The Passionate Sinner (15 page)

‘No more than I can help being a blind man whom you fooled with your play-acting. Do you mind my blindness? Is it that which scares you, the idea of being my wife?’

‘Not really.’ Merlin knew very well what scared her, and even yet she was unsure of the working of his mind, trained long ago by the Jesuits, then later by the dedications of his supremely delicate type of surgery.

‘I-think it does. All the time we have talked I have felt a sort of fear in your body. I shan’t hurt you.’

‘I’m a woman and I know about pain.’ Merlin said it with a slight smile, for she ached with love even as he held her, the pressure of his arms like warm golden chains, binding her to a lover who might yet become her torturer.

‘Then what is really at the root of your fear?’ he asked, his voice low and deep. ‘The fact that it was a woman who caused my loss of sight; my loss of usefulness?’

‘Yes,’ her throat had gone dry. ‘Possibly.’

‘Why do you tremble—you aren’t that woman, are you?’

She had no words to form a coherent reply. A shock as from a dangerous wire had run its current right through her bones and she couldn’t suppress a low cry from her heart itself.

‘Come,’ he laughed softly, ‘I was only making a joke.’

But had it been a joke? Had she not caught a deadly note of meaning deep in his voice? Suddenly she felt a sense of perilous dream, as of being suspended on the lip of a towering ledge, with a long way to fall, all the way to hell itself. She had to face it. There was no easy way to heaven in marrying Paul, but there was a good chance of finding hell if he did connect her with the agony of seared eyes and the shattering terror of never seeing again.

‘I know what is wrong with you,’ he mocked softly. ‘You want all the usual romantic cliches and the promises of rapture. You want me to speak of love even if it’s a lie. What is love? I will tell you,
meisje.
It’s part of the sun, the sky, the sudden smile. It has nothing to do with the black world I inhabit, where there are no smiles, and no stars to relieve the eternal darkness. Love is seeing love in someone’s eyes. Love is seeing a face lit with warmth and wonder. How can I talk of love when I can never see the evidence of it?’

‘You might—feel it!’ she replied, her mouth twisted by pain from his almost brutal honesty ... that to speak of love to her would be a lie.

‘Do you plan to fake it for me, my consummate little actress?’

‘Must you say things like that,
mynheer?’

‘It gives me a certain satisfaction to say them. You have played a highly dangerous game with a very disillusioned man.’

‘I only meant it for the best, Paul, and never for a moment did I think of you as a fool.’ She softened her voice. ‘Aren’t you going to forgive me?’

‘I am going to marry you.’ he said drily. ‘Does that not count as some sign of forgiveness?’

‘Marriage can mean different things to a man and a woman.’ Merlin hesitated. ‘When the novelty wears off you might start wishing you had stayed a bachelor. After all, a secretary can be dismissed with a minute’s notice, but a wife is rather more difficult to get rid of.’

‘You,
meisje,
are the one who seems to have reservations. I do scare you ... is it the bitterness in me?’

‘I understand why you feel bitter and cheated. I’m not insensitive,
mynheer.’

‘I agree, you are far from being insensitive. The blind develop an instinct about people, but all the same you had me fooled—or did I allow myself to be fooled because I would have sent you packing had I realised your true age. I would not have risked what has now come about, that I would want you, and out of pity you would agree to be wanted.’

‘It isn’t pity.’ she protested.

‘Oh, then what is it that makes a blind man so attractive to a girl?’

‘You’re still the same man you always were, except that your eyes have been hurt. I—I find you attractive.’ Her skin felt hot and Merlin waited with apprehension for him to jeer at her, but instead he looked strange, almost stricken, and his lips moved as if he couldn’t find the sardonic words that would have cut her down.

‘You—you’re a sentimental young idiot,’ he said finally. ‘You probably read too many romantic novels of the Ethel M. Dell variety, with the poor damned hero blighted of his limbs or his sight. It won’t always be romantic with me! I’ve one hell of a temper and I get impatient with having to be shaved and decently dressed by someone else, and of having my food laid out as if I’m a damn great baby. It won’t be all kisses and roses, Miss Lakeside.’

‘I know. There will be times when you’ll need a whipping-boy.’

‘You are no boy,
meisje.’
A smile edged his mouth, subtle and also rather sensual. ‘You are very much a girl, as I discovered at the height of the storm. You have lovely skin, so smooth and supple it’s like running my hands through cream. Sweet heaven,’ his voice suddenly thickened, ‘I feel like a man who is coming out of prison. Let me—your lips, Merlin, I must kiss you!’

She put her lips to his and with a hunger that was just a little terrifying he crushed her breathlessly close to him, his mouth exploring her face, her throat, the slim warmth of her neck. His lips were firm yet with a certain fullness that was intensely pleasurable as he made her untutored mouth respond to his, urging open her lips and waking their sensitive nerves to a hunger that matched his own. Her arms locked themselves about his neck, and all of her was melting sensation as she felt his mouth moving down inside her kimono, caressing her until she gave way to a soft little moan.

‘God, but you’re sweet.’ His face pressed to her, and her body was arched over his arm so that her hair streamed against the black leather of the couch, a coolness under her nape and the heat of Paul’s mouth against her skin. ‘Merlin, slim, creamy Merlin, I’m glad you like to kiss.’

‘I—I like kissing you.’ she confessed. ‘I’ve never done anything with a man before.’

‘Incredible as it seems, I believe you,’ he laughed softly, with a kind of triumph that he, a blind man, could make a woman feel this way. ‘Yet you worked among doctors, some of whom are fearful Don Juans. How come you kept yourself so innocent?’

‘I had my ideals—oh, Paul!’ She shivered with pleasure as he moved his lips along the soft skin of her inner arm; even loving him she hadn’t dreamed that her response to him would he so exciting, so heavenly. Through her lashes her eyes shone like golden-brown stars.

‘And I happen to fit your idea of the ideal lover?’ he murmured, and a certain mockery had crept into his voice. ‘Can you really say that of a man who is unable to see what your eyes are like when he kisses you?’

This time his mouth took hers with a sudden roughness. His face and touch had become harsh, as if with frustration because he was denied the power and pleasure of seeing her face as she was kissed ... the helpless tilt to her head, like that of a flower on a wind-bent stalk, yielding to what was stronger and more ruthless.

This time Merlin could feel his lips bruising her, but she lay quiescent in his arms and let him rake the anger and frustration out of his system, using her to whip the memory of being told that a careless hand had made him blind.

Only he didn’t believe that it had been a careless hand ... he believed that it had been a deliberate one, and it had left a black despair and distrust in his heart. All he felt, all he could feel, was the physical hunger of a desire that wasn’t love.

But love had to counter-balance the fear in Merlin’s heart, and there under his hurting mouth she was again the victim ... pale, slim, offered up to this hostile blond god whom she had learned to love when he hadn’t even noticed that she was alive.

When he drew away from her, thrusting the hair from his brow, Merlin lay wearily against the leather and the stars in her eyes had been drowned out by the big tears that filled them. She couldn’t make him see again. She could not give him the one thing he wanted above everything. She could only give him love, and he didn’t really want it... he only wanted her slim, warm girl’s body.

As she watched him through wet eyes he ran his fingertips over the face of his watch, a specially made Vacheron Constantin on a wide strap, with raised numerals so he could braille the time. ‘The night is half over,’ he said, ‘and you must be devilishly tired. You are very quiet,
meisje.
Have I wearied you with my kisses?’

‘No,’ her voice was husky. ‘I’m yours, and that’s all there is to it,
mynheer.’

‘My sacrificial lamb,’ he jeered softly. ‘Tomorrow I shall send for an old jeweller who lives down in the
kampong
and request that he bring an assortment of gems so we can have a ring made for you. Also he can see about some pearls for you to be married in—pearls, I think, will complement that skin of yours.’

‘You seem to have a fixation about my skin,’ she said tartly. ‘I might be covered in enormous freckles for all you know.’

‘You might indeed.’ He leaned forward and his fingers found her cheek and gave it a stroke. ‘When a man has to rely on touch in place of sight he gets quite good at it, and I’m quite sure that the tint and texture of your skin is pure, unadulterated cream, all the way to the bottom of the pastry. I intend to arrange our marriage right away. When I start touching you the voltage is likely to blow, and I’m rather impressed that in this age of birth pills and cheap sin, I have come upon a girl who has virtue. Yet you’re a passionate child, aren’t you?’ His fingertips slid to her lips and brailled them. ‘Did I hurt your mouth with my somewhat less than tender kisses?’

‘No—I’m all right.’

‘I can feel a dampness on your skin. Have you been crying?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t lie to me,
meisje.
I was angry, but not really with you—God, I don’t know!’ His face twisted. ‘Maybe I should send you away instead of marrying you! How can I tell what I might do to any woman since that bitch—I am sorry about the tears.’ He leaned lower and this time his
lips were infinitely gentle on her mouth. ‘Merlin, you and I are trapped, for though I should let you go, the devil in me won’t slide open the bolt and let you fly away. I have tasted the cream on top of the confection and I want it all... and you want me, don’t you?’

‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘I want you very much.’

‘Then it will suffice.’ He rose abruptly to his feet, towering over the couch where she lay in the glimmer of her kimono. ‘Come, it’s time you were in bed ... your own bed until I get that ring on your finger!’

But too much had happened, there had been too tremendous an upheaval for Merlin to fall asleep very easily. She tossed from side to side of her bed, disarranging the netting with her outflung arm, seeing Paul’s face vividly set against the darkness, feeling as if his arms were still around her, while all they had said to each other kept running through her mind, giving her no peace.

She drifted off to sleep near dawn, and when she awoke the houseboys were hammering away repairing shutters and windows and other damage the typhoon had caused. Out of all that torn darkness the morning had come in cascades of flame and gold, but it wasn’t until Merlin rose and dressed and went downstairs that she saw some of the havoc out in the compound.

Steam rose from the puddles as the sun climbed above the trees, brilliant butterflies and birds lay broken and dead in the mud, creepers lay twisted in their milky sap, and there was a crashed sandalwood tree that gave off a strong fragrance even as it lay there with its roots torn out of the ground. Great torn banana leaves were flung about like so many bedraggled flags, and the air was filled with the earthy scent of a thousand slaughtered flowers.

Merlin walked sadly in the garden, with its mud-spattered water-dock and leaf-choked lotus pool. And here a lovely sunshine tree had been felled, its golden bells filled with mud. Moths large as sparrows, lizards and giant crickets made no more sudden movements.

Sad as it all was, it could have been much worse, and when Merlin went to the kitchen she found the cook there making breakfast and was reassured that the people of the
kampong
had been quite all right down in the tea-sheds. At the height of the storm, he told her, a baby had been born and the mother was going to call the little boy Tofan, which meant typhoon.

‘You and
tuan
okay?’ He gave her a sudden impudent smile. ‘I see you make dinner for him. Him eat it all right?’

‘Tuan
eat it fine.’ she replied, and suddenly felt heat in her cheeks as she remembered what Paul had said about the islanders regarding her as his
nyai.
It just hadn’t occurred to her, but now she realised that it was only natural that they should think such a thing. They didn’t know the meaning of the word platonic but had a simple philosophy that man and woman were made for each other as the sun was made to ripen the fruit.

Suddenly it swept over her in a breathtaking wave ... she and Paul were going to be married. He was going to arrange the wedding without delay, and she was filled with the breathless miracle of it. Paul’s wife, free to let loose the love that filled her heart.

‘The
nonya
look plenty happy,’ the cook remarked, cocking his head at her. ‘You enjoy the typhoon, all alone here with
tuan?’

‘Who could enjoy that?’ She kept her eyes down and drank from the tea-bowl he had handed her. ‘And the
tuan
couldn’t be left all on his own, now could he? Trouble needs company, that’s why I stayed here at the house instead of going down to the tea-sheds with the others.’

‘All same,
nonya
not sorry to stay, eh? Big wind come and she cuddle up to the big boss.’ Suddenly the cook began to choke with laughter at the indignant look Merlin gave him. ‘Is all right, mees, we all knowing because
tuan
tell his boy who shave him and pick out his shirt.
Tuan
go mainland with Lon, see priest about become
suami
of the
nonya.
We plenty pleased, I tell you. Big man should have wife and
baji.
Him much brave like
harimau,
but blind in eyes and need woman very much ... love take away some of the hurting, eh?’