And No Regrets (10 page)

CHAPTER SIX

A PARTY. Her birthday party with Ross. Clare went eagerly to the kitchen to take a look at their food supplies and to see whether she and Luke could dream up a real feast. The party would be as much of a break for Ross as it would be for herself. His trip to the
_;
rubber plantation had plainly let him down, and he was, as Don Garter had said, such a devil for making raw land yield dividends that he wouldn’t be satisfied until the rubber trees were really flourishing
,
Luke had an abiding admiration for Clare’s husband (Ross seemed to possess that special half masterful, half fatherly attitude which these bush people responded to almost with affection) and under the little missus’s direction he set to with a will to whisk eggs for a cake while she sorted and cleaned the dried fruit. Chicken would have to be the inevitable main dish, but this time Clare had Luke cut it in sections and after boiling she braised the legs and wings to a golden brown. Yams and peppers set round with golden corn looked appetising—but oh, for some lovely roast potatoes! One of th
e
things Clare missed most out here was potatoes. Mashed with butter. Chipped, baked in their skins, boiled with hot dark gravy. “Now stop it,” she told herself firmly. “Be thankful for what you’ve got.”

Tonight, despite, the storm, she was very thankful. She would make her belated twenty-first birthday party one to remember.

Entree, she thought, patting a finger against her cheek. There was that pot of goose liver, and with thick golden slices of toast—yes, Ross would enjoy that! She went eagerly to the pantry and sorted out the pot.

For their sweet, she decided on orange baskets made from the fruit Don
C
arter had brought her. Halved, jellied and topped with cream and bottled cherries they looked delectable. She had made extra for Luke’s piccans, who were often in the house now Ross had relaxed his rule that Clare avoid the chance of infection as much as possible. You couldn’t bottle yourself in disinfectant, she thought, and Ross, like most men, worried unduly over germs.

With preparations in the kitchen well on their way, Clare grabbed Ross’s oilskins and dived round in the rain to bang on the door of the bath-house.
“Oh
, don
’
t be all night in there,” she carolled. “I’d like to have a bath.”

“Leave a guy in peace, woman,” he laughed. “My, there’s a dusky brute of a spider crouching in a web in here. You’re going to love his company.”

“You dare to leave him in there,” she gasped, wrinkling her nose as a great blob of rain splashed off the bath-house roof and landed on her face. “You know spiders give me the horrors.”

“They eat the flies, and those darned things carry more germs than anything else,” he said lazily, and she could hear him splashing about in the tub of water. “But as it’s your birthday, bar a few days, I’ll send Beelzebub scuttling back into the jungle when I come out.”

“Thank you!” she said. “The storm seems to be lessening, Ross. The thunder’s moving further along the coast.”

“I can still hear the rain—cut along indoors, honey. You don’t want to catch a chill.”

She glowed as she ran indoors. Ross in a gentle mood was a man to grab the heart right out of her. Tonight she adored him, and when he came in from his bath looking sleek and silvery-eyed, she wanted to bury her face against him and breathe the scrubbed skin and hard bone of him.

“Beelzebub has been sent packing,” he grinned, lighting a cigarette. “You may go and wallow in peace, wife of mine.”

Wife of no one else, she thought, as she towelled down and talcumed off, slipping into a lacy confection of a slip with matching panties. Oh, the unimaginable desolation of facing life with anyone but that tough-fibred, teak-skinned Roman! She stared at herself in the spotty mirror on the bath-house wall and saw her eyes grow dark with pain at the thought of parting from him. Husband and wife for eighteen months, then a parting and no regrets.

Could he, after these seven months, sever what they had built together here in the jungle? It was true they wrangled now and again, but all husbands and wives did that. They did not agree about a lot of things, but surely to agree all the time made for dullness? There was a hardness in him against which her sensitivity was often thrown and bruised, but he was a man undertaking a tough task in the bush and she didn’t ask for tenderness all the time, only to have it in blazing doses now and again.

Hate Ross? She smiled wryly at her reflection and slipped into his oilskins which she had borrowed again. They hung round her to her ankles, and were redolent of tobacco, jungle rain, and a whiff of male perspiration. He knew she didn’t hate him, but did he ever suspect that she loved him with every piece of her heart? Probably not. And perhaps it was just as well that he didn’t. He didn’t want complications, he had said at the beginning, when he had proposed to her.

Had he meant the kind that would make it impossible for him to end their marriage, when their eighteen months were up?

She gave a sudden shiver, then braced her shoulders and went back into the house.

She had a dress of lavender chiffon which almost exactly matched her eyes, and tonight she put it on. She applied Wild Violets to the crooks of her elbows and behind her ears—the centres of enticement, as she had once heard them called—made up her lips very carefully and fixed a little silver bow in the side of her hair. She stood a moment, nervously tensed as a bride, arms close against her body like a butterfly on the verge of taking flight, then she turned and head held high, walked out to the living-room.

He was there, standing tall by the lamp in his white jacket over narrow dark trousers. Clare felt a jab as
she
flicked her eyes over his jacket, then she withdrew the dart and tossed it out of sight. Nothing must spoil this evening. As Don had said, girls like Patsy were dangerous because girls like herself took them far more seriously than men did.

“Wow!” Ross had glanced up from the champagne bottle he was examining. “My girl, you look like
a
spray of Persian lilac.”

“What a pretty compliment, Ross.” She smiled at him. “You look rather handsome yourself.”

Their eyes met for moments in the lampglow, then he set aside the bottle of wine, picked up something else from the bamboo table and came with his long, indolent stride towards her. Fingers clutched her heart as, smiling, he pinned into her hair with the silver bow a real jungle orchid which, he said, he had gone out into the rain to fetch. He bent his smooth brown head, still damp from the rain and redolent of it, and placed a kiss against her cheek.

The smoky warmth of his breath drifted across her closed eyelids as she surrendered to his momentary embrace; she tingled to feel the strength of his hands on the slenderness of her bare arms. “Congratulations on your coming-of-age, Clare,” he murmured. “How does it feel to be a woman?”

It felt marvellous, and she wanted so much to clasp her hands about the warm nape of his neck and hold him close for ever.

“I see you unearthed the champagne,” she smiled. “The last time we had it was after our wedding.”

“Seems a long while ago, doesn’t it?” He looked thoughtful, then with a little shrug he walked away from her and picked up the champagne bottle. Luke had laid the table, and Clare put the finishing touches by adding candles and a bowl of jungle camellias. She stood back to admire the effect, then went along to the kitchen to help with the dishing up.

When she came back into the living-room, followed by
a grinning houseboy with the first course, Ross had put out wine glasses, and the lamps. The room flickered cosily with candlelight; outside in the night it still rained heavily, but the thunder had rolled away into the jungle taking the lightning with it. Clare slipped into the chair which Ross held for her, smiling, suspended on the rim of a heady anticipation.

“
I like the smile,” Ross said, sitting down at the other side of the table. “It dimples your mouth at one side, and I was beginning to fear you were losing it out here.”

“I’m happy tonight,” she said gaily. “I baked a cake and it didn’t drop.”

“My, the high peaks and the low troughs of being a woman,” he said, half mockingly. “If your cake had dropped, what then?”

“I shouldn’t be able to give you a slice with your coffee—oh, I want that!” As the champagne cork popped loudly under the pressure of his thumb, Clare caught it neatly and dabbed its winey dampness behind her ears. “For luck,” she laughed. “I wanted to do that at our wedding lunch, but I was more shy of you then.”

“And now you’ve bearded the wolf
i
n his den you’re more able to be yourself, eh?” The wine bubbled into
the stemmed glasses, and a cleft of amusement was slashing his hard brown cheek. “Here you are, Mrs. Brennan.”

“Thank you, Ross.” She took her wine glass and held it by the stem in slender fingers.

“Bottoms up, honey,” he smiled. “May all your cakes be successful ones.”

“Mmmm, delicious
!”
The wine was cool and bubbly and sent a sparkle through her veins. She felt, as they ate their pate on toast, the intoxication of the wine, and Ross in a charming mood.

“This is good,” he
approved the crunchy, sectioned chicken, and the yams which she had stuffed with a mixture of herbs and chicken meat
.
“Clare, you’re an angel in the kitchen.”

Only in the kitchen? she wondered wistfully. “You need a spot of fussing now and again to keep you civilised, boss-man,” she said, accepting more of the golden wine. “Wait till you see my orange baskets.” They were almost too toothsome to eat, he agreed, his grey eyes on Clare as he spoke, and spooned the jellied oranges. “I haven’t seen that frock before, have I?” he queried. “The colour almost matches your eyes. By candlelight you’re very fragile-looking, Clare, and I begin to get pangs at having brought you out here. Has
it all been worth while for you?”

“I’ve learned how to make the most of loneliness, and how to make yams almost taste like potatoes,” she replied lightly, her dark head bent over her champagne glass. “I hope you feel that bringing me here has been worthwhile?”

“I was a tough nut for you to try your teeth on, little one,” he spoke with a sudden trace of harshness. “No wonder your aunt was so against our marriage. She saw clear through me. She recognised me for an egoist who wanted the tropics at the possible price of her niece’s health
... I’ve been damned selfish
!
”

“No—” Clare glanced up, shaking her fair head so that the primitive scent of his orchid was released between them. “I knew what I was taking on when I agreed to your plan that we marry. Life in Ridgley had no bite to it and I wanted with a—a kind of hunger .to try my teeth on life in the raw.” She gave a short laugh. “I may not look leathery and tough like Mrs. Pryce, but I’m pretty tenacious. These bugs have bitten deeply only once since I’ve been here—”

“You mean you’ve had fever?” He stared across the table, his eyes narrowing to silvery slits. “When was this?”

“Oh,” she
gave a shrug, “when you went to take a look at your rubber trees. I—I didn’t tell you that morning because I knew you would fuss, probably
s
tay behind, and then not be able to make the trip because of the rains—”

“You little fool!” He spoke sharply. “How long did the bout last?”

“About four days. It wasn’t too severe. I took plenty of quinine and it soon abated.”

“It could have developed into something really nasty.” His face across the candles was so carved that the pulse beating angrily beside his mouth showed plainly. “God, I wish I hadn’t brought you out here!”

“Don’t say that,” she pleaded, her heart in her throat at the way the skin seemed stretched a shade more tightly over the strong framework of his face. She could tell that he cared about her getting ill, but was the caring in his heart or his head? That she couldn’t tell. But she did know that a sick woman on his hands would be a complication; one he wouldn’t welcome.

“You little muggins,” he growled. “You really should have said you felt ill that morning. I wouldn’t have snarled.”

“Your snarling is worse than your bite—shall we have coffee now?”

They had it seated in chairs, black and strong, with cream poured from her little Revere cream pitcher in silver. It had been Simon Longworth’s wedding gift, but she had never told Ross that. He invariably admired it. He did so right now, caressing the silver body with a large, rough thumb. “Delicate things always make a man feel clumsy,” he remarked. “He’s afraid of denting them, I guess.”

“Silver is pretty strong,” she laughed huskily. “Like women it’s capable of quite a bit of rough handling.”

She felt the razory skim of Ross’s eyes. “I don’t like Smart Alice talk from you, Clare,” he said.

“It’s only a form of defence,” she rejoined. “If you think me girlish and soft-shelled, you’ll pack me home to England.”

“I might at that.” He spoke quite seriously, scattering Clare’s hopes like spray against a rock. A parting now would close the way to his heart
... like the jungle that overgrows in weeks the spadework of months. No, oh no! She rose in a flurry of lavender chiffon and went to the piano. I won’t go, she thought wildly. I’ll defy him
... seduce him, do anything rather than leave here!

Her hands moved over the keys of the piano, then slipped into the rhythm of a popular tune. She remembered the foolish words and began to croon them in
a
soft, husky voice.

She heard Ross laugh as he went to the veranda door and opened it. “It has stopped raining,” he said. “The clouds have rolled away and you can see the moon.” Her song grew softer. Was he inviting her to share the moonlight with him? Well, she would! She’d adopt some of Patsy Harriman’s tactics
... he need not know that love compelled her. He could be persuaded to believe that hunger of the body made her want him.