'Looking for you,' he grinned. 'We're bosom pals, remember?'
'Don't tell me you've come to do some work?' she twinkled.
'I've come to do anything you're doing,' he replied menacingly, showering her with a handful of petals. There was no mistaking his effervescent mood. It sparkled in the blue of his eyes, the twitch of his smile. He looked blindingly handsome in white slacks and turquoise shirt, and when he curled an arm about her waist and swung her round she could only laugh along with him. Her working mood rapidly dissolved beside his gaiety. She tried to recapture it, but when he playfully reached for more petals and held them over her, dropping them tauntingly, she impulsively grabbed a handful herself and stuffed them down the open neck of his shirt.
It was a mistake, in the mood he was in. She knew that as soon as she had done it. She knew too from the corner of her eye that a big figure had appeared at the precise moment she had acted. But there was no time to think about that now, for Barry was bearing down on her over the distance she had put between them and from the gleam in his eye she knew he intended to do exactly to her what she had done to him. Unthinkable! She fled. But her laughter and alarm weakened her limbs and made her stumble. She was no match for Barry's lithe frame. As he came up behind her she could do nothing but sink down helplessly in the grass. His laughter mingled with hers as they tumbled, and then when she could hold him off no longer he dragged her to her feet to a low cart at the side where the women emptied their baskets, and without more ado swung her up and tossed her bodily into the mountain of blossom.
Tessa lay breathless and laughing and almost suffocated by the perfume. There were white petals everywhere, over her face and in her eyes, and it was only when she realised that she really couldn't breathe that she fought madly for air.
In her struggling panic she was aware of muscular arms curving rapidly beneath her and then she was gazing up into a pair of dark sea green eyes and at a mouth tight with… was it concern? She lay where she was in the arms, pondering on this before she swung up against a wide chest, held there for a moment, and then dumped down beside Barry as Neil clipped, 'If you two have nothing better to do than disrupt production I suggest you get back to the house.'
They turned to one another, tittering like naughty children, then made a rapid retreat.
That was only the start of Barry's antics, and Tessa had to admit she couldn't resist them. It was a long time since she had had so much fun with anyone. She couldn't really work out where his actual high spirits left off, and his desire to make his relationship with her look one hundred per cent genuine began, but it didn't really seem important. The days were long and sunny, and she was young like Barry and for a little while at least she was tempted to enjoy his friendship. Soon he would make other arrangements for himself and Elaine and then she would go back to her job at the salon and all this would seem like a rosy dream.
In the garden in the afternoons she would find herself lying under a mischievous blue gaze, when she had originally intended to recline in her swim-suit and shorts and doze luxuriously in the warm breeze. It was impossible then not to indulge in the kind of light play that Barry invoked and inevitable that Neil would be around somewhere on the terrace.
In the evenings she would be held suffocatingly close to the slender boyish frame, or hovered over while she chose more music from the extensive range of long-playing records. Their only company was Barry's grandmother, and his guardian and sometimes Nicolette. And then at the end of the week, Barry decided to take up Neil's suggestion and invite some of his friends to the villa. Tessa didn't mind. He would be back with Elaine tomorrow night, so it was as well that she started bowing out of his life again.
As a grand finale to the somewhat wild week, she decided suddenly and recklessly to wear a dress she had been persuaded to splurge on for her friend Debbie's engagement party, and never had the courage to wear since. A soft chiffon in palest apple green, it was rucked over a figure- hugging bodice and cascaded out in gossamer layers at the waist into a full short skirt. It might have seemed out of place in her bedsitter, but it could have been made for the life she was leading now. The colour seemed to lend a certain sheen to her hair and with bare shoulders she felt deliciously cool for what promised to be an airless evening.
Barry's friends thundered up in their expensive cars and parked them along the drive to leave the lamp-lit terrace free for dancing. It was quite a sight, Tessa thought, to watch the lethargic figures come to life once the music started. They pushed up from their chairs and drifted into each other's arms and then shook silently round the floor. They had that look in their eyes that probably spoke volumes if you were in on the language, and Tessa felt somehow that she wasn't. She also felt blazingly out of place in her frothy dress, among fringed waistcoats and jeans and sailcloth slacks, but it was too late to do anything about it now. Or perhaps she was being too self-conscious. Barry seemed fascinated by her appearance tonight and seldom left her side for a second.
Madame Devereux smiled and nodded over the scene from her chair in the golden light of the windows. Neil, big in dark lounge suit and brilliant white shirt, helped Nicolette occasionally to open a bottle of wine or serve the delicate savoury concoctions arranged on small silver trays, but most of the time he sat draped back, watching the smoke curl from his cigarette or gazing past it, to where the music played.
Thinking about it, Tessa wouldn't have minded taking a seat herself for a while. It wasn't that there was anything madly energetic in the way Barry was edging her around, but it could get monotonous after a while, especially after a week of it. Of course she had enjoyed his company all the way, but tonight somehow the spark seemed to have gone out of the fun. She felt strangely restless and discontent in his embrace. It was with something like relief that she noted the first signs that the party was breaking up. One by one the young guests went to shake Madame Devereux's hand gravely, then departed shrieking up the drive in a cloud of exhaust fumes. It was some time before the smoke dispersed and by then Tessa and Nicolette had cleared away the glasses and trays, and Neil the chairs and record-playing equipment. Barry was flushed with pleasure at the way things had gone. He brushed a happy kiss along Tessa's cheek and then went off to assist his grandmother to her room.
As everyone made their way inside, Tessa hung back. Now that all was still, she had a yearning for the peace of the garden, the tranquillity of the all-enveloping darkness out there. Perhaps with its silence wrapped around her she could come to terms with whatever it was that was rocking her inside; find out why she had ended up being slightly irritated at Barry's constant company tonight when, as a person, she was really quite fond of him.
She smiled to herself as she took the steps and walked across the lawn. It was in all probability just the airlessness of the night and a surfeit of music. There had certainly been all kinds of it during the past three or four hours. She inhaled deeply and relaxed. It was different in every way now. The only sound was the whisper of the fountain beyond the trees, and the soft 'clip' of her slender-heeled shoes along the hard earth path. Not a leaf nor a blade of grass stirred. Everything seemed weighted down with the perfume of the night.
The glow from the garden was snatched away as one by one the lights of the house went out. But after a while her eyes became accustomed to the gloom and she could make out the black explosion of a palm tree against the starlit sky; the delicate black tracery of vine leaves running along the loggias.
She had strolled along these paths quite a few times with Madame Devereux, and she considered she knew them well enough, but it was different in the dark as she was beginning to find out. When she almost collided with the wall fencing the garden off from the sloping fields, and stubbed her toe on a sapling that shouldn't have been in her path at all, she decided it might be wiser to retrace her steps and do her thinking upstairs in her room. She could always sit out on the balcony if she found she couldn't sleep.
Convinced that this was going to be the case, she was
musing on the possibilities of writing a letter to Debbie in Australia, or taking up the hem of a dress that was too long to be in fashion, when a rustle at the side of the path made her stop dead in her tracks. There was nothing to see in the darkness and all she could hear was her own quick breathing, then her heart leapt into her throat as firm fingers dropped roughly on her wrist and she was jerked under the trees. The figure belonging to the arm loomed big in front of her and gazing up at brilliant white shirt and taut chiselled features, she tugged herself free to gasp, 'Neil! You gave me a fright! I didn't know you were out here.'
'Surprised because it wasn't Barry who came?' The tones were lazy but laced with a sneer. They went on to add bitingly, 'I've got to admit I'm slightly amazed myself that he hasn't shown, the way you've been working on him.'
Terrified that he would hear her thumping heart, Tessa struggled to drown it with a flippant, 'Is all that supposed to mean something?'
The green eyes glinted not far above her own. She saw the tight mouth twist as he said with smiling contempt, 'Don't come the wide-eyed innocence with me. We're talking about Barry's affections—the ones you've been angling for all week.'
He let his gaze trail long and distastefully over her bare shoulders and throat and drawled thinly, 'You've been right in their pitching, haven't you? In the one way a woman can.'
Tessa felt a slow, hot surge of anger. Now she knew what had been going on behind those mask-like features all week, ever since that morning when he had caught her on Barry's balcony, and afterwards. The afternoons in the garden, scantily dressed in swim-suit and shorts, the chase in the fields that day and her dress now, tonight. He saw it all as some carefully planned operation to trap Barry into liking her. In his mind she had been on her way out and desperate after her two nights abandoned in Cannes. But for him to even think that she would resort to something like that to stay on knocked the breath from her.
'Of all the cheap and horrible…!' As her anger exploded, her hand came up and she brought it with all the force she could find towards that sneering smile. Just when she thought she was going to know sweet contact, her wrist was caught in a grip of steel and held where it was. She was jerked roughly against the wide chest as Neil glinted down, 'I think I told you once before, you'll find me tougher to handle than our baby-faced Barry.'
Struggling for breath in the powerful grip, she flashed her fury up at him, but the choice words she had ready were stifled as he brought his mouth down hard and mercilessly on her own. At first Tessa was too thunderstruck to do anything but fight for breath, then slowly she began to derive a certain savage sweetness in the rough embrace. The lips on hers were demanding in a way that drained her of all fight; the grip of the arms holding her close, cruelly insistent yet strangely pleasurable. She wanted to go on and on giving what the lips were asking, and then as hands came up to brush across her bare shoulders, she was reminded of his words and implications and found herself struggling wildly to be free. How could she even begin to let herself enjoy something that was meant to be a lesson to her? This was Neil's way of showing her his contempt and he was making sure she got the full force of it.
Her cheeks flamed at the thought and feeling the arms relent slightly she pushed away with a violence that almost made her lose her balance. A white-winged cuff shot out and she was steadied by a faintly trembling hand. Pale in the darkness, the green eyes strangely lit, Neil drawled from a tight smile, 'Wouldn't do for something like that to get out of hand, would it? I should go easy on Barry if I were you.'
Tessa could have wept with indignation, but rather than let him see how well he had done his job she tilted her chin and said as though rounding off a polite conversation, 'If you'll kindly put me on the right path I'll be getting back to the house.'
'I'll do more than that,' he replied with lazy humour, 'I'll take you back myself.'
Now it was his turn to behave as though they had been merely taking the night air together. He draped an arm across her shoulders and guided her expertly through the trees and across the lawn. His strides were easy and relaxed, but Tessa felt her legs quaking beneath her. That kiss was still a blaze in her memory, and the arm about her did nothing to dim its intensity. Terrified of giving him something else to smile about she held herself rigid in his hold. It was pure relief when he left her on the terrace. With a deep- toned, faintly mocking, 'Pleasant dreams,' he lit a cigarette and strolled off. Catching her breath, Tessa stumbled off to her room.
Safe inside it, she bathed her hot cheeks, and gazed at her startlingly bright eyes. It was anger, of course, she told herself, still trembling. What else would she feel after Neil's supreme show of contempt?
She turned hastily from the mirror and prepared for bed, but sleep was further away than ever now. She pulled on a cotton negligee and went to sit under the stars. Her mouth curved wryly at the stillness out there. So much for her walk in the garden. She had foolishly thought she might borrow some of its calm and found instead something infinitely more disturbing.
CHAPTER SIX
A hot dry wind came gusting over the countryside the next day. It shook the trees from their lethargy and whipped the petals from the blossoms with malicious delight. Gazing out on the squally scene, Tessa thought it was somehow in keeping with her own scattered emotions.
Usually her happiness overflowed at just being here in the lovely Villa Valrose, but today she couldn't wait to get away from it. She had thought that Barry would drive her off immediately after lunch, but he explained that Elaine wouldn't be flying in until late in the afternoon, so they wouldn't be meeting until tonight. He was keyed up and excited at the thought, and found the waiting to get away as unbearable as Tessa did. She saw him once or twice scuffing round his balcony and glancing at his watch before drifting back into his room.
There was nothing they could do outdoors to pass the time. It was impossible to sit in the garden or go for a walk and a cruise in the car was not Barry's idea of entertainment, even if he had the inclination. Madame Devereux, distressed by the swirling dust, had retired to her room. There was no sign of Neil.
Not that Tessa cared. He was hateful, she told herself today, a rebellious light showing in the violet eyes, and she was glad she was on Barry's side.
Some of her bravado left her when she had to go down to dinner, but Neil didn't put in an appearance and she was able to partially relax with Madame Devereux and Barry. As soon as the courses were finished he was out revving up the tangerine car, and Tessa had to admit that tonight she was glad of his eagerness. Zipping over the road to Cannes, the wind rushing past her face, she felt freer than she had done for a long time.
She was mildly amazed to find that the usual haunt, the cellar club, was out tonight. Barry had chosen an expensive hotel for his rendezvous with Elaine, and though Tessa welcomed the change from the cave-like atmosphere of the nightclub, she was reminded of Neil's choice of entertainment for a Saturday evening, and wondered if it was wise to go somewhere where he might be likely to patronise. No doubt Barry was feeling confident now that he had Tessa for an ally, and she didn't want to spoil his night by pointing out the danger, but she must make a point of warning him against it for another time.
Her wound-up nerves soon slackened when she got inside the tastefully lit open-plan lounge and bar of the hotel, and saw that there wasn't a lean-faced, wide-shouldered man in sight.
All the Devereux set were there, overflowing in the huge armchairs and oozing that indolent confidence in just the sprawl of their limbs. Elaine was there too, but not with the group. Barry hurried over to where she was engaged in laughing conversation with some older men at the bar. From the armchair that she had dropped into, where a drink had been placed for her benefit, Tessa could watch at her leisure.
Elaine looked stunning in a dress that could only have come from Paris and must have cost quite a bit. It was black and encrusted with black beads and it fitted like a second skin. The beads shone provocatively at every ripple and sway of the slender fo
rm, the colour was a perfect foil for the pale skin and cascading hair.
Barry had made his presence felt like an eager puppy wanting all the attention, and after a moment Elaine turned away from her gentlemen friends and switched on a brilliant smile. She allowed a possessive arm to lead her off towards a secluded corner, and Tessa left them there. She occupied herself after that by admiring the perfect decor of her surroundings, and watching the rich clientele, always a fascinating pastime.
Later, the group drifted in to the dancing area beyond the bar, and here Tessa found she had a perfect view of Barry and Elaine. She watched them for a long time as they laughed and clinked glasses, or moved close to the music. The dance floor and its surround was full of handsome richly attired couples, but to Tessa's mind, Barry with his gorgeous good looks and somewhat flamboyant but superbly cut deep cherry-red suit shone out from all the rest. Perhaps that was because what he was feeling at having Elaine back was so patently obvious. The sky blue eyes looked bluer than ever in a face flushed with proud ownership. The wide smile that he beamed down on her, boyishly adoring.
Tessa was happy for him. She just wished… well, she wished Elaine was a little more suited to him. Lovely as she was, there was a diamond-hard light in the dove grey eyes, a brittle sophistication in her manner that made Barry look like a third-form schoolboy.
Tessa tried to tell herself she was mistaken, that it was just that Elaine was somewhat older than Barry, but she had felt all this even before she knew about the attachment—perhaps that was why she had been so unsuspecting of a romance between them—and it was even more apparent to her now when she had made a point of really looking at the woman.
Still, she sighed lightly to herself and smiled, people in love didn't go looking for faults in each other, and who was she to find them? They would probably end up being wildly happy and stay married till they were a hundred.
Roumelia Lane - The Scented Hills Page 11
