Second Best Wife (9 page)

She shrugged her shoulders. 'I want adventure!' she burst out. 'I don't know what exactly!' Only she did. She wanted the whole of her adventuring to be with him!'Are you in love with Celine?'

His fingers brushed her cheek. 'My dear girl, are you going to be jealous of her too? I don't kiss Celine like this —at least you can be sure of that!' He bent his head and put his lips to hers, kissing her hard and with an expertise that rendered her breathless and made her heart pound against her ribs. 'She won't be taking anything away from you, Georgie Porgie, and you'll fight with her at your peril! If you want to let fly at anyone, you'll have to make do with me. Okay?'

It was so unfair! But then she caught sight of the slight yellowing that was all that was left of the black eye she had given him and her conscience was aroused, making her feel both uncertain and tearful.

'I don't want to fight with anybody!' she exclaimed.

He straightened his back, looking down at her with amused eyes. 'That'll be the day, my dear. Come and eat. You'll be meeting Celine soon enough and then you can make up your own mind about her. The only thing that's wrong with your fighting instincts right now is that you're half asleep.' A smile flickered across his lips. 'Shall I carry you, or will you walk?'

She stood up quickly, avoiding his helping hand with a disdainful gesture. 'You'll never have to carry me, William Ayres!' she declared. 'I can look after myself, just as I always have!'

'But you have a husband now,' he reminded her. 'Won't you allow him to look after you?'

If she only could! 'A husband is as a husband does,' she answered pertly. 'I don't need a keeper too, you know, so you'd better keep your care for Celine — and Jennifer if you have any over. I'll pull my own weight, thank you very much!'

He stopped her with a touch of his hand. 'Not against me you won't, my love!' He pulled her close against him and kissed the tip of her nose with a mockery that made her want to cry. 'Little Miss

Independence!' he added on a laugh.

CHAPTER FIVE

The road to Kandy enchanted Georgina. She loved the changes in the scenery as they climbed further and further away from the sea. First there had been the coconut palms, their trunks weaving gorgeous patterns against the vivid blue sky; then there had been the paddy fields, some of them bright with water and some of them covered with the vivid green of the rice; and then, finally, there were the first of the tea plantations, hundreds of ruthlessly clipped back bushes marching their way across the higher slopes of the hill country, their lines keeping a military precision.

There were the changes in the people too. In an island noted for its beautiful women, most of them seemed to be out in the streets that morning, smiling and waving and dodging out of the way of the constantly hooting traffic as they went about their tasks of the day. The clutter of shops, single-storied and bursting at the seams with fruit and coconuts and other local commodities, came and went, giving way to long stretches of teak forest, rubber plants, and other crops. But it was the rice fields that appealed most of all to Georgina. To see the water-buffaloes doing their twice yearly task of ploughing the inundated mud of the terraced fields, their owners urging them on to greater effort, was for her symbolic of a whole way of life she would never have seen anywhere in the familiar world of the West. This was what she had dreamed would be the stuff of the intriguing East.

‘Still want to go home?' William's voice cut across her contented thoughts.

She shook her head. ‘No wonder they thought this must have been the Garden of Eden. Is it always so beautiful?'

‘Probably. The Buddhist temples help the scene along, don't you think? The shape of those stupas must be one of the most satisfactory ever invented by man.'

Georgina followed where he was pointing to the domed buildings surmounted by a steeple, pencil-thin and narrowing towards the summit, and had to agree with him. ‘Some of them are very old, aren't they?' she asked.

'Before we go home I'll take you to Anuradhapura and Polonnaruwa where you can see some really old ones. They were building these huge domes here when we in Europe were congratulating ourselves on managing a few arches. Originally, they were built over a relic of the Lord Buddha, or of one of his more renowned followers, together with the treasure given by whoever had had the temple built as an act of devotion. I can't believe there were enough relics to go round for all of them, however, but it doesn't matter, for Buddha and his teachings are brought to the mind whenever one sees a stupa, or dagoba, or pagoda, as we call it in England, after a while.'

'I'm surprised no one thought to steal the treasure,' Georgina remarked.

'I've never heard that they ever did,' William told her. 'I rather like to think the Buddhist philosophy precludes such reprehensible vices as greed and violence. Sometimes it does, and sometimes it doesn't.'

Georgina gave him a saucy look. 'I didn't know you had pacifist leanings. They don't show much, if you don't mind my saying so?'

'It takes two to make peace, just as it takes two to quarrel,' he observed. He grinned suddenly, taking her breath away. 'Besides, I shouldn't like my warrior wife to find it dull living with me. As far as you're concerned, my girl, I give as good as I get!'

It was strange to feel such a strong liking for her old enemy as she did now. 'I'm still one black eye to the good,' she reminded him. 'Perhaps it doesn't count,' she added, 'because I repented it almost at once. And it was partly your own fault. You practically dared me to hit you!'

'I can't say I thought you would,' he retorted dryly. 'You won't get through my defences as easily another time.'

'I may not want to hit you again,' she murmured.

'You will!
One little
kiss — that's all it takes with you, Georgie Porgie! But I'll tame you in the end. I'll have you eating out of my hand, a reformed character, you see if I don't!'

She was silent. Back in England she might have argued the point with him, mostly because she was afraid that she already liked the feeling of his hands on the reins far too well, but here it would have seemed strident and out of place to have denied the possibility that there might come a time when she wouldn't want to fight him—if that time wasn't already upon her.

One little kiss!

The memory of the brief kiss he had given her the evening before stirred her blood and she found herself speculating on her reactions if he should want more than a few kisses from her. The thought of it made her burn with an emotion she had never experienced before.

The Moslerruwomen in the village they were passing through covered their heads with the loose folds of their saris, but they too were out in the street doing their shopping and standing in little groups exchanging the day's gossip. She felt very close to them. She felt very close to all women at that moment, for they too, some of them, had been caught up in the tide that held her in its grip for the first time in her life. They too knew what it was like to be submerged in a need for someone else — only why did it have to be
William?
How much easier life would be for her if she could have gone on hating him in peace!

'Kandy isn't far now. We'll stop there for lunch and go on to Nuwara Eliya afterwards,' he told her.

'Is that where you're going to be working?'

'Fairly near. I'll be able to get back most nights. I was fortunate to be offered the use of this house on one of the tea plantations there. It'll be more comfortable for you and Celine than anything the site will be able to offer.'

'I don't mind roughing it,' Georgina asserted. 'I don't want any favours from you!'

'You won't get many, but Celine deserves something better than the dust and grit of a dam in the building. Her father always gave her the best, and so shall I!'

Which meant that Georgina would be expected to do so too, she thought wryly. Oh well, it wouldn't be new to her to come second to someone else. What else had it ever been with Jennifer?

'Have you seen the house?' she asked, making conversation because she didn't want to be left to think her own thoughts an instant longer.

'No. I've only been to Sri Lanka once before and that was on a brief trip from a job I was doing in India. I thought I'd like to spend longer here, so I applied to help build this dam. I was very much interested in the historic aspects of their irrigation systems here. They're absolutely fantastic!— and built long before our modern machinery came along. I want to make a study of how they were done, to see what we can learn from it. It's a pity they were so neglected later on, but the European conquerors weren't interested in rice or the hinterland, they were attracted by the cinnamon and other spices and weren't any too nice in their methods of getting as much of the stuff as possible. The "bunds", as they call the dams here, and the "tanks", or artificial lakes, fell into disrepair and are only being put right now. At one time Ceylon fed twice the population she has now and still had rice over for exporting, now she has to import about a third of what she eats. It's getting better, but they still have a long way to go to catch up with their own history.'

'But surely nowadays — '

'Don't underrate the men of old,' he said dryly. 'We have the technology to do wonderful things nowadays, but have we the will? They lacked our machinery, but their deeds survive them to tell of their genius. We haven't yet built any comparable irrigation system in our time.'

Georgina was impressed. 'Was it very long ago?'

'I'm afraid it was. Europe had a long, long way to go in those days.'

Georgina made a face. 'I'm suitably chastened,' she said. 'Does it give you a good feeling to be treading in such august footsteps with your own project?'

He flushed absurdly, looking young and eager. 'It does, but I hadn't expected you to understand something like that. You're a much more complicated person than I thought!'

'Perhaps we all are,' she suggested. 'I mean, I don't think I know you very well either. I thought I did, but we're strangers really, aren't we? First impressions aren't always the most accurate after all. How I hated you that day!'

He laughed. 'It showed!' he said. 'You've been trying to hate me

ever since, haven't you?'

'Not more than you despised me. And I still hate you! I hate you every moment of every day!'

He slowed the car, his eyes flicking to her face and back to the road. 'Who are you trying to convince, yourself or me?'

She clenched her fists and found one of them covered by his own, much larger hand. 'I don't know what you mean,' she declared. 'I don't have to convince anyone about that! Ask anyone!'

'Funnily enough, I did. I asked my mother.' His eyes flicked over her face again, noting the strain beneath her hardly won composure. 'Did you know she prefers you to your sister any day?'

'Yes.'

'Ah, but did you know why?'

She shook her head, not trusting herself to speak.

'She thinks you have courage. I hope you're not going to prove her wrong by continuing to insist you hate me, because you don't, do you, little Georgie? She doesn't think you ever have.'

Georgina chewed frantically on her lower lip. 'I don't like you!' she managed at last.

'Liking is a very pale emotion. It doesn't warm the blood —as I can warm yours any time I choose.
That's
something else!'

Georgina lifted her chin. 'Any attractive man could do the same! It doesn't mean anything. I don't think it's anything to congratulate yourself about. It — it doesn't make me like you any more!'

'Nevertheless,' he said with a smile she could only think would have done justice to the Bad Baron in a pantomime, 'it gives me a great deal of pleasure to know I have you at my mercy—'

She trembled. Was it possible he knew of the strange excitement that burned inside her whenever he came near? If he did, she would have to make it equally clear to him that she was ashamed of all such emotions. But how to do it?

'You're making far too much of very little! What makes you think I shall ever change my mind about you? I'll fight you to the last ditch! Just because you took me by surprise and —and
kissed
me, and I didn't
say
anything, it didn't mean I
liked
it!' She took a deep breath, preparing to hurry on with her castigations of his behaviour, but he seemed totally unperturbed. The hand that was covering hers patted her lightly on the knee.

'Took you by surprise? My dear girl, husbands are usually expected to kiss their wives. Indeed, the complaint is usually that they don't do it often enough!'

'In the normal way.' She cast him a glowering look. 'Ours isn't a normal marriage! Do you think I
want
to be kissed by someone who is obviously wishing I were somebody else? You should have put up more of a fight for Jennifer. Haven't you always thought of her as a nice, biddable girl? Well then, why didn't you make her change her mind about Duncan? She would have done if you'd pressed hard enough.'

His lips twitched. 'Somehow I prefer greater enthusiasm in my wife — '

'Then you shouldn't have married me!'

He grinned. 'But I did marry you, my dear, and now I'm looking forward to the rewards of having done so.'