Scarlet-cheeked, she accompanied him in silence towards tables laden with hams, chicken, pork, pies, salads and fritters, cookies, jellies, jams and chocolate cake, and accepted without further demur the piled-up plate of food he insisted on providing, though she knew that even the tiniest morsel would lodge in her constricted throat. As she watched him tucking into a plateful of spare ribs she attempted to distract his attention from her own lack of appetite with a feeble jest.
'I know you Texans have earned the reputation of being hearty eaters, but I'd imagined I was having my leg pulled when someone assured me that cowboys have appetites so immense they tie sides of bacon to their feet and use them like skates to grease the griddle before cooking their breakfast pancakes. Were you brought up to regard a laden table as a symbol of success, a reward for honest work?'
To her surprise she saw a shadow cross his features as he turned aside to dispose of his empty plate.
'When I was a child, food was never plentiful in our household,' he told her bleakly, 'which is probably why I view waste not so much as a crime but a sin. I learnt how to become an expert beggar, how to cultivate an expression of pathos guaranteed to cajole meals from the mothers of school friends, and to reward them with a show of gratitude. As a consequence, I grew up with a burning ambition to succeed,' he grated the admission, 'so that I would never again be called upon to don a mask of humility.'
A mask that's been replaced by an armour of pride, Catriona almost blurted to the man she was about to jilt, the man who reacted with a lion's snarl to even the smallest sting!
'I think we can safely slip away now without the danger of being missed,' Leon suddenly surfaced from his retrospective mood to cast a look of tolerant amusement around the room full of noisy revellers. 'As you're obviously anxious to discuss some problem, I suggest the best place to talk would be my trailer where we'll run no risk of being interrupted.'
She hesitated, torn between a desire to be free of deception and fear of being devoured by anger in the solitude of his den.
'Very well,' she gulped, succumbing to the folly of desperation, 'what I have to say won't take longer than a few minutes.'
She almost changed her mind when, after slipping unobtrusively from the hall, she saw the night sky tinged with the first pale light of dawn but stifled an impulse to run back to the warmth and safety of the crowded room and allowed him to steer her swiftly towards the perimeter of the camp where his isolated trailer was situated. As he fumbled in the dark to fit the key into the lock she drew nervously away, but as if sensing her instinct to run he opened the door, then turned swiftly to grab her elbow and propel her in front of him up the steps of the trailer.
She stumbled across the threshold, then gasped with surprise when, at the click of a switch, light flooded a spacious, luxuriously equipped interior.
'Make yourself comfortable.' He waved her towards a plumply upholstered banquette couch covered with oyster velvet, then dimmed the lights to a soft warm glow before striding across to a drinks cabinet. 'What can I get you to drink?'
'Nothing, thank you,' she jerked, her courage dragging heavily as her feet through thick pile carpet.
'Very well,' he swivelled towards a hi-fi cabinet, 'then how about a little background music? Have you a favourite choice that might be appropriate?'
'Appropriate to what?' She shrank nervously towards the couch.
'It all depends,' he responded smoothly, moving swiftly to join her immediately she sat down, 'whether you wish to employ the power of music to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak, or to use it as an opiate to dull pricks of prudish conscience.'
The touch of his fingers stroking a sensuous caress against the sensitive nape of her neck sent her jerking out of reach until there was a yard of ominous, pulsating space between them. Unbearably agitated by the realisation that she had been foolish to trust herself alone with him, she jumped to her feet and began backing towards the door.
'Come here, Kate,' he commanded softly, patting the empty space beside him.
'Not without a chair and a whip,' she lashed out, terrified. 'I didn't come here to be mauled, I came to tell you that I intend telling Aunt Hanna the truth. Here…!' She snatched the ring from her finger and threw it at his feet. 'I won't wear your ring, and I refuse to be used as a sort of… of… guineapig in your matrimonial experiment!'
He leapt towards her with such swift fluidity she had no time to do more than catch a terrified breath before he pinned her with her back against a wall and held her quivering beneath the force of his physical anger.
'I promised your aunt that we would marry, and I intend keeping that promise,' he menaced tightly. 'Gossiping tongues must be stilled.'
'Did you seriously believe I'd allow myself to be blackmailed into marriage by the threat of further idle speculation?' she scoffed, attempting to wriggle free of his punishing grip. 'Gossip soon dies when it is given nothing to feed upon!'
'In that case,' he responded thickly, jerking her hard against his chest to pin her upturned face with an amber bright gleam of determination, 'we must begin here and now to prepare a banquet! The news that we've spent what's left of the night together should suffice as a tasty starter!'
'You wouldn't be such a beast!' she choked.
Deliberately, cruelly, expertly, he seduced her into silence with kisses that left her in no doubt that so far as he was concerned gossip had not lied when it had likened him to the ruthless, merciless hot-blooded king of the jungle.
Torrid moments later she had been reduced to a clinging, helpless state of abandon, transported in Leon's arms to the steaming heat of a tropical paradise where the air was warm and potent as burgundy, where flowers were drawn out of tight virgin buds to blossom into beautiful maturity, where orchestral waters played unseen behind a sultry screen of privacy guaranteed to tempt timid creatures from their shells to explore the pleasant diversions of connubial bliss.
She was hovering on the brink of surrender, lying totally acquiescent in his arms, when a violent knocking erupted to merge with the frantic thudding of her heartbeats.
'Leon!' She heard Geoff's voice penetrating from behind the closed door. '… Are you in there?'
'Go to hell, Geoff!' Succinctly, Leon made plain his resentment of the untimely interruption. 'You've tried that ploy once before, did you really expect it to work as effectively a second time around?'
'Believe me, Leon, this time I'm not kidding!' Geoff sounded desperate. 'You're needed out here— I've just received word that a serious situation has developed out on the rig!'
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LESS than half an hour later they were airborne. Looking tight-lipped and exceedingly grim, Leon piloted the helicopter over sea heaving and fretting in the cold light of dawn, flying low to avoid massed banks of cloud stretching without a break towards light glowing like a strip of copper wire across the horizon.
Catriona shivered and snuggled closer into the warmth of borrowed slacks and a thick-knit sweater, feeling numbed not so much by the chilly atmosphere as by the memory of Leon's implacable insistence that she should accompany himself and Geoff out to the rig, treating her as a sort of hostage, she reflected bitterly, because he had been deeply suspicious of Geoff's motives. During the ensuing rush to scramble into warm clothing before racing in his Range Rover towards the heliport there had been time for no more than a staccatoed exchange of words between the two men, from which she had gathered that owing to some mishap two divers appeared to be in danger of losing their lives.
As if conscious of the desolation swamping the tense figure crouched into the seat next to his, Geoff reached out to give her hand a comforting squeeze. They were sitting directly behind Leon who, ever since take-off, had maintained constant radio contact with the men aboard the rig, snapping terse questions and receiving replies that deepened the furrows across his brow, too engrossed and concerned to toss even the briefest of apologies towards Geoff when his suspicions were proved to be unfou
nded.
'I'm sorry I couldn't persuade Leon to listen to reason, Catriona.' Geoff bent his head closer to avoid having to shout above the noise of the engine. 'He must have realised by now what a fool he was to force you to endure such an uncomfortable and unnecessary journey. I must say that I found his attitude amazing. Never, during the whole of our long and close association, has he proved himself so unamenable to reason.'
'I may be partly to blame,' she shrugged. 'I seem to possess a talent for provoking his anger. Anyway, it doesn't matter now—my discomfort is minor compared with the danger being faced by the divers. Whatever is wrong, do you think we'll be in time to save them?' she queried anxiously.
'If anyone can, Leon will,' he told her, his sombre expression deepening. 'Whichever new technique is employed—and much expertise has been borrowed from astronaut explorers of outer space—he has always insisted upon being the first one to experiment with equipment that has pushed back diving frontiers to an extent that would have been considered unbelievable just a couple of years ago. His argument has always been that he has far less to lose than most—no home, no parents, no wife, not so much as a pet poodle to grieve over his loss but that argument no longer applies, does it, Catriona?' he urged, sweeping keen eyes over her suddenly stricken face. 'The acquisition of a devoted, loving fiancée has made Leon as vulnerable as the rest of us.'
Tears spurted to her eyes when his words painted a portrait of Leon with a stark, lonely background which had previously remained muted, a canvas daubed heavily with the brush of a feckless woman who had put her own selfish pleasures before the welfare of a child; smudged by the passing of the many light, meaningless affairs which he had tried, but failed, to fill in yawning gaps of loneliness. As gradually as the veil of cloud making way for golden sunrise awareness dawned, understanding of how a cat that has been continuously kicked will react with a snarl to every approaching footstep, of how a boy starved of love and tenderness could grow up thinking women were cast in the same uncaring, immoral mould as his aunt.
Smothering a small gasp of pain, she turned eyes bright with inner illumination upon Geoff and dispersed his frown by whispering.
'Look after Leon, Geoff—he mustn't be allowed to take unnecessary risks!'
Immediately the outline of the rig appeared on the horizon she was struck by a lack of movement, by the jibs of cranes left bowed as if in prayer, and decks and alleyways that seemed becalmed and bewitched as the ill-fated Mary Celeste. The eerie sensation was dispelled when she spotted signs of activity on the helipad where a safety crew was awaiting the landing of the helicopter, but as soon as it touched down and she and Geoff had alighted they were met by an uncanny, brooding silence, contained within an aura of atmospheric tension.
'The platform has been shut down,' he explained briefly, 'and will remain so until the divers have been rescued.'
'This is no time to stand gossiping!' Leon snapped unfairly, jumping down from the cockpit to go striding past. 'Follow me, I've instructed all diving personnel to assemble for a meeting in the control room.'
When they arrived inside the control room Leon took his place behind a paper-strewn desk and glanced keenly around the clutch of grim-faced men hovering with fists clenched deeply inside jacket pockets.
'Now,' he demanded, 'fill me in with every last detail of how the accident happened, why and when.'
Simultaneously, the assembled men swivelled their attention upon one particularly gaunt-looking man as if electing him their spokesman. Squaring his shoulders, he accepted the responsibility.
'The divers were carrying out a routine inspection of the underwater structure yesterday when they came across an anchor cable they suspected might be working loose. The sea was calm at the time, weather conditions ideal, but as a warning had been received that a storm was imminent they were instructed to spend no longer than an hour on the repair. Naturally, as the man in charge, I kept a careful eye on the clock and shortly before the given time I relayed instructions that they were to return to the diving bell. They pleaded to be allowed just ten minutes more, so,' he sighed, running a fretful hand through thinning hair, 'as conditions were still calm and the job was urgent, I gave permission for them to carry on.'
'Stop blaming yourself, Jock,' one of his listeners cut in, 'each one of us would have made the same decision had we been in your shoes. What happened next was totally unexpected, impossible to foresee.' He swung round to assure Leon. 'As Jock has just stated, conditions at the time were what we have come to regard as normal for this area—gusting wind, choppy sea, lots of cloud, but nothing out of the ordinary except perhaps for the band of what we assumed to be clear sky on the far horizon.'
Catriona jerked to attention, reminded of the copper-tinged sky she had noticed on her way home from work the day before, the grumbling of thunder and glass-smooth sea that any islander could have told them were the almost certain harbingers of a freak storm.
'One moment conditions were routine,' Jock continued confirming her theory, 'and the next we seemed to have been hit by a blast of thunderbolts, sheet lightning, and wind that heaved huge waves out of the guts of the sea. Though the storm lasted no longer than ten minutes all hell seemed to have been let loose, and it was during that period that the support vessel shifted so violently that the umbilical cord connecting the ship to the diving bell was severed, leaving the divers trapped on the seabed deprived of vital elements.'
'Is the diving bell's emergency support system working satisfactorily?' Leon questioned swiftly.
'It is,' Jock nodded, 'and has been for almost ten hours now—about half the maximum time.'
'And are you still in contact with the trapped divers?' Leon demanded.
'Thank goodness, yes. So far, their only complaint has been that the standard of food has fallen far below that to which they've become accustomed. But they're still able to breathe normally and an acceptable level of heat is being maintained inside the diving bell.'
Resolutely, Leon rose to his feet. 'Well, men, as pressure can't be guaranteed inside a bell that's leaking, you have obviously concluded that any attempt to winch it to the surface would pose a threat to the divers' safety. The leak can't be a major one, however, otherwise the men would already have begun feeling the onset of hypothermia. But as we're all aware that leaks never improve and invariably worsen, we dare not gamble upon being allowed more than several hours' grace if our rescue operation is to be guaranteed successful.'
He swung his attention upon the man in charge of diving operations, and prompted a kindling of gratitude into his worried eyes by declaring firmly,
'Jock, I'd like you to join me aboard the support vessel. I shall be going down in the rescue bell, and there's no one I'd rather have in charge of the operation.'
'There's just one big drawback to that scheme, Leon,' Catriona heard one man's voice rising above a chorus of dissent, 'we'd have sent a rescue bell down long before now if it were not that the weathermen have firmly vetoed the idea. They insist that, as there are still violent storms in the area, we should await their all-clear before running the risk of complicating the situation further with a second similar accident.'
'That's not a drawback in my book,' Leon dismissed, barely checking his stride towards the door, 'merely a minor aggravation.'
With Geoff's help, Catriona managed to scramble unobserved on to the tender that ferried the group of rock-jawed men across a short stretch of sea to where the support vessel was anchored. Once aboard, she tried to catch up with Leon, but managed no more than a glimpse of his broad shoulders as he strode out of sight down an alleyway.
'Geoff,' she appealed, feeling too hollow inside to attempt to hide tears spurting into her eyes, 'I must speak to Leon before he goes over the side!'
He hesitated, then as if sensing her need to put a lot of things right in a very short time, he slowly conceded,
'I'll take you to him, Catriona, but please don't expect too much, for I doubt whether you'll
find him in a receptive mood.'
He began ushering her towards the alleyway down which Leon had disappeared, guiding her past a row of closed doors before drawing to a standstill.
'This is the changing room,' he indicated with a nod, 'wait here a moment until I make sure that he's prepared to spare you a few seconds.'
Alone in the alleyway she braced herself to combat a curt refusal, trying not to dwell upon the fear uppermost in her mind, a fear of losing him that she could not even begin to analyse until she had attempted to make her peace with the man who, because of his conviction that he had the least to lose, had chosen to risk his life carrying out a dangerous mission. Tensely she waited, then darted forward when the door opened and Geoff reappeared.
'Leon's almost ready to leave,' he told her with a pitying look, 'but I've managed to persuade him to speak to you before he goes.'
Conveying her thanks with a look of gratitude, she stepped hurriedly into the room he had just vacated, then pulled up sharp, stunned by the impact of seeing Leon's lean frame looking poured into a black rubber suit, clinging supple as sealskin around long limbs, broad chest, and flat, narrow midriff.
'Well, Catriona, whatever you wish to say please say it quickly,' he ordered brusquely, continuing gathering up various items of equipment.
'I…' she began, but had to swallow hard when a lump suddenly lodged in her throat. Sensing his impatience to be gone, knowing that any moment he was liable to brush past and disappear out of her life, possibly for ever, she forced out the admission, 'I just wanted to let you know how much I regret our many past misunderstandings. Perhaps in the future,' she croaked, 'if we each agree to try a little harder, we might manage to achieve a better standard of relationship.'
Rapture of the Deep Page 13
