"It would be a change to see you dry," he said, with ironic reference. He held the edges of the towel close, pulling her against him, his fingers brushing the soft skin below her throat. "Do you think you could manage it one day?"
"Are you going to dry all of me?" she asked, moving closer to him.
"Kira, don’t . . . I could go out of my mind. You’re driving me crazy."
Kira looked up, seeing the angle of his darkened jaw from below. The planes of his face were hawk-like and dominant, the jutting brows hiding the expression in his dark eyes. She remembered their closeness last night in the ruined sugar mill, and hungered for more.
The air was heavy with scented blossom and the stars were struggling with the inky darkness. The moon shone through the clouds like a pirate’s silver coin broken in half.
Her swimsuit was wet and clammy cold but she could not stop herself. She stood on tiptoe, quickly twining her arms around his neck and pulling his head down to hers. She brushed her lips across his mouth and heard his sharp intake of breath.
"Driving you crazy? Am I?" she whispered, husky and low. "Like this?"
She did not care if he thought she was wanton; she had to feed her need on him and it was a lure that was too strong to resist. Her eyes were glowing with love. There was no argument now between her hurt-saddened eyes and ever-smiling mouth.
His chin grazed her smooth cheek but she knew with that slight movement that his mouth was parting, would soon be claiming her lips. In one swift moment, a fiery desire ignited and burned through their bodies. The straps of her swimsuit slipped down her shoulders and her breasts were crushed against him. She felt his fingers biting into the soft flesh of her arms.
"Giles, forgive me for last night. I was a fool, frightened of my feelings. They were so strong. So much was struggling inside. I know I’m not saying it right but I’m not frightened anymore."
A wild, unreasoning elation pushed aside the last shreds of commonsense. She was tired of being careful and sensible. And she was tired of being hostage to the past. She might get hurt again. Giles might love her briefly and then move on but it was a risk she was prepared to take for this one moment. Life was made of moments and this was one that she would treasure.
If it was soon over, then it did not matter. She wanted him to love her now, to bring her body alive, to be satiated with pleasure, to make her see stars in the darkness. It was a present to herself and she thought she deserved some happiness. After all these barren months, she wanted him to love her, even if it never happened again.
Her hands slid round his back, feeling the ridge of his spine through the thin jacket, pulling him close. The shape of his lips was well-remembered and beloved. Fleetingly she thought of Bruce’s boyish kisses, but the memory was so weak that it vanished as if they had never kissed. There was no comparison. This was a man. This was a man who knew how to kiss, who was coaxing her with gentle persuasion into a fever of delight.
Giles was murmuring against her lips, words of love, endearments, small tender names that sent her sailing on a cloud of singular sweetness. His hands were deep in her tangled hair. She would never forget this moment; nothing would ever be so perfect.
"Are you sure, Kira? Is this what you want?"
Giles had wanted her almost since the first moment of meeting at St Lucia. The lovely, curve of her mouth fascinated him and he had lost himself in her amazing eyes. The fierceness of his longing had been tormenting him for days. He longed to get rid of the last barriers between them, to stroke every inch of her beautiful body, to sweet-taste her skin, to become the centre of her being, of her life.
The strength of his feelings had shattered him. It made him fight her with words at every opportunity, when all he really wanted to do was to make love to her with all the passion stored inside him. An uncontrollable storm was building up in his hard body.
Long shadows of fringed palm leaves were thrown against the vibrating starlight of the sky. The waves broke softly on the shore in a low, passionate lullaby. The wind fluttered seductively through the heat of their bodies like extra fingers.
He was kissing her with a lingering, pulsing drive that had her thoughts spinning helplessly. His voice was husky with hunger and the words were a melody in her ears. Her abandoned response sent them both revolving into a dizzy world where the sky and stars were all mixed up into a crazy, climbing pinnacle of pleasure that neither of them could control.
They lay tangled on the sand, arms and legs entwined. He was slowly slipping the straps from her shoulders, pulling down her wet swimsuit. It was not easy and Kira felt a small bubble of laughter at his efforts. She rolled away to give him space.
"I have to tell you something," said Kira. Afterwards, she could not understand why she had done it. "I have to be honest with you. It’s something you ought to know."
"No, Kira, no confessions now. I don’t care how many lovers you’ve had. This is you and me, here and now. The past doesn’t matter."
"It’s not about the past. It’s the present, about Benjamin Reed," she hesitated, not able to stop.
"Oh no, not that old man." He paused and lay back as he had done the night before, breathing heavily. "Forget him, Kira. He’s a pain, a thorn in my flesh that I have to put up with."
"He’s my grandfather," said Kira. "I think you ought to know."
The palm leaves wept.
"What did you say?" His voice had gone cold.
"I am Benjamin’s granddaughter. Only he doesn’t know yet. I haven’t told him. I don’t know what he would think."
She heard Giles’s slow intake of breath. Her hands began to tremble. She had a glimpse of a terrible pain in his eyes. His face was a mask. What had she done?
"You mean Tamara was your mother?"
Kira was alarmed by the change which had come over Giles. She wished she had not said anything but it had seemed important to be one hundred per cent honest with him. There had been a slight chance he might even be amused.
"Yes," she said, bewildered. "Tamara was my mother, his daughter. Does it make any difference?"
Giles exploded, hitting the sand with his fist. "Does it make any difference, woman! Don’t you understand anything? Don’t you know?"
"No, I don’t," Kira said, struggling to defend herself. "I know you and Benjamin don’t get on well but that shouldn’t change how we feel. Surely it doesn’t matter? It’s an old, ancient feud between your father and Benjamin, and should have been decently buried a long time ago. It’s nothing to do with us."
"It has everything to do with us," he said, standing up and brushing sand off his jacket. "Ask Benjamin. Get up, Kira. I’ll see you back to your grandfather’s house. No doubt he’s anxious about your long absence."
"You can’t mean this?" Kira was angry now. She scrambled to her knees, roughly pulling up the straps of her swimsuit. She shivered. "Giles, what’s the matter? This is ridiculous. You’re not being fair to me. You’ve got to tell me what this is all about."
"Ask Benjamin," he repeated. "Your grandfather knows."
Twenty-Six
Locals who watched the weather were suspicious about the conditions that Wednesday. Something was happening. Something was not quite right.
Dolly was not aware of the increasing wind for a long time. The previous day had been calm and sunny with a little low cloud, a usual sort of day. A light sea breeze cooled the island. Dolly knew nothing about rising pressure or air movement from the north, and she had not noticed a thick sunset or distant lightning in an overcast sky.
She rarely listened to weather forecasts on the radio and there hadn’t been any bad storms in her lifetime. The last hurricane had been years ago and she was not interested in history.
She left Tamara at her father’s old house while she went swimming.
"You will have her, won’t you?" she pleaded, carrying the child on her hip. "Jessy has gone out and I must go swimming."
"Of course Tamara can stay with me. We’ll do some painting, won’t
we, ma petite? I’ll get her some brushes and a pinafore."
"Thanks, Papa."
Dolly waved to André as she ran down the lane. Benjamin did not approve of her unconventional ways with her daughter, but Dolly strove for freedom from the ties of motherhood. Being a mother went on so long, every day. The sea called her with an insistent voice, like some witch from the fragrant and salty depths.
She loved her little girl dearly but could not cope with the twenty-four hour commitment. There was only so much time she could give to Tamara. Part of the day she had to have to herself, to breathe, to think, to be herself. And in case she caught sight of Reuben.
Her passion still burned as fiercely as ever. It was like a knife deep in her ribs. They spoke now, but only distantly. It had taken months before he would even nod or say hello or acknowledge her presence. She had done her best in small, tentative ways to make amends but he was unable to listen, still tormented by her decision to marry Benjamin.
"You kept saying you couldn’t marry me," she reminded him with despair. "I wanted to be married. I wanted to have my own home, not to live in a falling-down wooden shack with my father."
"You could have waited," said Reuben, tight-lipped, unable to look at her, womanly with motherhood.
"For how long, tell me? Five years, you kept saying. How could I wait that long?"
"It seems to me you married Benjamin for a bathroom," said Reuben, his voice full of disgust. "I hope you’re making real good use of it, feeling nice and clean. A bath a day will keep your true love away."
"How can you be so horrid?" Dolly flared.
"Easy. Especially when the girl you’ve loved for years marries someone else. What did you do? Throw a dice? Me or Benjamin? Did Benjamin win you in a dice game?"
When he saw Tamara for the first time, Reuben was shattered. The baby was the image of Dolly, beautiful, dark, wild-looking but with not a shred of Benjamin in her appearance. Reuben could not smother his suspicions. He remembered that ecstatic night at Sugar Hill, when they made love again and again in the big bed, before falling asleep, exhausted in each other’s arms.
Anger exploded in him and he thumped his fists together, causing pain to shoot through his wrists. If Tamara was his child, his daughter, he had lost more than his beloved Dolly . . . he had lost his family.
Dolly was relieved that Reuben and Benjamin now spoke to each other, if only guardedly. The new plant was a success and even Benjamin was showing some taciturn approval of the new mechanisms.
That morning there had been light showers but only a gentle wind. But the sky was overcast with a low pall of altostratus with soft-looking cumulus clouds. Dolly did not like the darker sky. She wanted sunshine and clear skies as every day. There was occasional thunder, but she took no notice.
When the sky lightened over the east and the rain stopped, Dolly decided it was fine to go swimming. She did not connect the lightening of the sky with a change in wind direction.
The sea was relatively calm with any deep swells still far out. She could hear a light surf but was not disturbed by it. Her own special stretch of beach was fairly sheltered.
She did not notice the sea beginning to churn, or the large waves breaking beyond the reef and sweeping in to the shore to break again. She did not know that the sea at Hastings was washing through the Hotel Royal and that sand was flooding the road. The sea was breaking heavily over the pier head in Bridgetown.
An unexpected wave reared and broke over her head. She came up, gasping, hair strangled in her mouth.
"Ouch!" She never finished her exclamation for when she cleared her eyes, she was surprised by the change in the sea’s surface. A huge swell was causing problems for the small fishing boats and they were making hurriedly for the shore.
Now she could hear the wind whistling and groaning through the trees, sudden gusts flurrying the sand. Branches began to bend under the strain, leaves rustling and flapping like storms of tired clapping.
Suddenly Dolly was frightened by the speed at which the weather had changed. She did not know that the wind, expected to back from north through west to south over the island, had abnormally shifted from north through east to south. A hurricane was going to hit the southern half of the island instead of passing some fifty miles north of it.
She ran, stumbling through the swirling sand. Rain was pitting the sand like a smattering of Braille. She scooped up her dress and pulled it over her wet swimming costume – Benjamin insisted that she wore one now. She began to hurry inland towards her father’s house. Her sandals lay forgotten, soon covered with shifting sand. Everything looked different.
Tamara would be terrified. The little girl never liked the sound that the wind made. Dolly knew that André would be too occupied with securing his precious paintings to give much thought or time to comforting the child.
Her lungs began to labour. She was soon out of breath, alarmed how fast the wind had whipped up. Gusts of fifty miles an hour knocked her off her feet and sent her sprawling.
How could it have changed so quickly? It had been a normal morning, if silently overcast, with a pleasant breeze. Now only a few hours later, a hurricane was sweeping the island.
Dolly was panting, heaving and coughing, trying to keep her balance, fighting to make progress against the force of the wind. She threw herself from tree to tree, clinging to any branch for support.
"Please God, look after Tamara," she gasped. "Don’t let her be frightened. My little girl. Look after her, please. Keep her safe."
The lane was already a mess of broken branches and debris, leaves hurled into the air by sudden gusts. She fell again, rolled by the violence into the dust, unable to breathe. Her hair was streaming, frock soaked and filthy. Her feet were cut and bleeding but she hardly noticed.
The noise was deafening as the hurricane tore across the southern coastal districts of the island. Trees fell, ripped from the ground, roots smashed and wind-lashed. Fences were tossed in gusts, wooden chattel houses shuddered, collapsed, the steeple of St Martin’s Church toppled. Small, sailed fishing boats sank under the turbulent seas.
Three miles away, a corrugated roof was torn from a chattel and hurled across a field.
Dolly caught sight of a flash of pink cotton. Tamara had worn a pink frock that morning. She would be blown along the ground like a doll.
"Tamara!" Dolly shrieked. Somehow she found the strength to cover the distance, scooping Tamara up, dreading that she might find her child battered and lifeless. She clutched Tamara in her arms. Tamara’s face was blotched with tears and dirt but she was still breathing.
"Mama’s here, Mama’s here," Dolly crooned, crouching down against the trunk of a tree. They must find shelter. Somehow she had to reach the house.
She tried to look around, to see which way to go, but the landscape had changed so much. Nothing was the same. There was no shelter nearby and the gusts were strengthening. It was a hell of crashing branches and groaning trees, wind howling like a dervish. She covered Tamara’s face and pressed the child to her body. Somehow they must get through to André’s house. It was constructed of wood, old but strong enough surely to withstand these gusts.
"Mama, make it stop," Tamara wept, clinging. "I don’t like it."
"Hush, hush, I will. I will," said Dolly. "We must get back to grandfather’s house. Be a brave girl now . . ."
They began to crawl along the ground, Dolly half-dragging the terrified child with her, hindered by debris and smothered in swirling leaves and sand. The noise was deafening. Tamara was screaming. It was raining again, making the ground slippery and treacherous.
Ahead, Dolly saw the shape of a familiar building, one of the outhouses, and hope surged through her. They would get there. They would reach it.
"Not long now, honey," she shouted hoarsely. "We’re nearly there. You can make it with me."
The corrugated roof had travelled three miles, born by the devil wind, scything through fields of cane, caught in the eye of the hurricane, spinnin
g like a rotor blade.
The sheet of iron rode across Dolly’s body, a wheel of death.
They found her some hours later, still protecting the slight form of her small shocked and shivering daughter.
* * *
Hurricane Hilary took thirty-five lives. The animals somehow protected themselves and soon returned to their normal habitats.
Eight thousand small houses were destroyed, leaving 20,000 people homeless. St Michael’s was the worst hit. About two hundred larger houses were seriously damaged. Only one church, St Martin’s, suffered. Roads were blocked by fallen trees and wreckage. Telephone and electricity supplies were blown down. A few water pipes were damaged by uprooted trees. People wandered about, shocked and stricken, unable to believe what had happened so quickly.
The sea spray, blown over the island, blistered the leaves and crops. Trees were stripped and broken. Advanced planted cane was broken down, cane blown parallel to ground surface, eventually back-rooting. Provision crops were completely destroyed. There was going to be a severe shortage of food.
Twenty-three sail-type fishing boats were lost, more damaged. Pot boats were lost and hundreds of fishing pots lost. A small motor vessel, a yacht and a schooner were hit in the Careenage. A schooner sank somewhere off Pelican Island. The beaches were strewn with wreckage for weeks. The children took it home for souvenirs.
Reuben was shattered by the damage to Sugar Hill plantation. He wandered through the bruised trees and flattened cane, full of sorrow and despair.
He did not know the news about Dolly yet. When he heard, he lost the last shreds of his youth. His spirit shrivelled and died with her.
Twenty-Seven
Breakfast together under the breadfruit tree was becoming a habit, and a sundowner on the veranda a welcomed moment of relaxation after a busy day.
"You don’t have to go back to London," said Benjamin, cradling his tall glass. "You can stay as long as you like."
Sweet Seduction Page 18
