He had kissed her then. It seemed a sacred kiss in honour of a world greater than themselves. They were dwarfed by the immensity of land and sky. It was at that moment Merril thought she loved him.
A sound in the corridor brought her back to the present. It was the same woman, indicating that Merril should follow her.
She led her to a door at the end of the passage and stepped to one side after she'd pushed it open. She left as soon as Merril went in.
Peering inside, she was unable to see much at first. The room was made shadowy by long curtains partly covering the windows and venetian blinds tilted against the sun.
There was an imposing desk in the middle of the room, a sense of gilding and cornices and heavy furnishings, and Merril wondered if she was to meet the ambassador himself. Her journalist's mind was already ticking over the questions she might ask him when a white-clad figure detached itself from beside the window, coming towards her, silhouetted against the blinds, but one hand unmistakably outstretched in greeting towards her.
The handclasp was brief though warm. Then she gave a gasp.
'We meet again.' The voice was husky, almost inaudible, and for a second it sent a shock of recognition racing through her. She put a hand to her cheek in confusion.
'It can't be --' she faltered.
'At your service.' The man gave an unexpected bow.
'Azur?' Hair prickled over her scalp. He was the last person she had expected to see. What on earth could he be doing in England?
'I understand you wish to go back,' he rasped.
'Yes . . . yes, I do,' she agreed, licking lips suddenly gone dry. 'As soon as possible.'
'No doubt it can be arranged.' He came closer. Seeing him garbed in the same attire as when she had first set eyes on him, with that guerilla-style scarf concealing his head and most of his face, she had an overwhelming feeling that she had landed in the midst of a dream. He put both hands to her shoulders and pulled her towards him. 'Merril . . .'
In the dim light she could see the eyes, bright with some sort of emotion, dwelling on her upturned face as he brought his arms around her. This had been something she had dreamed of so often in the last week or two as an antidote to Torrin Anthony that when it happened it seemed only a pale shadow of her imaginings. Paradoxically the dream seemed more substantial. She pulled back a little.
'Have you forgotten me?' he asked, voice vibrating with emotion.
Merril shook her head. 'No, never,' she admitted. It seemed to be the answer he required. Stifling her protests, her drew her firmly into his arms and held her close enough for her head to nestle against the soft stuff of the scarf covering his shoulders, and she could feel the beating of their two hearts in wild unison together. It was like coming home, yet, at that same instant, her mind was seared by a wild, compelling image of Torrin, and the way he had held her in just this fashion, stilling her anger, showing her a strength she had never forgotten. When she could, she drew back.
Azur let his hands slide reluctantly from around her waist. 'I've come for you. I'm taking you back with me ... No protests, no objections,' he added masterfully, once again reaching for her.
It was so exactly what she had dreamed of, but now it was actually happening she felt herself hesitate. He saw her indecision and slowly let his hands fall to his sides.
In a turmoil of confusion Merril went over to stand beside the window, her back turned towards him. After an age she forced herself to speak. 'This is so difficult to say, Azur. You see ... I met someone else when I returned home. You must think me impossibly fickle—maybe it's true, but I really fell for him. Much against my inclinations. It's over now—but I know it's going to take some time for me to feel right about getting involved with anyone else. I don't think it would be fair to come back with you under these circumstances.'
'And this other man, my rival—his name?'
'Torrin Anthony.'
There was a pause, and Merril resisted the impulse to turn round. 'But if it's over between your' he asked, his voice gruff.
'I can't come back—I thought I could. I thought it was what I wanted. But I see now it would be like running away ... I have to stay to face up to the heartbreak, don't you see?' She turned slowly, then gave a gasp. 'Torrin!' she exclaimed on a different note.
'You never know when I'm acting, do you?' came the lazy response, in a voice that had lost all its adopted gruffness.
Pulling his disguise right down, he came rapidly across the room towards her. 'Thank you a million times for that, my darling. If the only way I can get you to say you care is to pretend to be someone else, then so be it.'
'Torrin, no!' Merril stepped back out of reach. The ground seemed to rock beneath her feet. She felt her fingers sliding down the wood panelling behind her.
Then his arm was coming out to support her and he was saying, 'No, don't give me that Victorian maiden act—it's so difficult to pull off without lapsing into melodrama.'
'I've never acted in my life,' she managed to whisper, 'and least of all now.'
He held her, not kissing her, just looking down into her face.
She began to struggle out of his arms, her face a furious red. 'You must have been having a good laugh up your sleeve, you bastard!' she muttered hoarsely, spinning towards the door as she managed to loosen his grip. 'How could you play such a foul trick? I hate you! You're lower than a worm!' Tears of humiliation scalded her cheeks and she grappled with the door, trying to open it, but anger and humiliation making the simple task impossible.
He was beside her in two strides. 'Don't go—' He slammed the flat of his palm against the door, closing it. 'You can't think I did it to make you look a fool?' he said fiercely. 'Think back. When could I decently have told you we'd met --'
'Met? That's an understatement! Told me you were my "dream lover", you mean!' Her voice rose. 'Like when I came to interview you, for instance. You. could have told me then. Like in bed—there was time enough, wasn't there?'
'Wait!' His face was like a thundercloud. 'How could I have told you at the interview? You didn't give me a chance before you launched into a diatribe against me.'
It was true. Merril remembered with anguished clarity the way she had cut him off in mid-sentence when he began by mentioning her piece about the civil war, and how she had gone on to treat him to a brand of sarcasm that was out of all proportion to the occasion.
'Your voice --' she said, looking bewildered. 'I would have thought I'd know that anywhere. It should have been a giveaway, despite your wildly different appearance, but you sounded so different --'
'Having a touch of laryngitis over in Kirkuk helped in that respect.'
Something came back to her. 'Of course, I remember Tommy saying something about a throat bug, but I put it down to the usual theatrical obsession with last-minute calamity.' Then she cast a glance round the room. 'This house—it is this one, isn't it? I thought it was, but I couldn't believe it. . .' She rubbed a hand weakly over her eyes. 'How come you were playing soldiers?' she asked, trying to hide now unsure she felt.
'Maybe I'm playing actors?' he retorted ambiguously, then, more helpfully, 'I told you I was brought up over there. My old man was a diplomat, and until the age of ten I lived permanently out there. I went to the local school—made a lot of friends who've stayed with me all the way. Even when I was packed off to boarding-school in England I used to go back every holiday. Now, of course, a lot of those same friends are active in government, though not all of them on the same side. My sister happened to marry the man who is now Foreign Minister. When that little skirmish took place between two of the factions, it seemed idiotic not to' try to mediate. You would do the same if you had two sets of friends who'd momentarily got themselves at cross-purposes. It's all over now. Those foreign troops you saw were sent ignominiously back over the border where they belonged. As for this place,' he looked round, 'my brother-in-law allows me to stay here whenever I'm in town.'
'And your name?'
'A ch
ildhood nickname.' He reached out and put a finger on her soft mouth. 'Couldn't you see how astonished I was when you walked into my dressing-room on the first night? I couldn't believe my eyes. I'd already decided that as soon as the show opened I was going to track you down. You seemed to cut me dead. It was only when I remembered I was still masquerading as Lord Rakewell that I understood why you didn't recognise me.'
'I thought you were simply switching on the charm --'
'Rakewell, arch-seducer? The first thing I said to you when we met here was how frightening it is to find people reacting so strongly to appearances but missing what lies underneath.'
'I didn't understand what you were trying to say.' Merril lifted her head, his finger sliding to the side of her neck, confusing her thoughts. 'If you remember, I tried to get my notebook to write it down—'
'I wanted you to respond to me, to forget your job, to see me as I am.'
'But you could have told me the truth later --' She tried to brush his hand away, not sure whether she ought to want it there.
'I tried to. I thought I'd set it up rather well, asking you to come here to do a profile. I thought it would be easier to explain if we met somewhere quiet—what better situation than an interview? But it misfired rather badly. That's when I had the crazy idea of kidnapping you. I thought the matter of my identity would come up naturally if we spent some time together.'
'But how could it? You looked so different. The first time we met you had long, scruffy hair and a blond stubble. Here you're clean-shaven with short hair or sporting a black stage wig with a pigtail. Have a heart, Torrin! Even your tan's faded.' She couldn't help giving a nervous smile at the sound of her own voice. It sounded as if she was forgiving him. But what would happen if she did? He was drawing her close again, her body taking fire from his.
She struggled, moving out of reach. 'I suppose you couldn't have told me when we spent the weekend together --'
'Things had changed by that time.' He frowned.
'Had they?'
For the first time he looked uncertain. 'I felt suddenly out of my depth. Of course I wanted you to want me. I knew I loved you. As I tried to tell you, for me it was love from that first moment when you threw yourself into my arms when the shooting broke out . . .'
'I threw myself? I thought you hauled me to safety?'
'Maybe it was mutual?' His voice was so quiet, it was almost inaudible. 'Later, after that argument at the millhouse when I saw that unmistakable look in your eyes, that hero-worship ... it made me want to run. Can't you understand? I've had enough of all that. Everywhere I go women look at me as if I only have to raise a finger—and it's got nothing to do with me at all!'
'It doesn't seem a good idea to reject someone because they look at you with adoration in their eyes,' Merril said stiffly.
'I tried to explain—about not wanting responsibility, not wanting to have someone's happiness like a millstone round my neck.' He gripped her savagely by the chin and stared down into her eyes. 'Didn't you understand what I was saying?'
'You meant you wanted love without responsibility?' The words were muffled with a pain she couldn't conceal, but she had to understand what he was trying to tell her.
'I wanted our love to be equal—not a massive adoration on one side, half fantasy, half wishful thinking—something I could neither repay nor live up to. I wanted to be loved for myself, Merril. Not because I have a glamorous job, not for my looks, my physique, not for the parts I play—not for any of those reasons, because none of that has anything to do with the real me. Inside I'm just an ordinary fellow.'
'Clark Kent, not Superman?'
He smiled briefly. 'Yes, something like that.'
What he seemed to be trying to tell her was that he didn't want her to love him, that by loving him she put herself out of play. 'I can't help loving you,' she told him miserably. 'You are Superman to me. What's so wrong in that?'
'It's not true.' He turned to the door. 'Let's get out of this stifling room.' He led her out along the corridor and through a door at the back leading into a small courtyard. It was empty, but a fountain played, splashing musically over smooth stones.
'Idyllic, isn't it?' he remarked ironically, sitting on the parapet and watching her closely.
'I suppose so.' Merril eyed the fountain and the fat yellow fish, noticing how the water boatmen were out already, leaping gaily over the surface of the water as if it were a skein of silk.
'What you're trying to say is, if I love you I lose you?' She trailed her fingers in the cold water, feeling that it matched her feelings, cold and flat. 'I believe I do love the real you,' she went on, no longer pretending. 'I must do, mustn't I, .because half the time you're somebody else and I still go on feeling the same way. Our bodies know it . . . It's just our thoughts that keep us spinning away out of each other's reach.' She lifted her head. 'Maybe you simply like the idea of the hunt, Torrin. The idea of catching your prey doesn't interest you.'
'No,' he gripped her round the waist as if he had decided not to let her go, 'when I catch you I'm going to keep you.' She wondered how he could possibly think ne hadn't caught her. But he held her for a moment before saying slowly, 'There is something else.'
He hesitated for such a long time, she wondered if she'd misheard, but, looking unseeingly across the courtyard to the house, he eventually said, 'I don't want to be a stand-in for your father.'
'What?' She slid off the parapet, looking down at him in astonishment.
'I think that's why a lot of marriages go wrong. One or both of the participants are looking for someone from the past. I don't want a six-month marriage, Merril. I have to slay that particular dragon . . . that's why I hoped for time before we became too deeply involved. I didn't mean to cut you out. It was to safeguard you as much as myself.' He was still fighting to express his feelings. 'I know how much he meant to you. He and Azur,' he grimaced, 'super-heroes, the pair of them. And distinctly uncomfortable bedfellows.'
'My father wasn't the little tin god I once thought.' Merril put a hand on his shoulder. 'I have it on the best authority.'
She had the satisfaction of seeing his head jerk up. 'What do you mean?'
'Mother had apparently the same idea as you about my feelings in that direction.' She had a far-away look. 'I suppose I did go on about him a lot. But it was all to do with my career. What he had achieved was like a guiding light when I didn't know how to set about things. His example showed me the limits I could go to.' She gave him a little smile and bent to rest her face against his cheek. 'I'm quite down-to-earth about most things, you know. It's only you who managed to send my common sense flying out of the window. As,' she mocked gently, 'you may have observed.'
Torrin took her hands, turning them over and kissing the palms. 'I want you unconditionally, Merril. Not because I fit some Identikit picture inside your head.' He said the words quietly, with force, and she met his eyes with loving recognition.
'You fit no picture. I think it was Tom who first drew my attention to that. You're an original.'
'Tom!' He laughed. 'He told me he saw you outside the theatre one evening, and he invited you backstage for a drink, but you refused.'
'I didn't dare come face to face with you. Not after you'd told me I'd thrown myself at you. I felt too ashamed. I really believed you meant it to be "kiss and goodbye".'
'I thought you wouldn't come because you really didn't care. He tried to make me see it wasn't so, but I couldn't believe him. It seemed obvious. Finally I couldn't bear it any longer. I decided to come round to the flat. But when I did you were out. It was a weekend, you must have been away. I sat outside all night in the car --' Torrin pulled her into her arms. 'I was in despair to know how to approach you. Then I was asked to present those awards and I thought that would be an opportunity to gauge how you really felt.' His eyes had a despairing look for a moment. 'Have you any idea of the agony I endured waiting to see you, sure you would reveal your true feelings when we met—only to find you were so v
iolently against me? I felt I'd been right all along—you'd simply been infatuated with Torrin Anthony, actor, and like all such emotions, it had faded as rapidly as it had arisen. When we parted outside your office on the Monday morning you were so cool, accepting without a protest that it was just one of those brief affairs. I couldn't believe that was really you --'
'I wanted to plead with you to let me stay with you. But I forced myself to hold back, not daring to relinquish my last shred of pride. If you'd rejected me then, 1 would have been left with less than nothing,' she explained.
'And you say you never act? As a performance it was entirely convincing. And then later, at the ceremony, you really seemed to hate me --'
'By then I'd convinced myself I hated you. I believed you wanted me because I was now hard to get. You had to have everyone crawling in adoration at your feet, and you just couldn't take rejection.'
'My ego isn't that fragile. I can take rejection any time—it's part of the job.' He gave her a sudden look. 'At least, I can take it from anyone in the world—but not from you.' He held her in his arms, cradling her against him as if she were the most precious thing he possessed.
There was a call from across the courtyard, and a young woman with a baby on her hip appeared at a first-floor balcony.
'Torrin—you asked me to remind you when it was time.'
'My sister,' he told Merril. 'It's time to go to the theatre. Will you come with me?'
Later they drove slowly back to the millhouse, Torrin explaining that he didn't usually use the chauffeur-driven Jaguar so much, but that the injury to his ankle made it difficult to drive.
'And fly?' queried Merril.
'We'll test that out on Sunday,' he told her. 'I promised you flying lessons.'
'And other lessons?' she asked wickedly.
'Certainly other lessons. I always keep my word.'
'Torrin, what about the chauffeur?' she protested as he reached for her in the dark at the back of the car.
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