The Passionate Sinner (22 page)

‘I suppose it would,’ she replied, keeping her voice low and cool. ‘If you’d like that, I’ll get Tutup to lead you down to the beach.’

‘I’d prefer you to take me,’ he said, ice clinking as he raised his drink to his lips and took a deep swallow. ‘I’m suggesting that we go moon-trail swimming together. Are you in the mood?’

Merlin was in the mood for anything he might suggest, but she was afraid of him and didn’t want to be charmed into compliance only to have him turn on her with sudden biting words.

‘If you aren’t in the mood, say so,’ he ordered. ‘Don’t just sit there moonstruck.’

‘How can you tell I’m sitting down?’ she asked.

‘From the angle of your voice—are you putting me off,
meisje?
Are you unable to swim tonight?’

‘No.’ She flushed slightly, for there was a very good reason why she could swim any time she liked. ‘I—I’d like to come with you, if you really want me to.’

‘Would I ask if I didn’t want your company?’

‘You might, if you meant to.’ She bit her lip. ‘I never know, do I, if it’s me or a whipping-girl that you require?’

‘Tonight, my dear, I require my wife.’ He stood to his full height and saw him flex his wide shoulders. Excitement stirred in the pit of her stomach ... it would be heaven, swimming in the moonlight with him, and afterwards lazing on the silver-lit sands. But she wanted him to be kind ... somehow tonight she wouldn’t be able to bear it if he turned on her and ripped into her.

‘Go and get my swim-shorts and your own suit,’ he said. ‘Don’t forget the beach towels and a rug. I will see Cook about some chicken in a basket, with hot bread rolls in a napkin, and plums.’

‘Oh yes,’ she breathed, excitement mounting in her. ‘And coffee, Paul.’

‘No, wine,’ he corrected her. ‘A white wine like moonlight.’

He went down the veranda steps and made his way round the side of the house to the kitchen quarters. Merlin clenched a hand against her racing heart ... oh, she loved this man, maddening and wonderful by turns. Clever, overbearing, charming beyond words when he wanted to be. Wine like moonlight, only Paul could have said such a thing in his deep-toned Dutchman’s voice, with that trace of an accent.

She hastened indoors and ran up to their room for the swimwear and the towels ... not forgetting the plaid rug Merlin caught her breath ... he wanted his wife, he had said. He wanted her, down there on those silver sands, the wine and the moon mingling to the sea’s music in their veins. Her legs seemed to go oddly weak again and she stood staring at her face in the mirror on the wall, a hand moving across her midriff. Then snatching up the bundle of bathing wear, she ran downstairs, the tiny bells jingling on her wrist.

CHAPTER NINE

MERLIN waited for her husband in the compound, while overhead the moon swung like a great globe coming alight, playing its white fire down through the palm fronds. She breathed the wafting scents of nocturnal forest flowers, and the jasmine stars winking awake now night had fallen. All around her trilled the countless cicadas.

‘Are you there?’ It was Paul approaching her with his firm tread. As he drew near her eyes searched his face and relief made her breathe easier when she saw the faint smile on his mouth. He carried a food basket and there was something rather touching in the way he showed it to her. ‘We have everything, including the wine. Shall we go?’

The stepped path to the beach twisted and turned at odd angles and Merlin held Paul’s arm carefully but firmly, directing his every step of the way. One false move and he could go plunging downwards, and the fact that he would drag her with him wasn’t what worried Merlin. She didn’t want him to be hurt any more, it was an acute relief when they reached the beach and were crunching across the sands together.

The night was achingly beautiful, with the sea running in a frill of creamy surf to the shore, which was fringed by palms and casuarinas—the male and female trees always side by side. The sea was rippling with wide bands of silver beyond the stretch of beach and the rocks that were soaked in moonlight and spume. An idyllic night for a swim, far out into the wonderful ocean, sparkling on the edge of paradise.

They laid the rug and food basket beneath a casuarina tree, and Merlin didn’t need to be shy of Paul as she stripped off her dress and put on her sarong that was backless to the bottom of her spine, falling into a soft border above her slim legs. It made her feel young and at the same time very female and sensuous. She tied her hair to the crown of her head with her red ribbon, and felt a pang of regret that Paul couldn’t see the way she looked.

Ever since her marriage to Paul, as if she flowered in a storm, she had grown into a woman who was no longer mousey and unnoticeable. She was much in love, and there was no denying that Paul was unstinting with those attentions that were supposed to make a woman take on added bloom.

She had certainly bloomed, and again Merlin pressed a hand to her body and her eyes were eager, hopeful as they dwelt upon Paul in his narrow dark shorts. How vital his body, how exciting the tawny gleam of his skin. She walked with him across the cool sand in her scanty sarong, nerves prickling as his fingers trailed her bare back.

‘Are you wearing a sarong?’ he asked, and her ears caught the slightly slurred note in his deep voice.

‘Yes, a rather pretty flowered one.’ Merlin took a breath and took the plunge. ‘Would you like to braille me? I’d like you to—to remember me like this.’

He made no reply in words but drew her towards him, and she stood there, melting in every bone, as his sensitive fingertips played over her, feeling the softness of her costume and her skin. At last his hands cupped her face and held it to the moonlight, looking down at her as if he could-truly see her. ‘I swear to myself that I know you, but I don’t really know you, do I? You are a mystery, Merlin, that I can’t seem to fathom. Shall we swim?’

‘Yes.’ She caught at his hand. ‘The water is glorious in the moonlight, like an enormous cup of sparkling wine.’

They ran together into the sea and gasped in unison at the cool touch of it as they plunged through the surf into the rippling water. It caressed all her body and with little cries of delight she rolled and crawled, and then drew Paul far along a moontrail to where the sea opened out to the distance and the possible danger. Anything could be out there in the silence of the night, but still they swam, Paul moving at her side to the sound of the little bells on her wrist.

Whenever he swam alone she was always in fear of the sharks or barracuda, but now they were together the fear was diluted to a tiny drop of caution that finally made her say to him: ‘I think we should turn back now, Paul. We’ve swum an awful long way from the shore and it’s the kind of night that might bring out a shark on the hunt.’

He lifted his face to the pagan moon and Merlin saw a strange look go across his features, as if for those few silent seconds he debated taking her with him into those lurking jaws that would put an end to the pain and torment of being bound by his body to the woman he accused with his mind.

‘Yes, let us turn back.’ He curved his body in a trail of phosphorescence. ‘Swim ahead of me. I shan’t lose you, for I can hear the bells tinkling on your bracelet.’

‘Paul, the sea is incandescent with phosphorous,’ she said gaily, glad to be swimming back to the shore and away from that moment when he had looked so darkly thoughtful. She could hear him behind her, moving with sure, graceful strokes through the water, and she knew why he was swimming at the rear of her ... just in case one of those dreadful sea tigers should emerge from the deeps, its fin breaking through the water like a deadly blade that could shear off a leg in the catch of a breath. Merlin moved faster through the water and her tiny bells echoed in the night, quickening Paul behind her.

They emerged from the surf like a pair of silver people, and tiny diamond drops ran from Paul’s shoulders into the wet hair of his chest. Merlin gave a laugh and screwed the water out of her hair. ‘That was good, but there was peril in it, wasn’t there,
mynheer?’

‘There is peril in everything that gives pleasure,’ he replied, and when they reached their casuarina tree he demanded a towel and flung it around her. ‘Drop your sarong and I’ll rub you down so you won’t catch a chill.’

It was a vigorous towelling, all the way to her hair, and then she slipped into her beach poncho while Paul used the other towel. She handed him his terry-cloth robe and while he tied it, set out the supper of cold chicken joints, jumbo tomatoes, and rolls that were still warm in the napkin. Paul uncorked the wine and handed her the bottle, and as she poured the wine Merlin thought of the typhoon and the way it had led to this moment on the beach.

‘I—I wish we could make a pledge,’ she murmured.

‘To what?’ he drawled, his fingers hard around the stem of his wine glass. ‘To our future happiness,
mijnvrouw?’

‘Isn’t there any hope of that?’ she pleaded. ‘Haven’t I earned a little—forgiveness?’

‘You can see that moon up there.’ He gestured at the sky. ‘Do you think you can reach it?’

‘As hopeless as that for me, Paul.’ Her eyes were huge on his adamant face, anguished and yet proud. She wouldn’t beg any more. She would just accept that it had to be with bitterness that she enjoyed some of the sweetness.

‘I’ll give you a pledge if you must have one,
meisje.’
He raised his glass so the wine shimmered. ‘The day you give me back my sight, my future as an able human being, then I shall give you my forgiveness. Is it a bargain?’

‘It has to be,’ she murmured, and sank to her knees on the sand. ‘Our supper looks good, Paul. Sit down and let us eat.’

‘Yes, let us eat and drink, and make love, for tomorrow —who knows about tomorrow?’ He tipped back his head and the wine was gone from his glass, which he held out for a refill. His face looked pagan, she thought, as she gave him more wine. His eyes gleamed as if the sea phosphorous had got into them. They ate their chicken, tearing it in their fingers, getting butter from the rolls over their lips. The very pain that underlay the pleasure added a zest to their beach, supper, and afterwards they lay side by side on the rug, her eyes seeing the moon, his eyes seeing only darkness.

The lordly palms reared above them, tall silhouettes against the stunning sky. The sands all around them shimmered as if polished. Merlin had never been so aware of being mortal ... never so certain that just by a fingertip she had missed finding heaven.

But Paul’s fingertip found her hand in the sand, tracing her palm like a blind seer who already knew her future in advance. ‘You are very deep in reflection,’ he said. ‘Of what are you thinking?’

‘How lovely the island is—as if when Eden vanished a small chunk of it landed here.’

‘And are we the mythical Adam and his Eve?’

‘No, we are Samson and Delilah, aren’t we?’

‘I believe we are,’ he drawled. ‘Waiting for the temple pillars to fall upon us—it was Samson, was it not, who brought down the pillars? To be rid of Delilah once and for all, do you think?’

‘Yes, that must have been the way of it. Desiring her even as he despised her ... the way you despise me.’

‘At this precise moment I imagine you as my moon girl, with your eyes filled with an unearthly glow and your hair all tangled from the sea.’ Merlin saw the taut lines of his mouth as he leaned over her, and his eyes coldly brilliant as diamonds. His hand moved inside her poncho and her own lips parted involuntarily. ‘I feel your heart— why does it beat so fast? Because you wonder when my detestation of what you did to me will overcome my desire for you? Well, even you, my Delilah, can’t know what I feel when I hold your slim, sweet, treacherous body in my arms. Hate and love, those twin souls, are undivided then and I can hold you until I stop thinking and there is nothing but the feeling. Hell goes into hiding and you, my fate, make a heaven for me that I must have. There’s no logic to it. Sometimes I want to end it with my bare hands, and at other times I can’t bear to be without you. It’s like that right now—has been all the evening. You know it, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she murmured, but he couldn’t see the sadness in her eyes that he should speak of hate even as he drew her to him and she breathed the scent of the sea on his skin and tasted the wine on his lips as they closed slowly and sensuously over hers. She felt the warm rush of love through her veins, the sweet-savage fire merging with the moon, and then there was nothing in the world but the feel of Paul.

Unbelievably here on the sands it was even more wonderful than that first time with him, as if tonight he needed the love more than he needed the hatred. Such giving, such joy had heaven in it, the pure moon in the sky their only witness, the vibrating surf their music, the sea as deep and mysterious, as high and shining as the waves they crested in their mutual delight.

He lay still, his face buried against her racing heart, his arms locked about her in a passion of possession. He whispered words she couldn’t understand, and then slowly they merged into her own language and she caught the sound of her name on his warm lips.

‘Merlin ... Merlin ... no moon or stars until I make love to you. Dear God, why you can give me heaven when you’ve given me hell I just can’t seem to fathom.’ He moved his flushed brow against her and she could feel the questing torment in him. ‘The mystery of you, Merlin, flame and waves and flower sap. There might be a devil in you, but there’s also something of an angel. Oh God, when I hold you like this I feel I could love you, and I dare not love you.’

‘Oh, Paul, don’t hate me—don’t—not after what we felt!’

‘I daren’t love you,’ he said again. ‘What other kind of trap would you lay for me if I allowed myself to forget what you really are? You’ve acted the angel before this in your nursing uniform—oh God, I have to forget it! I have to!’

This time there was violence as well as passion in his kiss, and it was a long time before her mouth and body were free of his merciless vigour. And there was fear in her for what lay inside her, his baby nestled deep in her body. The baby they had made on their wedding night, while the pagan beat of the temple music was still in their veins. She was in no doubt about the night, for nature had an infallible way of telling the time for a woman, and Paul was more potent than the moon, for he now had control of her rhythms.