by Olivia
She squeezed her eyes shut. "Then tell me."
"I don't have the words. Perhaps there are none."
"There are, oh there are!" Every little muscle in her body tensed as she waited. "Just tell me once, only once, that you love me . . ."
He seemed astonished. "You still need it to be said?"
"Yes. I still need it to be said."
"To prove that you have won your challenge?" he teased but with involuntary annoyance. "To ensure that you have indeed made me eat my words?"
"No. The challenge was won even before I threw it!" She sat back smugly and defied him to deny it.
"In that case, why? They would be only words, what would you do with them after I have said them?"
A moist film removed him briefly from her vision. Why was he mocking her? "I will let them console and comfort me when I am not with you. They will sustain me, nourish me, keep me alive and breathing until I am again where I am now. Why else?"
"No. That is what you must not let them do. You must merely listen and forget them." There were strange shadows in the depths of his eyes, still unhappy and profoundly troubled. "You have a death wish, Olivia. And you are naive, exasperating, incorrigible, persistent and outrageously wilful." He paused to lay the back of his hand on her cheek and there was in the gesture entrancing tenderness. "But yes, I do love you . . ."
He had said it. At last it was hers, at last!
The words dropped, one by one, into the stunned quiet of her mind to take root, to grow, to flower like the waxen orchids that clung to the acacia tree in her uncle's garden. In time, like the orchids, the words now echoing endlessly through the silence of her mind would blossom further, remain perennially radiant and fresh. Olivia had never known a moment of such unadulterated happiness. In just a single instant her life seemed enriched beyond measure. She wanted to cry.
He did not break the silence between them. Instead, he filled it with unspoken things, sharing with her the joy he had evoked with such an effortless triviality. With his eyes, full of softness and unfettered love, he touched and caressed her body still flushed pink with the residual effects of love-making. The swell of her breasts, nipples once more taut and engorged; the dip of her waist as it curved and flared into rounded hips; the shapely legs threaded through his; the perfectly fashioned toes that idly stroked the side of his calf. He left nothing untouched. Olivia's amber eyes, mellow with happiness and the aches of love given and received, watched him as he watched her, the communion between them as perfect as a rainbow, a summer rose, a drop of dew. He took her face in his hands and kissed the corners of her tranquil smile. Pulled up close against him, she felt the stir of renewed yearnings.
"Teach me how to love you, Jai," she whispered. "Teach me everything." With the tip of her tongue she reached up to remove the tiny dot of dried blood that still clung to his cheek. He shivered with pleasure. Without fear or inhibition, she ran the flat of her hand down the expanse of his skin in a caress that brought a gasp of delight to his lips. He had given her the right to love him; to exercise it she now knew there was no bound she would be unwilling to break.
He made love to her again, with passion but with a tenderness that went far, far beyond the demands of mere physical hunger. Dictated by love, his whispered commands were still hesitant; intoxicated with success, Olivia hastened to obey them. An apt pupil, a swift learner, she abandoned restraint without qualms. Coached by a masterly lover, she teased and tantalised and tasted him as fully as he had done her, eager to give as much pleasure as she had been given. Startled but enchanted by her unlimited offerings, he tutored her shyly, guiding her hands when they faltered, wincing in savage rapture when they didn't, increasingly enflamed when she surprised him with some erotic innovation of her own. Her success in rousing him to such extreme pitches of pleasure flushed her with triumph. She matched him kiss for kiss, caress for caress, exploiting at random the wonderful freedom he gave her of his body. He took her again, with gentleness, and this time his rhythms were leisured and languid, a celebration that was mutual, a revelation that was to be savoured slowly. So skillfully and unerringly did he guide her and with such compelling subtlety that when she reached the crest, Olivia's senses deserted her. She flailed the air, cried out his name and clawed at his flesh in a crescendo of sensation. In her ear he laughed, even more abandoned. Ruthless now in his perpetration of delicious torment, he captured her mouth to silence her; within her head a galaxy of suns exploded, blinding her with their dazzle. The cataracts of sensation became impossible and, driven beyond the pale of tolerance, she burst into tears.
He was frantic with anxiety. "What did I do? Did I hurt you? Was I rough, brutal? Oh God, I am an animal!" Maddened with remorse, he showered her with kisses, wrapped her in his arms and rocked her. "Don't cry, for pity's sake, don't cry. I can't bear it."
Weakly, drenched in sweat, exhausted, Olivia shook her head. Still muttering self-imprecations, he crushed her to him and cocooned her in his love, unspoken but oh so eloquent! Gradually her breath quietened; peace returned to her body and with it an enormous contentment. Her life was now truly complete; she wanted nothing more from it, nothing. Wordlessly she rested her head on his shoulder. A moment of silence expanded into an eternity of jewelled perfection. Then he released her to lie back, lace his fingers beneath his head and close his eyes. Cushioned against the gleaming damp of his shoulder, watching the once-again calm rise and fall of his chest, Olivia drew languorous patterns above his heart, smiling to herself. Suddenly, her hazy thoughts crystallised into a tangible question. She frowned but did not speak.
"Ask it."
She started. "I forgot that you see with your eyes closed," she complained, piqued at having been caught.
"I don't need eyes to read your mind."
The finger-tip doodling across his heart stopped. Her gaze dropped and she blushed. "How many others have lain with you on this bed?"
"Why? Does it bother you?"
Animated again, her finger-tip drummed a grim tattoo. "Yes, it bothers me."
He laughed, slid up against the bank of pillows and took her up with him. "I warned you, I am not exactly a brahmachari."
"What is a brahmachari?"
"What you said I could never be even if I tried." He cupped a breast in his palm and kissed its tip. "Hasn't it pleased you that I am not?"
Blushing deeper, she hid her face from him, suddenly shy. "Then why have you sent Sujata away?"
"Is there no stone of my life you would leave unturned? I sent her away because I no longer needed her."
Olivia recoiled. "And is that what you will do when you no longer need me?"
He became motionless, staring through her as if she was suddenly no longer there. "It is you who will cease to need me, Olivia," he said quietly. Taking off his silver pendant threaded through a fine chain, he slipped it over her head. "I have never given you anything because I cannot give you what I don't value myself, and I value nothing. Except this." His face was again haunted. "It belonged to my . . . mother."
A hard knot formed in Olivia's stomach. He had never before spoken of his mother! The significance of the gift, the enormity of his sacrifice in making it, the subsumed sanctity of the moment reduced her to silence. Lifting the pendant, she kissed it and then held it against her cheek, too moved to speak. It was in the shape of a box, heavy but obviously hollow. Along three sides was a hair-line crack. She started to run a finger-nail in it but, with a quick gesture, he stopped her.
"It was my mother's. It must not be opened, not even by you." He spoke with great agitation in short, gasping phrases. "Promise me that."
She nodded. Questions flocked to her mind but she did not ask them. What she had received from him tonight was a treasure chest of joy; she would not be greedy for more. She craned her neck to kiss both his eyes, his nose, the curve of his mouth, still too full for words. He had allowed her a glimpse into his private world; for the moment, it would suffice. And she had his love. Sweet Lord, how much she h
ad of his love!
He swung his legs off the bed and stood up. One by one he picked up his scattered clothes and slipped into them carelessly. Then, with care, he gathered her garments, shook each one out and folded it, then laid them in a neat pile beside her. For a moment longer he stood feasting his eyes on the unashamed length of her body. Something flickered in the greyness, a momentary ache, a rippling sorrow. He bent down to brush his lips over the flatness of her stomach within which, somewhere— everywhere!—she held the cherished proof of his love. He turned away to stand at a window, looking out, one hand absently stroking the back of his neck.
Whoever and whatever Jai Raventhorne was in his innermost self, Olivia knew their communion was over. Once more he had carried himself away and beyond her reach.
With a sigh, she stretched her limbs and yawned, her body throbbing with the sweetest pain she had ever known. Humming under her breath, she got up and dressed herself. In a nearby drawer of a mirrored dresser, she found a comb and ran it through her disarrayed hair. The dark patch at the window through which he stared with such intensity was starting to tinge with an icy blue. Olivia was surprised—had any night ever flown by on such lightning wings? Watching the rigid back turned on her as if in denial of the intimacy they had shared only a few moments ago, Olivia coiled her hair into a chignon. Inadvertently, her thoughts began to race again and, as always, he sensed them.
"You are still concerned about my defence." It was not a question but a statement, uninflected and matter of fact.
She saw no point in denying it. "Yes."
He walked to his desk, picked up a sheaf of papers and tossed them in her direction. They fell onto the bed. "Read them. You might find what they say of interest." He returned to his abstractions near the window. For all his impersonality indicated, they might never have shared a glance let alone a bed of such consuming passion.
The top sheet of the sheaf, stiff and formal, was a legal document. It was brief and to the point and Olivia read it quickly. Then, more carefully, she read it again. The remaining papers she had no need to go through; the top sheet had said it all. Stunned, she sank down on the bed.
"Well?" It was Raventhorne who spoke first. "Would you consider that an adequate defence?" His eyes were like flint, untouched by his amused smile.
"This . . . can't be true!" Olivia breathed as her colour drained.
"It is."
"Das signed this willingly?"
"Hardly!"
A cold hand wrapped itself around her heart. "There must be some mistake, some hideous misunderstanding ..."
"The mistakes and hideous misunderstandings are not mine, I assure you," he informed her drily.
"But . . . why Das?"
"He was the one most easily bought by them to engineer the farcical plot."
The cold turned to ice in her veins. "Was?"
"Yes."
She knuckled a hand against her mouth. "You . . . killed him?"
"Yes."
She was aghast at the unconcern with which he made the admission. "But why? Why when you already had his signed confession?"
He regarded her coldly. "Dead men can neither tell tales nor deny signed and sworn testimony. Das was scum. He deserved what he got."
That he had killed a man did not shock Olivia; she could well believe that Raventhorne had killed before. And she had been brought up with sudden death in environments of violence where a man could be drinking at a bar one moment and dead the next, driving a coach on a highway and ambushed into a ditch before he could turn around. What terrified her was Jai's added vulnerability.
"They'll never let you go, Jai. They'll hound you until they get you one way or another!"
"I'm used to being hounded. They will not find Das's body until it... no longer matters." Something amused him about that and he smiled.
Olivia fought back the biting fear that brought beads of moisture to her forehead, and brushed an unsteady hand across her eyes, trying to think clearly. "With Das . . . missing they'll say this confession is a forgery."
He shrugged. "Perhaps. It doesn't matter."
"What will you do with his statement?"
He raised a quizzical eyebrow. "What do you think?"
Olivia swallowed. "Make it public?"
"Don't you agree that I should? Don't you believe they deserve to be exposed?" For the first time he indicated anger. "I say they, but you know as well as I do that only one of them is twisted enough to concoct such a devilish plan. Ransome is a loyal stooge but he is not evil."
"And if you do make this public, will my uncle be the one charged?" The new situation added further dimensions to her horror. "It's unthinkable, monstrous!"
Raventhorne laughed. "You have much to learn, my naive American, about the workings of blind justice in India! Criminal offences can be tried only by English judges, and no Englishman—policeman or magistrate—would ever allow such an impertinence against a member of his club. Slocum will have the earnest endeavours of the entire community to discreetly whitewash the façades. The main consideration will be to avoid a public scandal, and your uncle will enjoy unanimous sympathy among those who matter. If need be, the Governor General will be asked to intervene. Justice will not be miscarried; it will merely be gently diverted into channels more acceptable to the community. Das's confession will be scoffed at, pronounced a fake and finally buried. Everyone will contend that Kashinath Das was, after all, only a dirty, native turncoat and liar, that he was forced by me to make the confession and to bite the hand that had fed him for so long, and that Calcutta is well rid of his kind anyway. And when and if his body is ever found, Calcutta will secretly heave a sigh of relief and sleep better that night, for not even dirty, native turncoats and liars are wily enough to speak from the grave. Far from being hounded, I might even be discreetly praised for having killed Das. At last that infernal bastard Kala Kanta has done something to justify his misbegotten existence,' the English will say in careful whispers over their evening brandies and cigars. 'Let's drink to the half-breed just this once, even if he has grown too big for his boots.' " He paused to take a breath and rested his head back against the chair, suddenly spent. Fatigued, he shut his eyes. "You need not be concerned for your uncle. No, I will not make Das's confession public."
It was the first time he had spoken to her at such length, and so openly. Tears swelled in Olivia's eyes at the extent of his bitterness, at the depth of his cynicism. But she could think of nothing to say, no words with which to contradict his dismal predictions. Restless again, he walked up and down and she watched him in helpless silence, herself torn between divided loyalties to kith and kin and to this haunted man to whom she had committed her all.
"Arvind is the only one I care about." Face cracking with strain, Raventhorne spoke again. "He knows the truth, of course. As for the rest of the bunch, Slocum already has a copy of this; so do Ransome and your uncle. Whatever their public postures, in private they will sweat, for among them only Arvind knows that Das is dead and can no longer bear witness one way or the other."
"And those witnesses under lock and key?" Olivia asked dully, filled with love for this maligned man already so burdened with undeserved ill repute. "What about them?"
A touch of humour relieved the strain on his face. "They are no longer under lock and key, I presume." He paused to flick a careless finger through the sheaf of papers on the bed. "If there is anything a money-lender has reverence for, it is accounting. And, of course, receipts. The 'witnesses' were handsomely paid with Templewood money. As his natural instincts dictated, Kashinath made them all sign receipts." Contemptuously he tossed aside the sheaf. "Not even Barnabus Slocum can produce a smell of roses out of this stench!"
It was difficult not to share in his contempt, not to participate in his anger at the infamy, but part of Olivia still held back. "That poor old man's death was an accident, Jai, it was not intended—"
"Not man, Olivia, native! Any European will tell you that with so many about, one mo
re or less makes little difference. None at all when an aristocratic English skin is at stake." Once more his bitterness bubbled. "Kashinath Das was filth. The world is perhaps a better place without him. But our innocent watchman, Haveli Ram, was a harmless soul devoted to us and to his gods. We have broken bread with him, Arvind and I; we know his wife, his sons, his grandchildren. He trusted us, served us diligently and with loyalty—until one white man's greed snuffed out his life just like that!" He snapped his fingers, lips twisted with hate. "Does it make it easier for his family that his death was an accident?"
Olivia longed to go to him, to hold him, to love him again and somehow use her love to cleanse his festering wounds, but she knew that he would not now allow himself to be reached. "What my uncle did was wrong, hideously wrong. I know that." She spoke with despair, seeing the futility of words to repair the damage but unable to leave thoughts unsaid. "You don't see this, Jai, but in many ways he is as blind, as obsessed as you. He too has a canker in his soul. It forces his hand, clouds his judgement, induces strange madnesses . . ." In her anxiety to touch some chord somewhere, she ran to him and held his hand. "For what he has done he will be accountable one day to God!"
He shook off her hand and started to laugh. "God has an eternity at his disposal; I am somewhat less patient. Besides, I do not believe in divine justice. My means of retribution are less ethereal, more earthy." He laughed again as if at a jest she had made.
But Olivia saw that the pewter eyes were unamused, alien. The look in them could have come from the dead; it was lifeless. Suddenly frightened, she took his hand again and would not let it go. "No more killing, Jai, please . . .!"
He shook his head. "No. No more killing. There will be no need. As the uncle on whose behalf you supplicate so laudably is fond of saying—there is, after all, more than one way to catch a monkey." He kissed her hand, disengaged his and was once more empty of everything, even hate. "A longboat awaits you below. As always, I trust Bahadur to reach you back safely." He walked to the door and opened it for her.