“Ram! We’ve been looking everywhere for you. For God’s sake, what happened with Jean-Marc?” she demanded.
“It’s not something I want to talk about.”
“What nerve—you drove him away somehow—you’d better have a good reason.”
“Anabel, I’m telling you that it’s best left alone.”
She stood up, moved to unusual anger. “Now, just what the hell happened?”
“Since you insist—Jean-Marc made some disgustingly improper remarks about Daisy and I told him he wasn’t a gentleman-”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake, Ram, you sound like something out of the eighteenth century. Improper remarks? What on earth are you talking about? Just what did he say?”
“Look, I refuse to have Daisy insulted, that’s all. Jean-Marc apparently thinks English girls are pretty hot stuff, Daisy in particular.”
“He never said that!” Anabel cried.
“You weren’t there. You would have been as revolted with him as I was,” Ram insisted coldly.
“Oh, what a total mess! He probably didn’t mean what you thought at all. And since when have you been Daisy’s champion? And now they’ve all gone off three days before they were supposed to leave and there’s been such an unnecessary scene. I do wish, Ram, that you’d try to develop a sense of humor,” Anabel said with unaccustomed asperity.
“The fact that he ran off with his tail between his legs speaks for itself,” Ram answered, obdurate.
Anabel looked at her watch and was startled. “Ram, don’t you realize that we still have a houseful of guests and that it’s time for drinks? At least make yourself useful and run down into town for me and get some ice—the fridge is acting up, as if we hadn’t had enough confusion today … quite seriously, Ram, I’m fed up!” As he left on his errand, Anabel thought that difficult as he had been since she’d known him, she had never been quite as angry at Ram as she was now. Nor had he ever seemed more indifferent to how she felt, now that she thought about it.
Nevertheless, as she surveyed her dinner table an hour and a half later, Anabel had to admit to herself that whatever it was that had been changed in the atmosphere of La Marée by the departure of Jean-Marc and his family, only good had come of it, unpleasant as the preceding day had been. It was the most agreeable evening she could remember of the entire summer. Everyone seemed touched with kindness and good will and jovial spirits and they were not caused just by the four bottles of champagne Ram had brought back from his errand to buy ice. Perhaps, she mused, it was because Ram himself had finally relaxed and lost that cruel, unforgiving look she was so sadly accustomed to seeing on his face. He played the host with charm and a grace which Anabel, herself the consummate hostess, could thoroughly appreciate. Although only his gray eyes physically reminded her of Stash, there was something of Stash in the way he dominated the table, yet refrained from taking over, allowing each guest to shine. He had a special air of being at home that Stash had always adopted unthinkingly wherever he went; he was gracious and gallant to all the ladies and with the men he seemed more mature than his twenty-two years, almost their equal, yet he retained a flashing, youthful gaiety that she was touched to see in him, in spite of her fading anger. It was so unlike Ram to express easy happiness that she couldn’t begrudge it. As for Daisy, although her cheeks were red and her eyes almost feverish, she was subdued. Anabel made a mental note to have a serious talk with the child about getting too much sun: did she want that skin of hers to be tanned like a piece of leather by the time she was thirty? Tonight Daisy didn’t offer to pour the coffee but gladly left it to Anabel, and the capriciousness which she’d been practicing on poor Jean-Marc was absent She seemed disoriented and far away, as if she had been sapped of her usual energy, and no wonder, Anabel decided. That riotous, nonstop night of dancing yesterday would be bound to cause a reaction in such a young girl. She wasn’t surprised when Daisy decided to go to bed almost as soon as the late dinner was over.
Once she had shut herself into her sea-green refuge, Daisy collapsed on her bed. She was in such confusion of mind and body and spirit that it had taken all her resources to get through dinner. Too much had happened for her to think about it coherently. In her mind she was still lying in that eucalyptus grove, still hearing Ram’s voice saying her name. Uncontrollable vibrations swept over her newly awakened body. She quivered from her toes to her scalp. She unbraided her hair and brushed it hard, she took off her dress and flung open the windows, hoping that the sight of Le Havre gleaming in the far distance might calm her, but the slightly misty air was too soft and the stars over the sea hung too low and the crickets were chirping in a way which she had never noticed before, a way that she could barely endure. She had never understood why adults asked each other how they had slept. That night Daisy was initiated into the great company of those who have passed sleepless nights. “White nights” the French call them, a night filled with thoughts she couldn’t escape. The thing that had happened—Ram hadn’t meant to do it! He was sorry—had he not wept, had he not said he was sorry, over and over? Of course it would never happen again. Of course they must never let anyone know. These tormented thoughts mixed and whirled with thoughts of Ram’s lips, Ram’s words of love, above all his words of love. He had told her he loved her. He had said he had always loved her. First one thought attacked her, then another, then they twined painfully round and round in her brain until, blessedly, at last the sun rose and touched the tops of the umbrella pines in front of her window, and she knew she could get up and find Theseus, who now slept outside, and take him for a good long run before breakfast.
Ram had never been so happy in his life. He felt as if only today had he become himself. He had come into his full heritage. He finally was the Prince Valensky with all the prerogatives that title implied. Of course, Daisy was meant to belong to him, just as everything his father had had was meant to belong to him. He looked back at the past weeks and realized what a fool he’d been, how he’d been angry and cold and unkind to her when it was only the simple injustice of not possessing Daisy that was the cause of his feelings of incompleteness, of unsecured happiness.
As for Daisy being his half-sister, it simply didn’t matter. There could be no barrier, when two people are not brought up together, Ram told himself. Why, he hadn’t even given a thought to Daisy’s existence until he was fourteen. Not for them the shared family warmth, the well-worn jokes, the cloying familiarity of ordinary people. They had seen each other only on scattered holidays, almost totally separated by age and interests. In fact, he smiled to himself, they had been the closest thing to born enemies that two children of the same father could be. No. Ordinary rules for ordinary people did not apply to him and he most certainly wasn’t going to concern himself with them, just as his father never had. Of course, he would make sure that other people—particularly Anabel who was basically conventional, in his opinion, in spite of the fact that she’d been his father’s mistress—didn’t meddle in business that didn’t concern them—his business. He was so grandly happy, so sublimely conscious of everything he was and would become, of everything that, at last, he owned, that he, too, spent a sleepless night.
“Let’s go to the stables and decide what to do about the polo ponies,” Ram said to Daisy the next morning. They were the only ones in the kitchen. Even the cook was still asleep and they had made breakfast for themselves, each unexpectedly shy and glad of the business of frying eggs and looking for the wild strawberry jam the cook always hid.
“I thought you didn’t want to make any decisions about them—That’s what you said to Anabel.”
“That was the other day—but I can’t have that whole lot, not just the horses but the men, too, eating their heads off in Trouville and not do something about it. Either I’ll keep them or I’ll sell them—but first well go take a look.”
“I’ll be ready in fifteen minutes. Will you leave a note for Anabel?” Daisy ran upstairs to get into her riding clothes, her heart beating lawlessly.<
br />
They were gone all day, like truants, riding for hours in the green fields, changing from one pony to another, and finally, worn out, they flung themselves under a tree to eat a picnic lunch of long, mild, buttered radishes and a crusty loaf filled with ham and cheese that had been provided by the wife of the stable manager.
Eventually Ram decided that since he didn’t play polo he’d put all the ponies up for auction at the first opportunity. There was no point in keeping even the best of them for ordinary riding; they were too finely bred, too nervous for his taste; he liked a larger horse, a good jumper, and Daisy had just acquired a fine pale bay with a black mane and tail who was stabled back in London, so she didn’t need another mount.
During the long day and the drive back neither Ram nor Daisy referred to what had happened in the woods. Then, just as they turned into the driveway of La Marée, Ram took one hand off the steering wheel and laid it heavy with authority, on top of her thigh.
“I’m going to kiss you there, right there, tonight,” he said brusquely. She didn’t dare look at him. Her whole body was blushing. Emotions spilled over which had been trembling near the surface all day, held in check only by the constant exercise into which they had thrown themselves.
“No, Ram!” she said in a low tone of prohibition which blotted out everything else, even the sight of some of the guests playing badminton in the garden.
“Be quiet,” he ordered her, and she was quiet, finding, from somewhere, a smile with which to greet the others, an expert smile she didn’t know she owned, a social smile and a social voice.
That night, after all the lights of the house were off, Ram tapped on the door of Daisy’s bedroom and came in without waiting for her answer. He locked it behind him. Daisy was on the window seat, her knees drawn up under her, her arms circling her legs, her chin on her knees, as if she’d been sitting there thinking for a long time. He walked over to her and swept back the pale curtain of hair which fell over the near side of her face. She didn’t move as she tilted her face so that he could see her eyes.
“We must not, Ram,” she said.
“Daisy, you’re still a baby. There aren’t any stuffy musts or must nots for us—except that we must love each other.”
“But not like … not what you did yesterday … Ram, just … sweetness, just being together,” she said, hope and supplication mingled in her voice.
“Darling Daisy,” he said, “just being together.” He put both his arms around the entire slim circle of her body and carried her over to her bed. She lay there, hugging herself, stiff, silently resisting, abashed. When he kissed her the first time she pressed her lips tightly together and tried to turn her head away, but he wouldn’t allow it. Very gently, very tenderly, but with absolute conviction, he parted her lips with the tip of his tongue. Now that he owned her he could take her slowly, surely. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt his tongue press on her clenched teeth and then felt it retreat to circle her lips, until she felt that her mouth was a ring of fire. Gradually, in spite of herself, she uncoiled her limbs as his lips traveled up her neck to her ear lobe. “Daisy, my Daisy,” he whispered into her ear in a voice so soft that she could barely hear him. With a plaintive sigh she threw her arms around his neck and held him with all her strength. Oh, how content she was with this, nothing more, just this closeness, this dear affection. She felt sheltered, protected, safe from everything and everyone, a security she had thought she had lost forever when she was told of her father’s death.
“Hug me tight,” she asked. “Just hug me tight, only hold me, Ram, promise me, promise me …”
“Yes, Daisy, yes,” Ram answered, while his fingers stealthily untied the ribbons of her long peignoir. “Yes, I’ll hug you, my darling, I’ll hug you.” And he felt the outline of her small, firm breasts with careful, traitorous hands, brushing lightly over the tips of her nipples again and again until they rose to his touch and became so singingly sensitive that he knew he could bend his head and suck them and she wouldn’t beg to be hugged anymore. He filled his mouth with the delicate rosettes, remembering their pale pinkness, still gently, still tenderly, until she lay back on the pillow giving herself in fresh astonishment to the darts which shot throughout her body from each nipple to her vulva, as if some crucial nerves had been activated, connections she’d never known existed.
Ram had been erect from the second he’d touched Daisy on the window seat but instinctively he had known to keep his rigid penis from touching any part of her, until she was led, step by step, into desire. Now he took one of her hands in his. “Daisy, feel how much I love you.” He guided her hand to his penis and closed her hand around the quivering organ. She jerked her hand away immediately, shocked, struck with fearful alarm. He didn’t try to make her touch him again but covered her lips with deep, slow, hot kisses, until he felt her mouth open of its own accord, until he felt her tongue tentatively reach out to touch his.
For half an hour he kissed her mouth and sucked her nipples until he could feel her beginning, just beginning, to stir her hips, unconsciously rotating them in a rhythm as old as time. Then he whispered again, “Daisy, touch me, touch me … you’ll feel how much I love you … please touch me,” and he took her hand again. This time she was too deeply bemused by her own aroused passion to resist. He took her hot fingers and tried to show them how to clasp his painfully engorged penis, but he had reckoned without his own towering desire. At the touch of Daisy’s hand he realized that he was about to come to orgasm. Ram clutched his penis in one hand and shoved it roughly into the girl, just as the spasms overtook him. He bit his tongue to keep from crying out in the silent house. Bewildered, and hurting, she felt him quake in great, silent tremors.
After a brief time in which he lay panting, he kissed her once more. “Now, I’ll hold you, my little Daisy,” he muttered, and he lay, half asleep, clasping her in his arms for long, quiet, motionless minutes. Daisy didn’t dare to move or speak. She was an accomplice. She had let him do it to her. If she protested he would fall into one of his sudden rages, or even worse, turn away from her and leave her all alone. But she could not be alone again. She had believed that all she wanted in Ram’s arms was protection, security and the feeling that someone loved her but now, painfully excited, and shipwrecked anew, she wanted … she didn’t know what she wanted. Furtively she pressed her lips to his bare shoulder, and as she did so they heard someone open, and a minute later, shut a door along the corridor.
“I’d better leave,” Ram whispered.
“Yes.”
He left her with a hurried kiss, left her high and dry, burning, burning, sickened with desire, sickened with shame, burning, burning.
The next day, after lunch, Anabel told Daisy that so many of the guests she had invited for the next week had announced that they were coming that Daisy would have to share her room, since it had two beds in it
“I never dreamed they’d all say yes, but it’s too late now. You’ll like your roommate, I hope—she’s an American girl, Kiki Kavanaugh, the daughter of an old friend of mine. Her mother is American too—she was Eleanor Williams when I first met her. She married a man who’s in the motor business in Detroit.”
“I’m half an American girl, too, Anabel—although I don’t feel it.”
“Do you remember much of it, Daisy?” asked Anabel, struck by some note of pathos in the girl’s voice she didn’t remember ever having heard before.
“So little. Mostly this feeling of having been with Mother and Dani and Masha—and sort of a dream memory of the way things looked, the big waves on the beaches, the forests, the light—I’ve never seen such light in England. I wish I could remember more. It seems as if my life was just split in half.” There was a wistfulness in her voice like the residue of sugar in an empty cup, the memory of uncomplicated sweetness. Anabel wished sharply that she hadn’t asked if Daisy remembered her American years—the girl looked even more weary than she had at dinner the night before, although at heir age it was
difficult to detect signs of fatigue.
Ah well, the death of Stash was a period they all had to live through, no way of skipping it and just carrying on as if nothing had happened. Anabel herself had had to strain every emotional resource she possessed to keep the house full and lively. Her own impulse was to crawl into a quiet room and just let desolation wash over her, but she couldn’t permit herself to do that, mainly for the sake of Daisy. There were no more words between them as they sat on the striped canvas deck chairs on the terrace, their backs turned to the sea which, at this hour, was too bright to look at Anabel had the gift of reposeful silence and she never asked what anyone else was thinking, a simple combination which had been only one of the many things men loved, that few other women had ever understood.
11
In course of the following week, Ram came to Daisy’s room every night. Now that he possessed her the feelings he had repressed for longer than he realized had been freed. They burst, full blown, into obsessive madness. He could think of nothing else but Daisy. At last he had her to himself, at last his father didn’t come first with her, at last he could do as he wished with her.
At night he waited only until the corridor was clear before he slipped through her door. He no longer cared if other lights were on in the house once he had locked the door. As soon as he saw the secret, tender whiteness of her breasts and her belly, as soon as he smelled the smoky, sweet wine of her hair, as soon as he felt her amber arms around him, he became so inflamed with the need to take her that all consideration, all caution, all vestiges of reason left him. And she was dominated by him, totally suffused with a strange mixture of wanting, still wanting, his kisses and yet dreading what she now knew he would eventually do to her. Each night, in torment, she waited for him, thinking that this time she would have the will to prevent him, and each night she failed.
Princess Daisy Page 20
