Ryman, Rebecca (33 page)

"I
can because I am a grotesque, monstrous man."

Olivia
flung herself out of her chair to confront him where he stood. "Don't
throw that damned notoriety of yours into my face again like an ... an
award
for meritorious service! I am sick of hearing you crow about your evil
self,
sick
of your self-denigrations. Your reputation, such as it is, is
meaningless to me."

"If
it were," he replied, untouched by her indignation, "you
would not want
to keep our meetings secret from your family, or anyone else."

Uncaring
of anything but his growing distance from her, Olivia no longer heeded how much
of herself she was giving away to him. "And what about that. . . that
wonderful
affinity?"
she mocked. "I should marry Freddie in
spite of that?"

"Not
in spite of it." He moved farther away. "Because of it. You will be
safe with Freddie."

"Safe
from
what?"

"From
me," he said mildly enough. "I will harm you, Olivia."

By
her side her hands clenched.
"Why
am I constantly being told that?
Why
do you talk to me in riddles?" Tears glittered in her eyes, unbidden.

"There
are riddles because you happen to stand where you do." He remained cold
and unyielding, immune to her torment.

"And
where exactly might that be, pray?" A far corner of her brain warned her
that she was losing dignity, stripping herself bare, debasing herself horribly,
but she could not stop. Driven by some hideous compulsion, she continued to
expose herself.

"In
my way."

The
gentleness with which he said the three words was more cruel than a hundred
lashes; Olivia was shocked into silence.
In my way!

He
straightened himself to pace with his hands clasped behind his back. "Yes,
I tricked you into coming here this morning. I should not have. It was a
mistake." His pace increased and his knuckles shone white with the grip of
his hands. "But where you are concerned, Olivia, I seem to lack sane
judgement. I become rash and fallible. I neither understand it nor like it. It
still . . . disturbs me." He spoke in jerks as if unsure of himself, and
his eyes were baffled.

She
had a violent urge to rip off his mask, to wrench off his insidious, cowardly
armour, to force him to denude his soul just as he had forced her to bare hers.
But, lacking courage, she kept her hands clasped too and her eyes lowered.
"There are dark areas in your mind that I need to reach, Jai..." Her
voice trembled as, for the first time, she spoke his name.

"You
cannot be part of those areas, Olivia."

"Don't
lock me out now, Jai, not
now!"
She was leaving nothing with which
to cover her nakedness, but it didn't matter any more. He knew everything
anyway. "Is it because of . . . Sujata?" She sickened at the depths
to which she was sinking, but
ravaged by his categorical rejection, she could no
longer control herself.

"Sujata?"
Brief astonishment widened his eyes. "No, it is not because of Sujata. It
is not because of anything that I can make you understand." Suddenly he
banged his fist on the desk top with such force that an ink-well jumped and
dark blue drops splattered a sheaf of papers.
"Don't
ask me any
more questions, damn you! I cannot,
will
not give you the answers. Do
you not see that simple fact?" His grey eyes turned ashen with rage.
"Your inquisitiveness about me is like an . . . affliction. I find it
obscene, do you hear me,
obscene!"

Between
them silence fell. At the far end of the cabin the sound of his rapid, raspy
breathing kept time with a handsome marine clock on the wall. The battlements
of suspicion, of hostility, that separated them showed no signs of a breach.
Olivia's face was pale, her eyes beset with the same deadness she felt within.
With a small sigh she roused herself out of her stupor. "I have to go
now."

He
swore again under his breath and walked back to her.
"Christ!"
he
muttered softly. "Don't cry."

She
wasn't aware that she had cried. Quietly, she wiped her cheeks. "It is
getting late. I must leave." She could not look at him.

Suddenly,
he touched her face. "I can't bear to see you cry." He made a gesture
of defeat and let his fingers stray over her eyes to brush them with the tips.
"I wish we had never met, Olivia . . ."

"Yes,"
she whispered mindlessly, hollow of feeling but eyes welling again.

Very
gently, he took her wrists and pulled her to him. "My God, how vulnerable
you really are!" His voice shook; for the first time there was anguish in
his face.

His
breath carried the words and buried them in the abundance of her hair. She felt
the warmth of his mouth against her scalp and shuddered. Eyes closed, body
trembling against his, she pressed her lips into the column of his neck, his
thick metal chain cutting into them with coldness, but the taste of his salty
skin was incandescent. Against her temple he murmured something and it was like
the hum of bees on a summer's day, a lullaby in some dream space between
illusion and reality. She did not listen to the words.

"I
have no answers for you, my innocent victim . . ."

Victim.

Unnoticed,
the word slipped through her fading consciousness like dew through the sun's
vapour. His closeness, the heat from his body, the quivering fingers brushing her
skin with feather strokes entranced her. Sour memory blew away like a
troublesome cobweb; she was a bird who, having braved the storm, was now again
safe in a nest she should never have left. An instant or an eternity passed,
Olivia didn't know which; time petrified like a fossil. Then, still with
gentleness, he unlocked her fingers from behind his neck and guided her arms
down to her sides. All too fleetingly he cupped her face within his palms and
skimmed his lips over hers.

"Now
you must go."

Startled
out of their trance, Olivia's eyes flew open. He withdrew from her, in body and
in spirit. Before her gaze fixed on his face, he again became a cipher. In
silence, he led her out of the cabin, up the companion-way and onto the deck.
There was no expression in those maddening, mistlike eyes. Once more the seamed
mouth was rigid and once more they stood on opposite sides of a chasm without a
bridge between them. The instant or the eternity might never have been.

"Bahadur
will guide you back to your horse and see you safely home." Raventhorne's
tone was flat. The sun behind his head shadowed his features so that she could
not see them; she knew that even if she could they would not give her any more.
"I will not see you again, Olivia."

Before
she could step onto the rope gangway, he had been swallowed up by the door. He
had not touched her again, not even with his eyes.

"Well,
which do you think—caramel custard or trifle?" Brow furrowed in thought,
Lady Bridget flicked another page of her recipe book.

"Both,"
Estelle decided firmly. "Knowing Lady B's appetite you'll need to. She . .
.
ouch!"
This to Olivia, who stood behind her with a pair of
curling tongs. "That nearly singed my scalp!" Olivia mouthed an
inaudible apology.

"Yes,
that's not a bad idea." Pleased, Lady Bridget shut her recipe book and
stood up. "We'll have saddle of lamb—not that it's lamb, of course, it's
that dreadful goat meat that smells high— if I can procure a leg of good
Canterbury. And the Bengal Club
keeps a reasonable Stilton,
if
one can get
there fast enough after a ship docks..." Muttering to herself, she went
out of the room.

"Bother
Lady B!" Estelle grumbled. "Why do we have to have them
tonight!'"
She had to repeat the question before Olivia answered.

"Because
they leave tomorrow. Anyway, what's so bothersome about having them
tonight?"

"I
had other plans," Estelle said loftily.

"Oh?
What kind of plans?"

"Just
plans." She waited for Olivia to shower her with questions, and when she
didn't, added, "Charlotte wants to take me for a ride in their new
carriage, if you must know."

"Does
the ride have anything to do with Clive Smithers, too?"

Estelle
tried to toss her head but, restrained by the tongs and the paper curlers,
couldn't. "Perhaps."

"Is
that why the hoity-toity, much-hated Miss Smithers is suddenly your bosom
companion?" Estelle maintained a haughty silence. "Well, you could
ask your mother if you can be excused tonight."

"Huh!
You think she'll agree? Mama doesn't like Clive. Just because he plays the
horses she thinks he's fast.
She
thinks I should sit and pine for John.
God, how
boring!"

"And
so you should, miss, if you are serious about him."

"If
he were serious about
me
he'd have taken me to London! He can't expect
me to live for a whole year like a
nun!"

Olivia
smiled. "Nuns don't go to parties and have their hair done up with
tongs."

This
time Estelle did toss her head, sending two paper streamers flying to the
floor. "Well, I'm
going
for that ride and Mama will never know.
I'll slip out through the back door."

"That's
wrong, Estelle. It wouldn't be right to deceive your ..." Olivia broke off
and flushed; who was she to be giving pious advice?

Through
the silence that followed, Estelle fidgeted, then caught hold of Olivia's hand
and stilled it. "Is anything the matter, Coz dear?"

"The
matter?"

"Yes,
matter! You've been going round all week like a duck lost in a thunderstorm.
What is it? Those rides with Freddie?"

Olivia
bent down to replace the tongs on the stove. "No."

"That
letter then? From your friend Mrs. MacKendrick? It's made you homesick all over
again, hasn't it?"

"Yes."

Estelle's
attention span, fortunately, was brief; it seldom stayed away from her own
problems for long. "When
I
leave home, I'm never going to be
homesick. At least I won't have to go through all this bother for a silly
little carriage ride!"

As
soon as Estelle's coiffeur was done, Munshi Babu arrived. At Olivia's request,
Sir Joshua had arranged for one of the clerks in his office to give her tuition
in Hindustani. He had now been coming for a week and for her he offered one
more means of filling her empty days with diversion. For the rest, she threw
herself into a frenzy of letter writing and books, reading whatever she could
lay her hands on, from Charles Dickens's moving novels to the lives of Lord Clive
and Warren Hastings, histories of Calcutta's commercial evolution and Tom
Paine's incisive writings, with which she was already familiar.

There
were also those dreary morning rides with Freddie, which she had now accepted
with resignation. Since she could not be on her own, Freddie's company was the
next best thing. He was the least demanding man she had ever met, asking
nothing of her but her presence. He even submitted to explorations of the
bazaar in Kumartuli, where sculptors preparing for the Durga festival sat
moulding hundreds of images for worship and for the ritual immersions in the
Hooghly that marked the end of the ten-day celebration.

Olivia's
attempts at self-beguilement were only partially successful; the pinpoints of
pain, of self-debasement and twisting humiliation, could be suppressed only
fleetingly, not erased. Ugly furry little creatures scuttled about in the
corners of her sleep, making the nights as intolerable as the days. If she
hated Raventhorne for his callousness, she hated herself more for allowing him
to visit it upon her with such impunity. But in the dark entrails of despair
there still flickered sparks of hope in the remembrance of what had been left
unsaid between them, of distant echoes of emotion, of silent flashes in those
tormenting eyes. And there was that gossamer filament between them, Olivia
knew, that could not be denied.

Never
to see Jai Raventhorne again was a living death to which he might have
condemned her, but she could not—would not!—accept that as the finality.