by Sandra Clark
'I didn't mean—I—' she paused. When Barron looked at her with such depths of coldness in his eyes she found it impossible to frame the words of apology that could heal this fresh wound in their relationship. The trouble was, she felt she could not trust herself.
He looked down at her for a moment, his lips curling in a savage smile.
'Quite the response I would have expected from the ice maiden,' he said, and Belinda bit her lip.
'That's not fair,' she said in a low voice.
He gave her a look of contempt and started to unroll his sleeping bag. She watched miserably. She was certainly fooling herself if she imagined she had hurt his feelings by her sharp reply. Despite the look which had briefly shadowed his face his every movement now expressed contempt for her.
Of course, she was just an inconvenience to him. His manner gave her no room to doubt that. He had Ikluk and perhaps other partners. It was his misfortune, his manner seemed to tell her, that he was stuck with her for the next few days. Yet she was angry to think that he should try such a cheap ploy to gain her gratitude. Surely she had made it clear that her gratitude would not extend so far? She plucked miserably at the fur trim on her jacket.
'Don't do that!' he said sharply, turning on her all of a sudden. 'You've no right to be wearing that jacket.'
Now it was her turn to question. 'What did you say?' she breathed.
Barron shrugged. 'Ayurnamat.' He moved abruptly to the door.
Ayurnamat— it doesn't matter, it can't be helped. Belinda heard him leave with tears in her eyes. Suddenly, overwhelmingly, she had a desperate need to call him back, to feel his arms round her and again to feel the burning passion of his lips on hers. The futility of such wanting welled up inside her. It brought more tears. 'Ayurnamat,' she whispered to herself. 'It can't be helped.'
CHAPTER EIGHT
Belinda washed herself and cleaned her teeth in water from a kettle of melted snow, then set about brushing her tangled mass of hair until it shone again. For the first time since leaving the settlement she felt well enough, and had the opportunity, to try and make something of her appearance. Barron had forbidden her to leave the snow house except for necessary calls of nature and she had spent an idle morning pottering about over the cooking, even ineffectually sweeping the floor with the back of Barron's huge snow knife, and trying to remember some of the cats' cradles Taqaq had taught her. Barron had come in when she was absorbed in a particularly intricate one and had abruptly told her to stop. She had looked up in amazement.
'Why on earth—' she began, a flush of irritation coming into her cheeks.
'Because,' he explained patiently, as if speaking to a child, 'it's not done to make them during daylight hours. It's something saved for the long dark nights in winter.'
That, and what else? she thought, biting the words back in the nick of time, as he had gently unwound the string from around her fingers. 'Anyway, that's wrong,' he told her. 'You should have looped it round the index fingers first.' Briefly their fingers had touched, and Belinda backed away at the contact as if scalded. She had let her breath come out sharply.
'Why is it you always think you're right about everything?' she demanded.
'Maybe because I nearly always am,' he replied without modesty. She was about to expostulate when she noticed the teasing gleam in his eye. It faded at once and the old coolness came between them again.
Because she was bored and fed-up with her vow of silence, she longed to have a good chat. Anything would be better than more unending hours of this icy silence. Barron seemed to be quite happy to go about his few chores without a word, and it piqued her to realise that her demonstration of indifference didn't seem to bother him in the least. Now that she was feeling more confident that he had no designs on her she quite irrationally wanted to arouse some response from him. He was busily scraping snow off his boots near the door when she spoke. 'You must know you make me feel like part of the furniture,' she said accusingly.
'I thought that was what you wanted?' he replied at once without bothering to look up. Belinda bit her lip.
'As it looks as if we're stuck with each other for a while you could try treating me like a human being,' she continued. He glanced across with a quizzical look in his eyes.
'That seemed to be the last thing you wanted from me,' he answered. 'I suppose you've changed your mind yet again.' For a moment they regarded each other belligerently across the freshly swept floor of snow.
Belinda felt a rush of colour when she met his eyes. This time she did not avert her own glance, but faced him steadily with clenched fists. 'It's your own fault. You always seem to provoke me. You make me so angry with the things you say. You must do it on purpose.'
'I can assure you I do no such things,' he replied cuttingly. 'I have no time for silly games like that.'
'You see! You're doing it again. Trying to make me look small.' She squared up to him with flushed cheeks.
'You are quite small,' he replied coolly. He took one of her hands in one of his. 'Quite small.' He let her hand drop. Belinda hesitated. Whatever she said next would have to be carefully chosen. They were suddenly on dangerous ground again. She took a breath. 'You say things, and I don't know what you mean by them.'
'Like what?' he demanded.
She turned away, picking at the sleeve of her parka. 'Well, about this jacket for one,' she raised her eyes accusingly. 'You said this thing about the jacket Mac gave me, and walked off without any explanation. Why haven't I got a right to wear it?' It hadn't been exactly what she wanted to say to him, but it was the safest thing she could think of, and she felt he owed her some explanation for his earlier remark. He seemed to stiffen and for a moment his eyes refused to meet hers.
'Please,' she said, 'why won't you explain?'
Carefully and with a degree of deliberation Barron fastened up his boots again, then moved casually over to where she was sitting on the platform and lowered himself down beside her. 'O.K. It doesn't really matter—I told you that. I was being weak. I was suffering from a pang of sentimentality, if you like.'
'You?' she broke in. The tautness in his face made the, laughter fade as soon as it had pealed out. There was sheer pain in his face, in the twist of his lips, the rigidity of his jaw, in the brooding darkness of his eyes, as he flashed her a glance that made her shrivel inside.
'Yes, me,' he said harshly. 'Is that so strange?' The face he turned towards her had savagery written all over it. A primitive emotion seemed to etch deep lines on each side of his mouth. 'Life here has its pain, the pain of birth and death, like anywhere else,' he told her fiercely. 'I didn't come here to opt out of anything, if that's what you think. Relationships here are more intense, more real, than anything in your world. Someone who skims the surface like you, playing with men's emotions, won't understand what I mean. But here things have more meaning than in so-called civilised society where everything, even love, has a price tag on it.' For a moment he paused as if struggling in the grip of some fierce and painful emotion. He gave a slow sideways glance at the jacket she was wearing and his lips curled as he spoke: 'To you I suppose that's just a nice, fur-lined jacket, not quite in the height of this year's fashion. In reality it's something over which a man demonstrated the highest qualities of courage and endurance, all the truest and most honourable virtues of friendship—no!—' his voice tailed off. When he spoke again it was resonant with the force of his emotion. 'It was something much more than friendship as you would understand the word—' he broke off again, his words fading into silence. His face was bleak in the desolation of some unspoken memory.
Belinda sensed that the man he had obliquely referred to was this sort of friend, and that something terrible had happened. She watched his face with eyes that yearned to share his grief, to ease the pain of his memory whatever it was, but the delicacy of the moment was impossible to translate into words. Vainly she sought for some means of showing that she wanted to offer what comfort she could. It made her put one hesitant
hand on Barron's shoulder. For a long moment his pained glance held hers, then the familiar shuttered look came down, the cruel glint of some sensation bordering on contempt sparked there and he pushed her hand roughly aside. 'Stop your games,' he sneered. 'I'm not putting on an act, I'm not begging for sympathy. I don't get my women into bed that way.'
Belinda's cheeks flamed. 'I didn't mean—' She stopped, a sort of despairing anger flooding through her body so that her voice shook when she spoke. 'How can you talk about real relationships, about friendships, when you see everything in such horrid terms? What makes you so sure that relationships here are so much deeper than in my world? I feel pain too,' she glared.
He looked oddly at her, his lips twisting in a half-smile that owed nothing to humour. 'Would you lay down your life for me?' he asked simply. Before she could reply he had thrown himself back full length on the bearskin and closed his eyes. 'I'll tell you something about the interrelatedness of the people here,' he said. 'If you change your mind about accepting my offer of help when you meet the Nasaq, you'll have to know something about friendship patterns in order to make sense of their social structure.'
'You're talking like a sociologist,' she said absent-mindedly, still occupied with the answer to his last question.
'Heaven forbid!' He gave a short laugh and his eyes narrowed. She was very conscious of the long length of his form as he reclined easily beside her on the platform. His deerskins failed to conceal the huskiness of his frame, the sense of vibrant health which his hard outdoor life had given him, and it brought a tremor to her so that she felt a pang when she realised that her answer to his question might just be yes. He would be a man worth making any sacrifice for—she shuddered. That was a dangerous thought in present circumstances. If Barron guessed she was into the self-sacrifice business ten to one it wouldn't be death he would demand of her. His blue eyes were just chips of ice between the narrow slits of his eyelids. She felt his glance sweep over her and a shiver ran uncontrollably over her body.
'Cold?' he asked, without moving.
'No—it's nothing. Just a ghost, maybe,' she laughed shakily to cover her confusion.
'Maybe I should have given you the full treatment after such a severe chill,' he said with an amused smile.
'What's that?' she asked.
'Stripping and a good rub down all over,' he replied. 'Perhaps that's what you need now?'
'No!' she said violently, muscles tensing. 'I'm all right. I don't feel cold any more.'
He laughed softly. 'Only in your heart, perhaps, nothing will melt that. The job comes first.'
She raised eyes to him which were large with unshed tears. 'I wish you'd stop saying things like that to me. Just because I'm not willing to become an exchange partner—.' she faltered.
'Oh, so you know about those?' he broke in mockingly. 'You must have been doing some homework, like a good little girl. Derek will be pleased with you.'
'Derek?' she queried in bewilderment.
'Isn't that the man who sent you out here? Isn't he the reason you've been so tenacious in your attempts to meet the Nasaq? You don't want to let Derek down.' He smiled grimly. 'He must mean quite a lot to you.'
'No, that's not it at all,' she said. 'It's not like that—at least, not now.' She flushed hotly and her words petered out. She knew quite well what the real reason was for Derek offering her the assignment in preference to anyone else in the department. Of course she was as capable as any one of them, and certainly as well qualified, but she was fully aware that it was Derek's personal feelings for her which had tipped the scales in her favour. If he had not felt that the relationship was becoming a threat to the stability of his marriage, to his career even, he would have never let her go.
'Or perhaps he'd finished with you and you're trying to get back into his favour,' said Barron cruelly.
'You would paint a black picture, wouldn't you?' she retorted. 'You always try to make me look worse than I really am. It wasn't like that at all. Derek hasn't finished with me. He gave me this opportunity because—because—'
'So he hasn't finished with you? I don't for one minute believe any man could finish with you once he'd loved you,' he said, quietly.
Nonplussed, Belinda pushed a lock of hair out of her eyes. 'Can't we keep this on a practical level?' she asked curtly. 'I thought you were going to tell me something about kinship patterns or something?'
Barron let his eyelids close. In a flat, unemotional voice he began to detail the different bonds which existed between members of the same group. 'Exchange partners you seem to know about. Seal partners—does that mean anything to you?' Belinda remembered the first time, it seemed ages ago now, when Mac had used the phrase. She had intended to ask him then what it meant but had forgotten about it in the rush of new sensations she had experienced in her first days in the Arctic. Now she shook her head.
'When the white fox trapping season ends in March,' Barron told her, 'all the Eskimos who've been living out on the traplines drift back to the post to turn in their pelts and trade for the things they need for the coming season.'
'Is that why you're here now?' she asked, 'living near your traplines?'
He nodded. 'I'm not staying out here until March, though. I'll drift back in a while, as Ikluk is pregnant.'
An icy hand clutched Belinda's heart and for a moment it was as if her breath was stopped. She looked urgently at Barron.
He seemed unaware of the bombshell he had dropped, and was lying back among the bearskins, eyes closed, tanned face conveying no recognition of the painful blow he had so casually inflicted.
Pregnant? That must explain the way one of the women had made Ikluk replace the large box she had been attempting to carry up to the store shed on ship-day. That would explain too the familiar ring to her voice when she had called out to Barron that day when she had passed Belinda in the copse. No wonder she had sounded at home! She had been like any woman anywhere, returning to her husband after a morning's shopping, only in this case she had been at an Eskimo trading post and the shopping seemed to be caribou skins.
Belinda shut her eyes against the sudden access of pain that shot through her body. It was with an ache that she realised that despite her repugnance at Barron's apparent casual promiscuity and the knowledge that he was unfree to form any attachment except on a casual exchange basis, she wanted him with a fierce and overpowering hunger which was entirely new to her.
He had opened his eyes and was again looking oddly into her face. 'Are you sure you're feeling all right?' he asked carelessly.
'Stop fussing!' she burst out angrily. 'Of course I'm all right. What on earth do you mean?'
Barron shrugged. 'Have you been listening to what I've been saying?' he demanded.
'Some of it,' she admitted truthfully.
'What did I say a break in the sea ice was called?'
She shrugged irritably. 'How on earth can I be expected to remember every fiddling little word in this lousy language?' she burst out, glowering at him, heart twisting with pain as he grinned lazily back at her.
'You're the person who once said it was precious and beautiful and unique,' he told her, the amusement making his eyes sparkle wickedly.
'Did I say that?' She hated him. 'That was then, wasn't it?' she retorted. 'I felt different then.'
'Did you?' he breathed. 'Belinda—' he sat up suddenly and caught hold of her by the wrist. She trembled at his touch and tried to pull away. 'I'm not going to hurt you.' He pushed her hair back from her face. 'Has something made you change?' he asked. 'Don't you think it's precious and beautiful and unique any more?'
Her thoughts were running in all directions in the confusion of his nearness. She tried vainly to steady herself by fixing her gaze on a point just past his left ear lobe.
'Look at me,' he insisted gently, turning her face up to his. 'You must know that I've changed. Something's happened to me. Now it's you that seems to be all those things.' Slowly he bent to kiss her lips.
Belinda
felt the resistance drain away in the ecstasy of his touch. There was no rhyme or reason in it. The very hair of his head seemed to carry an electric charge as it brushed her face and she wanted to cry out in the sweet anguish of her longing. With an effort of will she made herself push him away, allowing her mind to dwell on the inevitable bitterness and regret in the future if she succumbed now to the urgent desire of the moment.
She turned blazing eyes on him.
'Now? Yes! You can say that now! While you've got me a prisoner out here, miles from anywhere. You can say that to me now, can't you? Where no one can see, where no one knows what you're saying!'
Barron let his hands drop from her as if stung. 'Am I too clumsy or what? I hoped you were beginning to feel—'
'Feel what? Randy?' she asked through tight lips. 'You really thought I was going to say yes? You thought all it needed was a few pretty words, a little flattery, and I'd be stupid enough to fall for it?' She laughed with derision to hide the hollowness in her heart. 'You're contemptible!' The expression on his face wrung her heart. It made her swing back on him even more fiercely. 'Don't look at me like that—I can't stand it. It's a game with you. You want to have me as casually as your other partners.' The thought of Ikluk filled her eyes with scalding tears, but she turned away blindly, scrubbing her knuckles into them so that he would not see. 'I want you to leave me alone,' she said in a fierce quiet voice. 'I told you at the beginning that I have no interest in you. I find your way of life and sense of values beneath contempt.' She heard him give a slight movement behind her and next moment she turned to see him sinking back among the furs. He didn't look at her.
'Seal partners, then.' He spoke in a schoolmasterly way, rapidly and dryly, explaining how in the summer months a group of five or six men, armed only with harpoons, would take their loaded freight sled up to the ice floes of the northern seas, there to hunt the seal. She felt like saying that she didn't want to hear about it, that she thought it cruel and barbaric, but when Barron explained that the ancient method was part of the Eskimo's fight for survival, that it was no different, in fact probably more humane, than civilised man's way of dealing with beef or mutton or any other staple of his diet, she began to understand more of what he was trying to say.
