House of Storms (19 page)

'What form of marriage was that?' Debra looked curious.

'She was a Spanish gipsy and they were married in the gipsy way.'

'Bonded by blood,' Debra murmured, seeing in her mind's eye the leaping flames of the camp fires, the silk scarf tying together the bleeding wrists of the couple. The night would have been filled with tempestuous music, and gipsy bride and English husband would have stolen off into the starlit hills to consummate their marriage. The romanticism of it appealed to her and she couldn't help but realise that Rodare had wild strains of passion in him which he couldn't always control.

Passionate impulses at war with a rigid sense of morality which caused a duality in his nature: the heart of him hot with Spanish fire; the feet of him bound to the rock and stone of Lovelis Island.

'I suppose Rodare's mother couldn't bear to live anywhere else but in Andalucia?'

'That's what broke up their marriage,' Jack agreed. 'Rodare grew up in Spain and I can't imagine him ever wanting to leave—I can't help saying that I still find it strange that he asked you to marry him.'

'Oh, it was only a gesture.' She half-smiled. 'The
sombra y luz
in his nature.'

'The shade and light, eh?' Jack studied her as if he found her unexpected and rather intriguing. 'So you see Rodare as a divided man on account of his parentage? Both my parents were of the same social clique which my father rejoined after he took Soledad and her son home to Spain. Inevitably he grew lonely and married my mother, who got herself pregnant very quickly in order to cement the marriage. I admit that she can be a difficult woman at times, but can any of us help the nature we're bom with? Our destinies are in our genes.'

'Not in our stars?' Debra murmured.

The stars are too far out of reach,' he replied, 'even when we see them in another person's eyes.'

DEBRA felt as if she had been swimming against the tide and now it was carrying her back to the sands of Lovelis Island. As it came into sight, she felt a wild fluttering inside her . . . within the next fifteen minutes she would be stepping on to the beach where her very first meeting with Rodare had taken place.

She felt a pair of eyes upon her and turned to look at Jack Salvador. It touched her the way his fingers were twined in the string which secured the boxes of toys for Dean. They had gone out in yesterday's rain in order to buy them, and she knew that in his own way Jack was just as strung up as herself.

'He'll love the lion,' she smiled. It was a big woolly creature with wheeled paws so Dean could ride on its back, and the instant they had seen it in the shop they had agreed that it was the ideal present for him. But once in the shop Jack had bought soldiers and farm animals, a Panda police-car and a Paddington Bear, and mechanical toys such as a donkey that kicked its back legs in the air.

'I can hardly wait to see him again.' Jack's eyes were agleam with anticipation. 'I can just imagine how much he's grown—do you think he'll have forgotten me?'

'You'll soon know.' The island drew closer all the time, the snouts of its offshore rocks looming ahead of the motorboat, whose engine throbbed down into low gear as Mickey Lee guided it to the beach.

'You're back home, Mr Jack,' he said, rather hesitantly.

'Home!' Jack leapt ashore and took deep breaths of the island air which after yesterday's storm seemed laden with ozone.

'Mr Jack—' Mickey pulled a face of such agony it was as if he was having a tooth pulled without the aid of ether. 'I didn't like to tell you right away—'

'What the deuce are you on about, Mick?'

'It was the storm—' Mickey glanced at Debra, then again at Jack and it was obvious that he was trying to break some bad news. 'A bolt of lightning struck the west wing and caused a lot of damage, Mr Jack. All the terraces along that side of the house crashed into the sea and the walls and ceilings of the rooms caved in. I—I had to fetch the doctor because N anny Rose and the babby were buried under the rubble.'

Buried?' Jack grasped Mickey by the arm and his eyes glazed. 'Oh God, don't tell me Dean's been hurt?'

The babby's all right,' Mickey said soothingly, 'apart from a scratch or two. They found him underneath his cot, just a bit dazed and the scratches are nothing to worry about, but poor Nanny Rose took a whack on the head that knocked her right out.'

'Ye gods!' Jack flung a look up the cliffside. 'The house seems cursed—but my boy is all right, Mick? You're not holding anything back from me?'

Mickey Lee energetically shook his head and crossed his heart. 'Doc Tregarth went over him from top to toe and called him a tough little tyke like all the Salvadors. But as I say, his nanny is laid up and your Ma is taking care of the little fellow.'

'Let's hurry.' Jack caught Debra by the wrist and flung at Mickey that he bring up the boxes and baggage. When the pair of them reached the top of the cliff steps they were both out of breath but equally anxious to make sure that Dean was safe and well, and that Nanny Rose was recovering from the ordeal.

There was Abbeywitch with the façade of gables and ivy-hung walls at least undamaged, and Debra wondered if it was an omen of bad luck that on the very day she met Jack and persuaded him to return home, the house was struck by lightning. Even as they entered there was a smell of brickdust and plaster lingering in the air, and Debra was gripped by such a feeling of restraint that she hung back and watched Jack go alone up the blackwood staircase.

Dean was with Jack's mother and she had no part to play in their reunion. She stood alone in the hall, beneath the big portrait of the founder of the family, and felt like an intruder and far less welcome this time than she had felt the very first day she entered Abbey witch. Then she had been gripped by anticipation, eager to begin work and never dreaming that here she would meet a man who would trouble her heart and disrupt her life.

She was back on his territory and every nerve in her system was warning her of his presence. He might at any moment appear in the hall, and Debra was certain that when she saw him she would feel again the thrill and the tear that nobody else could evoke. He shattered her romantic dreams and rebuilt them not of rainbows but of storms.

A movement at the top of the stairs caught her attention, where they branched left and right and formed a gallery that overlooked the hall. Her heart lurched as she saw standing there the man who at this moment filled her thoughts to the exclusion of everything else.

She wanted to turn and flee from his house, but like someone in a dream she couldn't break the spell that held her there as he came down the stairs at his leisure, as if he had all day in which to approach her across the hall. Beneath the black brows his eyes had the intensity of ebony and though she tried to read them, their language was beyond her.

'I understand that you came back with my brother.'

'Yes.' She gave him a look which she hoped was remote. 'I hope his little boy is all right after that terrible incident yesterday? Mickey Lee told us about it—he said Nanny Rose was hurt.'

'She has signs of concussion and is being nursed by Mrs Lee.' His eyes swept Debra up and down. 'Jack's return with you in tow is another bolt out of the blue.'

'I expect it is.' Her body was rigid with tension. 'I've come back to complete work on his book—I haven't returned for any other reason.'

'What reason could that be?' he drawled.

'Y-you know—'

'Ah, could you be referring to our engagement?'

'We aren't engaged, so please stop pretending we are.' She met his eyes with a show of bravery, but could feel how her body betrayed her resolution as he suddenly stepped close to her and placed his hands on her shoulders.

'You're shaking,' he said.

'I—it was a shock, hearing that the nursery wing had been struck by lightning—'

'Your room suffered as well. The bolt struck around tea-time and there is every possibility that you might have been upstairs at the time.' With eyes and hands he held her immobile. 'Fate plays strange tricks, does it not?'

She nodded, and said with urgency: 'I won't be held to that impossible proposal,
señor
. I have no intention of—of marrying a man with whom I share no love.' The word alone, and saying it to him, made her lips feel as if they were burning.

'No love?' He gave her a look of mock despair.

'None,' she asserted, hating that he should mock her. 'I consider that love should mean fidelity, friendship and fun, and there isn't likely to be much of those in a marriage of obligation.'

'What,' he asked, 'if I refuse to retract? What if it suits me to make what you call a marriage of obligation?'

'Suit yourself of all you want,
señor
, but don't drag me in.' Having taken her stand, Debra was determined to show him that she meant every word, and in the strangest way she did despite his physical effect upon her. Even if her knees were quivering, her chin was in the air and there was a fighting light in her eyes.

'You aren't concerned to be thought of as the kind of girl whom a man feels free to visit in the right?' He watched her intently, as if waiting to see in her eyes some giveaway sign of what she was really thinking.

'I'm true to myself,' she said, 'no matter what others might believe of me.'

'And yet that night there was in your eyes a "please protect me" look, are you aware of that?' he asked.

'Whatever my look, you misconstrued it,
señor
.' Debra felt as if the pair of them were fencing, that each time a thrust of his drove her backwards she had to find some way to deflect his attack. 'I'm fully able to take care of myself, and I feel sure that now your stepmother has the little boy in her care she'll lose interest in me. You very well know that your proposal of marriage didn't fool her in the slightest—and quite frankly I don't think you made it out of any real concern for my reputation.'

'Is that so?' His eyes narrowed to a gemlike hardness. 'You seem to have returned to Abbeywitch with a determination to make an enemy of me—may I remind you,
señorita
, that I am the master here and if I so wished I could tell you to remove your presence.'

'Then do it,' she challenged him. 'I only returned for your brother's sake, but I'm quite prepared to leave again—'

'Of course you aren't leaving,' he interrupted. 'I'm quite impressed by your cunning in getting out of Mickey Lee my brother's whereabouts. Mickey is a loyal creature, especially to Jack because they grew up together while I came only on summer visits to the island. Mickey is a true Celt and he mistrusts anyone whom he regards as foreign. I am foreign to him, but he obviously sees in you a kindred spirit.'

Suddenly Rodare's hands left her shoulders and had hold of her face, his thumbs stroking the fine texture of her skin. 'With those sea-green eyes you could be a Celt yourself. Are you one?'

'Partially,' she admitted, 'on my mother's side.'

'Hence the air of mystery,' he murmured. 'So you don't wish to become my wife?'

'No more than you wish to become my husband,' she rejoined. 'Love and marriage aren't fuel for farce.'

'A farce, eh?' And as he spoke he thrust his ringers up into her hair and gripped her skull between the palms of his hands. 'Be careful, Miss Hartway, now you are back in my house. Don't think you will become a shadow again who flits in and out of that den where you work on Jack's book. You have inside this head covered in horse-chestnut hair a mind whose workings intrigue me and so when I ask you to walk with me, you will walk, and when I ask you to ride with me, you will ride.'

He tilted her face as if it were a kind of offering and he brought his lips dangerously close to her mouth. 'Do you hear me, Miss Hartway? If you wish to be employed in my house you will do as I demand.'

'And if I don't do as you demand?' she fought back.

'Then I shall prove to you that I'm not a man to be provoked.' His breath stirred warm against her mouth and she was reminded too vividly of their encounter in the conservatory, and deep inside her secret self she wanted just once more the hard possessiveness of his arms holding her to the power of his body as he took his fill of kissing.

Oh God, her heart had been unwarned that infatuation for a man could invade so deeply, so at the centre of her innermost self. She didn't want such yearning for this man whom she had just refused to marry and in a fury with her own feelings she found strength to wrench herself away from him.

'You—you're like a big cat who needs a mouse to play with,' she panted. 'I think I'd better leave—I don't think I could stand it here, never knowing when you were going to pounce on me!'

'Pounce?' he breathed. 'I don't like the word, Miss Hartway.'

'Why, does it hit too close to the truth,
señor
?’ His eyes flickered with a warning fire and Debra cried out as he caught hold of her and forced her across the hall into the very same alcove where Stuart Coltan had kissed her the evening of the party. She was pushed against the wall, held there with one hand while he wrenched open her jacket so he could bring himself hard against her writhing body that was rejecting him and wanting him in equal measure.

Twist and turn her head as she might, he captured her mouth and kissed her with a savagery that took no heed of time or place. He thrust a hand inside her blouse and filled it with her straining breast, and with hip and thigh he trapped her slender body to his body, stroking fire into her blood until she felt she was going crazy. Then at the very pitch of sensuous tension, he released her, pulling away and leaving her with lips apart and eyes dazed.

They faced each other in a panting awareness of what each had felt in the heat of mouth upon lips ... of unsparing fingers upon supple flesh.

'You brute,' she whispered, and with head lowered she rebuttoned her jacket and felt she would fall to her knees if she tried to run from the very sight of him.