Marion swung her own short brown hair about her lively face and laughed. ‘Oh, I shed mine with my school blouse and skirt. Do you like it?’ Without waiting for approval, she took Bryony by the arm and turned to introduce her father, a tall grey-haired man who seemed overwhelmed by his daughter’s more commanding character. Introductions over, she sat herself down beside Bryony on the settee, her brown eyes eager and curious. ‘Did Dominic bring you over?’
Bryony once more felt a flutter of embarrassment when she remembered what Edward Fuller had said about his sister’s opinions, and she hastily stifled it with a smile and a nod. ‘He was coming over on business anyway, and gave me a lift in his taxi; although I could quite easily have found my own way here.’
‘Still taking care of you?’ Mischief gleamed in Marion’s brown eyes and Bryony hastily avoided them. ‘Don’t you love it, Bryony? I would!’
Bryony felt strangely out of her depth with this new and very unfamiliar Marion. There was a maturity about her that had, she supposed, developed naturally from the bold self-confidence she remembered from their schooldays, and had so admired. Marion was just over a year older, it was true, but she seemed to have become a definite woman since their last meeting, so that Bryony was not at all sure that she knew this bright, self-assured creature beside her.
‘Yes, I suppose I do.’ She made the admission cautiously in the circumstances. She would never admit to anyone outside the family that she did not always appreciate Dominic’s attitude, but she felt that somehow Marion suspected it and did not understand it. ‘Dom’s always taken his role as my guardian very seriously, you know; I suppose he just hasn’t grown out of it.’
‘And you surely don’t want him to, do you? I can’t imagine why anyone would object to having a sexy male like Dominic Laminaire running around after her—I know I wouldn’t!’ Apparently heedless of any embarrassment she was causing, she glanced at her wrist-watch and then at her father. ‘Are you using the car after lunch, Pop? I thought I might take Bryony for a run somewhere.’
It was only then that Bryony remembered that she had a letter to deliver for Tim, and the idea of a ride suited her. Seeing Mr. Fuller relinquish possession of his car with a shrug of resignation and a wry smile, she accepted readily.
‘That will be lovely; I have a message to deliver for Tim, if we are going out. I don’t know where the street is, but you probably do.’ She took out Tim’s letter to Sarah Bryant and showed her the address, and Marion’s fine brows arched curiously.
‘A billet-doux?’ she laughed, and would have taken the envelope from her if Bryony had not slipped it back into her bag. ‘Don’t tell me Tim’s carrying on a secret love affair!’
To Bryony, remembering what a serious view Dominic took of the affair and what strong feelings it had aroused between the two men, it was not possible to treat it as lightheartedly as her friend did, but she hesitated to confide in her. She no longer felt so close to Marion as she had expected to, although she still liked her, and she found it difficult to know how to reply.
‘Tim was hurt in that storm we had the other night.’ She acknowledged a murmur of sympathy with a nod, and went on, ‘He was going to see her—Miss Bryant, yesterday, and by now she must be wondering what’s happened to him. I—we thought it might set her mind at rest if I brought her a letter from Tim.’
‘All very secret,’ Marion said, and her brown eyes were bright with curiosity. ‘Couldn’t one of you have phoned her?’
‘No, not really, not without—everyone knowing.’ Bryony held her hands on her lap and looked down at them intently, realising with dismay just how underhand she felt suddenly. ‘It’s—well, it’s a bit awkward really. You see, Sarah Bryant is about thirty-five and Tim’s only twenty, and there’s been some bad feeling between Dominic and Tim about it,’
‘Ah, I see, and if Dominic knew you were carrying a letter to her—’ Marion made a sign like a bomb exploding and pulled a face. ‘He’d be furious and probably explode!’
‘He’d be hurt.’ It was an admission Bryony hated to make, and Marion was looking at her with a curiously worldly look in her eyes, disregarding her father’s signals that she should leave the matter.
‘I see!’ She held out a hand and smiled at Bryony’s look of bewilderment. ‘Well, to ease your conscience, Bry, I’ll take it to the lady if you like, then you won’t feel quite so conscience-stricken about deceiving Dominic, will you?’ She snapped her fingers together, and after a moment Bryony obeyed the signal and handed her the envelope that Tim had entrusted to her care. Turning it over in her hand, Marion smiled at her quizzically. ‘I get the feeling that that’s what bothers you most, isn’t it? You really don’t like going behind his back, even for your favourite brother!’
‘Not really, but I didn’t look at it quite like that in the first place.’
‘But now your conscience is bothering you because you know he wouldn’t like you playing cupid behind his back!’ It was so near the truth that Bryony found it discomfiting, and Marion laughed good-naturedly. ‘You always did have a thing about doing something Dominic wouldn’t like,’ she told her, and Bryony made no attempt to deny it
It was a relief to know that Tim’s letter had been delivered, although Bryony found it rather frustrating that Marion refused to say another word about it, even about what kind of a reception it got from its recipient. The less she knew, Marion told her, the less involved she need feel. Supposing it to be true, Bryony was grateful, but it did not completely banish a niggling sense of unrest she felt at having deceived Dominic.
After delivering the letter, Marion drove them along the old road to Pointe-a-Pitre and, although the scenery was little short of spectacular, it soon became apparent that the main object of the drive was to indulge in conversation without the distraction of Edward. Conversation that turned out to be rather more discomfitingly personal than Bryony anticipated.
For a time talk was concentrated on the countryside around them, while Marion pointed out different aspects of the route to her. Acres of sugar cane with its silvery plumes alternating with the more familiar bananas with their ragged leaves fanned against the blue sky, and countless streams fed by falls that started in the mountains, making the whole lush prospect possible. And beside the more practical vegetation, the vivid exotic colours of hibiscus growing in such profusion and with such abandonment that the whole setting looked too good to be true.
‘How long can you stay?’
Snatched from her appreciation of nature at her most flamboyant, Bryony was surprised to realise that this was the first time the question of how long she should stay had been raised. ‘Until Saturday, if that’s all right, Marion. The Bonne Chance will be over again then and I’ll go back in her.’
‘With Dominic?’
Bryony cast a hasty glance at the dark lively face of the girl beside her. ‘Yes—at least, he said he’d be coming for me.’
‘Naturally!’ Maybe she should not have put it exactly like that, for the look that Marion gave her was loaded with meaning. ‘I was hoping it was going to be longer, but I suppose Dominic doesn’t like the idea of you being away for too long, especially if he knows Ned is home.’
‘He doesn’t, you didn’t tell me!’ It was difficult to simply laugh off the implication, though she tried, watching the riotous colours of the hibiscus as she spoke, and inevitably reminded of the garden at Petitnue. ‘It really doesn’t matter if he did know, Marion, you’ve got quite the wrong idea about—about Dom and me, you know.’
‘Have I?’ There was a ghost of a smile on her rather full mouth whose meaning was unmistakable. Marion had always shown an interest in the somewhat complicated ménage that existed on Petitnue, but so far as Bryony could remember, she had never before been so embarrassingly frank as she was now. ‘Have I really, Bry?’
Bryony wished she could not so easily remember the kisses that Dominic had pressed on her mouth before he left her, and it was hard to think of an answer when she recalled so vi
vidly the warm touch of his mouth and the hands that had held her close to him for a few seconds. She shook her head, trying to dismiss the sensations that remembering aroused.
‘Dom’s my stepbrother, Marion!’
Never before had she sought so firmly to establish it, but she knew it made little difference to what Marion had in mind. She was smiling in that discomfitingly knowing way she had. ‘You’ve never gone to much trouble to establish the fact before,’ she reminded her, ‘and it isn’t really important, you know. Your father just happened to marry his mother, long before you were born, and it doesn’t in any way bar him from—having ideas about you!’
‘Well, you’re wrong, Marion, if you think there’s anything—anything at all like that!’
‘Because he’s nearly sixteen years older than you are?’ Getting no answer, Marion chuckled quietly to herself and shook her head. ‘Oh, don’t try and kid me, my girl, I’ve seen the way you blush whenever his name comes up, and I firmly believe your Dom doesn’t believe in practising what he preaches as far as age is concerned—not in this instance anyway!’
Too stunned for a moment by the matter-of-fact way it was all being spelled out to her, Bryony shook her head. The situation that Marion envisaged was too disturbing to be contemplated sensibly, and she did not want to go on talking about it. ‘Marion, I wish you wouldn’t keep on about it! As you say, Dom is sixteen years older than I am, and he’s my guardian, or he was until recently!’
‘And he wouldn’t be the first man to fall for the girl he’s been guardian to,’ Marion insisted firmly. ‘He might decide that fifteen years is too big a gap between Tim and his lady-friend, but he doesn’t have the same reservations about himself!’
‘Marion, you can’t talk like that when you’ve never seen Dom, except once!’
‘Twice,’ Marion corrected her smartly. ‘He brought you back one term, I remember, and you looked so woebegone when he left that I swear you were—that way about him even then, when you were only sixteen. I saw the way he greeted you when you left that last term, and the way he looked at you. Oh, for heaven’s sake, Bry, you surely felt the way it was, didn’t you?’
‘No, I didn’t!’
Her voice was short and breathless and she sat with her hands in her lap, tightly rolled together, trying to contemplate something that she was not sure she could cope with at the moment. And it seemed almost as if Marion realised how she felt, for she turned her head for a second, then laughed shortly and pulled a face.
‘I’m sorry, Bry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you. I didn’t realise it would come as such a shock to you. I—well, I assumed you knew and just—chose not to recognise it.’
Reluctant to appear so naive as to arouse sympathy, Bryony made an effort to counter the impression. Shaking back her hair, she propped an elbow on the car door and rested her chin on her hand, pulling a wry face. ‘I must appear as a real country bumpkin to you, don’t I, Marion?’
‘No, you do not!’ The charge was firmly denied, and Bryony sensed some of the old familiar warmth give a boost to her morale as the brown eyes studied her briefly and seriously. ‘But you’re pretty enough to get under Ned’s skin, and I think he’s going to wish you were staying longer too!’
In a way it was something of a relief the following day when Edward Fuller decided to come with them on a trip to the summit of La Soufriere. At least in the company of her brother Marion would surely keep off the subject of herself and Dominic.
Edward was very obviously smitten and made no effort to disguise the fact, but he had the same forceful and uninhibited manner that his sister did, and at times Bryony found him rather overwhelming. He wasn’t unattractive, and yet she felt reluctant to encourage him, without being quite sure of her reasons.
Marion insisted on driving because, she said, she was a much better driver than Edward, and she knew the terrain slightly better. He sat in the seat behind Bryony, leaning forward to rest his arms along the back of her seat, so that she was kept constantly aware of him, and each time he spoke his breath stirred the hair at the nape of her neck, fluttering over her skin with a disturbingly shivery sensation that was not unpleasant.
The way to the summit was narrow though negotiable, and after a while the presence of Edward behind her faded to the back of her mind in the excitement of the trip. They had to brake suddenly when a small, sinuous shape scuttled swiftly across the road and a mongoose slid away into the undergrowth, and at one point the glittering, tumbling mass of a waterfall caught Bryony’s eye unexpectedly and made her gasp at the illusion it created.
She had wondered at the need to start so early in the day, but seeing the sun catch the surface of the rushing cataract of water was answer enough, for only at this time of the day could the full breathtaking beauty of it be appreciated.
The need for mackintoshes too had puzzled her until they were obliged to leave the car and continue on foot through the unbelievable world of the rain forest. Huge trees and gigantic ferns thrived in a cool wet world without sun, so quiet that the silence was uncanny, broken only by the never-ceasing splash of the falls. Falls that began at the summit and fell with increasing speed and volume down the whole height of the mountain and, seen in the light of the morning sun, almost too dazzling to watch, pouring like molten gold from a gigantic crucible.
It was only when she realised how she was wishing that Dominic could be there to share the breathtaking wonder of it with her that she eventually turned away. Perhaps he had never seen this stunning spectacle, or perhaps he had not thought to bring her to see it, but suddenly she wanted to tell him about it, to bring him into the enchanted world she found herself in.
Marion took the lead on the way back, and it was when his sister had put some distance between her and Bryony that Edward came up beside her and slid an arm around her waist, ostensibly with the idea of helping her negotiate the descent. Taken unawares, she instinctively caught her breath when she felt herself pulled close against the firmness of a masculine body, and she looked up into Edward Fuller’s smiling face for a moment without speaking.
‘I thought a hand might be welcome,’ he said, almost as if he challenged her to object.
‘Thank you.’
‘Ned.’ She looked at him curiously and he laughed, his brown eyes still showing that hint of challenge. ‘You always carefully avoid using my name,’ he told her, ‘and I can’t believe it’s because you’re shy; not when you have three brothers.’
‘Only two!’ She made the correction swiftly and without stopping to think, so that Edward flicked a brow in question. Sensing his curiosity, she went on hastily and a little breathlessly, laughing to dispel any suggestion of seriousness, ‘I never count Dom as a brother, probably because I’ve always thought of him in the role of guardian.’
‘Oh, I see!’ Something about his smile made her uneasy, so that she looked away again, walking within the circle of his arm without feeling really happy about it. ‘I thought there might be another reason.’
It was all too clear that he referred to Marion’s speculation regarding her relationship with Dominic, and she wished it was possible to deny the existence of such a relationship without making it sound too important. But whatever he believed, it was evident that he was not going to let it deter him from following his own interests, for the arm about her tightened, and she was turned to face him suddenly, looking up into a face that was half-smiling and damp with the same soft cool rain that moistened her upturned mouth.
It was instinct, she supposed, that made her close her eyes when he bent his head, and the same instinct that made her responsive in the first instance to the touch of his lips on hers. It was not the same firm hardness of Dominic’s kisses, but something more basic and insistent, that made her curl her hands against the wet raincoat he wore and, after a second or two, try to break away from him, by pushing hard with both hands against his chest.
It was a second or two before she ventured to look at him, and when she did she saw that faint
smile still lingering in his eyes, and giving to his mouth a suggestion of scorn that made her look hastily away again. ‘Haven’t you been kissed before, Bryony?’
‘Yes, of course I have, I—’ The need to counter the challenge was irresistible, and yet she did not want him to attribute the wrong cause to her breaking away from him. ‘It just doesn’t seem like the right time and
place, Ned. We—’
‘Came to see the sights?’ He laughed shortly, then shook his head, holding her arms again for a moment while he looked into her face and the wide uncertain blueness of her eyes. ‘Is it because you think your guardian might object, Bryony?’
She felt the bright warm flush that coloured her cheeks and shook herself free of his hands once more as she turned to follow Marion through the tangle of trees and ferns. ‘Dom has no say in what I say or do! Whether you and Marion believe it or not, the only relationship that exists between me and Dom is that of—’
‘Brother and sister?’ Edward suggested with a hint of malice, once more taking her up before she could finish a sentence. ‘But you went to great pains just now to point out that you never think of him as your brother!’
‘He’s my stepbrother!’
She felt almost out of her depth suddenly, and struggled not only with Edward’s, determined contrariness, but with her own emotional confusion as well. Then, it seemed, he suddenly regretted having changed the mood of the moment, for he came alongside her again and put an arm around her waist. Hugging her close for a moment, he smiled down at her flushed, damp face.
‘I don’t want to fight with you, Bryony; I’m sorry.’
It wasn’t quite so easy for Bryony to throw off the reaction he had aroused in her; he had come too close to matters that were, to her, too personal to be discussed with strangers, and she merely smiled and shook her head without saying anything.
‘You forgive me?’
It was impossible not to, of course, and she nodded. ‘Yes, of course, Ned.’
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