“Dominica!” Lord Hawkston exclaimed, and she thought he looked happy. “I was hoping you would be well enough to get up. But where is Mrs. Smithson? The servants tell me she has gone away.”
With a tremendous effort as if her voice came from very far away, Dominica replied:
“She asked me to ... tell you she had to go ... Mrs. Davison who is having ... a baby. She knew you would ... understand.”
Lord Hawkston walked nearer.
“I do understand,” he said. “At the same time it is inconvenient.”
Dominica felt her spirits drop.
He obviously did not want to be alone with her. He wanted Mrs. Smithson to be there, perhaps because it would prevent them from talking intimately.
The servants came in with cool drinks and some sandwiches.
Lord Hawkston took a glass in his hand and walked towards the window.
“It was very hot in Kandy,” he said in a conversational tone. “I was looking forward to being back.”
The servants left the room but Dominica could find nothing to say. She could only stand looking at him, thinking how handsome he was, how at ease he appeared in his white suit, and yet how elegant!
He turned and looked at her.
“How do you feel?”
There was a note of anxiety in his voice that had not been there before.
“I ... I am ... all right,” Dominica answered.
“That is what I hoped you would say.”
He put down his glass.
“It is however annoying,” he went on, “that Mrs. Smithson has had to leave so quickly. I had hoped she would be able to stay while we talked about your future, and now you have no chaperon!”
“Is it so ... important for me to have ... one?” Dominica asked.
“It is conventionally correct, as you well know.”
He stood with his back to the fireplace and after a moment Dominica said in a very small voice:
“Are you ... sending me ... away?”
He did not look at her but stared towards the window as he replied:
“I have been thinking about that, Dominica, in fact I have thought of little else these past few days. It seems to me there are two alternatives.”
“What are ... they?”
“The first, of course, is that you might return to your family,” Lord Hawkston said. “And considering that you were so nearly married to my nephew, I think it only fair that I should settle a certain amount of money on you.”
“That is unnecessary!” Dominica said quickly.
“On the contrary, I think it very necessary,” Lord Hawkston contradicted. “At the same time, I have a feeling that you might see very little of it and that your father would spend it on those he thought more needy than you.”
This was so true that Dominica felt it did not need an answer.
“On the other hand,” Lord Hawkston went on, “I can take you with me to England.”
He looked at her as he spoke and saw the sudden gladness in her face which was like a light.
“Once we are there,” he went on. “I can quite easily find you a suitable husband.”
The light faded.
Dominica’s eyes met his and it seemed as if neither of them could look away.
It was impossible to move, impossible to breathe. Then she said in a voice he could hardly hear:
“Let me ... stay with ... you.”
“Do you know what you are asking? I am too old for you, Dominica.”
Just for a moment it seemed as if she did not understand. Then she moved towards him swiftly and instinctively, seeking him as she had done the night she had been so frightened.
His arms went round her and it was like reaching Heaven to feel them holding her as she wanted to be held.
“I said I am too old,” he said in a strange voice that she had never heard from him before.
“I love ... you!”
She whispered the words, and yet they were quite clear.
“Are you sure? Oh, my darling, are you sure?”
She lifted her face to his.
For a moment he looked down into her eyes, then he pulled her against him and his lips were on hers.
It seemed to Dominica as if the whole world were illuminated with a golden radiance that was blinding.
She felt that his lips possessed her, and yet gave her everything that had ever been beautiful and moving, exquisite and lovely! It was what she had sought in the music she had played and listened to on the breeze of the wind.
It was also what she had found in the brilliance of the flowers in Kandy, and in the enchantment of the jungle.
“I love you! I love you!”
She was not certain if she said it aloud or with the feelings he evoked in her which seemed to pass from her lips to his.
She loved him so intensely that she felt already that she was a part of him; they belonged to each other; they were indivisible and no longer two people but one.
Finally Lord Hawkston raised his head.
“My precious, my darling!” he exclaimed unsteadily. “This is wrong! You should find someone of your own age.”
“There is only ... you in the ... whole world.”
“Do you really mean that?”
“I think I knew it from the very first ... moment I met ... you,” she whispered. “But I was not... aware that it was ... love.”
He kissed her again and she felt herself thrill and come alive with sensations such as she had never known existed.
Looking down at her face radiant with happiness he asked masterfully:
“When did you first know you loved me? Tell me—I want to hear.”
“I think I ... loved you first when you were so ... kind in giving each of the girls a new gown and bonnet,” she answered, “’and when you told Madame Fernando that they were all to be different. I thought you were more understanding than I could have expected any man to be.”
She gave a little sigh of sheer happiness and continued:
“And when you were so clever with Prudence, telling her she must eat her food so that she could go to her Ball you would give for her, I knew...”
Dominica’s voice faltered for a moment and a blush arose in her cheeks.
“What did you know, my sweet?”
“I... knew that was how I would like the ... father of my ... children to ... behave with them,” she murmured, and hid her face against his neck.
He held her so tightly that it was impossible to breathe.
“And when did you first admit to yourself that you loved me?”
“When we were at Kandy,” she answered. “It was so beautiful that I could think of nothing but ... love. Then afterwards, when I saw the picture of your bedroom I knew why. It was because I ... loved you. I loved you with all of me ... but I thought you would ... despise me.”
“I loved you from the very first moment,” Lord Hawkston said. “I realised what a hard life you were living and I wanted to take you out of it, to protect you!”
He paused before he said:
“I have never before in my whole life wanted to protect and take care of a woman, not for my own pleasure but for hers. I wanted to shelter you from harm, to stand between you and anything which could hurt or distress you.”
“That is why I ... ran to you when I was ... frightened,” Dominica told him. “I knew I would be safe with you.”
“As you always will be,” Lord Hawkston said, “And when I saw you in your wedding gown, I knew you were the embodiment of everything a man could desire and long for in a bride. You were beautiful, exquisitely beautiful and yet at the same time I had already learnt how much character and personality you had.”
He kissed her forehead.
“Will you wear that gown tomorrow for me, my darling, when we go to Kandy to be married?”
She turned her face up to his and her eyes seemed full of stars.
Then he felt her stiffen and she dropped her head. “What is it?” he asked.
Lord Hawkston put his hand under her chin and turned her face up to his again.
“I have no friends amongst whom you would not shine more brilliantly than the sun itself!” he said. “You are mine, Dominica, mine, as you were always meant to be, and perhaps you have been in the past! Now that you have said that you love me, I will never let you go!”
“That is all I want,” Dominica cried, “to be ... yours for all eternity.”
“That is what you will be,” he said, “and because I think it will please you, and because too I want it myself, I intend that we shall live here for six months of each year. It does not take long to travel to England. We will go back in the summer and do our duty for the family and the estate but for the winter we will return here. Will that make you happy?”
“You know it will!” Dominica answered, “and you know too that I will be happy anywhere ... anywhere in the world ... as long as I can be with you!”
There was a note in her voice that brought the fire into Lord Hawkston’s eyes. Then his lips were on hers and he was kissing her until she could no longer think, but only feel her heart and soul were both his.
The stars were very brilliant in the sky as Dominica and Lord Hawkston came from the Palm Room onto the verandah.
Dominica was wearing the white gown in which she had been married earlier in the day.
She had changed for the train journey, but when she had come home she had put on her wedding-gown again because she knew that Lord Hawkston liked to look at her in it.
It had been a very simple and quiet wedding with only James Taylor as their best man, but to Dominica it had been a service of dedication and she had known that Lord Hawkston felt the same.
She had heard James Taylor say when the service was over:
“I am happy for you, Chilton, you always needed a wife.”
“To keep me in order?” Lord Hawkston answered with a smile.
“To complete the story of your success!” James Taylor had replied. “When you have finished honeymooning come and see me. I have not only new methods of tea dyeing to show you, but I have also a young man who is just the sort of manager you need. He has been out here for two years and you can trust him.”
“Thank you, James,” Lord Hawkston said.
It had been very moving for Dominica to arrive back at the house and know it was to be her home with the man she loved.
As she saw it standing over the valley like a precious jewel encircled by the gardens and the silver lake her fingers had tightened on her husband’s hand.
“We will be happy!” she said.
“I know now that I built it for you,” he answered, “and there was always something missing when I was in the Palm Room.”
Dominica blushed and he kissed her hand.
“You need never be afraid of being alone in the darkness again, my lovely one.”
They had so much to say to each other, so much to talk about, that they had lingered long over the superlative dinner which the Cook had provided for them. Now as they stepped onto the verandah it was too late to see the sunset. Dominica looked up.
There was a half-crescent moon moving up the sky and as Lord Hawkston followed her eyes he said quietly:
“Do you know what the crescent moon is called by our people?”
“No ... tell me.”
She knew that even the sound of his voice made little tremors of excitement run through her and the fact that his arm was around her made her quiver and long for the touch of his lips.
“It is called ‘a lovers’ moon,” Lord Hawkston said, “and that, my precious, wonderful wife, is what it means to us.”
“A lovers’ moon over the Garden of Eden!” Dominica said softly. “What lovers could ask for more?”
“What indeed?” Lord Hawkston agreed, “and no man could ask more than to have you as his wife!”
She raised her face to his and in the light from the sky he could see her expression of happiness very clearly.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, “so exquisitely perfect! I want to tell you something.”
“What is it?” Dominica asked.
“When I first came to Ceylon,” he said, “and I was only twenty-one, I thought, as I suppose all young men do, that sooner or later I would find someone I would love and we would get married. But what happened was very different.” Dominica looked at him a little apprehensively as he went on:
“I fell in love—not with a woman, my darling, but with a country. I loved Ceylon! It seemed to me everything that a man could wish to find in the woman he would love. It was soft and warm, sweet and friendly, and besides giving a man so much materially, it also had a spiritual message for those who would listen to it.”
“I can understand that,” Dominica whispered.
Lord Hawkston kissed her hair and it smelt of the fragrance of the jasmine buds she had entwined amongst the orange blossom wreath which Madame Fernando had made for her.
It was the fragrance of Ceylon, he thought, a fragrance which was irresistible and wholly feminine.
“Sometimes,” he went on, “when I stood on this verandah I used to think that I would be alone for the rest of my life. No-one, I thought, could ever mean to me what this country had come to mean. No woman could ever be so beautiful or so utterly and completely desirable.”
His arms tightened around her.
“Then I found you!” he said. “And I knew that you were all that I wanted; all that I had dreamt of; all that I had thought of as the utter and complete perfection that any woman could attain.”
“Suppose I ... fail you?” Dominica asked in a breathless little voice.
“You could never do that!” he answered. “We shall doubtless have our difficulties, set-backs, perhaps even storms, like the rains that fall on the valley, but fundamentally, we are one, we belong to each other, Dominica, and nothing can change or alter that!”
“Another Adam and Eve!”
She felt his lips against the softness of her skin.
“You are my Eve,” he said. “I love you with all the love that exists in the whole world, and I will spend my life making you sure of it.”
He drew her closer as he spoke and now their lips met and Dominica put her arms round his neck to draw him closer still.
“I love ... you! I love ... you!”
She felt his hands on her hair drawing the pins from it so that it fell in a silken wave over her shoulders.
He kissed it, then sweeping it aside he kissed her neck, her shoulders, and as he unfastened her gown and it slipped lower, revealing her rose-tipped breasts.
“You are like a lotus flower,” he said passionately. “I worship you.”
Then he drew her gently, his lips holding her captive, back into the Palm Room and the curtains closed behind them.
Outside the lovers’ moon rose slowly up the starlit sky throwing its mystical silver light over the sleeping valley.
Moon Over Eden (Bantam Series No. 37) Page 16
