She did not say any more, but there was a pathetic, tragic sound to her words that told Tyrone Strome that she had suffered as a child suffers from sheer bewilderment at the death of someone they loved.
“Having lost my mother,” Nevada went on, “I transferred my affection to my father. I loved him and I wanted desperately for him to love me. I used to count the hours until he came home in the evening and try to spend every moment that he was in the house with him.”
She turned away to look out over the valley for a moment before she said, “One evening I was running into the study to welcome him home and tell him how much I had missed him, when I heard him say to one of the servants,
“Bring me a drink and for God’s sake keep that child out of my hair. I have not got time for her.”
Even as Nevada spoke, Tyrone Strome knew that never before had she told anyone what she had overheard and he realised from the expression on her face what a shock it had been.
“I c-cried when my mother died,” Nevada said in a tight little voice, “but when I lost my father – I did not cry. I only felt as if I was all alone in a world that was completely hostile towards me.”
There was a pause before, until with an effort, she went on,
“I-I suppose my father had some sense of – responsibility because shortly after this my nanny was sent away and I was provided with a young Governess.”
Nevada gave a little laugh with no humour in it.
“She was everything that I admired and thought attractive. There was something dashing and modern about her that I had certainly not found in my old nanny. So you will not be surprised that I concentrated all my love on her.”
“Were there no other children in your life?” he asked.
Nevada shook her head.
“Not so that I could make close friends with them. I was a multi-millionaire’s daughter, remember, and as such in a class of my own.”
She spoke scathingly and then continued,
“Of course I went to parties, but I felt very out of it, despite the fact that the grown-ups gushed at me, the children eyed me with suspicion.”
She gave a little sigh.
“They never had to suffer as I had, from going everywhere with a detective behind me in case I was kidnapped, having armed guards patrolling the house and grounds at night, having everyone who wanted to meet me vetted before they were admitted to my presence.”
“Was it really as bad as that?” “Worse – much worse than I can ever tell you,” Nevada answered. “I knew I was not an ordinary child and that I was in fact – extraordinary – but it took me some time to understand the barriers that separated me from other children of my age.”
“But you had your nice Governess.”
“Yes – I had Beryl Saunders,” Nevada said and something in the way she spoke made Tyrone Strome ask,
“What was wrong with her?”
“Need you ask?” Nevada replied. “She found me as much of a bore as my father had done! I can see now all too clearly how tiresome I must have been with my – adoration, my fits of – jealousy, my insistence that she must be at my beck and call all day and every day.”
“Did she get married?” Tyrone Strome enquired.
“I think that would have been easier to bear,” Nevada answered. “No. I merely read a letter she was writing.”
She gave another little laugh which again had no humour in it.
“It was a very good object lesson in teaching me not to read other people’s letters.”
“What had she written?”
“She left the letter in the blotter. She had been writing it while I was doing my lessons and, when we came back to the schoolroom after luncheon, she stopped behind to talk to my father’s secretary who was a friend of hers. They were always gossiping together and I was madly jealous because I thought she liked the secretary more than she liked me.”
“So you read her letter?”
“I opened the blotter and read it deliberately,” Nevada said. “I don’t know to this day to whom it was addressed, it may have been to a young man or it may have been to her family. All I know is that one sentence seemed to jump out at me in letters of fire.”
“What did it say?”
For a moment Tyrone Strome thought Nevada could hardly bear to tell him, then she replied,
“My beloved Governess, the woman I adored had written,
“I would not stay in this place for a moment if it were not for the money. If you only knew what 1 have to put up with, spending my time with a maudlin child who hangs round me like a piece of clinging ivy so that 1 never have a moment to myself.”
Nevada drew in her breath as if it was hard to breathe before she went on,
“There was a lot more but I did not bother to read it. I think it was at that moment that I swore I would never again love anybody, never again would I be hurt as first my father, then my Governess had hurt me.”
“I can understand you feeling like that,” Tyrone Strome said in his deep voice.
“As I grew older, I made up my mind that I would make people suffer as I had suffered,” Nevada went on. “I wanted men to fall in love with me, so that I could show my superiority to them by knowing I had no feelings except one of indifference towards them and the whole world.”
“And now you think you have changed?”
“I suppose everyone has a vulnerable spot, however hard it is to try and shield it.”
“And you have found yours?”
“I knew yesterday that I should be happy, at any rate happier, than I am at the moment – if I was with children.” “So you have discovered that you have love to give.”
“Of course I have love to give!” Nevada retorted almost furiously. “It has been there bottled up inside me all these years and at least children who are orphans and depend on charity will not be able to refuse it while they are small.”
“You think that such a life, looking after other people’s children, will make you happy and be enough to satisfy you?”
“Is one ever completely satisfied?” she asked evasively. “At least it will not be the emptiness and the loneliness I have experienced in the past.”
There was silence, then pleadingly she said, looking at Tyrone Strome,
“Help me – you know I cannot do this without your help.”
He rose from the couch and walked towards her. Her eyes searched his face to see if he would accede to what she asked of him.
“You must help me,” she said frantically. “If you send me back, I shall not know where to start or how to begin, besides – ”
She did not finish the sentence and after a moment Tyrone Strome enquired,
“You are thinking your father might prevent you from doing what you wish to do?”
“I don’t think father cares what I do one way or the other,” Nevada replied, “but you know exactly how my friends and acquaintances will behave, what the press will say! The whole thing will be talked about, written up and, before I know what has happened, I shall only be allowed to sit on a committee having no direct contact with the children or being allowed to take care of them myself, as I could do here.”
“I believe that is more or less true,” Tyrone Strome agreed.
“Then – you will help me?”
There was an eagerness in Nevada’s voice and in her eyes that had not been there before.
He stood close to her looking down into her face. Then he said quietly,
“I think the answer to your problem is a child, Nevada, but why not one of your own?”
She stared at him in astonishment. Then slowly, very slowly, so that she could hardly believe what was happening, he put his arms around her and drew her close to him.
“Shall I give you a baby?” he asked.
She felt as if the whole world stood still, then his lips came down on hers.
She knew, as he kissed her, that this was what she had wanted, this was what she had longed for and this was everything she had d
reamt of as her idea of Heaven.
At first his lips were gentle, as if he was afraid to frighten her.
Then, as he felt the softness of her mouth beneath his and felt her draw instinctively nearer to him, he held her closer still and his kiss became more demanding, insistent, passionate.
She felt as if they were part of the sunset outside, the pink cliffs, the wonder of the valley and she felt too as if he drew her very heart from between her lips and made it his. He raised his head to look down at her shining eyes and trembling mouth and now she could only whisper the words that came irresistibly to her lips,
“I love – you! I love – you!”
“As I love you,” Tyrone Strome answered. “Do you really imagine, my darling, that I would let you look after anyone else’s children except mine?”
“I thought you meant to – send me away.”
“I knew long before I brought you here that you belonged to me and there could be no returning to the life you lived before we met each other.”
“B-but you h-hated me, despised me and were so – cruel.”
“That was because I knew that you were not really like that inside, my precious. But I did not know then what you had suffered.”
He kissed her mouth again and she clung to him until, as he felt her quiver in his arms, he raised his head again to say,
“You will never be alone or lonely again, that I promise you, and darling, I need your love.”
“Suppose I – bore you – suppose you find that I – love you too much?”
Tyrone Strome smiled.
“You cannot love me too much and I want not only your love, my darling, but everything else that belongs to you, your eyes – ”
He kissed them.
“ – your glorious flaming hair.”
He put out his hand to touch the fiery red tresses as they fell down her back.
“If you only knew how difficult it has been not to touch it and not to kiss you.”
He kissed her cheeks, the corners of her mouth and once again her lips.
“I want to kiss you all over your perfect body, my beautiful one,” he sighed, “and especially your little hennaed feet.”
Nevada looked at him with starry eyes, then with a little murmur she hid her face against his shoulder.
“I love you and I want you to love me,” she whispered, “but h-how can I compete with the – dancer?”
She felt Tyrone Strome stiffen as if in surprise. Then, as she clung to him, he put his fingers under her chin and masterfully turned her face up to his.
“The dancer?” he questioned.
Then, when he saw the expression on her face, he gave a little laugh.
“You are jealous! Oh, my absurd darling, you are jealous and I had not the least idea of it!”
“She was so – attractive and I saw the Sheik give – her to you.”
“Yes, that is what you saw,” Tyrone Strome agreed. “But, if you knew a little more about this country, my lovely one, you would know that anything you admire in a Moroccan’s house is automatically offered to one as a gift.”
He kissed Nevada’s forehead before he went on,
“The Sheik, as was to be expected, offered me – his honoured guest – the dancer. It was an obligatory courtesy, but it was equally obligatory on my part to refuse such a generous gesture.”
“You – refused?”
Nevada’s eyes were alight, her lips were trembling and very near to his.
“I refused, darling, because I was already preoccupied with someone else, someone very naughty but irresistible, whom I already loved even though I had fought against acknowledging it.”
“I fought against falling in love with you, too,” Nevada murmured, “but when I thought of the dancer – ”
Again she hid her face against Tyrone Strome and he asked gently,
“What did you think about her?”
“I realised I could not – compete – but I w-wanted to be in your – arms – I wanted to be – close to you – for you to love me as I thought you – loved her.”
“The love that we have for each other, my darling one,” Tyrone Strome said, “is very different from what the dancer or any other woman could offer me.”
His arms tightened as he said,
“All my life I have been looking for the woman I would love as I love you. Perhaps because I have lived in the East I wanted to capture her, to conquer her, if you like, and make quite sure she was mine and she could never belong to anyone else.”
“I – love you!” Nevada said looking up at him. “I adore you – completely with every part of me – and I could never, never love anybody else.”
“I think to make sure of that I should keep you here,” Tyrone Strome said, “and never allow you to see anyone but me or go abroad without a litham over your face.”
“I would – do that – if that is what you wanted.”
“You mean that?”
“All I want is to be with you. You fill my whole life and there is nothing else but you – and you – and you – !”
His lips smothered the last word and he kissed her with a passion that made them both breathless and the red of the sun seemed to be reflected in Tyrone Strome’s eyes when he looked down at her.
“I love you in a thousand different ways,” he said, “and, although I would like to keep you all to myself, there are unfortunately too many things for us to do in the world outside.”
“What sort of – things?” Nevada asked apprehensively.
“For the moment they seem unimportant beside us and what we feel for each other, but I have in fact been offered a position which I think you would wish me to accept.”
“What is it?” she asked.
“The letter which I received yesterday was from the Foreign Office,” Tyrone Strome said. “They want me to stay in Morocco for at least a year as an observer of the events that are expected to take place very shortly.”
“What events?” Nevada asked in a puzzled tone.
“The British anticipate, although it is not to be talked about, that the French will try to occupy Morocco. If this happens, I shall have complete freedom to move about the country because of my special relationship with the Moroccans. The reports which I shall send to England will therefore be of diplomatic significance.”
“And I can be with you?” Nevada asked.
“Do you think I would accept otherwise?”
“It sounds too perfect, too wonderful that I can be with you here amongst the people I love already.”
She paused, then said excitedly,
“You will teach me to speak the language?”
“There is a great deal I have to teach you and the most important is to love me.”
“I love you already, so much that it seems impossible I could love you more.”
“I assure you that what you feel now is only the very tip of the iceberg,” Tyrone Strome said with a twist of his lips. “Oh, my precious little love, you are so beautiful and your red hair tells me there are many undiscovered fires within you that I want to ignite into a blaze that is all for me.”
Nevada threw her arms around his neck and pulled his head down to hers.
“Teach me to love you,” she begged. “Teach me to love you as you want me to do. I did not know that there was a man who could be so magnificent, so marvellous and so wonderful as you.”
She made a sound which was almost a sob as she went on,
“Are you quite sure that this is not a – dream and I shall wake up to find we are not in this lovely pink – Eden, but perhaps dying of thirst in some – desert?”
Tyrone Strome laughed at the expression on her face, then he picked her up and carried her across the room to the sofa, laying her down on the satin cushions.
He took the earrings from her ears so that he could kiss them, then he pulled aside the embroidered caftan to kiss her neck.
“I love you!” he said. “I love you as I have never loved a woman before a
nd your skin is like the petals of a magnolia.”
“Kiss me – make me love you!” Nevada said and now there was a note of passion in her voice that made it deep and not unlike Tyrone Strome’s own.
His lips came down on hers fiercely, compellingly, demandingly.
She felt as if he conquered her, as he wished to do, and made her completely his captive for ever.
She was no longer herself, but a part of him ready to be obedient to his slightest wish, even in the air she breathed.
Her body moved against his and she felt the hard touch of his hand through the thin silk of her caftan.
It was so thrilling that the sensation it evoked ran through her veins like fire and rose to her lips so she seemed to be kissing him with flames.
“I love – you.”
She was not certain if she said the words aloud or they were spoken in her heart.
“God – how much I want you.”
Tyrone Strome’s voice was hoarse and deep with passion.
Then, as she longed for him to hold her closer and still closer, he suddenly sat up releasing her and she looked up at him with a sudden concern in her eyes.
“What is – it? What is – wrong?” she asked.
“There is nothing wrong, my adorable one.”
“But there is!” she protested. “Why have you stopped kissing me?”
Tyrone Strome smiled down at her.
“We are going out.”
“Out?”
“To find the Reverend Andrew Frazer. We are going to be married, my darling, unless you want me to give you a baby without waiting for you to be my wife.”
“Can we be married now – at once?” Nevada asked.
“It will doubtless be according to the rites of the Church of Scotland,” he replied. “But I have a feeling it would be extremely dangerous for you to remain alone here with me tonight.”
He was laughing as he spoke.
He pulled Nevada to her feet and she moved close against him lifting her face up to his as she said,
“I am not afraid of that sort of danger, but I do want to be your wife.”
“And that is what I want you to be, my wife now and for all time,” Tyrone Strome replied. “Once you are tied to me, my darling, there will be no escape, no going back to the old life.”
The Punishment of a Vixen Page 14
