White Heat (5 page)

As she was assisted out on to the pavement, and then up the steps of quite an impressive hotel, Karin merely looked her surprise, and waited until a cool vestibule received them to give voice to it.

‘But why have you brought me here?’

‘I thought you’d like some tea. Or an ice, or a long drink, if you’d prefer it.’ His voice was still curt, but the unfriendly, hostile quality had departed from it. ‘You’re not yet accustomed to the kind of heat they get here, and what with the glare of the buildings, and so on, you probably found the streets a bit trying. Were you endeavouring to make up your mind about your next move when I caught sight of you, or had you actually lost your way?’

‘I’d lost my way.’ She peeped at him almost nervously as she made the admission, and then sank down gratefully in the seat that was pulled forward for her in the palm-decorated, marble-floored lounge, that as a result of air-conditioning was even cooler than the vestibule. ‘But I’d have found it again,’ she added, quickly and defensively, as she saw the way his jaw set and his brows met in a frown as he sank down opposite her. She removed her hat and shook out her moist, red-gold curls. ‘I really would! I’ve quite an excellent bump of location, and I don’t easily get lost!’

‘No?’

His smile made her feel about fifteen, and very foolish, anyway.

‘But I must admit
I —
I didn’t realize I was being stared at,’ she added, shuddering as she recalled the precise fashion in which she had been stared at. ‘It — it wasn’t very nice, was it?’

‘It was silly of you to come ashore alone,’ he said severely.

‘There was no one else I could come ashore with, as Mrs. Makepiece had one of her bad heads. When she gets them the only thing she can do is lie down.’

‘And what abo
u
t all those young Sir Galahads who so persistently follow at your heels?’ he inquired with a dry smile. ‘Don’t tell me there wasn’t one amongst them who would have been happy to act as your escort ashore? In fact, positively delighted!’

She flushed. She felt that, although he was attempting to be quite pleasant
—
human, at least
—
the hostility was breaking through.

‘I let them go without me because I wanted to stay with Mrs. Makepiece,’ she said. ‘At least,’ she corrected herself, ‘I thought I ought to stay with Mrs. Makepiece.’

‘But she made a sacrifice and decided she could do without you?’

‘She’s extremely kind, and never interferes with my pleasures if she can help it,’ Karin told him stiffly.

‘An excellent employer, in fact?’

‘I couldn’t wish for a better,’ with the same stiffness.

The tea had arrived, and he indicated to her that she should pour out. She was surprised when he accepted a cup himself. Somehow he had always struck her as the kind of man who would disdain afternoon tea, although undoubtedly looking upon it as a weakness to be encouraged in his womenfolk — when, and if, he acquired any.

‘You appear to be a loyal employee,’ he remarked, helping himself to several lumps of sugar. ‘How was it that you and Mrs. Makepiece met in the first place?’

‘I went to an agency, and she had already applied to the same place for a secretary-companion. I’m not really a secretary
—
not a proper secretary, that is
—
but I’m quite useful as a companion,’ a little naively. ‘And Mrs. Makepiece is so easy to get on with that I consider I’m very fortunate,’ she concluded with a touch of primness.

‘I see.’ There was a faint smile in his eyes
—
the first she had seen since that night when she slapped his face. And he seemed unable to remove his gaze from her slender figure in the well-tailored turquoise linen that did such remarkable things to her eyes. If she hadn’t been absolutely certain he couldn’t feel anything of the kind
—
not where she was concerned, at any rate
—
he would have suspected just a glimmer of admiration in his eyes.

‘Tell me something about yourself,’ he said unexpectedly. ‘Your background? Oh, I know I haven’t any right to ask, but I’m a bit curious about you. After all,’ with a sardonic look replacing that hint of admiration in his eyes, ‘of all the women I’ve met in my life only one has had the temerity to slap my face for me! And that after she had just slapped another man’s face for taking the same sort of advantage!’

She coloured all at once quite painfully.

‘You apologized to me that night,’ she said, the words falling over themselves in confusion, ‘and I suppose I’d better do the same thing and apologize to you now. I’ve always understood it’s a despicable thing for a woman to do to slap a man’s face. But you did ask for it!’ her eyes reproaching him. ‘If you want to know what I think,’
w
ith sudden boldness, and a consciousness of having been badly affronted, ‘I consider you behaved abominably!’

The
corner
s of his lips curved upwards in the tiniest form of a smile.

‘And your boy-friend Paget?’ he inquired. ‘Since you administered the same treatment to him on the same night do you consider he behaved abominably?’

She reflected for a moment, and then she shook her head.

‘No; because I asked for it. You had just passed by, and I knew you had a pretty l
o
w opinion of me, so I thought I would do something to help corroborate that opinion. Tom had behaved beautifully up till then — after all, he was a little in awe of me because someone had told him my father was a clergyman
—
and it was only when I offered him some encouragement that it seemed to go to his head. I don’t know why I was so
angry when he kissed me, but I was. I gave him an awful slap across the face! But he’s forgotten all about it long ago.’

‘And you think I should forget about it, too?’

She looked demurely down at her hands that were clasped in her lap.

‘That’s up to you, Mr. Willoughby, isn’t it?’ she said.

He leaned forward and flicked ash into an ash-tray. He had offered her a cigarette, but she had refused. Now he sat quietly smoking and regarding her with a faintly puzzled expression in his eyes over the glowing tip of his cigarette.

‘So your father was a clergyman, was he?’ he said. She nodded.

‘Does that make me seem more respectable in your eyes?’ she couldn’t resist inquiring.

To her further surprise he frowned swiftly, his green eyes rebuked her in quite the old fashion, and he addressed her sternly.

‘What right have you to suppose I ever considered you were not respectable?’ he demanded. ‘A girl of your age ... a girl who looks like you is obviously respectable!’

‘Yet you called me an “easy kisser”!’

‘I’d just seen you behave in a dubious manner.’

‘It wasn’t “dubious”, then, when you kissed me?’ innocently.

He crushed out his cigarette in the ash-tray, seemed to have lost his taste for another, and sat back and
regarded her with a somewhat odd mixture of emotions displayed for the first time quite clearly in his green eyes.

‘Look here,’ he said, ‘I’m not going to apologize for what I did and said that night. I think you wanted to provoke me, and you succeeded! You may be a clergyman’s daughter, and I’m sure you were brought up in a very admirable manner
—
Mrs. Makepiece wouldn’t touch you with a ten-foot pole and accord you the amount of respect she does if you weren’t what she would describe to her friends as “a nice girl”
—
but that doesn’t mean you’re basically and intrinsically “nice”. If you were my daughter, and I’d caught you hurling yourself at young Paget as I saw you do with my own eyes—’

‘You must have been looking backwards,’ she accused him, with a sudden touch of impishness.

‘And what if I was?’ And then he smiled
—
the nicest smile she had yet seen on his face. ‘After all, you’re a very attractive girl, aren’t you? You must know that very well yourself. And since we left England quite a few impressionable young men must have told you so — often! Including young Paget, who strikes me as becoming quite serious about you.”

‘Do you think so?’ and she dimpled delightfully.

‘Minx!’ he said. He sighed unexpectedly. ‘You were bound to be a minx — whatever else you are, or are not. I couldn’t meet a girl, and take even the smallest amount of interest in her, without discovering sooner or later that she was a minx.’

The impishness faded from her face. She regarded him seriously.

‘Why now?’ she asked.

He shrugged.

‘Old history.’

He was plainly disinclined to go further. In fact, she could tell, after a moment or so, that he had no intention of going further. His mouth had set like a trap, and his eyes were hard. She couldn’t help shivering a little, deep down inside her, because of the coldness and the withdrawnness of his extraordinary long green eyes.

‘You were saying just now,’ she reminded him, in order to relieve the sudden tension, ‘that if I was your daughter and you’d caught me with Tom that
night...?’

‘I’d have given you a good slap where you’d feel it most, and locked you up in your room for a fortnight and fed you on bread and water.’ The tension had vanished, but he smiled a little grimly. ‘That’s what I would have done if I’d been your father. As I was not your father I administered punishment in a different fashion
I kissed you!’

He looked hard and deliberately at her, and she felt herself colouring so painfully that the rush of hot blood to her cheeks actually burnt her skin. When she could meet his eyes no longer she looked away.

‘We’ll forget about it, shall we?’ she said.

‘I think that’s the only thing we can do.’

‘And now I think we ought to return to the ship.’

‘I think so, too.’

They rose, and he settled the bill, and outside in the street he beckoned a taxi again. On their way back to the
Ariadne
Karin sat very silent in her corner of the cab, and it was only when a sparkling view of the harbour came in sight that she ventured to thank him for buying her tea, and in particular for rescuing her from a situation that might have proved awkward.

He accepted her thanks with a grim air of detachment, staring ahead of him as if half bored by the thought of returning to the ship, and yet with no other alternative open to him that attracted him more. In a somewhat toneless voice he cautioned her:

‘You mustn’t do that again. If you have no one else to go ashore with you must go ashore with me.’

‘You?’

He turned and looked at her, and he smiled grimly. ‘At least if you do that you won’t get into any trouble, and I promise to behave as an Englishman should,’ with a slight sneer in the words. ‘But whatever you do don’t help to make up excursion parties with a group of young hot-heads like those faithless swains who went off today without you. In any case, they’re not experienced enough to guarantee the safety of a girl like you!’

CHAPTER THREE

That
night Karin dressed for dinner with rather more care than usual. She could not have told why she took such additional pains with her appearance, but she did. Mrs. Makepiece had recovered from her attack of migraine by the time she returned to the ship, and as the captain was giving a cocktail party in his cabin to which she was invited she went off smelling of extremely sophisticated perfume and sparkling with rhinestones while Karin was left to tidy up after her, and with plenty of time on her hands to devote to her own appearance.

First she washed and set her hair, and then re-did her nails. Quite by accident she had discovered that Kent Willoughby disliked brightly varnished nails, so the lacquer she applied was palely pink and matched the pale pink lipstick she afterwards selected.

Her dress, chosen after much thought, was also pink, but far from clashing with her hair it enhanced the beauty of it, and lent her the look of slight fragility that constantly deceived most people although by day her golden tan was difficult to camouflage. The dress was of wild silk and a simple sheath, and with it she wore sling-back shoes of black suede and an unusual cameo brooch attached to a length of black velvet ribbon about her neck.

When the time came for her to make her way to the first-class dining-saloon she felt just a little self-conscious, as if the excessive amount of care she had bestowed on her appearance embarrassed her when she thought about it afterwards. She ran into Mrs. Makepiece on her way back from the captain’s cabin, and the widow’s eyebrows shot upwards a trifle archly as she regarded her in some surprise.

‘My dear,’ she said, ‘you always look nice, but tonight you look almost good enough to eat.’ Which was a generous compliment from a woman who prided herself on her own appearance, somewhat run to seed though it was. ‘What a pity you didn’t receive an invitation to the captain’s party, but the truth is the poor man has so many people to invite that his cabin is in danger of bursting at the seams every time he obeys the company’s orders and throws it open to the top names on the passenger list. By the way, did you have a good time ashore? You were back rather later than I expected, and I was growing a little anxious about you.’

‘Yes, thank you, I enjoyed it,’ Karin replied, not really sure even at this stage whether she had enjoyed herself or not. ‘As a matter of fact, I lost my way, and Mr. Willoughby brought me back to the ship.’