by Robyn Donald
Mariel jumped. She recognized that voice, although it was not the one for which she listened unconsciously every moment of every day.
Slowly she turned. David St. Clair stood there, handsome face smiling, blue eyes serious beneath his cap of golden hair. “Hello,” she said, fighting a disappointment so acute it made her heartsick. “Mariel,” he repeated. “How are you?” She withdrew slightly. “I’m fine. How are you?”
“Well, thank you.” His eyes devoured her face. “You look a little tired,” he said after an awkward moment. “Don’t tell me that you’ve been kept up all night translating for importunate businessmen?”
“No,” she said quietly. She had loved this man, made love with him, grieved for months after he left her, and now she wondered how on earth it had all happened. She felt nothing, not even a mild pleasure, nothing of the fear and anger and outrage and heartfelt longing that he’d caused her. What a waste of emotions.
Is that how it would be with Nicholas?
No.
David shot his cuff back to look at the thin gold watch that had been his grandfather’s. “How about a cup of coffee?” he asked. “Does the deli across the way still make brilliant sandwiches? Remember how I used to pick you up on a Sunday morning and we’d buy sandwiches and go to Central Park for lunch under the trees? You only ever ate half of yours—you always fed the rest to the squirrels.” His voice was intimate, coaxing and confident. “I think about those sandwiches quite often.”
“The deli’s changed hands and I don’t want any coffee, thank you,” she said coolly.
He gazed at her with possessive eyes. “I want to know how you are, Mariel. Come on, it won’t take much time.”
Once she would have followed him to the ends of the earth. Now it seemed too much trouble to cross the road with him. Damn Nicholas! He had imprinted himself so firmly on her that drinking coffee with another man seemed like the worst sort of faithlessness.
Revulsion at this realization persuaded her to look in turn at her watch. “All right, but I can only spend ten minutes. I’m on my way to the agency.”
“Good.” Automatically he took her elbow and escorted her into the deli. Once seated with their coffee in front of them, he said, “How are you really, my dear?”
What on earth did he expect her to say? Fully recovered from the knowledge that although you loved me, you loved your career more?
“I’m fine,” she said, trying to sound cheerful and reserved at the same time. “Things are going really well. How are you?”
His smile was muted. “I’m in pretty good shape.” Stirring a spoonful of sugar into his cup, he inhaled deeply and said, “Ah, this is wonderful. I wonder why Americans can’t produce a decent pot of tea when they make the best coffee in the world. Do you ever think of us, Mariel?”
She almost spluttered into her drink, only just restraining herself, although not before she’d burned her tongue. “No,” she said cautiously, putting down the cup. “Not often, anyway.”
“I think about us all the time,” he said, watching her with a wistfulness that didn’t appear feigned.
She shrugged. “It seems a fruitless exercise, especially as you...” ... have a wife, she’d been going to finish.
“I haven’t been able to get you out of my head,” he said, searching her face with a hot blue gaze.
“Raking up the past is another fruitless exercise,” she said briskly. “It’s over and done with. What are you doing in New York?” The trade conference had finished three days ago, so it couldn’t be that.
“Work—the meeting of the General Assembly,” he said indifferently. “I’ll be here a couple of weeks. Look, why don’t we get together some night?”
She didn’t even have to think. “It wouldn’t be wise,” she said, putting her untouched cup back on the saucer. “You’re married, David.”
“Oh, God,” he said, looking at her wearily. “And what a farce that is! I should never have let you go, Mariel. Never have let anything but us matter. I felt I owed loyalty to my family, to my...oh, to everyone who wanted me to do well, I suppose, and your parents certainly would have been a rather murky splotch on my record. But honestly, darling, since we broke up nothing has gone right for me. I almost had a breakdown, you know. I had to take several months off.”
No wonder Nicholas had accused her of ruining his career. Because David seemed to need a response, she said, “I didn’t know. Are you all right now?”
Not touching her, he leaned forward, his face intently earnest, his glance a mixture of pleading and need. “Oh, yes, I got over it. Physically, anyway. But...Mariel, it hurts to breathe when you’re not with me. What really hurts, though, what I can’t ever forget, is that I deserve to be unhappy,” he said deeply. “I was a coward. I let the best thing in my life slip away because I didn’t have the guts to make a stand against all the expectations everyone piled on me.”
She had no idea what to say to this. Six months ago she might have understood, even been secretly thrilled by his confession, so patently sincere, but now she felt nothing but distaste. Nicholas had stormed the guarded castle of her heart and thrown out its previous inhabitant, banishing his image so successfully that her love for David was a dim, insubstantial wraith from a previous existence.
He said, “We didn’t meet accidentally. I’ve been waiting for you.”
She had never loved him, Mariel thought with the shock of a simple clarion call of realization.
She said politely, “I’m sorry. Even if I still felt the same way about you—and I don’t—I never go out with married men.”
“Darling,” he said, clearly shaken. “Mariel...Mariel, my marriage means nothing to either of us. Cosima married me because she thought it was time to settle down and I was suitable, and I married her for exactly the same reasons, also because I didn’t care who I married if I couldn’t have you. My parents thought she was an excellent catch—the daughter of an earl, you know.” In spite of everything he couldn’t hide a note of pride.
“I’m sorry,” she said, attempting to conceal her aversion, “but although you might not have loved each other, I’m sure you both vowed to be loyal.’’
His face contorted. “I’ve made my bed,” he said on a note of regret and bitterness, “and now I should lie in it, is that it?”
Gently she said, “I wish you all the best, David.”
“So you’ve found someone else. I was sure you would, but I had to try.” He got to his feet, looking down at her with greedy despair in his eyes. “You deserve someone who will fight for you,” he said. “I hope you’ll be very happy, Mariel.”
And he bent and kissed her lightly on her startled lips and went out into the street.
Students were back in school, and the number of tourists on the streets diminished slightly. Mariel kept her emotions at bay with hard work and long hours.
“Saving up for a holiday?” Carole asked.
Only then accepting a decision made a long time ago, Mariel nodded.
“Where?”
She felt self-conscious, even a bit stupid, but she said, “I thought I’d go back to New Zealand and see what difference the last ten years have made.”
With a New Yorker’s inherent arrogance Carole said, “What is there to do in New Zealand? Look at scenery?”
“Mainly.” It was time to face demons. She’d go back to the little town where she’d been so unhappy and look up a few people—especially, she thought, the neighbour who’d been so kind to her. When she’d left New Zealand she’d kept in touch with Mrs. Reilly, still sent her postcards and Christmas cards, but that was all. “I haven’t really seen much of the place.”
“When do you plan to go?”
Mariel smiled. “February. It’ll be summer there then, so I’ll come back with a tan.”
“You can get one of those in the Caribbean and it won’t cost you so much.”
Mariel laughed. “My parents didn’t come from the Caribbean.”
“Oh, well, i
f you’re going back to your roots, I suppose you’ll have to get it out of your system,” Carole said, nodding wisely. “By the way, I got a call yesterday from that island resort—Bride’s Bay—in South Carolina. They wanted you in a couple of weeks’ time.”
Mariel hadn’t told the agency that she wouldn’t accept bookings from that hotel anymore, and she was glad she could say casually, “I’m in Chicago then, aren’t I?”
“Yeah, well, I suggested Karen to Bride’s Bay and they okayed it, but I’ve just got a fax cancelling.”
“Another high-powered meeting gone phut,” Mariel said with an inward shudder.
The last thing she wanted to do was return to the island. In fact, sometimes she wondered whether the almost involuntary decision to return to New Zealand had been based on a desire to put as much distance as possible between her and the place where she and Nicholas had loved so sweetly, with such fire and tenderness and intense, consuming passion that even now, all these months later, her dreams were heated by memories and images.
The meeting with David had brought insights and a sense of closure, of final parting, but Nicholas’s dark strength and dominance had already banished David from her mind and heart. She would never see Nicholas again, unless an unkind fate threw them together coincidentally, but she’d given up hoping that she would get over him as she had David.
Oh, no doubt there’d come a time when she’d be able to think of him without this searing pain, but she would always love him. He had made himself master of her heart.
One month to the day after the meeting with David, Mariel arrived home from an exhausting international seminar involving hours of simultaneous interpretation and was pouring herself a glass of iced tea when the phone rang. Yawning with exhaustion, although her mind was buzzing, she picked up the receiver.
“You’re wanted at Bride’s Bay this weekend,” Carole informed her cheerfully. “I’ve done some juggling because they were really insistent that you go—you must have good relations with the boss down there! The usual agreement— leave tomorrow on the 7 a.m. plane via Washington. Your ticket will be waiting at the counter.”
Mariel froze, but she knew she couldn’t refuse. And who knew, she thought wearily, perhaps this would be some sort of exorcism. She would get it over and done with and then she wouldn’t ever have to fear it again. And as she had no intention of going anywhere near the cottages, she wouldn’t be faced with that particular agony.
At the airport in Charleston the resort’s helicopter was waiting. “I’ve just dropped off a couple of guests,” the pilot, a tall, rugged man with a face too cynical to be handsome said in answer to her query. “Ms. Jermain said I might as well bring you back.”
Although she liked going on the ferry, Mariel contrived to look grateful. “That’s nice of her,” she said.
He shrugged. “She’s a nice woman,” he said deliberately, swinging Mariel’s case into the chopper before helping her in.
And the pilot was a nice man, she thought as the helicopter rose from the ground and swerved across the complicated intermingling of sea and marsh and land that was South Carolina’s coastal area. She didn’t know him well; hotel staff said he was something of a dark horse, but he’d always been pleasant to her. Perhaps she should forget Nicholas and concentrate on him.
She was seized with a tide of revulsion so intense that it kept her silent all the way to the island. If only life were that simple!
Half an hour later she was once more back in the business centre talking to Elise. “How are things going?”
Elise smiled. “Better,” she said. “Jimmy now has some faint inkling of what he did to Caitlin. Oh, we aren’t going to get back together, and I don’t think he’s ever going to stop being a selfish, thoughtless adolescent, but at least he’s handed over enough money so that I can buy a house in the village, and he’s admitted that Caitlin’s probably better off with me for the moment.”
“And Caitlin?”
“She likes living in the village. Now that Jimmy’s stopped his campaign to steal her away, she’s beginning to settle down. They talk on the phone every week, and we’re flying out to spend some of next summer with him.” She looked quizzically at Mariel. “Jimmy was very impressed by the man who knocked him out. Angry, but impressed. He’s used to being the biggest, toughest, most macho man around, and Mr. Leigh’s finishing him off so easily really astonished him. Do you see anything of him now?”
“No,” Mariel said, quickly adding, “I’m glad things have worked out for you.”
“Life’s certainly much better than it was before.” Frowning, Elise looked down at her desk. “Oh, I have a message for you from Liz Jermain. She wants to see you in her office as soon as you can get there.”
“Okay, I’ll be back later and you can fill me in on what I’m to do.”
Mariel strode to the manager’s office, testing her mental pulse. Unhappiness—yes, she was unhappy, but she was accustomed to that now. For the rest, well, she didn’t feel too bad.
Perhaps this minor ceremony of exorcism was going to work.
Liz Jermain was coming out of her office as Mariel approached. “Oh, hello,” she said after a keen, intent glance. “I’m sorry, something’s just come up—I shouldn’t be long. Just go in and wait, will you?”
“Of course.”
Mariel turned the handle, opened the door and walked in.
And in one shattering moment her previous confidence stood revealed for the bravado it was. Because Nicholas was there, waiting for her.
Blindly she took a step backward, her pupils dilating endlessly as her hand groped behind her for the handle.
“No,” he said with uncompromising authority, “this time you’re not going to run away or force me to go.”
In a voice she didn’t recognize she blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “Was that you—when I couldn’t come last time?” she asked.
“Yes.” His eyes narrowed. “I went to quite a lot of trouble to get you down here, and I was angry when you chickened out.”
“I did not chicken out.” It seemed important to tell him this, even though she knew she was using it as a distancing tactic while she struggled to deal with the intense emotions roused by his presence. “I had a prior booking, damn you!”
Without much interest, he said, “Did you? Ah, well, it doesn’t matter much. You’re here now. It took me considerable persuasion to talk Ms. Jermain into allowing me to use the hotel to get you here, and then I had to do it all over again. Even now she’s not entirely sure that she’s doing the right thing.” He sounded quite casual.
If he’s like David, wanting to take up where we left off, what will I do?
I’ll die.
“Come away from the door,” he said. “She’s trying to get in.”
Stiffly, keeping her face so rigid it felt wooden, Mariel moved into the office as the door opened behind her.
He didn’t look any different, she thought, trying not to stare, trying desperately to summon a cool composure and failing miserably.
His face almost quizzical, his eyes giving nothing away, he said, “Come in, Ms. Jermain. Mariel will tell you that she isn’t being threatened—”
“I’d like her to tell me herself,” Liz said crisply, with another intent look at Mariel.
Nicholas, damn him, looked amused.
Mariel said, “It’s all right, Ms. Jermain. He’s not a homicidal maniac or even,” she added with a cutting snap to her voice, “particularly dangerous.”
“Oh, yeah?” said the manager somewhat inelegantly. “Any man who could talk me into a stunt like this has to be dangerous. Do you want him here?”
“Yes,” Mariel said, because she knew there was no way out of this meeting. Nicholas radiated a hard-edged vitality, a sense of purpose that exhausted her.
“Then perhaps we can let Ms. Jermain have her office back,” Nicholas said with smooth urbanity. “I have a suite, or if you’d rather meet in neutral territory...”
/> “Your suite will be fine,” Mariel said stiffly.
They went up to his suite in silence, walked without speaking along the corridor, and silently she went ahead of him through the door he held open.
“Sit down,” he said. “I’ll get you a drink. Mineral water?”
“Yes, thank you.”
He brought it to her, waited while she drank half of it, and then said pleasantly, “Tell me what it was like living in New Zealand after your parents died.”
Spluttering, she set the glass down on the table. “Why?”
“We have to start somewhere,” he said. “I think it’s relevant.”
He’d never looked more determined, more relentless. She could feel the force of his will beating her resistance down. How could he do this to her? Was it just an egotistical man’s anger at being refused?
Resentfully she flared, “Is this more of your pop psychology?”
“Stop trying to annoy me,” he said blandly.
Biting her lip, she surrendered. After all, the sooner this was over the sooner he’d go. “I hated it,” she said in a voice drained of energy and expression. “Somehow everyone knew who I was, even though my aunt had changed my name, and they tormented the life out of me. I was absurdly sensitive, which didn’t help.”
“And your aunt? How did she feel about looking after you?”
From the past came the voices, the children’s taunts, her aunt’s continual complaints: If it wasn’t for you I’d be where I should he, right at the top. You and your parents dragged me down...
“She blamed me,” Mariel said, shrugging. “Well, my parents mainly, but she couldn’t tell them how she felt so she told me, instead.”
“And every childhood misdemeanour was traced back to your parents’ treachery, every character flaw seen as the start of the slippery fall to perdition and ruin.”
He seemed to be quoting. She asked tiredly, “How do you know?”
“I went back and asked questions. A Mrs. Reilly told me you were the saddest child she’d ever seen.”
