House of Storms (23 page)

'Name one,' Rodare challenged.

'The girl at that desk,' Jack said deliberately. 'I hope she's made it clear to you that she doesn't consider herself under any kind of matrimonial obligation? She ran away from the very notion of it!'

'And she returned,' Rodare drawled.

'In my company,' Jack rejoined. 'I've told Mama, and I'm telling you, Debra is under my protection.'

'How gallant, Jack, and how that must put to rest Miss Hartway's girlish fears that I shall cause her to take fright again. I wonder what it is about me that gives her nervous palpitations? The fact that I resemble our esteemed ancestor who plucked himself a piece of girlish booty and took to sea with her?'

He abruptly swung a look at Debra and caught her staring wide-eyed at him through the tortoiseshell rims of her glasses. They gave to her face, those rims, a vulnerable look, intensifying its heart shape.

'Afraid I shall repeat his performance,
señorita
?'

'You look capable of it.' She had made her reply out of pure defensiveness rather than spite, but she knew how he would take it.

'If you know that,' he said, his voice edged with meaning, 'then next time you're alone on the beach you had better take care or history might repeat itself.'

'You lay a finger—' Jack started to say, but Rodare was on his way to the door.

'Will it be swords at dawn,
hermano
?' The words were flung over Rodare's shoulder as he walked out of the den and slammed the door behind him.

Debra looked at Jack and saw him gritting his teeth. 'I wish the devil would go back to Spain and stay there! I don't know what gets into him, but I can understand your reaction to him, Debra.'

'My reaction—?' She gave Jack an anxious look; she didn't want anyone to guess how she reacted to Rodare and she had hoped that she kept her feelings concealed and under control . . . those turbulent feelings that were her awakening to the urgings of the body rather than the heart.

'You're a sensitive girl,' Jack said, and he came round to her side of the desk and laid a hand upon her shoulder, 'and Rodare's buccaneer manner must alarm you. I can just imagine how he must have overpowered you with his arrogance the night he proposed to you—anyway, I think it's now been made plain to him that he isn't your type of man, though I can quite understand why he should want you.'

Debra caught her breath and gave Jack a startled look. He smiled down at her.

'Modest as well, aren't you, child?' He ran his gaze over her hair, so neat at her nape, yet its colour took fire against her skin. 'Despite Rodare, are you glad to be back at Abbeywitch?'

'It's a wonderful house,' she replied, sitting there carefully with his hand upon her shoulder, remembering what Rodare had said about how she regarded Jack ... a tragic hero who needed a tender shoulder to lean on.

'Are you glad that we're now working together?'

'Yes, the book is really coming along and should be ready on schedule.'

'All the same,' Jack's hand moved and seemed to hover above her hair, 'all work and no play isn't fair on a young woman. Each evening you seem to vanish into your turret, but I think you should let your hair down for Midsummer Eve and I'd like you to dine downstairs and take part in the festivity. This evening Mick, my brother and myself are going to build the bonfire and when it's set alight tomorrow evening it will be a beacon that will be seen across the water. It's quite a sight!'

'Your brother mentioned the bonfire and I would like to see it,' she said, and added warily: 'But I won't dine at the family table—I much prefer to take my meals alone.'

'Because of my mother?' Jack exclaimed.

'Yes—you know how she feels about me, and you have guests in the house.'

'Sharon will be delighted to get acquainted with you,' he said at once. 'She's a bright and friendly girl and not in the least uppish.'

'I'm sure she looks very nice, but my last attempt at socialising with your family and friends was a disaster.' Debra raised an imploring face to Jack. 'I'm here to work for you and it's better that I hover in the background—'

'Just because you're self-conscious about that business with Rodare?' Jack looked obstinate. 'Don't think I'm unaware of your feelings, but as well as being my secretarial editor you are also my friend—at least, Debra, I hope you are?'

'I—I'm pleased to be anybody's friend—'

'Right, and I'm as entitled to have a friend of mine at the family table as Zandra is to have hers.'

'Your mother likes Stuart, but she regards me as only a notch above the housemaids—oh, how can you know how humiliating it was that night, to have her thinking that I was about to get into bed with your brother! She said such things—that was why Rodare sprang his proposal.'

All at once, overcome by a mixture of emotions, Debra sank her face into her hands and let the wave sweep over her. Since her return to Abbeywitch she had suppressed emotion as much as she could, but suddenly it overwhelmed her. It wasn't so much that she felt like weeping, it was that she felt like crying out in distress.

'Child, don't do that!' Jack gathered her upright into his arms, and this time he didn't hesitate to fondle her hair. 'You're always such a composed girl and it worries me to see you like this—it was Rodare coming in here, wasn't it? What did he say to upset you so, damn him?'

'No,' she shook her head against Jack, 'it isn't anything he said. It's just that I don't want to get into another situation like the last one and I—I feel better about working here if I'm left to myself when I leave off work. I want to be—'

'Alone and preferably invisible,' he broke in, his fingers gently stroking her hair. 'I do assure you, Debra, that my mother has calmed down considerably now I'm back at Abbeywitch. She realises that she made a mistake where you're concerned—won't you try and forgive her, for my sake?'

Debra didn't know how to reply to him. The way he touched her hair, the way he spoke to her, soothed and reassured her, but could she really find the boldness to face Lenora Salvador again? Since her return to the island she had taken pains to avoid Jack's mother, and now he asked her to sit at the same table.

'If you go on hiding yourself away,' he said, 'everyone will think you have something to hide.'

'You know I haven't—'

'I want the others to know it as well.'

'But,' she drew back and gave him a perplexed look, 'why should it matter to you what your family thinks of me?'

'It does happen to matter.' His jaw was set. 'I don't intend to say more than that at the present time, but it does matter. I want the rift closed between you and Mama and I'm more or less ordering you to join us tomorrow evening.'

'I see.' Debra raised her chin and gave the rim of her glasses a little shove. 'You're exerting your authority over me?'

'Yes, if you like to put it that way.'

'Will you send me packing if I refuse to obey you?'

'No.' He shook his head. 'But I shall be disappointed in the girl who came so spiritedly to
The Cap And Bells
and showed me where my duty lay. Such spirit, matching that wonderful hair of yours.'

She flushed vividly at the compliment and it was nerves rather than vanity that moved her to take off her glasses and fiddle with them.

'Y-you make it difficult for me to refuse you,' she said, confused by this new side he was showing her . . . mastering her and telling her openly that he admired her hair.

'I wanted to make it difficult,' he rejoined. 'You're a girl to hold your head up anywhere and I expect you to do so tomorrow evening, but if you lose your nerve I shall understand. I won't hold it against you but I shall feel let down.'

They left it at that and resumed work, but something new had crept into the atmosphere between them . . . Debra knew that they had become aware of each other as man and woman.

FROM a fascinating old book which Debra found on the shelves of the den she learnt that the Midsummer festival of fire was a custom dating back to pagan times before becoming blessed by the church as the Eve of St John.

In each locality the fire was blessed by a priest who spoke his words in the old Cornish dialect, then wild flowers and herbs were flung among the flames and when the fire had burnt down low, those who were still agile joined hands and leapt the embers, laughing and chanting to chase away evil spirits from their homes.

This was linked to the old pagan belief that the fires helped to warm the sun, always a source of worship, and a sun that shone all through the summer helped their crops to flourish and their children to grow. The sun was venerated and devils and witches had to be warded off which was the reason why broomsticks were burnt on some of the fires.

Debra was enthralled by all this old Cornish lore and the meaning of old Celtic words such as Bodmin, which meant house of the monks.

The Cornish, she read, were an unconquered people, tough and durable as the granite cliffs, and deep-natured as the mine shafts which penetrated beneath the sea.

As she laid aside the book, she pondered the strains of Celt and Latin in the Salvador clan ... in Rodare those strains were intermingled like serpentine rock. The
sombra y luz
, as she had termed it, the light and shade in layers through his personality until it became hard to tell when the lighter side of him would be overshadowed by the dark, almost devilish side.

Whenever she was alone with him Debra was aware of how swiftly he could shift his mood, rather like a tiger whose purr was only a concealment for a sudden attack. Big, tawny, menacing like one of those great cats that prowled in a cage. Abbey witch, for all its gothic beauty high on the cliffs, was Rodare's cage, and Debra reflected what a shame it was that Jack wasn't the eldest brother. Unlike Rodare he wasn't divided by a love of Spain and an obligation to settle here on Lovelis Island if ever he married.

Rodare had used those very words, a marriage of obligation, as if he had already decided that he could never find happiness anywhere but in his beloved Spain.

She wondered what his reaction would be if she did fall in with Jack's wish that she dine downstairs tomorrow evening. She tried to imagine herself walking into the drawingroom where drinks were served before the family went in to dine, facing up to Rodare's irony, the curiosity of the Chandlers, and most daunting of all the condescension of Lenora Salvador.

Heaven forbid! Snatching a woolly jacket from the closet Debra flung it around her shoulders and decided that she needed a breath of air. She wanted to walk in the moonlight above the cool sea.

As she passed the tall clock on the gallery it chimed eight, the silvery chimes following her down the stairs. The family and their guests were at dinner right now, their ease with each other excluding her.

Silent as a shadow she crossed the hall and slipped out of the side door into the courtyard which extended to archways leading in various directions.

She went in the direction of the headland, along a pathway bowered in trumpet-vine, quince and firethorn. The air was alive with moths like pale floating feathers, and somewhere among the trees a rook croaked, for black as the Devil they nested here, craftily aware that later in the year the oaks would shed acorns for them to feed on.

Being a city girl Debra had been wary of the island's wild life, especially the hawks who swooped upon smaller birds in mid-air and fed upon them to the last feather. The seals she loved, especially when they waddled out of the water and perched on the ebony boulders along the shore. Their doglike heads and huge shining eyes had such appeal as they sunned themselves among the sandpipers and the puffins.

She strolled along in the moonlight, breathing the salty air and feeling its cool touch in her hair, which she had let down from its knot. Her eyes glimmered at the mystery and enticement of the sea, splashing in upon the rocks, gentle enough at the moment but when the tide arose the powerful motion of the sea made a bellowing sound in a blow-hole below the headland where Debra walked.

Just ahead of her it jutted out above the beach, forming a kind of plateau, and she was unsurprised to see that work on the bonfire had already begun. It was already half built, perhaps by Mickey Lee who was probably having his own evening meal, for he was nowhere to be seen. A cart filled with logs and boughs and bundles of loose kindling stood with its shafts empty and Debra guessed that Mickey had taken the horse to the stable for its meal of oats.

Was it from here, Debra wondered, that Jack had scattered his young wife's ashes, seeing them waft out over the water and then settle on the crest of the waves . . . rejoining her spirit where she had died?

Debra glanced about her, pulling her jacket closer around her shoulders as a pale image was evoked. Her glance was caught by some wild flowers growing at the edge of the cliff, the moonlight on their petals. She knelt down and was touching the flowers, so soft and cool to her fingers, when a voice spoke above her head:

'Don't pluck blue scabius or the Devil will come to your bedside.'

She went very still, rather like a wild creature who hopes its stillness will fool the hunter.

'Come to your feet and step away from that edge,' the voice commanded.

'I'm all right—'

'You're a little fool.'

'I expect I am.' And defiantly she plucked a single flower and then rose to her feet. As she turned to face her intruder the tide wind caught at her hair and blew it into a coppery pennon, and the moonglow made her skin pearly pale as she stood there indecisive, wanting to pass by him but afraid he would touch her.

'Do you want the Devil at your bedside?' he mocked, long-legged in black trousers, wearing a dress-shirt open against his throat. He looked like a freebooter there in the moonlight, filling Debra with a mixture of feelings.