Time of the Temptress

by Violet Winspear

  There just wasn't room for the modesties of civilised living. They couldn't exist as they did and be unaware of each other.

  [124-125] Eve knew exactly how the thick dark hair grew in an arrow straight down Wade's lean, strong body, and she had seen that fearful scar on his thigh, almost deep enough to thrust in her hand. She knew that he must be aware of the velvety mole on her left hip, and her much smaller and neater scar from an appendix removal when she was fourteen years old.

  Such an awareness of each other could be borne if it were only for a short while longer, but if it continued, in the moist, musky, sensual jungle, then one dusky evening the inevitable would happen, he would reach for her and Eve would be helpless to resist him. She would submit to the excitement and ruthlessness she had already felt in his embrace, and alone with him in the wild, lush heart of Africa she would give way without reserve to being a woman. The very thought was enough to make her tingle from the nape of her neck to the soles of her feet, and she had to look away from Wade, for the movement of his brown arms, the dark wet clinging of his shirt to his muscular skin was enough to melt her on the inside as the hot sun was wilting her on the outside.

  She longed for the evening when they tied up the canoe and rested; ate their supper after their bathe [sic], and lounged beside the fire talking quietly of impersonal things. There was a domesticity to it that could have led easily to the intimacy she both wanted and feared. If he touched her, if he took her, driven to it by all that was primitive in their surroundings, Eve knew it would be a heaven followed by hell when he told her, as adamantly as before, that he wasn't free to keep her.

  It had to be everything or nothing. Eve realised that each time she looked at Wade. She couldn't surrender [125-126] herself to him and then give him up with a sweet, sacrificing smile. But she could just endure the parting that must come if she never knew what it was like to be his possession . . . she had come the hard way to that realisation, much as she longed for the feel of his mouth on hers again, the caress of his hands, the loving of his lean body, certain and tireless at his handling of the canoe.

  Eve shivered in the heat, torn between the longing and the martyrdom of loving a man who belonged to another woman.

  "Your hands keeping all right?" he asked suddenly, for during that early spell of coolness he had allowed her to paddle for a while.

  Eve glanced at them and gave a grin. They were brown, nail-torn, and were developing slight callouses across the palms. "They got hardened at the mission," she said. "I told you I did the scrubbing, and also I peeled buckets of vegetables for the patients. I wonder is [sic] Sister Mercy and the others are back in England, or still working out here?"

  "My bet is that they're still out here," he replied. "While someone needs them, those saintly creatures will carry on regardless."

  Eve's smile deepened, for in that moment she had caught the Irish inflection in Wade's voice, which he must have picked up years ago from his father. Then she turned her head and her smile faded and unaware she trailed her hand in the water . . . were he not a Catholic, would he cut free from his wife?

  "Take your hand out of the water," he snapped. "There's no knowing what's under the surface, and if you lost some fingers I'd have one hell of a job keeping you free of infection."

  [126-127] "Sorry." She guiltily pulled her fingers free of the water. "I wasn't thinking."

  "No, you were miles away in thoughts of England, no doubt, and your fine wedding day at some smart church with lots of guests and bags of rice."

  Eve didn't protest that he had it all wrong, and that she'd fight her guardian yet again if he tried to force her into a loveless marriage. Perhaps she'd go into a nunnery herself, train for the life and then return to Africa to work under Sister Mercy for the rest of her days. Why not? It seemed a more worthwhile prospect than settling into a useless rut with a man she didn't care for.

  Dusk always came suddenly, after the clashing of colours around the dying sun, and then the clamorous sound of water fowl would follow. Wade pulled into a clearing, and Wade stood a moment against the afterglow in the sky, tall, unbowed despite his long day at the paddle, pulling his sleeve across his forehead. "If I had to do this all over again," he remarked, "surprisingly enough I'd choose to do it with you, Eve. What a trip to remember, eh? If you ever take a world cruise on a luxury liner, think back on these days and nights and you might laugh or weep."

  "I shan't laugh," she replied, watching him, letting her gaze travel up the long legs in combat khaki to the hard, inflexible shoulders and the life-hardened face. "I was thinking earlier on that I might decide to train for mission work--"

  "What?" he broke in. "What the devil do you mean--be a nun?"

  "Why not," she asked. "Others do it, so why not me?"

  "You haven't the right temperament." He said it almost scornfully.

  [127-128] "Thanks, Major. You're always ready to boost my ego."

  "To the devil with it, Eve, you aren't a cold, devout saint, and you know it. Forget such nonsense and do what you were born to do."

  "And what's that?" she enquired. "Develop from the season's debutante into the cool and gracious hostess of a house kept spotless by maids, and a kitchen ruled over by some treasure of a cook who won't even allow me to boil an egg."

  "That doesn't have to happen," he said, almost curtly. "You have gumption enough not to be forced into marriage if you don't love the man. Find someone you can love, even if he happens to be poor. That way you'll soon learn how to boil an egg."

  "Thanks," she said again. "I suppose this little lecture means that we're only a few miles from Tanga?"

  "You've guessed it, Eve. This time tomorrow you might be on a plane and on your way home--all being well and if we find the status quo at Tanga."

  "What happens if we don't?" Eve could feel the agitation of her pulses, and the sudden twisting pain deep inside her, as if already the strands that had bound her to Wade for this strange journey were now beginning to tear asunder.

  "Then we're still up the river, but fortunately with a paddle." He leapt ashore and quickly secured the canoe to the thick roots of a tree. Eve followed him and thought dismally that this might be their last night together, their last bathe in the river, their final supper all smoky from the campfire they dared to light even though it might be a beacon for the enemy. He was fatalistic in some ways, was Wade O'Mara, but he was also too much a soldier to be capable of the kind of fear [128-129] other men might have felt. He had weaned the fear out of Eve, and she was even certain that if a band of insurgents fell upon them and the odds were too great, Wade would turn the Breda upon her and she would die at his hands. It was the way she wanted to die, if she had to.

  He got the fire going, and Eve baked some fish, squeezed wild lemon over it and sliced a wild cucumber. For dessert they had big squashy berries with coconut jelly, which was rather delicious from the green nuts which Wade climbed for, cutting them down with his panga. Watching him do certain things Eve wondered at the difference between him and men like her guardian, not all that much older than Wade and yet grown flabby and reliant on other people for every sort of need. Such men would starve in the jungle, go out of their heads, and not be able to tell a suspended hornet's nest from a shaggy fruit. Of course, seated in importance behind their city desks, they were big men, and would regard someone like Wade as a barbarian.

  Her dear barbarian, she thought, worth a thousand of the kind of people she must go back to. Oh lord, how to explain all this to the man who had reared her, paid her school fees, sent her abroad to acquire the poise of a young woman expected to marry well? How to convince him that she could never marry anyone chosen by him? They'd fight again, and she had the feeling she might burst into tears the next time; weep wildly for the man she had left behind in Africa.

  Somewhere close by the clearing where they camped a parrot bird was still awake and apparently watching them in the glow of the fire. All at once it moved along its branch and squawked what sounded like
: "Your dinner . . . your dinner!"

  They laughed in unison. "Some dinner," Eve mur-[129-130]mured. "A pity all the yams are used up, they were delicious all hot and crackling on the outside and so white and flavoursome inside."

  "You'll be dining at some swanky restaurant in no time at all, gobbling coq au vin and pears in brandy." Wade lay full stretch on the blanket and smoked one of his hand-rolled cigarettes. Overhead spread the branches of a great forest tree, and above them was the sky washed with moonlight, with clusters of stars in the shadowy patches.

  "Why do you take it for granted that I shall slot back so easily into my old life?" she asked, seated there in the firelight with her arms about her updrawn knees. They had been lazy tonight and had not yet bathed in the river, as if they were waiting for the moon to ride right over them, casting the river to silver before they plunged in.

  "You'll do so, little lady, because you aren't old." His dark brows had a devilish twist to them. "What your sweetie?"

  "I wish it was! I could go for a nice sticky caramel, but instead I have to chew on that awful-tasting tablet that's supposed to keep me from getting dried up and saltless."

  "You'll never be saltless." He handed her the tablet. "And I never could tolerate sugary females."

  "Do I accept that as a compliment?" she asked, chewing the tablet and washing it down with hot smoky coffee, made from wild beans which Wade had roasted and ground to powder between a couple of stones. "And have you taken your own tablet?"

  "I'm salty enough," he drawled, blowing a smoke ring. "I want you fighting fit when I get you to Tanga, the [130-131] saints willing. Got your story all prepared for your stern guardian?"

  "Did I say he was stern?" Eve forced a smile to her lips, but again she felt that dropping sensation in her stomach, as if very gradually all the elation was going out of her life.

  "I have the feeling he expects you to conform, eh? I imagine he's chosen your prospective bridegroom, but don't be bulldozed into the fellow's arms, not if you don't want to run into them."

  "James is all right," she said, making her voice casual. "I could do worse, I suppose, but he's the kind who would expect me to drape myself in pretty clothes and chatter with equally useless females and sit on a committee or two, so long as I didn't overtax my bird brains. The upper classes remain very conservative in their ideas--they aren't like you, Wade. They don't go out and do. They couldn't do half the things you're capable of--if I were lost in the jungle with James, I'd be in a pretty poor way by now."

  "Are you saying I've spoiled you for other men?" Wade asked sardonically. "In the literal sense, you understand. No one can say I've had more than a nibble of the sweet white frosting."

  "Are you cynical about everything?" Eve murmured, her fingers clenching together until they hurt. "Despite the dangers, this has been one of the best experiences of my life. I shall never forget it."

  "Nor I, lady." He rolled to one side so he was facing her and their eyes met and held, then broke apart. "There's been a certain alchemy, but don't mistake it for anything else. When you're home again, and you take up the threads of the life meant for you, you'll gradu-[131-132]ally forget all this and in a few month's time you won't even remember my face. I guarantee it, Eve."

  "And you'll take up the threads of your life, I suppose?"

  "Sure, I shall go on fighting out here until things are in order again, then I shall probably take a holiday with my--family, and then I'll find another war to fight."

  "Don't you ever want to settle down?" Eve kept her gaze on the fire because she felt that her eyes were bleak. A holiday with his family, he had said. It made her feel so cut off from him; it underlined what she was, just a girl he had brought through the jungle to the threshold of safety, doing his very best for her, aware that she thought him valorous and daring, and letting her down as lightly as possible. Soldiers must often come up against this kind of hero-worship, Eve supposed. It wouldn't be the first time in his life, but it was the first time in hers, and she saw an awful, lonely future ahead of her . . . if she couldn't forget him.

  "I've been too many years a fighting man," he said, tossing the stub of his cigarette into the fire. "Maybe when I'm really decrepit, they'll offer me a cot at the Chelsea Hospital."

  "Oh, Wade!" It was a cry from the heart she couldn't suppress. "You make me want to cry when you talk like that. As if your family--"

  "It's all right," he soothed, "I'm only jesting. Shall we go and cool off in the river, lady? That moon up there is big as an uncut cheese and I fancy a moon-swim--a sort of pagan farewell to this. Are you game?"

  Eve didn't have to be asked twice, and collecting their towels and the soap they shared, and not forgetting the Breda, they hastened to the water that was rip-[132-133]pling silver in the radiance of the moon. A big gauzy moth brushed Eve's cheek and she could feel a primitive response to the night in the very centre of her being. The white fire up there must have confused the cicadas, for they were vibrating madly in the trees, and she breathed the musky scent of a night-flowering plant.

  "Get thee behind a tree, temptress," Wade grinned, and planted her behind a huge silk-cotton where she swiftly removed every stitch, but was careful to hang slacks, shirt and briefs on a branch before running eagerly into the water.

  Wade was already swimming about, and Eve felt the combined thrill of the cool water and sharing it with him. She rubbed the soap over herself and rinsed off the suds, then swam over to Wade and handed him the depleted bar.

  "What a night, eh?" His teeth gleamed in a smile. "We couldn't have asked for more on our last night together, except for music drifting across the river."

  "What a romantic idea!" Eve moved her arms in a lazy backstroke, uncaring that the silvery light glimmered on her pale body. Wade was a husband and father; he didn't have to pretend that he didn't know what a woman looked like. Nor did she pretend to herself that she wasn't playing the temptress. This was the last time they'd swim together (if all was well at Tanga) and she knew what she wanted to happen . . . she wanted a lasting memory to take back to England.

  Her fingerips touched Wade and she felt the shock of it vibrate through him . . . then he somersaulted with hardly a splash, a gleaming body that was moonlit, with a dark clouding of hair that brushed Eve as he swam up [133-134] beneath her and wrapped his arms all the way around her. It was incredibly sensuous, wonderful, the feel of his hands gliding over her wet curves.

  "Eve, you little devil," he groaned. "God, how lovely you feel, like a slim white fish with soft, velvety scales all alight and trembling. I'm mad for you, you wicked child. I want you till you cry the jungle down--but I'm damn well not going to do what Adam did!"

  "Scared?" she taunted, slipping her arms around him and feeling his body taut and burning through the cool water. "Is the great big hero a mouse at heart? Oh, love me, love me, Wade, so I'll have something I can't forget!"

  "You'd have it all right." He scooped her into his arms and ploughed out of the water with her and dropped her to her feet on the riverbank. His hand slapped out and stung her wet bottom. "Now stop being a pretty strumpet and behave yourself. I've been a gentleman with you for the first time in my inglorious life and I'm not spoiling the sheet."

  "Is this what they give medals for?" she jeered. "I've seen it on its grimy ribbon. What did they give it for? Gallant action in the mess?"

  "Stop it!" He gripped her slippery shoulders and gave her a hard shake. "It would be the easiest thing in the world to throw you down on my army blanket and love the breath out of you, all the way, Eve, to that moon up there, and then down in the mud. You'd find yourself with a baby in that slim white body, and I'd be the father, and unable to marry you! Have sense. Be realistic. Get dressed!"

  "I want a baby." She clung to him like catchweed in the streaming moonlight, her wet skin clinging to his. [134-135] "I want yours--a black-haired boy like the one you gave that other woman. Why not? I'm entitled to something of yours, if she's going to have you till you--till yo
u get what you seem to be after, a bullet in your heart."

  Her hand played down his chest and her fingers went into that awful cicatrice in his flesh. "I've never known a real man in my life--oh, Wade, there'll never be another night like this one, and we'll never be alone like this ever again. Someone will make a woman of me, if I ever marry, and I want you to do it. I want you."

  He held her, as if lost for words, and Eve loved the rough and tender heaven of his arms. "Right," his voice was low and savage against her neck. "I want you--because you're young and pretty and innocent. I want to make a feast of you, here in the jungle. I want to kiss every bit of you and let my body revel in you--but I'd hate my own guts in the morning, and I might even hate you, my vixen, for letting me do all that to you. Go home to England, Eve, sweet and untroubled, so I can remember you like that. How do you think I could live, not knowing if you were having my kid, or laid out in some clinic having it taken away? Do you think your upper-crust guardian would let his ward have the baby of a mercenary? Think again, my pretty Eve. A girl might hide what's in her heart, but there's no hiding a baby."

  "You seem so certain I'd get--that way."

  "There's a good chance of it." His eyes slid down the smooth length of her bare body, and she felt the tensing of his forearm muscles under her gripping hand. In the light of the moon his face might have been carved, except for the flicker of a muscle near his mouth. "I've [135-136] been living hard for some time, honey, and I don't think I'd keep a cool head if I had you at my mercy. Come, you're not so innocent that you don't know what I mean?"

  "I--I know what you mean," she said huskily. "Doesn't it count, Wade, that I'm ready to take the consequences?"

  "Don't talk nonsense." His voice grated. "You're little older than my Larry, a mere girl with all your life ahead of you. Think I'd spoil that for you? My life has made me hard and I've done things I shall never talk about, but I haven't come to robbing the cradle, not yet I haven't, and I'd put the Breda to your head if anyone out here tried it on and I didn't have a chance of protecting you any other way. You know that, so go and put some clothes on and let a guy's blood pressure settle down."