Spindrift

by Rebecca Stratton

  ‘What could be cosier,’ he asked, ‘than Tim safely paired off with your friend, and you with her brother, eh? Isn’t that how you see it all working out, ma chere?’ Nothing had been further from her mind than herself and Edward, and she hastened to tell him so. ‘No, no, no, I hadn’t thought about Ned and me, I meant Tim and Marion! I thought you’d prefer Marion.’

  ‘If I had the choice I wouldn’t want Tim to marry either of them,’ Dominic admitted frankly. ‘But I don’t have any more right to interfere in Tim’s life than I do in yours, and if it has to be one or the other I must confess I’d rather it was your friend.’ A dark brow arched quizzically. There, petite, does that satisfy you?’

  She could have left it there, she realised, and perhaps she should have done, but instead she still lingered, her eyes searching that dark and shadowed face for something, she wasn’t sure what. It was hard for her to forget how he had openly flirted with Marion earlier, and she wished it didn’t bother her quite so much. ‘You don’t think Marion would be good for Tim?’ He speculated on it for a second or two, or so it seemed to her, then he shrugged and smiled. ‘Who knows? She’s a very attractive girl—’

  ‘You noticed that?’

  ‘Yes, ma chere, I did.’ He was still smiling, but there was a look in his eyes that was making her feel strangely uneasy. ‘But I don’t somehow see Tim being happy with her. Your friend is a very attractive girl and very, very sure of herself, but I think she might prove too much for someone as easily swayed as Tim. She’s a very strong character and she needs someone with an even stronger character to handle her or he, whoever he is, will sink without trace!’

  ‘Someone like you!’

  ‘I didn’t say that.’

  ‘I know, but you—’

  ‘I know that she took Tim’s letter to Sarah Bryant, and not you, petite.’ He interrupted her gently and he was smiling at her through the haze of smoke from the cheroot, shaking his head at her as he did so. ‘No one could mistake your copper-red head for Marion’s dark brown, and Miss Bryant described a dark girl to me.’ He caught and held her gaze, his own disturbingly steady. ‘I wasn’t too surprised to learn that you couldn’t after all bring yourself to defy me to the extent of actually delivering that letter for Tim. It took someone like Marion to take the initiative in that.’

  Nothing she did could surprise him, she realised, and wondered why it gave her such a wonderful sense of comfort suddenly, because he knew her so well. Snuggling up in the armchair next to his, she hugged

  her knees and smiled at him with a hint of challenge.

  ‘But you did invite Marion and Ned here so that Marion could—go to work on Tim, didn’t you?’

  ‘As well as I can follow your disgusting English, I have to admit it.’ His grey eyes were laughing, gleaming warmly in a way that set her heart racing as she looked at him. ‘Marion is also—working, on me, had you noticed? But yes, of course you have, you’ve remarked on it more than once this evening.’

  He was obviously still amused by Marion’s flirtatious approach earlier, and Bryony was puzzled by his attitude. ‘I couldn’t help noticing the way she was flirting with you when she asked if you’d like to join us tomorrow.’ She lowered her lashes and concentrated on tracing an imaginary pattern on the skirt of her dress with a finger-tip. ‘I noticed how you were lapping it up too.’

  ‘Mon dieu, I might as well have sent you to the shack school in the village for all the good it’s done for your English!’ he declared in mock horror. ‘As for your friend flirting with me, I have to admit I couldn’t resist playing up to her—especially after last night.’

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘Last night when I was on my way to my bedroom I was—waylaid by Marion.’ Bryony blinked at him in startled bewilderment and he laughed, sending up more smoke to haze and soften the rugged outlines of his face. ‘She was on the landing of the old wing,’ he explained, ‘and I think she’d been waiting for me. I couldn’t swear to it, but she obviously thought she might as well take advantage of the situation, accidental or contrived.’ His grey eyes were bright with laughter and her amazement only seemed to increase his amusement. ‘I’ve always said your friend was far more sophisticated than her years, and she rolled her eyes at me in a way there was no mistaking. Being a man, I have to admit I was tempted, however briefly.’

  ‘Oh, Dom!’ Her hands to her face, she stared at him over her fingers. ‘I’d no idea she’d done anything like that. I—I only hope you weren’t too embarrassed.’ Dominic leaned forward, crushing out the cheroot with his dark strong fingers, and he was obviously far from embarrassed by the incident; probably less so than she was herself. ‘It was no more embarrassing for me than it is for you when Ned does the same thing.’ She wished he had not brought that matter up, and she looked at him with a hint of reproach. ‘That isn’t quite the same thing, I mean—’

  ‘That I’m so much older and therefore should not expect to be—flirted with, eh? Is that it, petite?’

  ‘No, of course I didn’t mean that; you know I didn’t, Dom!’

  He dismissed her protest with a sweep of one big hand and smiled. ‘I’m not embarrassed when a pretty girl flirts with me, ma chere and especially when I know she isn’t doing it for the usual reasons.’

  Bryony frowned at him curiously. It was difficult enough at any time to follow what was going on in his mind, and harder still when he sat in the shadows as he did now, with the soft light from a solitary lamp making such deceptive play over the rugged hollows of his face.

  ‘I don’t quite understand,’ she confessed, and watched him raise his lean length from the armchair to tower over her.

  His eyes had a depthless darkness as he looked down at her and a ghost of smile hovered about his mouth. ‘The obvious play is not for Marion’s own sake,’ he said in his quiet, gentle voice, ‘it is for yours, Bryony. She hopes that by getting me to flirt with her, you’ll be jealous enough to resent it.’

  The catch of her breath was clearly audible in the big quiet room and she stared up at him with wide unbelieving eyes, her mind in chaos. ‘Oh, Dom, you surely don’t believe that!’

  Her voice was small and strangely husky and she felt herself trembling as she responded automatically to the two large hands thrust suddenly in front of her, palms upward. She put her own into them, thrilling to the warm clasp of strong fingers as he drew her to her feet and she stood facing him.

  ‘Come on, kitten, it’s time you were in bed, or you’ll never have the energy for all that swimming tomorrow.’ He still held her hands while she stood musing on whether or not Marion had meant to arouse the response that Dominic claimed. Even Edward had admitted his sister’s desire to see her married to Dominic, and she had said so quite openly to Bryony herself, more than once. But the thought of her employing such an obvious strategy with someone as discerning as Dominic was embarrassing to her, however unmoved it left him.

  She felt her face warm and bright with colour as she stood facing him in the dimly lit salon. ‘Dom, you— you don’t believe it, do you?’

  ‘That you could be made jealous by her flirting with me? But of course it’s nonsense!’ He bent and kissed her mouth; a light gentle kiss that set her heart racing in a way that alarmed her. ‘Isn’t it?’ he asked softly. But Bryony did not reply; she was only thankful when he turned off that one dim light, so that he could not see her face.

  It was some time since Bryony had done any diving, and at first she chafed a little at the restriction the aqua-lung harness seemed to impose on her movements. The cylinders had no weight in the water, but it wasn’t quite the same sensation as swimming without restrictions of any kind, like she did when she and Tim played like a couple of energetic dolphins in the shallows.

  Out here where the water was deeper there was a sense of isolation from the familiar world, where the silence was complete and vision restricted by the edge of the rubber face mask. The advantages were many, however, and one could go much deeper and see things t
hat surface swimming did not allow sight of.

  The thousands of small brightly coloured fish that swept to and fro in rainbows of movement, streaming like veils through the water, and glimpses of coral formations, and flecks of sunlight spread like nets on the surface of the sea.

  Marion was close by, just off to her right, performing somersaults to Tim’s encouragement, and as she turned Edward came shooting down behind her like a silent rocket from beneath the overhead bulk of the cruiser’s hull, leaving a trail of silver bubbles in his wake. He slid smoothly up beside her and put a hand on her bare back, using the other to propel himself along beside her.

  It wasn’t possible to smile with the air-inlet clamped in his mouth, but his eyes smiled, and she responded instinctively, shrugging in response to his nod towards Marion and Tim. They were apparently oblivious of anyone but each other, and not interested in joining them when Edward led the way deeper and further ahead, his hand still on her back.

  He let go for a moment, jabbing downwards with a finger, obviously meaning they were to dive even deeper, and Bryony looked below them in the direction he indicated. The water was darker, like thick blue silk and without the same golden shimmer that glittered above their heads. There were rocks, she could see, and the lacy fans of coral among sea urchins and waving sea grass.

  Edward came closer and put an arm around her shoulders, their flippered feet treading water for the moment while he pointed out their objective. Indistinct in the shifting pattern of water, its shape camouflaged by clinging barnacles and weed was a wreck; thin skeletal masts thickened by crustacea and flying pennants of weed that flowed back and forth with the tides.

  Bryony nodded, her heart skipping with excitement at the prospect of exploring, and Edward’s eyes gleamed approvingly as he took her hand. Downward they glided through the water, warm and soft on her skin, a lazy kicking movement with her legs sufficient to propel her downward with the help of her one free hand, until they hovered like birds above the sunken ship.

  There was no clue as to how long it had been down there, but the sea soon clothed a wreck in its own disguise, making it a refuge for swarms of tiny fish who slid past them in a silvery grey ribbon and disappeared. Two masts, one of them broken off short, showed it to have been a schooner, and it lay half on its side with the rock that had holed it, thrust deep into its timbers.

  It gave her a momentary shiver of horror to realise that the Bonne Chance with Tim and Louis aboard might so easily have ended like this, only such a short time ago. This was in all probability a Laminaire schooner, sunk before it could gain the quay. Shadows slid around the wheelhouse and the open hatchway yawned like a black mouth in the deck, and everywhere the tiny creatures who haunted such places clung in their millions to form a new outline, following closely on the old. The name was long vanished.

  Boarding her was easy, they simply went in through the gaping hole in her side, but the hold was empty except for a few rotted and crustated containers that could have held almost anything originally. Bryony never really knew who started the rather energetic game of tag that followed their initial exploration of the wreck, but they chased one another through and around the old schooner for quite some time, enjoying the sensation of lightness and the silky smoothness of the water on their bodies.

  Apparently Tim and Marion had found their own amusement, for they saw nothing of them near the sunken schooner, and they were quite content to have it so. Edward was momentarily out of sight, somewhere below the tilted stern of the wreck, and Bryony took advantage of his disappearance to seek out a better hiding place, somewhere he would not so easily find her. She found it in what had obviously once been the galley, a small and well concealed hiding place where he was unlikely to discover her.

  There were no sounds to guide her as to his whereabouts, and she found herself holding her breath without really meaning to as she tried to detect some clue to his coming. He must surely be wondering where she had got to by now, and yet she had seen nothing of him.

  After a while the galley seemed much too small and confining, and she looked around her with a fluttering sensation stirring in her breast, at the narrow doorway and the water-filled space that was little bigger than a large cupboard. Whether or not it meant giving herself up, she thought it was time she got out of that claustrophobic space before her imagination took off.

  With one foot she pushed hard to give herself the impetus that would start her towards the doorway, but instead of the expected dart forward she was held back. Her foot with its big flipper broke through the rotted timbers of the galley floor and became wedged. Going through, the rubber web had bent upwards to pass through the hole, but it sprang back immediately and she was now trapped like a lobster caught in a pot.

  She didn’t notice any pain at all, only felt a cold rush of panic as she tried to free her foot and found herself held tightly by her ankle, held as firmly as if she was in a trap. She tugged hard, a frantic effort that dragged her ankle against the splintered edges of the hole and drew blood that tangled like thin red threads around her trapped limb.

  The temptation to open her mouth and call out for Edward was barely resistible, but instead she clamped the air-inlet more firmly between her teeth and took a deep, slow breath to try and still the panic she felt. Her heart was thudding hard, and she could only think of the times Dominic had warned her and Tim never to go anywhere in a wreck alone.

  She thought of Louis up there on deck, watching the sun on the water and thinking all was well with them down below, and she felt alarmingly helpless. A silver-grey streamer of small fish returned to their abandoned home, shimmering past in ribbon formation only inches from her face, and she looked around the confines of the galley with wide anxious eyes. Somewhere soon she must see the betraying tracery of bubbles that would tell her Edward was close by.

  His continued absence began to tell on her nerves, and she made other abortive efforts to free herself, her imagination running riot as she pictured him similarly caught in another part of the wreck. But the more she pulled at her trapped foot the more firmly it seemed to become wedged, and she noticed that now the ankle was so swollen that it impeded any hope of release without help.

  Her hands tightly rolled, she fought down a rising panic, taking slow deliberate breaths in an effort to control it, but there were so many possibilities. Edward might think she had returned to the boat and go to look for her there, or her air might run out before he found her.

  She closed her eyes tightly for a second to shut out the silent water-filled little galley, and when she opened them again it was to see a drift of bubbles floating up past the tiny porthole. Once more she almost succumbed to the temptation to cry out, but hastily closed her lips round the air-inlet again when Edward’s head came into view just above the edge of the round opening.

  Bryony waved frantically, trying to catch his eye, and eventually he looked in, his eyes barely able to distinguish her in the dimness of the tiny galley. She used her arms, waving and signalling wildly, and, after what seemed like an eternity, he appeared in the doorway suddenly. As yet unaware of anything wrong, he ducked through and came to join her, reaching out to touch her cheek by way of congratulation for having remained hidden for so long.

  Taking her hand, he meant to lead her back through the doorway, but she pulled him back, pointing downwards to her trapped foot, and she saw the change that came over his face; the colour change in his brown eyes, from sparkling laughter to dark anxiety. Crouching at her feet, he used both hands to try and free her, but the timbers, having given sufficiently to trap her, refused to budge another inch, and he could do nothing.

  He came up beside her again, making signs with his hands that he needed a tool of some kind to prise the timbers apart, and she nodded. When he moved only a little way, however, she clung to his arm in sudden panic at being left again, so tightly that the mark of her fingers remained on his flesh even after he managed to free himself.

  He held up one hand, the fing
ers spanned out, to indicate the time he anticipated it would take him to fetch the tool he needed, and she managed somehow to nod her understanding, her eyes making their own appeal. Just before he turned away he gave her a thumbs-up sign and pressed a finger first to his own lips and then to hers. A brief wave and a push and he had vanished again through the black doorway, leaving her once more with only the darting fish and the coldness of fear for company.

  It seemed like hours since Edward had left her, and Bryony was close to tears, though she had not yet thought about the result of crying in the present circumstances. She supposed her ankle was going to be painful when she eventually got on dry land again, but at the moment it was simply numb, and she was grateful for that at least.

  How long she had been there, she had no idea, but she was beginning to feel as if she was never going to be rescued. And then quite suddenly, as it had happened before, she thought she saw movement outside the porthole. Bubbles floated upwards and the next moment a familiar dark face, disguised in a rubber and perspex mask, looked in at her.

  Louis! She hadn’t expected Louis, and yet she should have done, she told herself in a delirium of relief. Waving a hand, she saw it briefly acknowledged before he disappeared as Edward had done, and she settled to wait for his reappearance with even more impatience. Once Louis knew that something had gone wrong, he would insist on coming himself. He would never entrust the task of freeing her to anyone else; Dominic would never have forgiven him if he had.

  Her mind turned automatically once more to Dominic while she waited. He would be angry, she could safely say that without fear of being wrong. He would be concerned too, of course, but he would hide it as he always did in a savage anger that so often expressed the deep passions he was capable of and yet so seldom let show other than in anger.