Ryman, Rebecca (40 page)

Patiently,
she learned to recognise all his many moods. Her sixth sense about him honed
itself to pick up every nuance from his extraordinary eyes, from the
imperceptible movements of his muscles, from the merest droop of his lips. She
became accustomed to not understanding some of the things he said, to not
questioning
when she sensed a retreat. Sometimes, ridden by his invisible demons, he was
harsh; she accepted these moods meekly because there were others when he was as
soft as the underwing of a dove. His hunger for her, Olivia knew, was immense,
but he kept it securely trapped. Even this she accepted with joy, for she knew
that one day, some day, when he gave himself rein it would be showering
rainbows. On those enchanted mornings when she had her ear next to his
heartbeat, it was enough to iron out every aching crease of her own heart and
set it singing. Intoxicated, she met him again and again with a reckless
abandon in which there was no place for guilt. For two cents, she would proclaim
her love from the terraces of Calcutta, and some day soon she would.

Often,
laughing within herself, she wondered why nobody noticed that when she walked
her feet no longer touched the ground. Was it possible that such opalescent
happiness as was hers could fill the world with so much light and still remain
a secret? But, as it happened, the inner glow that radiated so fearlessly from
her eyes now was by no means going unnoticed. Returning from church one Sunday
when the girls had stayed behind with some of Estelle's friends, Lady Bridget
remarked to her husband, "Isn't Olivia looking marvellously well these
days, Josh? I do believe it is young Freddie's devotion that has effected the
transformation. Don't you agree?"

Disgruntled
at having been dragged to church again, an exercise he disliked intensely, Sir
Joshua snorted. "I'm inclined to give the credit to his therapeutic
absence from station," he commented drily.

"Don't
be absurd, Josh! Olivia is extremely well disposed towards young Freddie. He's
already written to her thrice from the plantation."

"That
might prove
his
ardency," he was quick to point out; "it
hardly proves hers. I doubt if Olivia has troubled to write back."

"Oh,
I'm sure she has, dear! I shall have to ask Estelle—and speaking of Estelle,"
she frowned and drummed a tattoo with her fingers on the carriage window,
"I'm really at my wit's end with that girl. You will have to make a strong
stand with her,
very
strong."

Sir
Joshua cursed under his breath. "God's blood, woman, don't you think I
have enough to worry about? Manage as best you can but spare me these daily
trials!" He knocked hard with his crop on the back of the coachman's seat
as an instruction to
go faster. "If she's frisky, then loosen the reins a little. It works with
horses; there's no reason why it shouldn't with high-spirited fillies like
Estelle."

"Loosen
the reins enough to allow her to be in this wretched pantomime?" Lady
Bridget cried. "Are you out of your mind, Josh?"

"Pantomime?
What pantomime?"

But
by the time Lady Bridget had finished telling her husband what she already had
several times before, he was no longer listening.

A
letter arrived for Olivia from Kinjal inviting her to Kirtinagar once again,
this time for the Dassera celebrations. It was a tempting offer and Olivia was
touched; she replied with equal warmth but made vague excuses for not accepting
the invitation. To be away from Calcutta now, even for a day, for an hour, was
to her intolerable; and Kinjal's well-meaning warnings would stand like a
barrier between them. As for the dispute her uncle had engineered between Jai
and the Maharaja, Olivia was no longer exercised by it. Raventhorne's shoulders
were broad. God knew he was capable of resolving his own problems without her
concern. Whatever burdens he had on his head had been there before she had come
and no doubt would be there after she had gone. After she had gone . . .

It
was these four words that always brought Olivia's thoughts to a standstill and
chilled her with apprehensions. Her future had become a cul-de-sac—unless Jai
included her in his. Did he? She didn't know, he never said. Fiercely, she
willed everything erased except for the present.

"Calcutta
cannot be that much of a village if I can continue to meet you with such
impunity!" Olivia could not help but jubilate at the persisting success of
her subterfuges.

"Is
it
with impunity that you meet me?" Raventhorne asked.

She
knew that it was not to the risk of exposure that he referred, deliberately
twisting her question. Olivia's eyes blazed defiance; she hated it when he
slipped into ambiguities such as this. "Yes!"

"Then
you
are
less clever than I had thought!" His frame of mind this
morning was cussed, there was no doubt about that. He was restless, refusing to
sit still; his fingers were fidgety as they
clasped and unclasped the holster he
sometimes wore when he had what he called "serious" business to
transact later. Olivia wondered about the reason for his mood when he abruptly
asked, "Your Freddie returns shortly. Will you be seeing him again?"

"I
can hardly avoid it." She spoke carefully, for the subject of poor Freddie
Birkhurst was a prickly one with him. Secretly, however, Olivia was delighted
that he should show signs of jealousy, an emotion so far removed from his usual
confident self.

"Do
you plan to marry him?" He sat down and glowered at
her.

She
was tempted to tease him but his humour was already so sour that she
regretfully abandoned the thought. "No." She could not, however,
resist exploiting her advantage to some extent. "Although it was you who
recommended that I should. You said—"

"I
know what I said!" He sprang up again, flicked his Colt out of its holster
and fired at a
bel
tree, bringing a plump green fruit crashing to the
ground, its bright pink pulp spilling in all directions. "I was angry
then."

Olivia
put her arms around her knees and rocked herself back and forth. "And you
are angry again."

"I
am
not
angry!" he shouted, balling a fist and hitting it against
the palm of his other hand. Then his arms dropped. "Yes, I am angry,"
he muttered savagely. "I am angry because for the first time in my life I
find that I am avaricious. I cannot let
go."

She
got up and went to him. "Then indulge your greed," she dared to
suggest, running her hand over his shirt sleeve. "Do not let go!"

He
shook his head impatiently and moved away. "No, that must not be, cannot
be." When he looked at her, his huge mother-of-pearl eyes were like
distant moons covered in cloud. "You ask for the impossible!"

"But
I love you, Jai," Olivia breathed for the hundredth, the thousandth time,
pleading tacitly for a response that would not come. For all his moments of
tenderness, his exasperated admissions, his cautious kisses and caresses, his
ill-concealed desire for her, he had never said that he loved her and now she
hungered to hear the words.

"You
should not love a man such as me."

"You
are the only man I
can
ever love!"

"Don't
tempt your fates, Olivia. As it is you have produced turmoils in me that defeat
me."

Then
allow those turmoils to lead you to love me!
Her passionate plea
remained
unsaid. Instead, the hurt she felt emerged as anger. "And you cannot
tolerate to be defeated in anything, is that it?"

"I
have never
been
defeated in anything." Supreme arrogance cemented
the lines of his face into an aloof mould. "You ask for the impossible,
Olivia," he repeated with a return to cold hostility.

She
was unbearably wounded. "I have never asked you for anything," she
cried, "except for crumbs of your precious time!"

"You
ask without asking and I cannot refuse. It makes me angry that I should not be
able to refuse even those crumbs."

"Then
don't
see me anymore!" she flung back in his face. "I
can
do without you, Jai Raventhorne,
believe
me I can!"

"In
that case," he grated under his breath, "you
shall."
He
vaulted into Shaitan's saddle and thundered off in a cloud of dead leaves and
dust, leaving her choked with unexpended fury.

Olivia
cried silently all the way home. For three whole days after that, although she
wandered the countryside far and wide in desperation and fear and bitter,
bitter remorse, she did not see Jai Raventhorne. Her sense of loss was almost
too much to bear.

Once
more they had come full circle.

But
then, on the fourth morning, he was with her again. Without a word he gathered
her in his arms, crushing her to him as if he would never let her go again.

"Wipe
out everything I said," he whispered huskily, covering her face with
fierce kisses with lips that trembled. "Erase every damned word from your
mind as if it had never been said. Forgive me, forgive me . . ."

She
already had. With the magic wand of his touch the sorcerer had broken one spell
and rapidly woven another to enmesh her once more in tangles of enchantment.
She kissed away every line of unhappiness from his ivory face looking so wretched,
to whisper back meaningless phrases of comfort.

"It
is a novelty for me, this ... relationship," he groaned, not letting her
go, smoothing the hair back from her forehead. "Your love is like a
mechanical toy for me. I see that it works but I am baffled at
how.
You
should not make me angry like you do."

She
laughed at his stern frown, his aggrieved expression.
"I
make you
angry?" She kissed the corners of his mouth. "You do have such
infernal gall, my darling!"

His
sombre, worried grey eyes lit up in smiles. "Were it not for my infernal
gall, would you love me at all?"

"Perhaps
not," Olivia conceded, starting to purr like a kitten
just surprised
with a bowl of cream. "But a
little
less gall would make me love
you so much more."

"Love
me
more?"
She laughed delightedly at his alarm as he swore. "I
cannot assimilate what you give me now. How can you punish me with even
more?"

But
she knew that he teased her, for in his eyes there was tenderness such as she
had never seen before. He had brought her a gift, glass bangles in an
iridescent display of startling colours that winked at her as they caught the
early sun.

"Oh,
Jai..." She was profoundly moved. "They're so lovely, I can't bear
the thought of wearing them in case they break." Nevertheless, she allowed
him to slip them over her wrist one by one, his huge brown hands clumsy in the
unfamiliar effort.

"I
have given you nothing," he lamented, once again unhappy,
"can
give
you nothing to compare with what you give me. Tell me what would please you,
anything at all—jewels, gold, beautiful clothes," he spread his hands
helplessly, "
any
thing."

Give
me part of yourself. . .

She
held up her hand and turned it around slowly, thrilling to the gentle tinkles
as the glass bracelets nudged each other. "What you give me now is enough.
I have no need for jewels or clothes."

"But
I thought all women liked jewels and pretty clothes."

She
surveyed him coolly through narrowed eyes. "The kind of women
you
are
used to no doubt do. I would be obliged if you would not include me among
them."

"Christ!"
He
threw up his arms. "I thought I had learned everything that could be
learned about women in my travels, but a sassy upstart from California now
tells me that my education is incomplete! All right," he leaned and kissed
the tip of her nose, "since I insist on giving you something in return at
least for crumbs of
your
precious time, name it."

Olivia
felt her throat tighten as she stared back into those bottomless dove grey
pools of haunting tenderness that ravaged her dreams each night.
Just tell
me once, only once, that you love me . . .