Bride's Dilemma Page 12

  “My cousin,” Paula said. “John’s first wife— who was drowned.”

  “I know.” Tina’s throat ached with pain. “She was beautiful. John once told me she was, but there’s a certain coldness about the word, one thinks of chiselled perfection alone—but how warm, how alive, how vivid she looks.”

  Paula was holding the fresh drink the waiter had placed in front of her, suspended midway between the raffia coaster and her mouth. “Has John talked much about Joanna?” she asked sharply.

  Still a trifle dazed, Tina glanced up. She shook her head. Joanna’s death had not only been the destruction of a beautiful person, but there had been a rift John had wanted to cross, back into happiness with his wife, and fate had irrevocably widened it. The pain of that was always with him —it overshadowed Tina’s marriage.

  She clicked shut the little case holding the photographs and handed it back to Paula. The emerald fingernails glinted against the silver, then it was out of sight in her purse, but not out of mind. That was why she had showed it, Tina supposed. To let her see what she was up against. . . or more likely as a warning that she, Paula, was capable of enticing a man away from a lovely woman, let alone a plain one!

  It was at this point that deep, gay, attractively accented tones dropped into the silence that had fallen between Tina and Paula. “May I join you ladies?” said the voice.

  Tina glanced up, startled, straight into a pair of yellow-brown eyes under a cropped thatch of raw-gold hair. Immaculate cream drill sat on shoulders so broad they made Tina blink, while a quick white smile cut clefts in the hard, tanned face. Decidedly not a man who was instantly forgettable, and every bit as spectacular as he had looked skimming the aquamarine waves in his swimming trunks.

  “Dacier!” Paula smiled and held out a slim hand, which he took and carried to his lips. “You may certainly join us. What are you drinking?”

  “I have told the waiter to bring me a Rhum Clement,” he smiled down, letting go of her hand with attractive reluctance.

  “You were that sure we would want you, eh?” Paula drawled.

  “A man who is sure is always acceptable to women.” The audacity of his grin swept from Paula to Tina.

  “Will you not introduce me to this delightful child?”

  Tina’s ringed left hand was in her lap, her skin was shiny, her hair pushed carelessly behind her ears. Very likely she did look a child to this sophisticate with the boyishly wicked, pale-sherry eyes. His French blood made him tag on a compliment.

  “This is John Trecarrel’s bride,” Paula informed him. “Tina, meet Dacier d’Andremont, that dangerous bachelor I was telling you about.”

  “How do you do, Mr. d’Andremont?” Tina tried hard not to give in to her infuriating habit of blushing, but he was the type of man who could have made even Paula blush, had he wished. Her right hand received the warm touch of his lips, then he parked himself beside her and gave her a long, frank scrutiny. “So you are the bride about whom everyone on Ste. Monique has been speculating? I am charmed to know you, Mrs. Tre-carrel.”

  “Thank you.” Tina gave him her shy but direct smile and was willing to bet that he had singed dozens of wings in his thirty-odd years without once getting within entanglement distance of the matrimonial net. A charmer, a dangerous one, if you weren’t already on love’s hook as firmly as she was.

  His drink was brought to the table and as he raised his glass to Tina, he said: “There is an old Andalusian saying about marriage which has always amused me, that they are like melons and in every hundred you will find a good one. Here is hoping yours is rich and full.”

  “I have an idea, Dacier, that you’re cynical about love,” Paula said, accepting a cigarette from his case, which glittered as the sun caught it and was monogrammed. Tina shook her head when it was offered and saw him quirk a blond eyebrow. His top lids sloped down at their outer edges adding a lazy look to his eyes, which swept over her face as he extended a lighter to the cylinder jutting from Paula’s jade holder. The flame moved to the tip of his own cigarette and smoke jetted from the nostrils of his sculptured Latin nose.

  “Are we not all cynical about love until it happens to us, Paula?” He lounged back in his chair, looking supremely at ease between the two women —as only a man with Latin blood can look. “It is a fever against which few of us are immunized, and I do not expect to go through life without succumbing to its attack.”

  “I thought Frenchmen were romantic about love,” Paula fenced.

  “Not about love, mon amie. About marriage. When we marry we do not expect it to take care of itself, we know that it has to be worked at. It is within marriage that romance should constantly accelerate. To make a comparison, is there not more pleasure to be had out of a car which one has grown accustomed to handling; is it not more responsive, with an eager purr to it instead of a stiff reluctance to give of its best?”

  “Dacier!” Paula put back her elegant head and trilled a laugh that was faintly piqued. “You really are a brute! I might have expected you to quote ‘Odi et amo—I hate and love,’ but never to compare women to cars. To you, then, a wife would be a possession, something to be run in until maximum performance is achieved ?”

  He grinned and shrugged in acknowledgement. “I should hope, Paula, that to every man a wife is regarded as a possession, for to a man his possessions alone have real value. It is the nebulous things, the dreams, the pie in the sky, that belong to women.” He turned his audacious smile on Tina. “Do you feel, ma petite, that to be a man's possession is not the ideal way to run a marriage? Do you wish to be at the driving wheel?”

  Tina took a gulp of her drink and felt her head swim. “I—I’m not the type to want more than to be a passenger, Mr. d’Andremont,” she replied. “My happiness would lie in that, but naturally there are women who wish to share the driving seat.”

  “To each man the right kind of woman, eh?” he smiled. “We shop around for that, but we are not all fortunate enough to find our ideal—and then again our ideal is often snatched from beneath the nose by someone else.”

  Even as Tina wondered if he was speaking personally, she saw Paula assume an idol-like tenseness and realized that for her the words had a double significance. Apprehension pierced Tina like a knife point—she could feel Paula’s hate reaching out, touching her—

  She jumped to her feet, then had to clutch at the table edge as the world spun alarmingly. “I—I must be getting home,” she said. Her voice was distraite, and Dacier rose lithely out of his chair, looking concerned as Paula drawled:

  “Tina isn’t used to strong drink, mon ami. I’m meeting someone for lunch, so how about being a pet and running her home?”

  “I shall be happy to do so.” He clasped a warm hand under Tina’s elbow and drew her protectively against a body that felt firm as rock. They said goodbye to Paula and made their way out of the club and along the limestone walk to a sleek-finned convertible. He unlocked it and Tina slid in against the comfortable upholstery, raising grateful eyes to Dacier’s face. “I hope you haven’t a date?” she said. “I can take a cab—”

  “You worry too much about other people, Mrs. Trecarrel,” he said, leaning on the door he had closed and watching her with narrowed eyes. “Who taught you to be on edge all the time, like a little mouse? Not this husband of yours, I hope?”

  “John?” She flushed and shook her head. “John doesn’t bully me.”

  “That is just as well.” Dacier strode round the glistening bonnet and climbed into the car, large-limbed, smelling of the open air, platinum watch and golden hairs glinting on his wrist as he reached to the ignition and they shot away from the flower-bordered lawn of the club. Soon the ocean was beside them as they drove and Tina held her hat on her lap and let the breeze whip through her hair. She remembered John saying that there was a speed limit on the island, but it seemed that Dacier d’Andremont recognized few limits, whether they related to cars or people. But he slowed when there was a little more natural color in Tina
’s cheeks, and she wondered at the way she felt more relaxed with him than she had ever felt with John. It was as though she had known him for years—comfortably as into an old shoe she had slipped into a strange intimacy with the man.

  “You are too much a girl who likes to please people,” he remarked. “You like them to smile and to be kind, but let me warn you that Paula Carrish is of the type who reserves her better side for the men of her acquaintance.”

  “I know that,” Tina smiled ruefully, “but she invited me to have a drink and I couldn’t be rude and say no.”

  “I think she had said something to upset you just before I joined you for a drink. Would it be a great impertinence if I asked what it was ?”

  Tina’s fingers clenched on the straw brim of her hat, for how did she put into words the mood Paula had induced without making it sound like a sick fantasy to this high, wide and healthy man? “My husband has been married before, as you probably know. Mr. d’Andremont, and Paula was showing me a picture of Joanna. I—I suppose I have a bit of a thing about her. She was hauntingly beautiful.”

  “And you think she still haunts your husband, eh? Paula is encouraging you in this belief?”

  “She doesn’t have to encourage me. It happens to be true.”

  Dacier’s amber eyes flashed to meet Tina’s. Then he said, very deliberately: “You, also, have beauty. Ah, but yes, mignonne, the very best kind that shines out from within. And you are so young, with few defences. There is a sweetness to it.” He smiled. “You are very sweet, Tina.”

  “You’re rather nice yourself,” she wasn’t too embarrassed by what he had said, only shot through with regret that she must hear such things from him and not from John. All the same they boosted her confidence, if they were true, and Dacier nodded his blond head when she smiled at him with doubt in her eyes.

  “I find it fascinating the way you English girls are unaware of your charm,” he asserted. “You have an air of retreat which is most enticing. Perhaps when I lose my heart it will be to an English girl. . . after all, my grandmother came from your country.”

  When they reached Blue Water House, Tina invited him to stay for lunch, but he said he had a previous engagement and it was with a touch of regret that she watched him wave goodbye and sweep the convertible in an arc round the driveway plants. The powdered coral spattered and settled, a green parrot squawked in a tree and the lace-plants quivered. Tina, moving her hat like a fan, walked round the side of the house and in through the open glass doors of one of the ground floor rooms.

  Coming in from the brilliant sunshine the room was dim, and she was halfway across it before she realized she was in the library and that John was at the big desk, a pen poised in his hand, gazing quizzically at her and waiting for her to notice him.

  “H—hullo!” She stood poised like a startled crane, enormous eyes fixed on him, flaxen hair in disorder. She didn’t move as he rose and came to her, but when his hands touched her shoulders she trembled from the love-ache that ran through her bones.

  His hands tightened, registering the tremor she couldn’t control, then he let her go. “Don't overdo the dashing about,” he said rather curtly. “The trade winds cool the island to a certain extent, but you mustn’t forget that our sun is a sub-tropical one.”

  “I met Paula Carrish—didn’t Topaz tell you?” Tina fought to sound casual, frustrated by his touch, longing for the kiss he had denied her. “We ran into her as we were leaving the market and she invited me to have a drink at the Spindrift Club. She introduced me to Dacier d’Andremont— he’s the rich Frenchman she was telling you about the other night. He’s very nice. He gave me a lift home.”

  “Tina,” John broke into a whimsical smile, “I’m not asking for a list of your movements. I’m pleased you’ve had an enjoyable morning. That’s what I want you to have, some fun.”

  Fun! Tina moved away to his desk and picked up one of a pair of perfectly balanced bronze horses, running her fingers over the silk-smooth workmanship and reflecting that it hadn’t been all fun that morning. She could still feel the smart of Paula’s sly digs, and showing her that photograph of Joanna had been a brilliantly spiteful piece of strategy. She had ensured that from now on Joanna’s vivid face would gaze back at Tina from every comer of Blue Water House.

  “When are you going to teach me to ride?” She spoke in an over-bright voice as she replaced the bronze horse, which she knew without being told was a piece of John’s work.

  “How about this afternoon, if you aren’t feeling too beat from your shopping expedition?” He leant against a comer of his desk and surveyed the downbent curve of her profile and pale swing of her hair.

  “It was amusing watching Topaz haggling with the various shopkeepers.” She glanced up and met with a breathless sense of shock the intense blue of his eyes. Lean and easy, he leant there, her husband, and yet a stranger. She had only to reach out a hand and it would have touched him, but her hands could not move, they were shackled by uncertainty and shyness. She knew in this moment that a wall of reserve was growing between herself and John and that they were both contributing to its construction. Fear and anger flared inside her and she wanted to batter it down before it cut them off completely from one another—but her hands stayed clenched at her sides, for already there was no sense of communication with John and she dreaded a rejection from him.

  “I’d better go and freshen up for lunch,” she said, making for the door.

  “You’re forgetting your hat—here.” He whizzed it across and laughed unkindly when she missed catching it.

  Upstairs she showered and changed into a tangerine blouse and a pair of white, tapering pants. She brushed her hair and latched it back in a pair of white slides, then was turning to go downstairs when an imp of curiosity compelled her into the adjoining lounge and across to the door of John’s room. She turned the handle and glanced in. It was a big room, untidy and lived-in. On his dressing chest there were college and navy groups, a stud box in hide, a pair of ivory-backed brushes, a tobacco jar shaped like a Toby jug . . . but no personal photograph of Joanna. Not there or on the bedside table, where a couple of books and a pipe jostled with a leather-bound clock and an attractive mounted photograph of Liza sitting astride her pony.

  Tina could feel her heart pounding as she closed the door. She had found out that he did not sleep with Joanna’s lovely face gazing at him, but it was a short-lived flicker of reassurance, for it was hardly likely in the circumstances that he would flaunt her in front of his second wife.

  Wife? The word was farcical when applied to herself, she thought, pausing at the bend of the stairs to gaze from the rose window at the blue-green ocean and coral beach. If John were in love with her he’d want to make love to her. It was the rational thing to suppose, but it seemed that whatever transient attraction she’d had for him in England had vanished now he saw her against the background that had been so natural to Joanna.

  She thrust her hands into the slant pockets of her pants and went on down the stairs. Liza called her name, then came sliding down the waxed banister rail, jolting to a halt against the carved post and swinging a long leg over it. They went into the dining room together and a few minutes later were joined by John.

  The next few days passed pleasantly enough, and Tina learned to do several things she had never dreamed of when living at Chorley with her aunt. She discovered the fun of horseback riding, sailing a catamaran, and reef fishing for amberjack. John even gave her one or two driving lessons, but he was rather an impatient teacher and she was relieved when he said she’d better get herself enrolled at a driving school before the car ended up with shattered gears. He grinned derisively as he spoke, and sparked her temper.

  “We can’t all be brilliant at things,” she flashed. "I’ve never pretended to be anything but ordinary.”

  His eyebrows reached for his hairline at her outburst, but he drove on without comment. His silence was eloquence enough for Tina; she was ordinary and he wasn’t going to
pretend otherwise. Her nails dug pits in her palms and she wished fiercely she had not gone to the Chorley headland that windy, fateful day in March ... but inevitably there came a reversal of this wish when, the following morning, he wandered into her bedroom with his hair ruffled and a robe draped over his pyjamas, beguiling a share of her breakfast teapot. She had done away with tea bags and her tea was now being brewed as it should be, in its natural state.

  John sat beside her on her bed, plundering triangles of toast and curls of butter, and it was all Tina could do not to launch herself into his arms and take whatever consequences resulted. But she wasn’t a gambler by nature and she clung to what she had rather than risk it in a grand slam. She watched closely each move in the game and came to the conclusion that she played against a poker-face. John gave little away. He treated her in a kind enough fashion, but really she was what Paula Carrish had insinuated—a big sister for Liza.

  Not that she minded Liza making up a threesome, for somehow her presence eased the faint tension that seemed to spring into life between John and herself when they were alone in the evenings. These hours together could have been so rich, she thought wistfully, but instead they passed in a separateness she knew no way of bridging. John would sit absorbed in sketches for the new piece of sculpture he was planning, while Tina lost herself in colorful tales of the Caribbean islands.

  Great white moths fluttered round the lamps hanging in the veranda. Sprinklers watered the lawns and a fresh, moist scent mingled with that of the many blossoms, especially the frangipani, which had a peach-like fragrance that turned peculiarly bitter when the flower was cut from the tree. Tina, thinking it pretty, had arranged some branches in a vase, but the coral stars had quickly withered and when she had thrown them away the bitterness they exuded had saddened her. It seemed to her in her present hypersensitive state that love could go the way of the frangipani, which bloomed so richly only to die so bitterly. Even in its growth it was somehow symbolic, for the star-flowers and leaves clustered at the extremity of the branches, leaving the tree with a hollow heart. The sap, John had told her, was poisonous!