The Passionate Sinner (17 page)

‘Bear with me, little one.’ His fingers found the pearls at her throat and fondled them. ‘I have a wife, but is there any real hope that I can protect and keep you—what if you grow weary of leading me about?’

‘Oh, don’t say such a thing!’ Merlin pressed her hand to his lips. ‘Do you think I mind what I do for you? I want to care for you and comfort you—and do take that suffering look off your face, Paul! I’m not doing an audition for
East Lynne
—I can see how terribly nice you look in your dark suit and beautiful white shirt. There’s nothing so attractive as a man in a perfect suit and shirt.’

‘What is your game,
kindje?’
His fingers played with her earlobe. ‘Are you seducing me, or are you afraid I’m going to have another try at breaking your fingers?’

‘Paul, when you say things like that you make me go shivery!’

‘It isn’t the talk that does it, my dear, it’s touching your ears just here at the back where the skin is like velvet. There is nothing more sensitive than a woman’s ears, but you are really as innocent as a baby, aren’t you? You have never committed a sin in your sweet life, have you?’

Merlin searched his face, trying to read what lay behind his sardonic expression. It could be due to edginess because he couldn’t see what she looked like; she was his bride after all, and marriage was just as big a step to a man as it was to a woman. Two people tied together in the most intimate relationship in the whole of life, able to bring them infinite joy if there was enough love and tolerance between them ... but at no time had Paul spoken of love, and Merlin couldn’t put out of her mind his almost stony behaviour all through the wedding service.

If only she knew what had been in that wire from Hendrik! Lon knew, but Paul would have told him to keep the contents to himself had they contained any mention of her in connection with his eyes. Merlin was unnerved and terribly unsure. She didn’t know what to make of his mood. Perhaps he was thinking that if he still had his sight he would never have married someone who lacked the soignee sophistication he had liked in his women. Perhaps he felt cheated ... a blind man who made the most of her because she was conveniently at hand under his roof.

‘Your face is cold,
meisje.
Has it been an ordeal marrying me?’

‘I believe you’re the one who thinks of it as an ordeal,’ she said, in a driven way. ‘In normal circumstances you wouldn’t have dreamed of marrying someone like me! You had—I feel sure you had beautiful girl-friends with lots of smart and witty conversation, certain of their place in the world, poised and perfectly dressed.’

‘Aren’t you perfectly dressed right now?’ His hand found her shoulder and moved slowly down her side, waking all the tiny nerves under her skin. ‘What is this material, it feels as soft and fine as mist?’

‘Shantung.’ Her voice quivered, though his touch was light it seemed to send tiny currents of feeling deep into her bones, a sensation almost on the edge of torment.

‘Shantung,’ he repeated after her. ‘And what kind of colour—no, don’t tell me. I am going to make a guess, for I have a feeling you are not wearing white. I wonder why? Is it because we aren’t a wildly romantic couple, but two people who find it a comfort to cling together in the dark? Don’t start like that!’ His hand was resting under her heart. ‘Now let me see—if only I could!—with your unusual eyes I think you might choose honey-gold or amber. Didn’t you say your eyes were cognac with a dash of champagne?’

‘I said nothing of the sort—as if I would!’ There was a catch in her throat at the softly thrilling caress of his hand ... she ached for him to take her now, using headlong desire to subdue the nagging doubts and suspicions. Oh, if only she were a woman of assurance who would know exactly what to say and do, but much as she adored Paul she was as unsure of him as if he were the tiger the islanders called him. She had to let his mood be her guide, fighting not to give way to her feelings as his fingers found the tiny pearl buttons at the front of her dress.

‘You’re all tensed as if to spring away from me,’ he mocked, as he fingered the buttons with a kind of sensuous deliberation. Merlin waited with bated breath, and then his hand slid to her waist.

‘I understand from Lon that the islanders are laying on a feast for us in the courtyard of their temple—they call it the Temple of the Seven Delights. You will be in a position to see the carved images on the walls, so you will have to describe to me,
liefje,
what these teasing delights look like.’

‘A feast,’ she said, blushing slightly, well aware of the carvings because she had seen them on one of her solitary afternoon walks, adorning the walls of the old temple set in a grove of frangipani trees, with dragon eaves and a cascade of overhanging balconies like cages hung upon the walls. There were steps like carved leaves of lotus leading up to the entrances, set round with fringes of sculptured stone in the form of demons and serpent tails intertwined. The frescoes themselves had been more than explicit and yet with a simple integrity that was part of the island philosophy; love was the many-sided key to everything, woman the gate and man the hand that opened it.

‘Are you blushing?’ Paul touched her cheek. ‘Yes, I can feel your skin glowing. You know,
mijnganzen,
you were not quite correct when you said a while ago that I would in normal circumstances have preferred a sophisticated woman. I see no fun in that, as it happens.’

‘Fun?’ she echoed him. ‘You mean with a woman of the world you wouldn’t be able to—to take the mickey?’

‘Is that what I’m doing to you?’ he mocked. ‘It rather felt as if I were making a little preliminary love to you, feeling my way so as not to startle you. You don’t have to describe the frescoes to me if you don’t want to. I think I can fill in the pictures for myself, but when I speak of fun I want you to understand that it can be an amusing pleasure for a man and his
vrouw
to explore all the shades and meaning of being together. We are going to be very much together. I expect you to realise that. I happen to want you like the very devil—despite everything.’

Merlin stared into his face, seeing the way it abruptly hardened when he spoke those last two words. The amusement, the hint of indulgent mockery, vanished into the bronze mask and his eyes held that deadly little glow at the centres of them. The hand of fear clutched her heart, the iron fingers of apprehension made her gasp.

‘You are not to worry.’ His lips were at her ear. ‘I shall make it my pleasure to please you, little one. I know you are shy, and I imagine there is fear in those big doe-like eyes of yours. Are you afraid the tiger is going to gobble you up, bones and all?’

‘Of course not—I’m not a baby, Paul.’

‘A baby,’ he murmured, and buried his lips in the side of her soft neck, moving his mouth against her skin until he found the fast-beating pulse at the base of her throat. ‘There will be no son or daughter of mine who I can’t guide through life, into a decent human being. I have married you for myself and I intend to share you with no one. Is that understood?’

‘If you say so, Paul.’ Anything ... everything, if he would only go on kissing her like this ... she moved against him almost unaware, the lids of her eyes feeling as if little weights were attached to them, a sensation that had nothing to do with being sleepy. She had never felt so aware, so sentient, so alive to being a woman.

His lips clung to hers for long moments, and then drew away. ‘That will have to do for now,’ he drawled. ‘As I told you, we are to be honoured with a marriage feast and the islanders will be hurt if we don’t attend. I think it would please them if you dressed in the traditional gown of an island bride, and I have told Lon to bring you a
kain,
a long wrap-around skirt of rich silk, and a
kebaya
jacket of lace. Keep on your pearls, and also wear this.’

He took from his pocket a fairly small object wrapped in tissue paper, and when he opened the little package a gold bracelet was revealed, unusually set with three tiny golden bells.

‘Give me your wrist,
meisje,’
he said. ‘I am going to lock this around it—you see, the bracelet cannot be undone once the little latch is closed. Now I’ll always know where you are.’

Merlin gazed at the bell bracelet in some astonishment. ‘It’s a slave device,’ she exclaimed. ‘Paul, what do you take me for? Do you think I’d run away from you?’

He gave a short laugh and moved her wrist so the little bells made a tinkling sound. ‘Where there are bells there are no demons, so it is said.’

‘A little exorcism for me?’ she asked, and deep down inside herself she felt convinced that Hendrik’s wire had contained some reference to her as the nurse who had been blamed for his blindness, who had been too shocked and stunned to offer any resistance to the accusation. Who would have listened? Shy, quiet people often took the blame for the crimes of others, and she had no defence against Paul’s bitterness.

She ached deep down that Paul should believe like everyone else that she was capable of causing him agony ... all she wanted was to give him happiness.

‘Take it off, Paul,’ she requested. ‘I don’t want to wear it—like some cruel little cat who will tear open the throats of birds unless I’m belled!’

‘It would have to be filed off,’ he said. ‘It’s just a piece of jewellery, so don’t let your imagination run away with you.’

‘I want it off!’ Merlin began to struggle to move the gold circlet over her clenched in fingers, but it was too narrow and the bells made a crazy music of their own as she tried to be rid of the bracelet.

‘Stop that!’ Paul reached out and closed iron fingers about her hand. ‘I want you to wear the bracelet and that is good enough. Some of the island brides don’t remove theirs from the day they marry to the day they die. Little idiot, it’s a talisman, a protection from evil. And I daresay it looks pretty on your slim wrist.’ As he spoke he lifted her wrist and kissed the inside of it.

His lips on any part of her person could always weaken her resistance and Merlin could see from the set of his jaw that he had made up his mind that the bracelet was going to stay exactly where he had placed it. ‘Not a little cat,
meisje,
but my belled dove. They have them in the courtyard of the Temple of the Seven Delights—an appropriate-sounding place for a marriage feast, don’t you agree?’

‘I can see what sort of a husband you’re going to be,’ she rejoined. ‘So I’m to go around tinkling like some slave girl in your harem. Don’t you want to put another one on my ankle?’

He laughed and moved her hand against his throat. ‘You have at times a tongue as tangy as bitter orange.
Kindje,
don’t you know that when I hear those little bells in the night, when you turn over at my side, I shall know I’m not alone in that black pit I didn’t ask to live in. Will you deny me the small pleasure of hearing that soft music on your slim arm, so I can reach out from the darkness and feel you there?’

‘Oh—Paul.’ Her throat had choked up. ‘Paul, I didn’t think of it like that. My dear, I’ll wear a cowbell if you want me to! I deserve it, being such a cow over the bracelet.’

‘No,’ he stroked a thumb against her wrist and Merlin knew her pulsebeat was palpable to him, ‘I happen to like it that you have spirit and courage. I wouldn’t want a tame bird in my nest.’

‘In your tiger house, you mean.’ Summoning the courage, for it was still a kind of half-frightening dream that he was hers to touch and caress if she so wished, Merlin leaned forward and put her lips to his cheek, breathing the Tiger Balm on his shaven skin, feeling the hard warmth of the well-defined bone as she moved her mouth against him. She felt him catch his breath and he crushed her slim warmth close to his hard body.

‘You feel like a willow bending to a strong wind,’ he murmured. ‘Did you know that in the mythical language of the island the willow is the woman, the palm, is the man?’

‘Like poetry,’ she said, and her hand moved along his shoulder and the potent difference of the male was alarming to her and also very exciting; the power in his shoulders made her feel fragile and at the same time aware of her own feminine influence over him. She knew that the scent and feel of her could carry him beyond the cruel reef of memories into the deeps of physical desire, and instinct told her that she would be comparatively safe with him while desire had ascendancy over him ... beyond that Merlin didn’t dare look. She closed her eyes to the rending rocks and let herself drift with the tide of sensuous pleasure as Paul caressed her in silence with his firm and beautiful hands. She felt a throb as he lit a flame deep inside her, a sweet and stabbing fire that would immolate all the torments she shared with him, with every step he took in his blindness.

‘You are more divinely sweet than anyone I ever touched in my life,’ he whispered. ‘You just cannot realise what it does to me—ah, we must stop this,
meisje!
We have a party to attend, and I think I hear footsteps coming along the hall right now. Lon, I expect, with your costume. You will agree to wear it?’

‘Yes, I’ll wear the
kain
and
kebaya
and try to look as much like an island bride as possible.’

‘Yes, do that,’ he urged softly. ‘Wear your hair loose with a ginger flower in it. I love the scent of ginger.’

Merlin longed to say that she loved him, so much that she ached with it. A lovely, tormenting ache that made her feel slightly dizzy when he released her from his arms. She took several deep breaths, then turned to smile at the lean young Indonesian, who stood just inside the doorway, holding garments of silk and lace across his arm.

He gave her a bow and it seemed to her that his eyes were strangely inscrutable as he said to her: ‘Permit me to wish you great joy,
mevrouw.’

‘You’re very kind, Lon.’ Merlin rose to her feet and approached him, eager to take a look at the island clothes Paul wanted her to wear to the feast. ‘May I see what you have for me? And may I ask who was generous enough to lend them to me?’

‘They are yours.’ He looked right into her eyes. ‘Did you not know?
Tuanku
sent me
to
the
wanita
who made other things for you and she has just finished sewing them. Very pretty, eh?’