But her life had not been in danger, and nor did Ash love her. It must have been the tears in her own eyes which had seemed to cause a shimmer in his. Only . . . why had he turned away then, if not to conceal some emotion he preferred not to show?
The days passed and all at once, as she had been promised, her lethargy wore off and left her responsive to the beauty of the garden as, watered by some heavy showers in May, the flowering trees of the summer began to put out brilliant blossoms.
The temperature rose a few degrees. The humidity increased slightly.
But not as much as in the autumn when, said Lilian, it could become a little uncomfortable. Meanwhile the extra heat was not unwelcome at Heron's Sound with its breezy verandahs and shady parts of the garden, and the cove so near and inviting.
But her change of mood was not matched by a change in Ash's manner. He continued to be courteous but aloof.
At last she could bear it no longer. She had to do something positive.
The impulse crystallised one morning when she was in Lolita's looking for material for a kanga. This was the huge diaphanous scarf which the most fashion-conscious tourists were wearing as beach cover-ups. It was tied in a knot near one armpit, and covered them from chest to ankle, except where the sides came apart to reveal a hip, thigh and calf as they walked.
Browsing among the bolts of materials piled in the centre of the shop, and studying those stacked on the shelves behind the counters, she saw at last what she wanted—a thin cotton voile in the colours of a ripe melon, the very dark green near the selvedges merging with a band of paler green which in turn merged with the deep golden peach of the greater part of the fabric.
As she asked for the yardage she needed, and watched it being cut off the bolt, she knew she was going to have it hemmed before nightfall, not to wear on the beach but when she went to Ash's bedroom.
He seemed keyed up and restless that evening. She would have liked to believe it was sexual frustration which made him on edge, but she didn't delude herself that, because he had not made love to her for so long, he had remained celibate all the time. He was always at home for dinner, and never went out again later. But during the day he had plenty of opportunities to keep assignations with one or more accommodating women.
Tonight he did not make one of his most frequent excuses to avoid spending the rest of the evening with her—that he had correspondence to handle. Half an hour aftrt" supper, while he was pacing restlessly about the drawing-room and she was pretending to read, he said abruptly, 'I'm tired. I'm going to turn in early.
Goodnight, Christie.'
'Goodnight,' she echoed, pleased that she wasn't going to have to endure another two hours of her own mounting tension.
Of course if he really
was
tired, it could ruin her plan of action. But somehow she didn't think he was.
After giving him time to reach his bedroom, she switched out the lights and tiptoed to her room. As usual, she had bathed before dinner.
Now she only had to undress and apply the Vent Vert she had bought specially for the occasion, and perhaps lightly retouch her lips.
Having draped herself in the new kanga, she had a couple of afterthoughts and took it off again. First she fastened a fine gold neck chain, given to her by Miranda Hathaway as a cheer-up present, to one inherited from her sister, converting them into a waist chain.
Then she painted her rose-red nipples with a deeper red lipstick to make them more noticeable through the voile.
That done, she had an even better idea and added a design of petals and dots to make them even more eye-catching. This time when she fastened the kanga, the golden gleam of the waist chain and the patterned points of her breasts gave a much more erotic effect to her thinly veiled body.
Light showed under her husband's door as she paused outside before tapping. She was trembling with nervousness, but a couple of deep breaths steadied her.
Who dares wins, she reminded herself.
'Come in,' his voice called, in answer to her light triple knock.
Christie opened the door, walked in, and closed it behind her.
Ash was stretched out on the bed, his shoulders propped against pillows. He was naked, the upper sheet thrown aside for maximum coolness. One long leg was extended towards the footboard, the other drawn up to form a rest for the book he had been reading when she disturbed him. He looked no more tired than he had earlier.
He did not say
Is something wrong?
or
What do you want?
She felt he had only to look at her to see why she had come to his room.
As he took in the filmy kanga, and all that showed through it, she saw, before he used the book to conceal the fact, the spontaneous reaction which proved that, although he might profess indifference, he was not indifferent to her. If nothing else, she could still make him want her physically.
She walked slowly towards the bed, and seated herself on the end of it, not far from his outstretched foot.
'I—I think John needs brothers and sisters. If we delay too long, there'll be too great a gap between him and them,' she began.
Ash $aid nothing. His expression had never been more enigmatic.
Not the slightest flicker of reaction showed in his dark, steady gaze.
'Besides which, I'm already in my middle twenties,' she went on, 'and one can't have children in too rapid succession. If, as you told Hugo and Emily, you want to have a large family, to have three would take nearly five years . . . unless we had twins,' she added awkwardly.
This wasn't at all what she had meant to say; but somehow the things she had planned were impossible to utter while he fixed with that penetrating stare which seemed to read her mind while revealing nothing of his own thoughts.
She forced herself to persist.
'You . . . you once spoke of a skipper's responsibility to his passengers. Is your sense of responsibility towards John strong enough to overcome your aversion to me?'
At last he responded. 'My aversion to you, Christiana? Surely it's the other way about?' he said coolly.
'I've never found you repulsive, Ash.'
'No? One could frequently have been forgiven for thinking so. You were never eager for my embraces until, as you once pointed out, I'd managed to force a response from you.'
He sat up and reached for the sheet, drawing it upwards to cover himself to the waist.
The movement made the muscles of his arm and shoulder ripple under the tanned skin. The oblique beam of light from his reading lamp emphasised the powerful structure of his torso. It was a long time since she had felt those strong arms enfolding her, the broad shoulders bowing under her hands.
A tremor shot through her; a surge of intense, urgent longing to relive the embraces they had once shared, to feel their flesh joined and made one.
For the first time, before Ash had even touched her, she was ready and eager for his possession.
Ash heard her quick intake of breath, and his smile was not pleasant as he leaned towards her, grasped her wrist and drew her towards him.
'Why not be honest? You haven't come here to do your duty by John.
I taught you to enjoy your body, and now you find you can't do without the pleasures you used to be so reluctant to indulge in. You've become addicted, my girl. Look at you—eyes half closed, lips half open, breasts quivering! He touched the sensitive centre of one of her lipsticked adornments. 'The personification of a woman panting to be taken. Shall I rip this thing off, or can you wait while I undo it?'
As his hand moved towards the knot of her kanga, she struck it away and tried to jerk free of his grasp.
'No . . .
no!
That's not true,' she blazed. 'You don't understand. I—'
She stopped, choking back the admission of how much she loved him.
'On the contrary, I understand perfectly. I share your impatience,' he told her.
The next moment she was crushed against him, his fingers forcing her face up to meet the fierce, famished kiss with which he stifled her protest.
Once she would have resisted and struggled. Now, the instant he pulled her into his arms, her whole body melted with ecstasy. A hurricane tide of sensation coursed through every nerve of her being.
The convulsive delight which, before, she had only experienced after many kisses and caresses now engulfed her as soon as she felt herself roughly caught and imprisoned in that first hard, demanding embrace.
His fingers at work on the knot, Ash felt the climactic shudders which racked her soft, slender body. At once she was flung on her back, and he was upon her, taking her with an unrestrained passion which, although it might once have frightened her, now prolonged and intensified her pleasure.
As a purely physical experience it was, without question, the most exalted of her life. When, all too soon, it was over, she burst into tears of reaction; uncontrollable tears which there was no way of concealing from the man lying relaxed in her arms, his dark head close to her own.
At first he seemed not to notice the soundless weeping, as if she were struggling to breathe. His tall frame weighed heavily on her, compressing her lungs. He lay still, his violence spent, his broad back as damp as her cheeks where the tears seeped between her closed eyelids.
'Oh, God! Have I hurt you?' He raised himself on his elbows. 'My love ... my darling . . . don't cry.'
As he spoke, his voice hoarse with concern, she felt his hands on her face, the touch of his fingertips gentle as they stroked aside tendrils of hair.
'Don't cry ... I can't bear you to cry. I went mad for a minute. I've been going crazy for weeks. It seems like ten years since I held you like this, my sweet Christie.'
Light kisses rained on her forehead, and on her wet cheeks and temples.
'I wouldn't hurt you for the world. I'd give my life for you, darling.'
His deep voice rasped with remorse.
'You didn't. . . you didn't hurt me. Oh, Ash ... I love you . . .
I love
you.'
Choked by sobs, she was hardly coherent, but her heart was swelling with joy because of his anguished contrition, and the tacit admission that he loved her.
Ash rolled aside, breaking their fusion, but immediately drawing her beside him to cuddle and soothe her until, gradually, her weeping diminished. At last, as her ragged breaths steadied, he reached across her for a tissue, then tenderly turned up her face and blotted the tear-stains.
'I thought I'd made you loathe me . . . that you couldn't stand it any longer, all those things I'd forced you to let me do to you, and that that was why you ran away. God, the hell I went through till you came back!' he admitted, scowling at the memory. His hold on her tightened. 'Then you announced you were pregnant, and I thought that had brought you back to me. I felt I was going to have to live the rest of my life like a monk. I knew I could never force myself on you again, and you'd killed my interest in other women.'
'You mean there's been no one else ... all this time . . . since I left you?'
she whispered unsteadily.
'How could there be? I love you, Christie.'
'You love me . . . you really love me ... I can't believe it!' she murmured, with a shaky sigh. 'I've been insanely in love with you since the night we flew to London.'
'I can't believe it either; that you're here, in my arms—and willingly.'
'Oh, much more than willingly,' she told him, beginning to smile.
'That's the understatement of the year.' Very softly, she added,
'Please
stay, my love, and share the life I saved for you, each drop it guarded
against all invasion till now.'
He drew back to look in her eyes.
'You know that by heart?'
'I've read it so many times, wishing you were that kind of man . . .
wanting only one woman . . . me.'
'I am. I do.' His dark, virile face was transformed by the tender expression with which he was watching her.
'But when did you start to love me? And why did you never tell me?'
she asked.
'I realise now that I recognised you as the woman I'd been looking for the morning I came into your bedroom at the flat in London. You blushed like an old-fashioned virgin—and look at you now. Where did you get this idea?'—tracing the patterns she had painted.
'I'm not sure. I think it was a fashion in ancient Crete.' Already his touch was having an effect. 'But, to get back to London, we'd only just met, and I was so dull and defensive.'
I care not whose you were—or even whose you are—your eyes will
tell me that you are mine and that you are waiting,'
he quoted.
'Naturally my rational side rejected that, but all the same it was the principal reason I went out and booked you on a flight here. The boy could have come on his own. In special circumstances, airlines will take unaccompanied children under six. But apart from the fact that he needed you here, I needed you here to see if my instinct was correct.'
His whole hand was stroking her now, not only the tip of one finger.
She slid an arm over his shoulder and began to caress the strong brown column of his neck.
'When did you find out that it was?'
'Within a few days. But even when I asked you to marry me, I hadn't admitted to myself that I was as crazy about you as my father had been about my stepmother. For a long time I overlooked the fact that you're nothing like she was, and therefore being yours to command wouldn't make a weakling of me as it had of him.'
'Because I
am yours
to command. Anything you want, I will give you.'
She gave a soft, sensuous sigh and moved her hips closer to his. Her lips were parted, her grey eyes openly inviting. It was wonderful not to conceal her increasing excitement, her eagerness.
Ash's dark eyes held the same light of mounting desire, but he kept it in check as he said, if you'd ever looked at me with love, I should have told you at once. But you never did, Christie. There was always reserve in your eyes. You never once asked me to love you—not even tacitly. It was always an act of aggression on my part, and reluctant compulsion on yours.'