by Anne Hampson
‘It was intended to be,’ he told her quietly, his eyes never leaving her face. ‘It was planned to take place in the moonlit gardens of the Club—’
‘Oh!’ Disappointment flooded over her. ‘I didn’t go because I thought you—you were going to—to get engaged to Rosa—’ She broke off, fighting the tears which had formed a cloud behind her eyes. ‘You never gave me any indication that it was me you loved.’
‘I gave you plenty. However, I admit I paid a good deal of attention to Rosa.’ He paused a moment, a frown darkening his brow. ‘When I first became interested in her she seemed a nice enough girl, though not possessed of any real depth. It suited me to have someone like that, seeing that I was only interested in having a son one day—an heir for what I owned. Rosa’s father is a very good friend of mine; he’s a lonely man who dotes on his daughter, and when he saw that I was interested in Rosa he was delighted. It seemed to take ten years off his age to think that she was to marry someone who could give her all she was used to.’ Chad stopped and his frown deepened; it was plain that this explanation was proving difficult for him. Beth said quietly,
‘I think I understand, Chad.’ And she did. Rosa’s father saw in Chad a man rare among his sex, a man any girl would be proud to call her husband. She would be the envy of her female friends. To her father only the best was good enough for Rosa, and in Chad she had got the best. ‘You couldn’t ask me to marry you until you’d spoken to your friend—Rosa’s father?’ Half question, but half statement too, and he nodded. ‘I often felt you were playing some kind of waiting game, but of course I had no idea what it was,’ Beth added reflectively.
Chad looked at her and gave a small sigh. He drew her to him and kissed her tenderly before speaking again.
‘I had to wait until he came home. It would have been too bad to drop Rosa while he was away and to become engaged to another girl. I couldn’t do it, Beth dear, even though I knew that you were unhappy and bewildered at times. I ought not to have kissed you, but I couldn’t resist, my love.’ He looked tenderly into her eyes and added, ‘Last Saturday when I met your uncle from the train I told him I loved you and intended asking you to marry me, but I said too that I felt I must see Rosa’s father first. Your uncle agreed, and we were both troubled about his reaction when I told him I was not going to marry Rosa. I had to be honest and tell him that I’d never loved her, and that I now did love someone and would be married to her shortly. Surprisingly, he took it very well.’
Beth, thrilling to his words about marriage, felt her whole body flooding with happiness. Yet in spite of this she just had to say, slanting him an arch glance,
‘What made you so sure I’d agree to marry you?’
At that he quirked her a smile of mocking amusement.
‘Haven’t I said, on a couple of times at least, that you’re very transparent on occasions? Well, my love, you certainly gave away the fact that you were head over heels in love with me just as I was with you.’ He held her from him, to gaze with tender emotion into her eyes. ‘You almost surrendered to me once, Beth, and you’re not the girl to let a man make love to you unless you love him.’
She nodded her head, but buried it in his coat immediately, hiding her embarrassment.
‘I wish I’d known you loved me,’ she whispered huskily after a while. ‘I’d never have been so—er— unfriendly as I was sometimes.’
‘Unfriendly? Sometimes! My God, Beth, that’s an understatement if ever there was one! That tongue of yours was acid! And you can change that “sometimes” for always!’
She flashed him a glance.
‘That’s a fib,’ she countered. ‘It wasn’t always! I was very charming to you on occasions!’
‘Then those occasions must have been so rare as not to be noticed!’
‘Why,’ she asked quiveringly, ‘do you want to marry me?’
‘For the opportunity of taming you,’ was Chad’s swift rejoinder.
‘I ought to be thinking twice,’ she began.
‘You’ve already done all your thinking,’ he told her perceptively. ‘And so have I. I’ll be honest, Beth. At first, although I was admitting that you attracted me as no woman ever has before, I felt sure we’d never hit it off. I’d become a wife-beater and you’d run off and leave me within a year, so I tried to prevent my feelings from becoming too deep. But it was no use. I love you and want you, my beautiful little vixen.’ He bent to kiss her, gently at first, but soon she was drawn right into the whirlpool of his passion and for a long time no words were spoken between them. When at last he released her she was quivering with longing for him, aflame with the burning desire he had ignited within her. But eventually they both managed to resume their control, and Chad took her to the window, letting go of her hand while he opened it. The air was cool and fresh on their faces; the heady, exotic perfumes from the garden drifted in on the zephyr of a breeze from the direction of the mountains. Chad slipped an arm around Beth’s waist. She had been thinking of Rosa and she asked, a little hesitantly, if he had seen her this evening, and spoken to her. He nodded.
‘Yes, I’ve seen her, but not this evening—Or, to be correct, I did see her, but not to speak to. As soon as I saw Jo and Carole come without you I went to them to find out what was wrong. They said you were off-colour—’
‘I didn’t want to go because I felt sure that you and Rosa would be announcing your engagement,’ Beth broke in, sure that he was about to add some disparaging remark about the lie she had told.
‘I don’t know why you should have come to that conclusion,’ he said, puzzled.
‘I thought—well, we all thought—that you’d been waiting for Rosa’s father to come home so that you could speak to him first—about wanting to marry
Rosa, I mean ...’ She tailed off, her eyes sparkling with humour. ‘It’s of no importance, is it, Chad? So I don’t know why we’re wasting time talking about it.’
He laughed then and said teasingly,
‘There are other things you want to talk about, eh?’
She laughed with her eyes again and said, shyly, ‘Yes, please, Chad.’
For answer he swung her slender body to him and pressed it close, taking the sweet rosy lips she was offering to him.
‘How very lucky I am,’ Beth was murmuring a long while later. ‘Oh, Chad, I shall never know why you chose me!’
‘I’ve told you,’ he rejoined with mock sternness, ‘I want the opportunity of taming you.’
Strangely, this did not worry Beth in the least. She snuggled close against his shoulder and for a moment or two they became lost in what was going on around them. Little creatures with bright eyes made rustling sounds among the pile of dead leaves that had been brushed up from the lawn; bats’ wings whistled through the scented air. The cry of a night-bird, the crickets in the trees. Throbbing into the darkness the primordial beat of a native drum in a beautiful, slow mysterious rhythm of falling cadence. It faded finally, and all the other sounds too, and there was only silence over the timeless bushveld, hushed, primitive. Time stood still in the depth of night and the landscape slumbered in the starlight.
Beth stirred in her lover’s arms and whispered softly,
‘I love you, Chad. Please love me always.’
His arms about her tightened tenderly.
‘That will be easy.’ He turned his head and looked deeply into her eyes, eyes glowing with a new and wonderful joy—the joy of loving and being loved in return. ‘My life, sweetheart, is all yours—my life and my love and my heart.’
Beth was unable to speak for the emotion that flooded every fibre of her body and so, with a little access of tenderness, she put her hands to his face and brought it down to hers.
And her kiss was sweet and tender on his mouth.
Table of Contents
Start
reading books on Archive.
