STORMY HAVEN
Rosalind Brett
She didn’t want him just as a guardian!
Stephen Brent was a man who made Melanie very aware of how young and inexperienced she was. “A girl like you shouldn’t be wandering around unprotected,” he told her, and took it upon himself to be her guardian on the beautiful tropical island of Mindoa.
But Melanie wasn’t a schoolgirl anymore. Stephen Brent was fast turning her into a woman—so why wouldn’t he recognize the fact?
CHAPTER ONE
THE DYING SUN flamed over the Red Sea, shed sable shadows along the foothills and empurpled the ragged Arabian mountains. The Tjisande steamed steadily into the hot winds with awnings flapping, a black and white monster heading south.
Stephen Brent leaned both arms on the rail and abstractedly watched the flying fish that leaped and darted like silver-gilt birds over the surface of the waves. Once more he was east of Suez, but this time he was on his way to a spot that promised little excitement and few results. Stephen admitted that such an outlook in a man of thirty-three savored of disillusionment and cynicism. After all, Mindoa would be new to him, his work would be easy and undemanding, and islands in warm, seas were never dull.
But he was tired of traveling, and sick to death of the stereotyped men and women who exist in the tropics. Though he had only joined the ship at Alexandria he was already chafing to leave it, to get away from the familiar mixture of sahibs and memsahibs, missionaries, sweet-looking nuns, and lordly children who never dropped a book or a glass marble but it was retrieved by an ayah.
That the other passengers considered him a boor had its advantages in that their sports proceeded without him and he was not roped in for bridge. There were a nonconformist minister with whom he played chess and a blimpish major at whom he cast revolutionary remarks merely to enliven the voyage, but the women were much married and even less interesting than the wives of his colleagues at El Geza had been.
Sometimes Stephen wondered if he would ever settle down. Being a roving geologist was not all butter and honey, after a while one became sated with sights and experiences, and the shine definitely wore off. One began to think that there was much to be said for the government job that was still on offer, and a good bachelor club not too far from Lord’s and the theaters. But Stephen knew his own nature far too well to delude himself into the belief that such a mode of living would satisfy him for long.
Dusk came suddenly, like the methodical switching off of skylights. Passengers had gone below to dress up, leaving the deck clear and peaceful. A Genoese seaman swung out by the rail to tighten an awning rope, then slid away on slippered feet.
Stephen remained there lounging, hoping to avoid the women in turbans and wraps hurrying to and from the bathrooms. Some of them were modest if encountered in the corridors, others smiled and brushed close, knowing him a man alone and banking on his being as susceptible as the next to a delicate perfume. They might as well have attempted an affair with a cast-iron capstan. It was at least four years since Stephen had been beguiled into a shipboard flirtation.
He lighted a cigarette, flipped away the match and, turning his back to the sea, looked up the deck. Thoughtfully, dispassionately, he regarded the lone figure that had appeared and was standing facing the darkness of Arabia. She was thin and very young, not more than eighteen. Her dress was of some light color and her hair, slicked back by the wind, might be pale gold. Her contour was smallish and fine boned, and altogether she gave an impression of self-contained politeness.
He had seen her last night, and the night before, standing just there for a while, then walking rather fast around the desk. For some reason, which Stephen made no effort to clarify, she did not eat in the main saloon, nor did she come on deck at any time other this.
A liner of the Tjisande class was bound to carry a mystery or two; this girl was probably going out to her missionary father; perhaps she had been warned against promiscuous and fleeting friendships. Poor kid.
Stephen straightened. He supposed he’d have to get into a dinner jacket, make a pretense of enjoying the curried meat and dehydrated potato and the hoary jokes tossed around the captain’s table.
He had taken about four paces when the thing whipped across his face and draped itself over his shirt-clad shoulder. He stopped under a lamp, peeled it off and held it up; a strip of pale pink diaphanous stuff such as women occasionally tie over their hair in a wind.
“Please ... I’m so sorry,” came a breathless voice at his side. “I wasn’t holding it securely enough.”
He looked down at her. What a strange little thing she was: pale skinned, eyes like green jewels under the light and a mouth that was red without the aid of lipstick—otherwise quite plain. And wasn’t the frown of distress rather obvious? Stephen gave her the scarf.
“Lucky that I was in its path or you’d have lost it,” he said.
“Yes. I’m very glad I didn’t. It’s my cousin’s. Thank you.”
She walked on around the deck. Stephen went below to his cabin.
During dinner that evening the captain was expansive. “Aden tomorrow,” he said. “Bombay on Thursday, then southwest to Mindoa. This will be the first time the Tjisande has called at Mindoa for more than a year.”
Stephen answered offhandedly. “It was decent of the shipping company to allow you to go out of your way for me and my equipment.”
The captain laughed. “That’s a rich company you’re with, and you’re evidently an important man. Give me the tip if you find diamonds.”
“Mindoa’s mainly volcanic.”
This apparently conveyed nothing at all to the captain. In any case, his thoughts had taken another turn.
“It’s peculiar how you go for months without hearing a place mentioned, then it crops up in several directions. We’ve two more passengers for Mindoa, you know.”
Stephen glanced around at the other tables. “Oh. Who are they?”
“Two women, named Paget. Mrs. Paget—she’s around thirty but damned good-looking—has been ill, and the younger one looks after her. They’re related in some way.”
“Why are they going to Mindoa?”
“The elder one told the doc that she owns a plantation there. Her husband died on the island sometime ago and the profits have dropped so steeply that she’s sure the estate is being mismanaged. What she expects to do about it, I can’t say.”
“Has she been there before?”
“Never. The marriage—again according to the doc—was a fiasco. She lived on his money in England but hardly ever saw him—something like that, anyway. A few weeks ago she heard that Mindoa now has a new hotel at Port Fernando, and decided the climate couldn’t be so bad, after all.”
Stephen shrugged. He had all the data about the island. Seven hundred square miles of it growing rice, tobacco, sugar, patchouli and other flower essences such as geranium and ilang-ilang; climate exceptionally mild for the tropics, rainfall excessive inland but about thirty inches on the coast, droughts rare, hurricanes the chief menace. Population dense at the port and in the villages, chiefly Indians, but also a good portion of Chinese and coloreds. Among the three hundred white people were a number of French, Spanish and Portuguese, and the island was administered by a legislative council.
Dismissively, he said, “From my information several wealthy men live in Port Fernando. She may pick up a second husband.”
Next morning they docked at Aden, that arid, rocky city upon which, it is said, it never rains. Stephen had friends in Aden. He had time to visit them, but not the inclination, so he penetrated beyond the tourist shops to the close, dirty streets overrun with half-naked children, goats and monkeys. In the Arab town people squatted in the dust making pots or weaving a coarse cloth while
camel carts lurched by. Stephen sat in his decrepit taxi asking himself why he was again making this trip. The shadowlessness, the dust, the smells and the appalling drabness were unforgettable.
He was about to order the driver to reverse and take him back to the harbor when his attention was arrested by the totally unfamiliar sight of a white woman beset by a mob of tattered brown boys yelling for backsheesh. It was the girl of the pink scarf, the Paget girl. What the blazes was she doing here!
He shouted at the driver and leaped from the car, strode across the beaten-earth street and scattered the urchins with a few sharp words. The girl stood there looking white and frozen in the withering sun. Unceremoniously, Stephen grabbed her arm and almost dragged her to the taxi. He pushed her inside, got in beside her and told the driver to get moving.
The girl was rigid, her knuckles gleamed on the strap of a white straw handbag. Presently she whispered, “I’m ... terribly grateful.”
“Why were you there, for heaven’s sake!” he demanded. “Weren’t you warned against roaming the Arab town?”
“The purser said I should be careful, but I did something rather stupid.”
“I’ll say you did.”
“Anyone is likely to make a mistake. You don’t have to be rude about it.”
She slackened a bit, was turned slightly his way. Obviously she had been frightened, but she could hold her own, this slim thing in gentian blue. Stephen did not apologize; he was still very angry with her for standing like a lost child in the middle of a bunch of verminous boys, even angrier that she should be kicking around this part of the world unprotected.
“Well, what was the stupid thing?” he asked.
She sat up very straight and looked ahead. “Elfrida—she’s my cousin, Mrs. Paget—she wanted some mementos of Aden, so she sent—so I said I’d go out and get what I could. I got into a taxi like this one and told the driver to show me something genuinely made by Arabs. He took me out there to the native quarter and said that if I wished him to wait while I made purchases I must give him two English pound notes as security, because he was missing fares at the harbor. I gave him the money and he drove off.”
“Of course he drove off, you simpleton! Did you buy anything?”
“No. The moment he had gone I was surrounded.” She controlled a shudder. “They were begging, and I threw them all the silver I had. After that they... grabbed my skirt.”
“All right, all right,” he said irritably.
They bumped along in billows of dust, snaking around corners and narrowly missing a variety of livestock. At the street of tourist shops Stephen helped her out and dismissed the cab. Brusquely, he indicated one of the stores.
“Go in there and make your choice. I’ll wait for you.”
“Please don’t bother. I can see other people from the ship. I shall be safe now.”
“I’ll wait,” he said flatly, “and call me if you think they’re overcharging.”
She was forced to obey. Stephen stood smoking and staring with shaded eyes at the gimcrackery on display. He’d been almost everywhere and had never collected a thing. He had been appalled to find, upon visiting a one-time traveling companion in England, that the man had cluttered his home with African voodoo masks, Egyptian daggers, Indian ivory and cheap Hawaiian jewelry. The acquisition of mementos was a form of conceit to which Stephen would never become a victim; for one thing, it was unlikely that he would ever wish to be reminded daily of Suez, the Gulf or the Pacific.
Yet when the Paget girl came out of the shop holding a small, tissue-wrapped parcel and looking as if she had all the beauties of the Eastern world in her grasp, Stephen thought there must be some magic in this junk hunger that he had missed. She was an uncomfortable creature to have around; so young that she made him feel old, so innocent that his own austere past seemed to trail back into a channel of dissipation.
“Are you ready to go on board?” he inquired.
“May I look at the shops as we pass? This is all wonderfully new to me.”
Her voice, when eager, was low and husky. As they gradually made their way along the street she was like a well-bred adolescent, excited but restrained. At one store she stopped and fingered the carnelian bracelets and necklaces, the jade rings. There was a block of amber carved into a quaint mosquelike shelter with a camel standing within the pillars.
“Look,” she said, balancing the object in the center of her hand. “Did you ever see anything so exquisitely in proportion and utterly beautiful?”
“Many times,” he answered dryly. “That’s how the craftsman earns his bowl of rice. It’s quite useless, but catches the tourist’s eye.”
“Oh, but nothing’s useless that gives pleasure.” She gazed up at him, gravely. “You’re like Elfrida. She made me give up practicing on the piano because I wasn’t good enough to make a career of it. She said it was a waste of time.”
“Did she?” Stephen’s level dark brows drew together. “How good are you?”
“Third-rate, but I love it. One day I’ll—” She interrupted herself sharply.
Stephen guessed that she had suddenly seen the incongruity of standing in an Aden street beneath a merciless sun, and expatiating upon her youthful desires to a stranger. The animation had died from her expression.
An Arab wearing an old burnoose stood beside them, indicating with a stained forefinger the trinket that still lay in her hand.
“You buy, master?”
“How much?”
“Two pound ten—English.”
Stephen didn’t argue. His notes were jubilantly accepted. He smiled sardonically into the wide green eyes and carelessly closed her fingers over the sides of the carved amber.
“It’s yours.”
“But I couldn’t take it. I don’t know you.”
“Stephen Brent, geologist. How do you do, Miss Paget. Does that square things?”
“I’d rather not have it, if you don’t mind.” She was not distressed, merely stating a fact.
Exasperated, he took her elbow so that she had to move on with him. “Put it away. It’s no different from buying a child a toy.”
“That’s rather unflattering. And anyway... would you buy a child a toy?”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Only that I don’t think you would. You don’t strike me as the sort of man who’d like children.” She was walking quickly, to keep up with him. “I don’t believe you like anyone very much.”
“You’re absolutely right,” he said crisply.
They had reached the dock and he stood aside to allow her to ascent the gangway steps in front of him. They reached the familiar deck.
“I’m going to the lounge for a drink. Will you come?” he said, in a tone calculated to impress upon her that she was unwanted.
“No, thank you. I must find my cousin.”
Stephen paused, a cold glint in his eyes. “Did you come from England?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you pick up the Tjisande?”
“At Marseilles. Elfrida fancied the journey across France, but it was too much for her. She isn’t particularly strong. If you’ll excuse me, Mr. Brent,” she finished hurriedly.
But it was too late. The tall woman in white tailored silk was level with them. A lovely woman with curling, silky black hair and dark eyes, firm, creamy skin and fine, mature curves. Stephen would have said she was a sight stronger than this other pale little thing, who was now so completely eclipsed.
“Why, Melanie!” exclaimed Elfrida. “I’ve been worried about you. Did you have any trouble?”
“No, not a bit.” The girl turned to Stephen without looking at him. “This is Mr. Brent ... Mrs. Paget. Mr. Brent showed me the best shop for curios.”
“How good of him.” Elfrida slanted at him her almond-shaped glance. “Are you one of our ship companions, Mr. Brent?”
“All the way to Mindoa,” he told her. It seemed that Melanie was not so truthful as those candid eyes would suggest;
or maybe there was an element in the relationship between these two that forbade complete honesty. You could never be sure what one woman thought about another. “I hope you’re fully recovered?”
“Thank you, I am. I’ve never left England before, and the foreignness and rich cooking in France upset my nerves.”
Stephen said, “Will you share a table with me at lunch?”
“You’re very kind.”
He bowed. “I’ll arrange it. Your young cousin has been tired out by the heat. She needs a rest.”
“Don’t bother about Melanie. She always looks dreamy and pale. We’ll see you later, then, Mr. Brent.”
CHAPTER TWO
MELANIE HAD FOLLOWED Elfrida below, to the large cabin they shared. It was blessedly cool; the air conditioner roared gently and the short red curtain billowed away from the porthole, admitting a strong, warm breeze.
At the shipping office in Marseilles, Elfrida had insisted on two separate cabins—until she had seen the ship’s plan and realized that Melanie would be given an apartment as luxurious as her own. That, as she had pointed out, was unfair and too expensive. It was more satisfactory to commandeer three parts of a double cabin; in any case, she was too unwell to be left alone all night.
Melanie could make no demur of any kind, for was she not the unfortunate little cousin who had first been given a home and had this astounding opportunity of seeing some of the world? Not that she was ever anything but grateful to Elfrida. She might be a bit unhappy sometimes—what parentless girl isn’t—but she was passionately thankful that Elfrida had decided to bring her on this voyage.
Elfrida was her cousin by marriage. Melanie remembered the wedding when she was twelve or so; her cousin John, home from Mindoa and blazingly happy. He wasn’t going back, not he. He had settled with Elfrida in a Mayfair flat, and for a long time had been inexpressibly contented. Then rifts became apparent; he could not get used to living in the noise and hurry of London, but Elfrida would not move out of town. He wanted children, and she didn’t. She was extravagant and the income from the Mindoa plantation was gradually dwindling. By the time he had to return to the island he and Elfrida had reached the point of estrangement. He had no option but to go without her. For six months he had slaved to increase production, and then he had died.
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