Windward Crest

by Anne Hampson

  ‘Well, aren’t you going to ask me in?’

  The abrupt voice, the narrowed angry eyes, the compression of those sensuous lips ... Dominie said, her voice edged with fear,

  ‘Wh-what d-do you want?’

  Rohan’s lips parted; she heard his teeth grit together. The door was pushed open and he entered, brushing past her and then waiting, until she had collected herself sufficiently to close the door.

  ‘And now,’ he said, glaring down at her in the dimness of the tiny hall, ‘we’ll talk! Is this where you were?’ and without waiting for her answer he had entered the kitchen, where on a small formica-topped table her tea was laid.

  ‘No—er—no. I—we usually sit in the other room—’ She stopped and passed a tongue over her dry lips. ‘Rohan, why have you come?’ Appealing tones, jerky and edged with tears; eyes that willed his own to lose that harsh forbidding light, a hand unconsciously pressed to her cheek. Rohan’s mouth relaxed as he took in all these things. He shook his head in a gesture which denoted both censure and exasperation.

  ‘Why have I come?’ he repeated. ‘Are you totally obtuse?—not that it wouldn’t match your stupidity,’ he added grimly, and pointed to a chair. ‘Sit down; you look ready to faint!’

  She remained on her feet, but put out a hand to the back of the chair, holding it as if she required support.

  ‘You’ve discovered the truth,’ she began, thoughts wildly confused because she could not believe that Jake had gone back on his word. ‘You know ... know that I...’ Impossible to say it; her face puckered and she turned from him. ‘I don’t know why you’ve come, Rohan, but if it’s to ask me to marry you, then the answer’s no—’ She got no further. Rohan gripped her shoulders, roughly bringing her round to face him.

  ‘I haven’t come to ask you to marry me. I’ve come to take my fiancée back home—to Windward Crest, where she belongs!’ He gave her a little shake, as if he just had to, in order to relieve his feelings. But his face had softened and his hands on her arms became more gentle. ‘You idiot, Dominie,’ he said, a muscle throbbing in his neck, revealing the depth of his emotion. ‘You ridiculous child—’

  ‘Rohan,’ she cut in urgently, ‘I can’t marry you with a shadow like that between us. Jake must have told you all, but he must also have explained that I told him I couldn’t marry you without confessing who I really was, and if I did confess I couldn’t marry you either, because although you’d agree that it wasn’t my fault, the day would come when you’d begin to hate me.’

  ‘It would? When?’

  ‘When we had a tiff, perhaps—’

  ‘We aren’t going to have any tiffs,’ he interrupted, astounding her now by his expression. His eyes were actually twinkling with amusement. ‘No, my Dominie, we shan’t have any tiffs, simply because you’ll have more sense than to rub me up the wrong way, more especially, since you’ve learned a little about my temper. Incidentally,’ he continued without allowing her to speak, ‘it wasn’t Jake who told me the story; it was Erica.’

  ‘Erica?’ she echoed blankly. ‘I never told Erica anything.’

  ‘No, but Jake did. He sent for her specially to repeat what you’d said, and then told her to come and tell it all to me.’

  Dominie stared.

  ‘That wasn’t very nice of Jake—and there was no other reason for his sending for Erica?’ she asked, for the moment diverted.

  ‘Not at the time—’

  ‘But the children. He required a nanny for them.’

  ‘There was no need to send all that way just for a nanny. However, he admitted that he was a little interested in Erica, after what you had told him.’ A slight pause and then, ‘They’re to be married in about a month. Erica’s gone off to sell up her home and other belongings; she’ll be back in time for our wedding. I promised to put it off until she returns.’ So cool now, he appeared, and perfectly self-assured. But a movement in his throat had not yet been brought under control.

  ‘I can’t marry you, Rohan.’ Dominie had been some moments in making this statement, because of the pain it would cause Rohan, and of course herself, and because it would be far easier just to give up the struggle and allow him his own way ... and because she yearned to be in his arms...

  He looked at her intently through those shrewd and piercing eyes.

  ‘You spoke a lot of rubbish just now about a shadow being between us—’

  ‘It isn’t rubbish!’ she cut in urgently. ‘It would always be there—’

  ‘Will you be quiet, Dominie, and let me finish!’ He glowered down at her and she said, catching at her dress in a little gesture of agitation he had seen before,

  ‘I’m sorry, Rohan. I was just trying to make you understand.’

  ‘And I’m trying to make you understand. Dominie,’ he said in slow deliberate tones he would have used if speaking to a very young child, ‘you had nothing to do with my sister’s death.’

  Silence. For one wild moment of joy she believed him and every cloud went from her eyes. But suddenly enlightenment dawned and she slowly shook her head.

  ‘You’re just saying that,’ she stated with conviction. ‘It won’t work, Rohan...’ On noting the glowering expression that entered his eyes Dominie allowed her voice to trail away to a mere whisper.

  ‘Dominie,’ he said in a very soft voice, ‘you really are asking for it. How far do you expect my patience to stretch? Have you given a thought to what I’ve taken from you?—to all the trouble you’ve caused me? You first of all treated me to your scorn and arrogance in that bower, accusing me of flirting before your eyes—which was a damned lie! You called me pompous; you jilted me, threw back my ring at me—’

  ‘I never threw it—’

  ‘Hold your tongue!’ Subdued, Dominie hung her head, nervously twisting her fingers as Rohan continued, ‘You allowed me to believe you preferred Jake to me, you’ve put me to all this trouble of coming here after you, and now you accuse me of lying!’ He gritted his teeth. ‘I’ve reached the end, Dominie. Try me one step further and you’ll drive me to something I’ll regret!’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she hastened to say, his words beginning to register properly in her mind. ‘About that scene in the arbour, Rohan,’ she just had to add, ‘it was all an act, necessary, as you should have seen if Erica told you the whole.’

  ‘Of course I now know it was an act, but I didn’t then. And in any case, does it make it any better, if it was an act?’ he demanded wrathfully.

  Dominie swallowed.

  ‘Well ... no.’

  He looked at her for a space, then took something from his pocket and handed it to her, retaining something else in his hand.

  ‘I rather thought you might suspect me of lying,’ he said, ‘so here’s proof that you were not involved in that accident.’

  ‘Proof?’ Dazedly she looked at the paper as she took it from him. ‘Proof ... there can be no proof.’ But she lowered her eyes to read, noting the rusty mark at one corner, made at some time or other by a paper-clip. ‘Aged about sixty. Stout, double chin. Jet black hair obviously dyed—’ She broke off, the glance she would have given Rohan transferred to the snapshot he held on his open palm. He flipped it over and she saw that the handwriting was the same as on the paper she had just been reading. Her heart gave a great bound, even though, as yet, she had not by any means grasped the whole of the unfolding miracle. ‘It’s a description of—of someone—’

  ‘Of the woman who was driving the car. The man who witnessed the accident sent it to me, along with the picture of the spot where it happened. It was no good to me ... not at that time,’ added Rohan significantly, his eyes on the paper, fluttering in her hand. ‘It has certainly come in useful now,’ he ended with a sort of grim triumph. ‘You can scarcely refuse to believe me—unless, of course, you are able to identify yourself—I mean, the double chin and the dyed hair—’

  ‘Rohan,’ she interrupted in a fearful little voice he had never expected to hear, ‘it all sounds very well, but
I remember it all; I did as soon as I saw the snapshot of the place where the accident occurred. I must have been involved!’

  Rohan set his mouth.

  ‘Dominie, please don’t start an argument over this. If you continue as you have been doing then I must accept that you really do want to call our marriage off—’

  ‘Oh, but no!’ The exclamation was out before she had time to think, and pretty colour flooded into her pale cheeks. Rohan’s eyes softened as he noted this, but his voice was neither caressing nor tender, as she would dearly have liked it to be.

  ‘That’s something. We might, with my perseverance, make some progress after all.’

  With her hands she made a little gesture of placation, but seconds later forgot all about it as she said, a clear vision rising up before her,

  ‘I remember the screeching of brakes so well. And—’ She stopped then and frowned. ‘There were lights. And I do very clearly remember the man putting his head through the car window and saying ... saying I w-was drunk.’

  Ignoring this latter sentence, Rohan seized on the one before it.

  ‘Lights? What lights? You never mentioned lights to Jake.’

  ‘No ... I didn’t...’ Dominie knit her brows in concentration. ‘There were coloured lights. I remember them now.’ She looked up at him. His face was set in austere lines. ‘Perhaps from a shop...’ She let her voice fade, allowing Rohan to say what was in her mind.

  ‘There were no shops anywhere near this place. It was quiet, and very dark. It was a major road in relation to the other, but by no means a major road. On the contrary, it was just a country lane. Coloured lights,’ he mused. ‘Traffic lights?’

  Her eyes widened.

  ‘Yes, Rohan! Yes—’ She stopped, shaking her head. ‘But there were no traffic lights at that spot.’

  ‘Therefore,’ he cut in softly, ‘whatever happened to you happened somewhere else. Jake told Erica that you weren’t at all sure that this was the road you came out of, and it’s my opinion that had you never seen this snapshot you would never have connected this particular place with anything you had done, and,’ he added wrathfully, ‘you wouldn’t have acted in so precipitate a manner, flying from me as if the devil himself were after you!’

  Dominie averted her head. She murmured, just for something to say,

  ‘Perhaps you’re right, Rohan.’

  ‘I am right,’ He frowned at her bent head. ‘Jake told Erica that you maintained you had a lapse of memory on your way home. All drivers have lapses of memory. I drive regularly into Charlotte Amalie, as you know, but I don’t note every curve and bend; every single landmark doesn’t loom out at me and register. When I get to the end of a journey I couldn’t describe what I saw on every inch of the way.’

  ‘I understand that.’ Dominie readily agreed. ‘But, you see, it was those brakes—the terrible screeching—that kept coming back to me all the time, and if it hadn’t been that my car was unmarked I’d have sworn I myself had been involved in an accident. When I saw that snapshot it all seemed to fit into place—’

  ‘In other words you did manage to fit your unmarked car into an accident. Clever girl; go on.’

  ‘I do realize that you consider me silly—’

  ‘That’s putting it mildly indeed. But I asked you to continue.’

  ‘There isn’t anything else. You know it all. I concluded that I was responsible for Alicia’s death.’

  An impatient click of his tongue was all the reaction she received to that for the moment. And then Rohan said,

  ‘I rather think that all that happened in your case was that you almost shot the traffic lights at some place or another, and you jammed on your brakes—or you might even have actually shot them and someone else braked—’

  ‘But the man. What about the man?’

  Rohan’s frown returned. ‘If you were stopped at the lights he might have been asking for a lift. What exactly did he say to you?’ Dominie was staring at him wide-eyed and he added, misinterpreting that stare, ‘You don’t remember? You told Jake that he said something more than the comment about your—er—intoxicated state.’ The merest hint of humour touched his eyes as this was said.

  ‘I do remember I Rohan—you’re right; he was asking for a lift!’ Her eyes shone suddenly as the last piece of the picture fell into place. She felt free—free!’ He tapped on the window and when I wound it down he asked if I was going past the railway station, and then he said, “Drunk! Never mind; I might be in a hurry to catch my train, but I’m not intending to risk my life to do it.” And he repeated the word drunk again and again—at least, I think he did.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ Tenderness looked out from those amber eyes now, and Rohan took her hand in his. ‘Stupid child,’ he murmured as he brought her hand up to his lips. ‘Jumping to a wild conclusion like that. Did it never occur to you that, having seen the snapshot, you immediately proceeded to build up your own picture of what happened during those lost few minutes? They’d been troubling you ever since that evening and, consciously or subconsciously, you had a deep desire to fill in those moments. When you saw that snapshot, Dominie, the only thing that came to you was the incident of the man putting his head through the window. From that you built up the most stupid picture and in view of the blanks still existing I’m amazed that Jake could accept that you were to blame for the accident. It’s only now, during the past few minutes while we’ve been talking, that memory has been fully restored to you.’ Rohan stopped and gave a small shrug. ‘True, there’s a bit missing because you’re not sure about those screeching brakes, or about the particular place where you entered the main road, but these are of no matter. I myself favour the idea that you yourself applied the brakes on realizing you were about to drive on when the lights were against you.’ He looked at her and shook his head in a little gesture of impatience. But his voice was gentle when he said, ‘The important thing is that your mind has been put at rest by your remembering that the man merely wanted a lift from you, that he was not the witness to my accident.’

  Dominie said nothing for a space, dwelling on what he had said, and recalling her own admittance that full memory had not returned on her seeing the snapshot. But when Jake said that the picture was that of the spot where the accident had occurred, and as she knew that Alicia was killed about the same time that she herself was returning from the mortuary, pieces of a picture seemed naturally to fall into place ... with a little manoeuvring from her, Dominie now admitted. But she had in fact built up her own picture, as Rohan had just explained.

  ‘So it was all for nothing.’ Dominie shuddered at the memory of all that they had both suffered; and it was so unnecessary, brought about by her stupidity in jumping to the wrong conclusion. She thought of the manner in which she spoke to him that day in the bower, when she had told him their engagement was at an end. Looking up at him now, with his face stern despite the slight relaxing of his mouth and jaw, she did wonder how she had had the temerity to adopt so scornful and arrogant an attitude towards him. ‘I don’t know how you can forgive me,’ she uttered in a very small voice.

  ‘I don’t either,’ came the unexpected agreement, and Dominie’s lip trembled. His face softening miraculously, he said in low and tender accents, ‘You must be something quite out of the ordinary, my darling, to be able to treat me like you have and get away with it.’

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she whispered. ‘At the time I was almost out of my mind over the whole business and I just had to give you up.’

  ‘And a very good job you made of it. For a few minutes I was so mad I could have killed you. But I hadn’t got far when I decided to turn back, unable to accept that you were really throwing me over, for I had been so sure of your love—’ He stopped and frowned impatiently. ‘No more of the past! The whole miserable business is finished with and won’t ever be mentioned again by either of us. Understand?’

  She nodded, swallowing the tight little lump in her throat as she thought of him coming back and
finding her in Jake’s arms.

  ‘I’ll never, never hurt you again ... not for one little second—’ She got no further as she was swiftly caught into his arms and the rest was smothered by his kiss.

  ‘My precious girl,’ he whispered in the tenderest tone she had ever heard him use to her, ‘my adorable angel...’ He took her face between his hands and looked into her eyes; she caught her breath in wonderment, for never in the most intimate moments they had spent together had she seen so softened an expression on those stern and haughty features. ‘I shall never let you out of my sight again, Dominie, I need you so—’ His strong deep voice actually broke and in a little access of love she flung both her arms round his neck, went up on tiptoe, and pressed her lips to his.

  ‘I love you,’ she whispered simply, and tenderly gave him her lips again.

  For a little while there was silence in the room as the pleasures of the moment occupied them both. But eventually Rohan spoke, imperiously telling her that she must pack right away and come back with him to St. Thomas, back to the home which was now hers.

  ‘Oh, but I can’t go to Windward Crest immediately. I expect I can stay with Jake until we’re married.’

  ‘You’re coming straight home,’ he told her inflexibly. ‘There are plenty of servants around to lend propriety to the situation.’ His expression changed suddenly and he looked with deep tenderness into her eyes. ‘Haven’t I said I’m not letting you out of my sight again?’ She nodded happily and Rohan went on to say that they would be married very soon anyway. ‘I promised to wait till Erica’s return, which should be in about a couple of weeks’ time.’

  ‘And I suppose she will then begin making arrangements for her own wedding?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It all seems to have been done very quickly—I mean, Erica’s not been on the island very long.’

  ‘Not quite three weeks. I was away in New York when she arrived and didn’t return until the day before yesterday. She and Jake seemed to be very much in love—but of course, you already knew that Erica cared for Jake.’