House of Storms (24 page)

'I—I've had him there,' she retorted, somehow driven to recklessness, perhaps by the mad moon of Midsummer.

A smile curled his lip and he cast up at the moon a glance which seemed to share her thought. 'The moon is said to incite primitive responses in a woman, and strangely enough when your hair is set free you seem more of a woman and less of an efficient little robot who obeys her master with such quiet dignity.'

'I haven't a master,' she argued, seeing the moonlight like fire in his eyes.

'And don't want one, eh?'

'Indeed not.' She flung up her chin, the blue scabious flower clenched in her hand. 'I wouldn't tolerate one.'

'So you are a free soul,
señorita
?'

'Yes I am,
señor
.'

'With no wish to be the
adorada
of a man who will jealously guard you and make of you his very own possession?'

'How claustrophobic!'

'You believe so, eh?'

'I know so.'

'You know!' He took a step closer to her, his eyes flashing with scorn. 'What can you know of the emotions, straight out of the schoolroom and into an office to work upon other people's imaginings on sheets of paper. You know very little of real life there behind your prickly hedge that keeps men at a distance.'

'Y-you haven't always kept your distance,' she reminded him.

'Perhaps because my hide is so tanned it has become tough as leather—isn't that what you are thinking?'

'Yes.' Her eyes were upon his tanned throat in the opening of his shirt and there was something else on her mind . . . she was quite alone with Rodare up here on the headland, the boom of the tide like a pagan drum, the surging sea lit by the radiance of the huge tawny moon. There was a barbarous splendour to the night as if some of the Midsummer magic and madness was in the air.

'We say in Spain,
señorita
, that when a woman argues with a man she is entering the arena with the bull.'

'I don't quite see you as a bull,
señor
.'

'You don't?' He slowly raised an eyebrow. 'How do you see me?'

'As the matador, with your cape hiding the sword.'

His eyelids narrowed and for long seconds the silence between them was filled with the boom of the sea, echoing up the cliffside and filling the air with the tang of wreck and beaten sand and secret gardens on the bed of the ocean. Debra breathed it in and felt a cool moisture on her skin as she stood there with her hair blowing about her brow.

'I wonder,' he said at last, 'if you realise what you've said?'

Her eyes widened upon his face, so very Spanish with those shaded depressions below his strong cheekbones, the dominant nose and lean, swarthy jawline. 'I thought I was stating a fact,
señor
. Doesn't the bullfighter conceal his sword before dealing the fatal stroke?'

Rodare inclined his head in agreement, but glimmering in his eyes was the smile of a man enjoying a private joke. Held by his gaze, Debra didn't realise that he had moved until his hands closed upon her waist and made a captive of her.

'Don't—please—'

'Don't do what,
santa pequeña
?'

'This—what you're doing—' She strained away from him, but it took no more than a little additional pressure for him to have her pressed against his pliant warmth. He lowered his head and his mouth vibrated against her skin, sending little waves of sensation to the very centre of her body.

'I like to make you suffer, little saint. You put on such airs of demure self-containment, and then I touch you and you are like a moth twisting and turning in the flame, wanting the ecstasy even as it burns your angelic wings. Come, confess it to me! Be a woman for once and emerge from that prim cocoon in which you keep yourself bound up ... be again the girl who danced with me and forgot her inhibitions.'

'I—I'll never be that girl again,' she panted. 'That girl makes trouble for me—you make trouble for me! It doesn't affect you if I'm seen in a bad light by your family a-and you ruin a job which I've grown to love.'

'Does love of the job include my esteemed brother?' He spoke the words against the side of her neck where the soft column had picked up a distress signal from her heart.

'I—I don't intend to discuss my private business with you,' she said, her voice as rigid as she tried to keep her body. 'I'm well aware that you're the master of Abbeywitch, but that doesn't give you any rights over me. Whatever your Spanish ways, they don't apply in this country.'

'It's a pity they don't,' he drawled, his warm breath fanning her skin. 'In Spain a girl is dishonoured for life if found with a man in her room. To the Spanish mind there could be only one reason for such an encounter and that reason couldn't possibly be innocent.'

'In our case, you very well know it was.' Debra found herself fighting him again. 'Let me go—your brother and Mickey will come soon and I don't—'

'Don't want Jack to see you in my arms, eh?'

'Of course I don't—he'd think—'

'That you might enjoy having my arms around you?'

'I enjoy it about as much as I'd enjoy having the coils of a snake around me!' The more she struggled the closer he seemed to hold her, those saddle-strong legs of his planted firm on the ground as she swayed in his arms in the tide wind and the moonlight. The image of the two of them was vivid in Debra's mind, etched there in detail against the sky.

'You—you want your brother to find us together, don't you?' she accused.

'The thought never entered my head.'

'Liar!'

'That's no way for a little saint to speak.'

'I've never pretended to be a saint.'

'Then why all this show of resistance?'

'Y-you know why.'

'Not completely, but I'm prepared to listen.'

'I don't play around with men, but you've got it into your head that because I'm a single woman in my twenties who happens to be English I'm available for your attentions. How many times do I have to say that I'm neither available, nor am I dishonoured, as you call it, just because you were caught in my room. In short, Señor Salvador, I'm not your toy!'

Her eyes blazed in the moonlight, fired by temper and a desperate need to be free of Rodare's arms before Jack arrived on the scene.

'You're no better than Stuart Coltan,' she added. 'You're a whole lot worse because you make out to be the gentleman of honour. I don't find you very honourable!'

Even as she spoke the word she cried out as she felt the ground slipping from beneath her feet ... as effortlessly as if he handled a toy, Rodare swung her over his shoulder and began to march along the headland with her, making for a wild area of butcher's-broom, tall grass and gorse and the strong tang of sweet-briar. He thrust his way among a tangle of shrub until they were out of range of all eyes, even the tawny eye of the moon.

'You Spanish devil, let me down!' Debra struck with her fist at his back muscles, but they were firm as leather and she caused herself more pain than she caused him.

'When I'm ready, you long-haired vixen.' In retaliation he swung a slap at her backside. 'The time has come,
mujer
, to finish what started between us the day we met.'

'Why didn't you do it then?' She gave him a punch for each word. 'Why didn't you rape me then to get it over with?'

'So you think it's going to be rape, do you?' As he swung her to her feet her hair was a flying scarf of silk which he took in his grip, forcing her head backwards until her slim neck was exposed to where her blouse strained across her breast. His eyes raked over her, a prelude to his touch.

'I like to feel you struggling in my arms,' he said. 'I like it when my fingers climb so smooth a slope to the peak of your breast.'

'Damned devil!' She felt herself shudder as he suited action to his words . . . and what she found unforgivable in herself was that her shudder wasn't one of repulsion. Her eyelids closed heavily while her lips parted . . . parted to receive his lips as his fingers went on caressing her through the fabric of blouse and brassiere.

'Don't—' The word blurred against his mouth. She made her protest, but couldn't stop his fingers from travelling from one button to another until her blouse slid from her shoulders. His hand slid around her and found the tiny hooks that released her breasts from the cups of silk. She cried out, but it was barely a cry as Rodare lowered her to the fragrant grass and the wild clover, his lips pausing for tantalising moments before they began to explore the warm valley that led to the peaks of her breasts. Her limbs grew heavy as sensual little waves began to beat through her bloodstream, her arms tightened around him and her response made him gasp her name . . . gasp as if he were suddenly drowning.

Their lips clung hotly, their breath mingled, then, as his hands began to coax her towards the ultimate closeness, she found the will to refuse him.

'Is this,' she broke his hold on her clamouring senses, 'is this what you did with Pauline?'

Her words were followed by utter stillness, so that in the distance she heard the sound of a voice calling his name, then with the lithe grace he could never lose in any situation, he rose from the grass to his feet, half-turning away from her as he regained his control and thrust a hand through his disordered hair. 'So that's it,' he said harshly.

'Go away.' Debra rolled over so the front of her was hidden from his gaze. 'Go and help with the bonfire a-and tomorrow night—throw yourself on it!'

He made no rejoinder and she lay utterly still, waiting until she couldn't hear him any more, thrusting his way back to the headland where Jack had called his name. She fumbled with tiny hooks and blouse buttons, then made her way to the house through the woodland that merged with the garden. The moonlight on the flowers made them unearthly in their loveliness, and all at once she felt such a reaction against Rodare that she sank down on one of the rustic seats and burst into tears.

She howled inside though her outward weeping was stifled by her hands over her face. The painful tears seeped between her fingers and her weeping was like a grieving over something lost that she would never find again.

Dreams . . . illusions of a love so precious that it would light up her life as the stars lit the sky. She had dreamt of romantic splendour, but now all her doubts and fears were confirmed. It meant no more than two bodies finding their satisfaction . . . hot lips on palpitating flesh ... a wild, delirious urging to give and be taken . . . taken until pain was pleasure, and pleasure was pain.

'I hate him . . . hate him,' she whispered, over and over. If she kept saying she hated him then perhaps in time she would start to believe it. She would be able to look at him, big, powerful, beckoning, and nothing would happen inside her. She wouldn't feel as if her heart was suspended on a tightrope above a steep drop. She would be still and cold and empty inside, and safe from any more tumults of feeling when he laid hands upon her.

It was some time before she felt ready to enter the house . . . his house where the dark and glossy furniture was of Spanish design, intricately carved like the black oak table at the centre of the hall on which stood the wide silver salvers always piled with fruit. Tonight black grapes, peaches and egg-shaped plums.

Debra came to a hesitant halt, for standing beside the table was a slender figure in sugar-ice silk crepe, which was pleated beautifully and calf-length. A long strand of pearls was around her neck and she wore pink shoes with high narrow heels. She stood there as if trying to decide between a peach and a plum, and then from the comer of her eye she must have caught sight of Debra.

'Hello!' She swung round to face her. 'You're Jack's secretary, aren't you?'

'Yes, Miss Chandler.' Debra's heart pounded beneath her blouse . . . did she look very dishevelled and weepy? Did it show that she had been partially stripped by Jack's brother and still felt where his lips and hands had been? By comparison to the immaculate Sharon, she felt degraded.

'We've never been introduced, but I remember you from Rodare's party—how sensationally the two of you danced together. You didn't look much like a secretary to me, the way you turned about in his arms like a real professional. I can never achieve that sinuous movement, though Rodare has promised to teach me.'

Beneath the survey of those blue and rather inquisitive eyes, Debra flushed to the roots of her hair. She felt shabby, used, and wanted to stand under the shower in her bathroom until she felt clean again.

She couldn't help but notice the fresh pink of Sharon's lips. Her brows with a curving prettiness to them, the soft mauve shadowing of her eyelids and the way her hair glistened like a halo. She looked like a beautiful doll straight out of a lace-edged box, with not a fingermark on her.

Tears brimmed in Debra's eyes and suddenly she was dashing past Sharon towards the stairs. 'I—I have the most awful headache, Miss Chandler! Please forgive me—'

Up the stairs she sped, making for her turret where she could be alone to break her heart in peace.

A sustained shower helped and she stepped from beneath the water feeling refreshed in body though her thoughts were still shadowed by the incident with Rodare. There was nothing profound in whatever the feeling was that he had for her, and she wasn't sorry that she had flung Pauline's name in his face.

The name had struck home because instantly she had felt desire go out like a flame in a gust of cold wind. He had spoken only three words, 'So that's it,' and he had spoken them through lips with a locked-in, swearing look.

Debra wrapped her towelling robe tightly about her, her damp and glistening hair caping it. She sat down in one of the cane chairs and tried to read a book, but the print ran together in a jumble and with a sigh she took off her spectacles and rested her head against the cushion.

Sharon Chandler was very pretty and she did seem as friendly as Jack had said she was. Debra didn't envy the prettiness or the wealth that made the girl's life so easy that her problems were reduced to a debate between a peach and a plum. Debra idly wondered if that was how Sharon regarded the Salvador brothers. Was she here on the island to try and make up her mind between them? Surely neither of them would be able to resist if she laid her hand with its pink fingernails upon one sleeve or the other and said, in her well-modulated voice, that she thought marriage would be a good idea and why not try it with her.