"A big sigh, Miss Reed. Yet you’re improving daily. Is the hospital food getting you down?"
Dr Armstrong leaned over the end of the bed. He was captivated by the fragility of this young woman. There were sad secrets behind those clear hazel eyes that he wished he had the means to heal. She smiled at him ruefully. The doctor had been consistently kind and attentive.
"I’ve been sacked," she said. "My boss has already replaced me."
"It could be a blessing in disguise," said Dr Armstrong. "You’d only go racing back to work when you need several months convalescence. At least three months."
"That’s quite out of the question." Kira wriggled further down the bed as if to shut away the world. "I have a living to earn and a career to pick up again. There’s a by-election soon. Perhaps the victor would be glad of my Parliamentary experience."
"Forget it," the doctor persisted. "What about this grandfather? Can’t you go and stay with him?"
"My grandfather?" Kira looked surprised and confused. How did Dr Armstrong know about her grandfather? He was someone she never mentioned to anyone. Never, ever. He was buried in the past. He could be dead for all she knew.
"You said you had a grandfather living in Barbados."
Kira sank back against the pillows and a cloud settled on her ashen face. "I think you must be mistaken, Doctor."
"No, my nurse heard you mention your grandfather quite plainly."
"I was probably delirious."
Dr Armstrong did not push her. For some reason Kira was refusing to talk. He patted her good foot.
"You can try getting up tomorrow," he said. "See how you manage with the crutches. They take some getting used to."
"I can get used to anything," said Kira firmly.
Two
She had not thought of her grandfather for years, pushing him completely from her life. It had not been difficult when he had made no contact with her or her mother. Why had her mind suddenly dragged him out of the shadows? Had she subconsciously been calling for help again, as she had when her mother died?
"Go and visit him? Never!" said Kira grimly to herself.
He was a vague, shadowy figure with no face. Tamara’s father. Kira had never met him. But she remembered, only too clearly, her mother’s distress as letter after letter was returned to her, unopened.
Tamara had been a widow with a young daughter to bring up in a strange country, her eyesight failing. It was only natural that she should turn to her father for help, but it seemed he could not forgive his daughter for leaving Barbados and her inheritance to marry a foreigner. And to marry a Russian. That was madness.
Tamara’s eyesight had got worse. She was in poor health and died one winter in a severe influenza epidemic. Kira had been taken into care, placed with a series of foster parents, eventually boarded at a convent for disadvantaged children, funded by the Government.
It was during those suspended years that Kira resolved that nothing so disastrous was ever going to happen to her again. She was going to be self-supporting. She was going to have a career. Her mother’s pale face haunted her.
But Tamara never had a single regret about falling in love with Aaronovitch and said many times that their brief time together had been magical.
“He was a wonderful man, your father,” she often said.
Kira grew into a tall, reserved girl, nurturing a fierce ambition and independence. From an early age she realised that everything depended on her own efforts. Even her chestnut hair seemed to be alive with electricity, bouncing in all directions; her green flecked eyes kindling energy. When she ran, her long legs carried her like the wind. The nuns liked Kira winning races but they did not approve of the legs that took her past the winning post. They were far too shapely.
Kira took a secretarial course, determined that this would be her passport to an executive post somewhere in the world. She would not be taking dictation forever. One day people would take orders from her. She was going to make it happen.
"Still not eating, miss?" The hospital orderly looked at Kira’s untouched tray. "You gotta build up your strength. Broken bones don’t mend by themselves. I’m not surprised you were knocked over by the wind. There’s nothing of you."
"It was a motorbike," said Kira.
"I’ll get you a cup of tea and a biscuit."
Kira had no appetite. It was not simply the road accident. She had not eaten properly for months. She could cope with a broken leg, the hospital stay, the unexpected dismissal. It wasn’t anything to do with having a grandfather who had disowned her for years.
The numbness crept over her again and Kira closed her eyes against the midday sunlight filtering through the high windows. She did not want to see the sun.
She still ached from Bruce’s below-the-belt body blow. The road accident hardly mattered. It was merely another event in the chain of blows dealt to her over the years. The abrupt letter from Mr Connor was almost a relief. It was liberating. Now she was free of them all.
"One day at a time," said Kira to herself, easing her good leg over the side of the hospital bed. "Don’t go and break the other leg."
She was no longer wearing the foam collar and cuff to support the cracked collarbone. She longed to leave the antiseptic hospital atmosphere and was keen to go home to everything that was familiar. As she no longer had a job, she could do whatever she liked. Go anywhere, be anyone. There was nothing in the world to stop her.
She looked out of the window at the drizzle of rain running down the glass. It was the worst spring for years. She wouldn’t be missing anything if she left London. She would avoid meeting pregnant secretaries and having to hide from men buying bedroom furniture.
"Soon it will be time for you to go home," said Dr Armstrong, on his next ward visit. "We can’t keep you here forever even if you do decorate the ward. Have you any plans?"
"I’m going to learn about the sugar industry," she said without thinking, surprising herself too. "Or something like that. And go somewhere that’s warm."
Dr Armstrong seemed taken aback. It was the last thing he had expected to hear. Still, it showed that Kira was coming out of her lethargy.
"I hope it doesn’t involve anything too strenuous. You must take care of that leg."
"Nothing more strenuous than a phone call to my former employer who owes me a big favour. There was a trade delegation at Westminster recently, to promote the sugar industry. Mr Connor went to a luncheon, a conference and a reception on the Terrace. He ought to remember at least one contact name that would be useful to me."
Dr Armstrong gave a low chuckle. "I’m glad to see you’re better. I don’t know what Sister was getting worried about."
Her leg was on the mend, but he wasn’t sure about her heart. Someone had hurt her badly and there wasn’t a plaster yet invented that would heal those feelings.
Kira flew Club Class on a British Airways 747 out to Bridgetown, Barbados. The ticket was an extravagance but she had been saving to get married and it seemed a good way of spending the money. She had almost no information about her grandfather, except that his name was Benjamin Reed and that he grew sugar on the island. Tamara had reverted to her own surname after Aaronovitch died, tired of always having to spell it out to people. Now another name, Fitt’s House, kept coming into Kira’s mind but she had no idea why.
She planned to meet her grandfather but without letting him know who she was. And it was important that she was out of the country and a long way away when Bruce’s baby was born.
It was a challenge . . . to arrive as an unknown on Barbados and see if, by sheer force of personality, she could become someone. Not Kira Reed, out of work, lame, jilted and rejected. There was a word for her hope. Hype. She would become a self-generated publicity stunt.
It was velvety dark when the plane made an unexpected landing on the Caribbean island of St Lucia. The captain invited passengers to stretch their legs and Kira followed the exodus off the plane with relief.
It had been a nin
e hour flight and the knotted muscles in her leg hurt. She kneaded away the pain, glad to be moving at last. The island was only a shadowy dark shape but she could smell the volcanic dust. Kira walked slowly to the perimeter of the airfield, the landing lights twinkling in the darkness, the dramatic hills a backdrop to the sultry night sky.
It was then that she had the strangest feeling that someone was watching her and caught sight of the tall man wearing a wide-brimmed hat in the airport lounge. She did not know him. No-one knew her on St Lucia or on Barbados.
She tried not to look in his direction but he was compelling. He was like no other man she had ever seen before. He was strangely different and with such confidence and assurance. She felt it, like an invisible power, winging towards her over the heat of the space between them.
* * *
Hannah sang no songs, nor danced, nor whispered enticing words of love. Her hair was a mere whisper, not long blown strands of ripe corn or dark waves as blue-black as a humming bird’s wing. She did not twist a man round her little finger nor beckon him into the soft, warm hollow of her arms.
Yet she held a fragrant promise of pleasure and her elusive scent was disturbing; her secrets lay hidden in the invisible depths of her dark eyes. Some men panicked and went mad. For most people she had no face, no body, no eyes and the only certainty of closeness in her arms was death.
Hannah did not yet exist. Hannah . . . capricious, powerful, terrifying . . . was the name of a hurricane being seeded a thousand miles away by the fluttering wings of a single checker spot butterfly high on a mountain.
Three
The St Lucia airport officials were dismayed by the sudden number of passengers strolling around the airfield. A harassed woman official in a creased uniform began handing out transit cards.
"I’m not in transit," said Kira. "I’d rather go back on the plane and sit in the air-conditioning if I can’t walk about."
"You wait here, please. Passengers are not allowed to walk anywhere." The woman was at a loss. "You wait in the transit lounge, please."
"Then why let us get off the plane in the first place?"
The woman was adamant; she refused to allow Kira to return to the plane.
The transit lounge was crowded to the point of suffocation. There were no seats left and the noisy air-conditioning was over-working. Kira looked round in despair.
The crowded area was a heaving mixture of tanned tourists, island-hopping locals with bags and bundles. Babies cried, skins sweated. Brightly-coloured Caribbean clothes and headdresses and straw hats painted the scene. Voices were loud and distracting. Kira listened to the West Indian accent. It was a strange mixture of dialects from Wales, England and France, strangled with their own particular clipped intonation.
She turned slowly on one heel, her lame leg resting against the barred gate again. She was going to faint if she didn’t get somewhere to sit down.
Kira’s physical discomfort was heightened by the tall man’s steady and relentless gaze. She was jostled by another angry passenger demanding to be allowed back on the BA flight, and the intensity of his eyes was broken. She turned her back on the stranger but the silhouette of the man in a brimmed hat stayed in her mind.
She became aware that the man was moving through the mass of people. She could feel her pulse quickening for no reason at all. She knew she did not want to look into those powerful eyes or be confronted by such an aggressively masculine man.
It was strange that he should be even remotely interested in her. She looked a mess and was too tired to be civil. Perhaps it was merely politeness to a visitor.
He made some comment about the weather and the heat. Kira answered.
"Shall I get you a chair, ma’am?" He raised his hand and snapped his fingers at an airport guard. "Please find this lady a chair."
"Certainly, Mr Earl, but I can’t leave my post."
"Then get someone else to find a chair. Now, and be quick about it."
His voice was deep and confident, touched with a trace of impatience. She did not speak to him. She looked down and saw long legs in well cut trousers, polished light brown shoes. The slimness of his legs and the expertly tailored trousers that encased them made Kira avert her eyes.
She was shaken by the intensity of the feelings stirred by this stranger and longed for some flight announcement to release her from the disturbing encounter. She felt desperate to get away from him and yet something deeper made her stay. Perhaps it was the chair. It arrived and he placed it for her.
"Thank you," she murmured, sitting down, pressing her skirt over her knees.
He was looking straight at her, critically taking in Kira’s creased linen suit and tousled hair. His mouth had a curved upper lip that held a hint of a sardonic smile. Under the brim of his hat Kira saw a fringe of crisp black hair. His skin was deeply tanned and slightly rough in texture. There was a fresh scar on his cheek and she wondered how he had got it. His eyes dared Kira to ask him about the scar. But she did not care or want to speak. She did not want to say anything to this unnerving man.
"We have to wait for the Caribbean Airways flight to take off and then they will allow you to re-board your plane to Barbados," he said.
"They could have said," Kira remarked.
"They have problems. St Lucia is not Heathrow London with sophisticated equipment and highly trained staff. They were overwhelmed by the number of people who suddenly began to walk all over the airfield. It was for your own safety that they herded you into this building," he went on.
"Herded is the right word." Kira did not like the sharp way she sounded. It was a foreign tone.
"You will soon be in Barbados. It’s only a twenty minute flight from St Lucia. Hardly time to fasten your seatbelt."
"But why stop here at all? I thought it was a direct flight to Bridgetown."
"We use planes like buses," he explained with a wry smile. "Some passengers got off at St Lucia and the plane will fill up with people wanting to make the short flight to Barbados. Like myself," he added. "I’ve been to St Lucia on business and now I wish to return home with all speed."
Kira found the force of her anger draining away. The stranger had reassured that the plane would not take off without her. He was looking deeply into her eyes as if he wanted to know much more.
"Don’t I know you?" he said curiously.
"I don’t think so," said Kira, prim and remote.
"There’s something familiar about your face."
"Impossible. I’ve never been to Barbados before. This is my first visit."
He was several inches over six feet tall, rangy and loose-limbed. His white shirt was unbuttoned at the neck, showing a strong throat gleaming with the heat. He had dispensed with his tie and it was draped over his briefcase.
A young man in a brown uniform shirt strolled over to the gate, opened it and began to collect in the transit cards. There was a surge of people behind Kira, almost sweeping her off her feet.
A steady hand gripped her elbow and the man shouldered a way through the crowd for Kira, protecting her with his body, creating a clear path through the milling mob of people with bags and babies and baskets. The new passengers broke into a run across the tarmac to the waiting plane. Kira had never seen anything like it.
He steered her towards the front section and the steps which led into first class, assuming her travel arrangements.
"Everyone is a little over-anxious about getting a seat, despite being booked in. It’s still like a bus to the locals. But don’t worry, they will not take off without me."
The warm breeze was wonderful after the stifling airport building. Kira felt a wave of relief to be moving and stiffly climbing the steps into the plane. The tall man was right behind her, not allowing anyone to jostle her.
Once in the cool cabin, she turned to thank him.
"Thank you," she said. "I’m all right now. I’m very grateful."
He took off his hat, holding it by the brim in lean brown hands in front of him.
His blue eyes were startlingly clear now, darkly lashed, dark brows, their expression unswerving.
"My pleasure, ma’am."
As Kira moved away to find her seat in the forward section, she heard an air hostess greeting the dark stranger.
"Good evening, Mr Earl," said the air hostess with a smile. "Nice to have you travelling with us again. Your usual seat, sir?"
"No thank you. I think I’ll see what there is further back."
He was following her again. Kira was half afraid, yet half wanting him to sit in the empty seat beside her.
She busied herself fastening the seatbelt, stowing her bag, marking territory, looking out of the window. She was being incredibly foolish. Her heart was racing. This was no way to behave after all she had gone through. What did it matter whether the man sat next to her or not?
"I believe this seat is free?" he asked, stopping in the aisle. "May I join you for the flight?"
"Please do," said Kira, but she did not look at him.
He eased himself into the seat, stretching out his long legs. She could not help liking everything she saw about him . . . the capable brown hands fastening the clasp, the old gold of the watch chain, the sharp crease in the trousers, the faintly aromatic smell of a spicy cologne, the darkly glistening hair crisply cut into the nape of his neck. He was all man, and a magnificent man. But she wanted nothing to do with him.
"Do you always travel first class for a twenty minute flight?" Kira asked.
"You may have noticed that I need the leg room."
His arm brushed against her as he moved sideways to stow a wallet in an inside pocket. It was like an electric shock. It took a physical effort to stay still in her seat and let the feeling wash away.
"Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Giles Earl. I own Sugar Hill Plantation in the Parish of St John," he said.
Kira took a steadying breath and smiled briefly. "My name is Kira."
"That’s a very pretty name."
Kira was hardly listening as Giles Earl continued talking. Sugar Hill Plantation. In the briefcase at her feet was a letter of introduction written by Percival Connor MP to the owner of the Sugar Hill Plantation.
Sweet Seduction Page 2
