He gazed down into her eyes in the lamplight, and it was then, for both of them, that the voices of conscience began to fade. "You lovely, lovely thing!" The words broke from his lips against the glossy hair clustering at her temple. The deep beat of has heart was very close to her, then a hard tremor shook him. "I must go back to my own room, Fern...."
"Of course." A mere sigh against his shoulder.
"I must go now, sweetheart."
"All right." She moved as though to slip out of his arms.
"No !" He caught her back with a laughing, defeated groan. "Oh, baby, no!" Holding her with one arm, he stretched the other to the intrusive bedside lamp. As the room was drowned in darkness, as he found her with his lips, she sighed his name and slipped her arms about the hard, warm column of his neck. Yesterday dissolved into mist and there was no tomorrow.
There was only tonight. .. Ross ... this sweet madness.
Fern awoke to see bright sunshine spilling through the long lace curtains at her bedroom windows. She stretched each limb like a kitten full of well-being and saw tea things and cookies standing on her bedside table. She let a hand drift over the indentation which a certain bronze head had left in the pillow beside her and a smile trembled on her mouth as she remembered the steel under the smooth skin of male shoulders; the caressing storm a man turns into when he becomes a lover.
With a little laugh she poured herself a cup of tea, nectar because Ross had made it. She ate a cookie, then
she showered and dressed in a summery print that matched her holiday mood. Now, grown a little shy, she went in search of her husband.
He had cooked breakfast—she could smell the bacon —and she found him sitting at a table in the garden. He glanced up from the morning paper. "Good morning, sweetheart," he smiled.
"Good morning, Ross." She helped herself to bacon and a couple of grilled sausages and sat down facing him. Sunshine winked on the coffee pot, burnished Ross's hair, and Fern shyly remarked that it looked like being a gorgeous day.
"Heavenly," he agreed. He poured her a cup of coffee and as he pushed it across to her, their fingers brushed, their eyes met and remembrance of the heaven they had shared last night was a tangible thing between them.
"You're a picture this morning, Mrs. Kingdom."
She smilingly shook ketchup on to her breakfast and thought to herself that he looked good himself with a snowy shirt thrown open at his brown throat and impudent twinkles lurking in his eyes.
Oh, lovely madness... lovely dream, to which she must cling very tightly, forgetting everything else!
"Is the bacon frizzly enough?" he wanted to know.
"Mm," she chewed appreciatively, "delicious. Thank you for getting breakfast."
"You were sleeping like a babe. I just didn't have the heart to wake you."
Her cheeks grew faintly pink and she heard him give that boyish, pleased, tender groan of a laugh from last night.
He sat looking at her. A lavender bandeau held her platinum hair demurely back from her face; her mouth was pink and unpainted and he could hardly reconcile such a girlish picture of innocence with the ardent, wholly enticing armful who had dimmed harsh memory so completely for him last night.
"Fern," he held a hand across the table and she put her left one into it; gold ring, hand and body were his, "you don't regret last night in any way, do you?"
"N-not if you don't, Ross." The beat of her heart had nervously quickened.
She saw his scarred eyebrow contract slightiy, then he shook his head. "I'd be an awful ungrateful guy if I regretted your sweetness to me last night. I—I can't pretend I really wanted it to happen," then his fingers gathered hers very close as though to soften the harshness of a truth he had to admit, "but now it has happened we're both adult enough to realize we can no longer live impersonally together—"
Her heart was in her throat as he paused; her eyes were fixed upon his serious, handsome face... the face she had caressed and kissed.
"Fern, are you prepared to go on being a real wife to me?" he asked.
A real wife!
She hardly knew how she kept adoring words of love from tumbling out of her mouth. "I—if that's what you want, Ross," she said.
His smile was whimsical. "I'd rather like to hear you say you want it as well."
"I do, my dear."
"For better or worse?"
"Yes."
"Then so be it." He squeezed her fingers. "Look, Jenny has a lodge up in Monterey and I'm sure she'd let us have it for a couple of weeks. I—well, it would be nice, being alone, huh?"
She wanted to say that it would be heaven, but she must not impose her love on him. It was almost enough that he had let her into his arms; she mustn't let him see that she craved to be let into his heart. "I've always wanted to go to Monterey," she said.
After breakfast Ross phoned his sister and, with a note of coaxing eagerness in his voice that thrilled Fern, he asked if they might have the use of her mountain lodge for about a fortnight.
Jenny must have answered him with a wisecrack, for he burst out laughing, hooked an arm about Fern and tucked her against his side. "You've hit the nail right
on the head, sis," he replied. "We want to use it for a spot of private billing and cooing. You're agreeable? Swell! Say, how's the place stocked up for canned foods?" He listened attentively for a minute. Then he grinned. "Yes, Fern's right here beside me if you want to speak to her."
He handed Fern the receiver and Jenny's stage-clear voice struck against her ear. "I'm batting on your team, honey! You'll find the lodge is way up in the Monterey hills and wildly romantic, with purple sage scenting the air and stars like big diamonds spattering an indigo blue sky at night. Gray, my husband, used to adore the place. It has memories, so I don't go up there so very much, but you'll find everything looking nice. I pay someone to housekeep."
"It's kind of you to let us use it for our holiday," Fern said, gratefully.
"You're only too welcome, honey. That brother of mine has been looking in need of some mountain air with some romance thrown in. I've got to go into Hollywood today, but I'll leave the lodge keys with Aunt Winna. Okay?"
"Fine. Thank you again, Jenny."
Fern's smile was tremulous as she replaced the receiver on the telephone cradle. Ross regarded her with teasing eyes, so delectably fair in her gaily patterned dress with a row of white beads about her throat. He dropped a kiss on to her nose. She crinkled it flirtatiously, and after that it was several breathless minutes before Ross went off to get the car out of the garage.
They drove down into town for the supplies they would need up at the lodge and stopped off at the Kingdom house on the way back for the keys. Diana was home from Santa Clara and looking as excited as a puppy with two tails. She and Jeff had got engaged at his parents' farm and she was wearing a pretty heart-shaped diamond ring on her left hand.
"Good for you, young Di!" Ross swung her right off her feet and gave her a resounding kiss.
"My," she giggled, "you're looking pleased with yourself today, you handsome old thing."
"Oy, not so much of the old!" He landed a fight smack on her shapely little bottom before she could dodge out of the way.
His aunt suggested that he and Fern stay for coffee if they weren't in too much of a hurry to start their drive up to Monterey.
He glanced at Fern. "Do you want to, my pet?" he asked. So possessive an endearment in front of his aunt and Diana brought an uncontrollable blush to Fern's cheeks. .. and Diana would have to say : "What's with you two, are you having a baby or something?"
Later on, while the Mercury sang along in the Freeway traffic out of Los Angeles, Fern let herself think about the expression Diana's remark about a baby had put into Ross's eyes. Laughter had faded from them and they had filled with a look of rejection. Mentally, if not physically, he had backed away from the idea.
Fern tried not to feel hurt. She told herself it was only natural Ross should feel the way he did. He was basically the
type of man who rejected desire as a mere self-indulgence, and though he had given in to desire last night, wanted now to go on giving in to it, he evidently disliked the thought of his children springing from an emotion so removed from love.
Despite her pain, Fern hugged the knowledge to her. In Ross were the virtues she had not found in Ken, and from a full heart she could say to herself : "This man you love is worth loving."
Ross noticed her quietness once they left the main stream of traffic behind them and got on to a less busy road. "Do you want to take a nap on the back seat?" he asked, thinking her a little tired.
"I'll take a nap if you'll let me take the wheel in a while," she replied.
He shot a smile at her. "You're quite a gal, aren't you?" he murmured.
"Am I?" Tears stung the backs of her eyes and she quickly lowered her head and tinkered with her hand-
bag. Hiding her vulnerability to his smallest compliment was going to be terribly difficult from now on. Each time he said something nice she would be pierced anew by her desire to believe he was really saying: "I love you."
The Mercury pulled into the side of the road and Ross didn't drive on again until he had settled Fern in a nest of soft rugs on the back seat. "All right, little worrier, I'll let you take the wheel for an hour later on," he laughed. "There, are you comfy?"
"Mm." It was delicious, having him fuss over her.
They passed through a village of white and yellow adobe houses just after eight o'clock and entered a world of enchanting mountain scenery draped in the violet veils of evening. A steep, narrow road wound up to the lodge, with torch cypresses casting long shadows before the car and eucalyptus trees slapping their silver-tipped leaves together in a heavenly sage-scented breeze. Then the roof of the lodge appeared through the trees and a minute later the car swung to a halt in front of a log-built, attractively irregular building with picture-frame windows and nicotine bushes growing up against its walls.
Ross unlocked the front door, then wth a sudden little laugh he scooped Fern up in his arms and carried her over the threshold.
"You crazy boy," she ruffled his hair as he strode with her into a long, low-built room, "we're not newlyweds."
"Aren't we?" His lips found her left ear-lobe. "Then how come we've been collecting saucy glances all day long? The waitress at that pull-in was actually looking me over for confetti."
"She wasn't... oh, don't, Ross, I'm ticklish!"
"You're cute."
He stood with her in his arms and gazed around the room, only dimly revealed in the violet glow through the immense windows. "I've never been here before," he said. "The place has an air of peace... do you feel it?"
"Yes."
"Oh, Fern," he carefully dropped her to her feet, but went on holding her, "I can't feel bad about the way
things have turned out. We're husband and wife, after all, and that set-up of ours was darned inhuman. A man would have to be made of stone to be able to tolerate it. . . you see, you're so beautiful."
"I understand, Ross. It's all right, my dear." She lifted her mouth and let his kiss drown out thought and pain. If her beauty was all he wanted, he was more than welcome to it.
They lit the oil-lamps, carried in the supplies from the car and Fern prepared supper. They ate off a tray in front of the fire Ross made with aromatic cones and pine chips found in a bunker behind the lodge. The smoke tickled Fern's nose and Ross laughed at her over the cold chicken leg he was eating.
Before going to bed they took a stroll down through the trees to nearby Piney Ridge. A blossoming moon sailed overhead, while below the ridge the ocean surged over a line of black rocks that looked for all the world like the pointing snouts of a school of seals.
Jenifer had aptly described the Monterey stars as big diamonds set in an indigo blue sky, Fern thought smilingly, and then her fingers tightened convulsively about her husband's as one of the stars suddenly swooped in a downward arc and abruptly faded. A tremor of coldness shook Fern, so Ross suggested they make their way back to the lodge. There the lamplight revealed her paleness, but when Ross would have spoken, she hurried over to the fireplace where she knelt and tidied up the fallen ashes. Afterwards she went to the kitchen, washed her hands and made the hot chocolate they both liked before turning in.
Fern couldn't quite account for her strange, suddenly uneasy mood, but it held her silent on the brick surround of the fireplace, her hands cupped about her chocolate beaker, her gaze fixed upon the dying embers of the fire.
When she stood up and would have taken the empty beakers to the kitchen, Ross took the tray out of her hands. "Don't feel so sad about a fallen star," he murmured. "Some things are inevitable."
"Poor, lovely star, lost out of heaven." She walked to
an open window and felt the scented night air brush in against her face. Ross came quietly behind her. His arms encircled her and his lips touched the nape of her neck, where the tender skin suddenly thrilled to a pitch of ecstatic anguish that made her forget everything but Ross... Ross. She must have turned into his arms, though she did it without conscious volition, for all at once their lips were locked, then the ground was gone from beneath her feet and he was carrying her away to heaven.
The two weeks that followed were full of gay, warmhearted companionship, of eager rapture and tender concern for one another.
Fern adored Ross and was utterly enchanted by Monterey, a place out of a fable with its unspoiled bays, fertile valleys and colourful mountainside villages. She was happier than she had ever hoped to be, and hardly aware that she held on to her happiness as a child clutches the string of a very precious, brightly painted balloon that might go pop at any moment.
During the day she behaved like a charming tomboy, racing about with her husband in shorts and a cotton shirt. She obligingly dug up worms for him while he stood thigh-deep in water with a fishing-rod, enjoyed the seals at Carmel with all the enthusiasm of a child, listened enraptured in the moonlight when they were invited to a Spanish wedding at a nearby rancho and a slim, dark youth played the guitar as she had never heard it played before.
At night she became a slender, adoring Eve, holding Ross, clinging to him; inextricably mingled in the deep heartbeat of him. In the mornings she awoke in his arms, her silvery hair in bright strands across his brown throat, love singing like a sweet, wild music through her veins.
Then one night a shadow came to darken the spangled colours of her joy. She and Ross had been swimming and playing all day in the sun. Back at the lodge in the evening he suddenly developed a bad headache and that night he fell asleep with his forehead against her
as though in an effort to find ease for a pain his tablets had failed to take away upon this occasion. Fern felt the heat of his forehead right through the silk of her nightdress, and several times he moaned and pressed into the shelter of her arms like a child.
Then, as Fern lay worriedly holding him, he began to mutter in his sleep. At first the words were indistinguishable, then quite clearly he said : "No... I won't go through it all again. I'd be broken completely a second time ... and I couldn't take that. I won't take that!"
The words trailed off, he seemed to sink into a quieter sleep, nuzzling his face against Fern.
Fern lay holding him, staring into the darkness, the scents and sounds of the wooded hills drifting through the open windows. Ross's old love still haunted him, she bleakly told herself, and weakened by pain he had to cry out against the pull of it.
The following day they took things easy. Ross rested on the roomy couch in the sitting-room, not wanting much to eat and content just to watch Fern pottering about. In the afternoon it rained a little and to dispel the gloom Fern lit a fire. Then she sat beside Ross on a little padded stool, mending a shirt he had torn in the woods.
"You look like Gretel in a picture book I had as a boy," Ross murmured, watching the play of firelight on Fern's braided hair and crisp gingham dress. "You're the most beautiful girl I've ever seen, do you know that?"
"I'm glad I'm beautiful, for you." Her lavender eyes were soft.
He took her left hand and carried it to his lips. "Thank you for these two weeks, my Gretel," he said, kissing her hand and looking a little whimsical. "Have I made you happy, too?"
"You know you have !" The words broke huskily from her.
"Say it then, Fern. Tell me." His eyes watched her with an eagerness almost boyish.
"You—you made heaven for me each time you held
me!" Then she pulled her hand free of his and jumped to her feet. "I—I must start dinner. I'll open a tin of beef chunks and make a pie."
They left the lodge early on Sunday morning. While Ross made sure all the doors were locked, the windows firmly secured, Fern plucked two small flowers off one of the nicotine bushes. She had loved the intoxicating scent of the bushes at night, stealing into the lodge like a heavenly incense, and she tucked the flowers into her handbag with a tiny, sentimental smile.
CHAPTER NINE
IT was late on Sunday evening when Fern and her husband arrived home. The bungalow was stuffy after being closed up for a couple of weeks and while Ross went round opening windows, Fern tidied her windblown hair in her bedroom. Gazing back at her from the dressing-table mirror were the eyes of a woman in love from the tingling tips of her toes to the top of the fair hair that contrasted so glamorously with her sun-kissed skin. She saw her lips form into a tiny, secret smile and felt hope struggling at her heart like a flower bursting to put out petals.
Dare she believe that in the past two weeks she had become necessary to Ross ? That the warmth and tenderness shared at Monterey could blossom here into something deeper?
At breakfast the following morning Ross caught up on his mail.
"I've a letter here from Lionel Leston," he remarked with a pleased grin. "The sixth edition of my book has just sold out and he says they're publishing a seventh." He clasped the hand Fern put across the table to him. "We look like we're getting rich, Mrs. Kingdom."
The flower of hope in her heart put out a petal at the way he bracketed them together.
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