Island of escape (11 page)

It was, as she suspected, the room furthest from her own, and the minute she stepped inside she caught the scent of his after-shave lotion. She knew it almost sickeningly well. It had been in her nostrils when he took her in his arms in Hobart. His room looked tidy and he had made his bed—a bed quite decidedly wide enough for sharing. She stood staring at the quilted cover with its diamond pattern in bronze and gold and off-white, feeling her heart beating hard. It was a very masculine room, a little austere. There were no photographs—a row of books on a low shelf, a bedside clock, pewter-backed brushes on the dressing table. Almost tiptoeing, Ellis collected two shirts that had been flung down on a chair. They'd need washing

She'd come in from hanging them out on the line when she encountered Leanne again, and the other girl looked at her exasperatedly.

Tor heaven's sake, have you been washing Steve's shirts? I'd have stopped you if I'd known. If he runs out of clothes he might start to realise what it means to have no housekeeper around.'

`It was no trouble; Ellis said, more than a little embarrassed. 'And haven't you been—been doing the

laundry since Miss Gascoyne went to hospital?'

`Not for Steve. We had a woman over from Launceston for a couple of weeks, but she didn't like it here and she left just before Steve flew down to Hobart. This will be his first real taste of doing without and I don't intend to make it easy for him. He doesn't go out of his way to make things easy for me.'

Ellis said no more. The men didn't come home for lunch, and she made a salad which she and Leanne ate sitting in the shade in the garden. Then Leanne announced that she intended to bring out a recliner and a book and have a rest.

`I hardly slept last night. I was fuming over Steve.' `No drive to the beach?' asked Ellis.

`What's the point?' was Leanne's answer.

Ellis did the washing up and went upstairs feeling rather useless. She was disappointed in Leanne. They could have had some fun together, but it seemed Leanne was intent on sulking. In her room, she wandered across to the dressing table and with a slight shock discovered the small red jeweller's box still there. She picked it up and looked at the ring without taking it out. He'd bought it for her the day they'd left Hobart. Had he really imagined she'd accept it, wear, it, after what she'd said? She stood thinking about him, her feelings oddly confused. He had a considerable amount of charm—but he was so hard ! It was easier to hate him than to love him.
And she had felt sorry for him !
That was laughable.

She looked up, drawn out of her reverie by a sound, and through the mirror she saw Leanne had come to the door. The two girls smiled at each other warily. Ellis was thinking of last night and possibly Leanne was too, and now she came across the room.

`Look, Ellis, why don't you take the car and go to

the beach?' She stopped suddenly and. Ellis realised with a start that she had without realising it slipped Steve's ring on to her finger. Her face flooded with colour and she pulled it off and put it back in the box. She said jerkily, `I'd like to take the car. Do you—do you know where I'd be likely to find Martin Webster?'

Leanne looked at her so blankly she almost laughed.

`Martin Webster?' Leanne repeated stupidly.

`He's my cousin,' Ellis said awkwardly.

Leanne's face reddened. 'Then you—you know about Jan?'

`Yes. That's how I came to meet Steve. I knew he—needed someone.' She broke off hopelessly and said instead, 'Where would I be likely to find Martin, anyhow?'

`He may be somewhere around North East River,' said Leanne, looking rather speculative 'Charlie went fishing with him last weekend and that's where he was then. There are a lot of birds up that way, I believe. Isn't he doing something about birds?'

`Yes, he's a naturalist,' Ellis said briefly. 'Is it far to North East River?'

`Nowhere's far on this island,' Leanne said discontentedly. 'You'll have plenty of time to get there and back before dinner time, but he mightn't be there.'

`I'll take a chance,' Ellis decided.

A QUARTER of an hour later she was on her way and she was beginning to understand why Leanne made such a fuss about this car. It was an absolute bomb. The steering was bad, and the gear change difficult, and the engine sounded very sick. Ellis closed the gates carefully behind her as she drove through the Warrianda paddocks, and though she saw plenty of sheep she didn't catch a glimpse of either Charlie or Steve.

Leanne had told her to turn left outside the main gates, but as she drove along the lonely white road she began to have serious doubts about going to see Martin. She hadn't written to her uncle that she was on Flinders, and the more she thought of it, the more certain she felt that she didn't want Jan to know. It would seem so odd. And of course it was odd. Jan would imagine she was chasing Steve—and she would probably find that very funny because a man like Steve Gascoyne would never even look at a girl like the Ellis Lincoln Jan knew.

Ellis drove more and more slowly. She knew now she wasn't going to look up Martin, though in time, since he was friendly with Charlie, he would certainly discover she was there. But Ellis didn't want it to happen yet. In any case, she might not stay here much longer. It all depended whether or not Steve accepted her on her own terms. If he was going to jump on her every time he got her alone, then she would have to leave, but if he behaved himself she'd stay—at least until she found something else to do.

She saw no more than one or two farmhouses as she drove along, enjoying the sight of the green grasses rippled by the wind, the distant line of granite mountains, and the picturesque clumps of native pines. Occasionally there was a dead wallaby by the side of the road and once she saw a snake wriggling across the white quartz gravel.

When she reached a narrow track that turned off to the left she decided to take it and see if it led to the beach. It wound along through clumps of tea-trees and scrub and presently, sure enough, Ellis found herself by the sea, and her spirits rose. It would have been lovely to picnic here at the beach, but it appeared no one was going to tell Leanne what she was to do, and if Steve said, 'Go to the beach', then that was the last thing on earth Leanne would do.

Ellis drove slowly along looking for a good place to pull up. The sand was starkly white and the sea was like jewels—emeralds and sapphires, she thought, and that thought conjured up another—a sapphire ring for Jan, an emerald one for Ellis. It was funny how all her thoughts seemed to lead her to a man she'd met so resently and didn't even like. Once, all roads had led to Paul, every lovely thing she saw she had wanted to share with him. Not that, in retrospect, she had actually managed to share a great many of her thoughts or enjoyments with him. It was odd how thin that love affair was beginning to seem. It had consisted mostly of daydreams—of reliving his kisses, dreaming up love scenes —more passionate ones than ever eventuated.

What had Steve Gascoyne said? 'He didn't set any fires alight in you! ' But he had, she thought, determinedly. She had been deeply in love with Paul.

Had been. It was a disquieting thought, and Ellis put it aside.

She pulled up under tea-trees on the slope above the beach. It was a small secluded beach that looked as if no one had ever visited it. There was not a footprint on the sand, not a boat or a human being in sight. Ellis climbed out of the car, relishing the quiet now the noisy motor had cut out, and made her way over clumps of coarse grass to the beach. The water looked so terribly inviting she wished she'd brought her swimsuit. The sun was hot and she pulled off her shoes and wandered along the sand, occasionally stooping to pick up a shell or to let the water wash over her feet.

Presently she flung herself down on the sand and stared at the seagulls that were the only living things within sight, but soon the temptation to go into the water grew too much to resist. She took a long look around her, then, deciding she was completely alone and perfectly safe, she quickly discarded her clothes —white jeans and a scoop-necked cotton shirt, bra and panties.

She enjoyed her wallow in the sea, and didn't care in the least that her hair was going to need washing and resetting—she'd attend to that when she got home. She had no idea of the time—she'd taken off her watch when she washed those shirts of Steve's and forgotten to put it on again, but she had plenty of time to dry off before she dressed again, and she stretched out on a big time-smoothed rock—flat on her stomach, her head turned to one side so that her cheek rested against the warmth of the great ancient rock that seemed to have been made for lying on.

She had never in her life been in a place so solitary, so quiet, so—so benevolent. This was an enchanted island—an island that loved her.

In minutes, she was asleep ...

She woke with a little shiver, to realise she was cold.

She was in shadow and for a dizzying moment she had no idea where she was. She had been dreaming vividly, but now the dream had fled and memory came back. She rolled over and sat up abruptly to reach for her clothes—and to discover with a chilling shock that the shadow that lay across her was a human one. She drew up her knees instantly, hugging them to her to hide herself, and looked up, her blue eyes widening.

Steve Gascoyne stood looking down at her.

Ellis felt both frightened and outraged. There was a look in his eyes—dark, brooding, primitive—that made her want to run, to escape. But naked, she could run nowhere—not into the sea, not across the clumps of yellow grass and into the tea-trees, not back to the car at the far end of the little beach. All she could do was to sit there, as still as the rock on which she had been lying.

He didn't apologise and he didn't turn away; he stood where he was and looked at her, and then he said, `You look very beautiful there against the rock. As beautiful as a legend. I'm almost persuaded to believe in love again.'

He dropped down on the sand and Ellis felt a shiver run through her, and hugged her knees to her more fiercely than ever. She could imagine too vividly the shock of being pulled helpless into his arms, he looked so dark and powerful. He must have been back to the house, for instead of the checked shirt and cord pants he had worn at breakfast time, he was now in a silky black shirt with a polo neck and black pants that accentuated his lean muscular maleness. The white streak in his hair looked so dramatic in this setting it was easy to believe he was some superhuman demon, and what he was saying was no help at all. Nor was the way he looked at her.

She said quiveringly, Please—go away.'

His heavy dark eyebrows rose and his long mouth curved in an ironic smile. 'Words straight out of a sile
nt prayer,' he said mockingly. B
ut I'm afraid I'm not going to disappear, Ellis. Why should I, when my —intentions are honourable, when I've asked you to be my wife and to sleep in my bed?'

`Go away,' she breathed again. 'Leave me alone ! '

`When I've found you naked? Which I didn't expect to do, by the way. No, it's too much to ask of any man, Ellis. Don't you know, my little moonbird, that if you take off all your clothes and fall asleep on the beach, then you must accept the consequences?'

`There—there aren't going to be any consequences,' she got out, wishing desperately that at least he would stop looking at her. Certainly she was being as modest as she could, but when you were quite bare it was decidedly difficult, and she realised far too late what a fool she had been to imagine she was safe here. It was such a small island. And suppose someone else had come and found her here? Though to tell the truth she thought she'd have felt safer with any other man in the world than she did with Steve Gascoyne at this instant. He had been menace enough in civilised Hobart, but here on this island he seemed to have shed his thin veneer of polite conventionality, and she knew she could expect anything of him. Her desperate exclamation, 'There aren't going to be any consequences', was sheer bravado, and of course he knew it.

Quite suddenly she wanted to weep, and she shook her dark gold hair forward and rested her head on her knees.

`I'm going to take pity on you, moonbird,' he said after what seemed endless seconds. 'Get into your clothes. I'll go back to the car and wait for you.'

Ellis raised her head to find he'd got to his feet and stood looking at her, a crooked smile on his mouth. `You're quite helpless, aren't you?' he said reflectively. `That's something a woman does well to remember—her physical inferiority. I've only to take you by a handful of your beautiful hair and you'll be completely at my mercy. You might kick and scratch and call me names, but it would get you nowhere if I decided to make love to you, would it?'

`That would be—rape,' she said huskily but defiantly.

`It wouldn't be rape. I'm talking about making love,' he said.

She stared up at him and her pulses raced. Those strange greenish eyes seemed to have some supernatural power over her, and somewhere deep inside a voice told her that what he said was true. If he should start making love to her now—she wouldn't be forced into anything against her will. Once she was in his arms, with his lips on hers and his hands caressing her, she'd allow him to do as he pleased with her. She knew that from her experience of him already, and the thought frightened her. Her body had weakened before, when he took her in his arms, her principles had been all but decimated by her purely physical reaction to the male in him. She'd never felt the least like that with Paul, and yet she'd been in love with Paul. It was—it was crazy, and it was frightening.