface and breathed air again while she treaded water and took her time about pushing the heavy strands of hair from over her eyes and her lips because she knew... she knew even before she felt his arms go about her and felt his salt-wet kiss taste the salt of her lips. And only then did she open her eyes to his voice saying huskily, “Oh God...oh God, my moonwitch, how much I have wanted you! And how much I want you now!” Not only her hungry eyes but her fingers traced the contours of his face and the feel of his wet black hair and felt him against her thighs and then between them until she heard him say in a voice that was half groan and half caress, “I don’t want to drown in your enchanted pool, mermaid, sea witch, sweet Alexa, with your eyes like night that trap the moon in them just as you trapped me that first night I saw you....”
The grass was soft and sweet smelling under them as the wildness of urgency gave way to touching and tasting and reexploring, and rose very slowly and very gradually until their longing for each other and the aching, agonizing need for each other became like a wind, like an ocean gathered into one wave, like dying and being reborn again. And they lay together there, he, on his side behind her, holding her so closely and yet so gently that it almost hurt being so happy, and she had to turn her head to make sure it was he, and he had not left her. And in the end she had to turn to face him and touch him and hold him and tell him in naked words what she had always felt for him and had fought with all her strength and could not help; because some people, as the ancient Greek legend had it, were but two halves of a single whole, separated by some jealous god and condemned to search the earth forever until they found, at last, the other half with whom, when joined together, they made the perfect whole. And some things were not to be questioned but only accepted gladly and joyfully, so that their resting here together with the child that would be theirs between them was like reaching a plateau at the top of a mountain they had had to climb with their hands and their knees and their feet until they had had to shed everything else but the one fact that they loved each other. “I love you, I love you, I love you!” Alexa said fiercely. “Oh Nicholas, why did you let me go? Why did you go away before I could take back all the horrible, ugly, lying things I said to hurt you? And oh if you hadn’t come...if you hadn’t come I would have come looking for you, you know! With our baby carried in a pack on my back, if I had to. It is our baby, you know. Bridget...oh, thank God for Bridget, because she kept count of certain dates even if I did not!”
He started to laugh then, and the laugh creases at the corners of his eyes and his mouth made him look younger and wiped from his face the hard and twisted look he used to wear most of the time before. “ Alexa, my sweet Alexa, did you think I would have cared? Do you, my love?” And when she looked at his face in the moonlight before shaking her head decisively, the last barrier fell and she leaned her face contentedly against his shoulder while he told her that it was Newbury of all people who had told him the truth in his bored, slightly jeering fashion.
‘“Oh, Nicholas! I can’t bear to think that I...” Alexa shuddered against him until he tilted up her chin and kissed her fiercely.
“It’s done. And I learned from what happened, strangely enough. Perhaps it taught me to think of what consequences my own selfish actions might have on other people.” He kissed her eyelids and the tip of her nose before his lips traveled very slowly to hers and brushed against them lightly as he whispered: “Especially a certain hot-tempered, reckless, sharp-tongued virago that I had fallen in love with in spite of myself. And do you know why? Because the first time I saw her the little witch of the sea put her invisible silver net about me, and I was trapped forever in the net of her enchantment until...”
“Go on. You’re not going to stop now, are you?”
“You have a bad habit of interrupting, my dearest love, which I might have to...” Holding his mouth teasingly a mere inch from hers, Nicholas whispered, “Until I bought a goddamned ship, which had better be a magic ship that flies many times from New York and Boston to China and back in the future, let me tell you, or I’ll be reduced to borrowing money from my rich heiress bride!”
“The story!”
“Well, I guess the story has a good witch in it like all such stories, and her name happens to be Harriet. So we plotted and planned with a considerable amount of help from high places, I might add, until at last when the night was just right and the moon and the tide and my wicked enchantress was swimming in her pool, I caught her in my own invisible net of gold. And you’re trapped forever, sweet witch, just as I am—so I suppose we might just as well make the best of it, don’t you think?”
“Why not?” Slipping from his reluctant arms, Alexa poised herself on the edge of the pool before turning back to him with one hand on her hip, just above the golden chain he had put on her once. “Will you come and swim with me in my enchanted pool once more, my darling? I’ve heard that two silver nets are much stronger than one, and I mean to keep you in my thrall forever and ever, you know!”
Version History
V1.0—Sept2004—Spell-checked and formatted.
h friends
Surrender to Love Page 63