A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  ‘I’m going for a walk,’ Tom Nicholson said, rising abruptly to his feet.

  Elizabeth hesitated for a moment and then said: ‘Would you mind if I came with you, Tom? I’ve never been put into the gardens at the rear of the hotel. Helena tells me they’re gorgeous.’

  She rose to her feet, uncomfortably aware that Raefe Elliot’s eyes were still disturbingly on her.

  ‘You didn’t mind me asking to come with you, did you?’ she asked Tom as they walked from the veranda.

  He grinned down at her. ‘Heavens, no. Were you suddenly feeling as claustrophobic as I was?’

  She gave him an answering smile. ‘Yes, the atmosphere was pretty tense, wasn’t it? You would think Mr Elliot would have more sense than to dine with his girlfriend in a hotel frequented by his father-in-law.’ As soon as she had uttered his name she was furious with herself. Why speak of Raefe Elliot? He wasn’t of the remotest interest to her.

  They walked out of the lobby and into the gardens. ‘You’d think he’d know better than to bring her here, father-in-law or no father-in-law,’ Tom agreed drily.

  ‘Because she’s Malay?’

  He nodded, the lines around his mouth tightening. ‘Yes, it’s not the done thing. There are plenty of places in Hong Kong where you can take Malay or Chinese girls, but there are some places where you can’t. Not without causing talk. And the Repulse Bay Hotel on a Sunday lunch-time is one of them.’

  She said carefully: ‘Adam and I didn’t go to the race yesterday. We drove up to the New Territories instead.’

  ‘Did you enjoy it?’ he asked, making an effort at civility, only his eyes revealing that his thoughts were elsewhere.

  ‘We went to Kam Tin.’

  He stopped walking. ‘Oh,’ he said, understanding immediately. ‘You saw?’

  ‘Yes. She looked awfully pretty, and you looked to be very much in love.’

  He grinned ruefully. ‘We are. Her name is Lamoon. Her father is a property baron. If he knew she was in love with a European, he’d have her married to a suitable Chinese within twenty-four hours.’

  ‘Is that why no one knows about the two of you?’

  ‘Helena knows. There are times when I feel she is a little disappointed in me. You know how direct Helena is. She doesn’t see why I don’t squire Lamoon around openly, as Elliot does his girlfriend.’

  ‘And why don’t you?’ Elizabeth asked curiously. He wasn’t a man she would ever have accused of cowardice, or of caring overmuch what other people thought.

  ‘Because the minute I did, the minute it became known that it was a serious liaison and not just a romp in the hay, my career would be at stake. I would find myself conveniently posted to India or Africa or even Outer Mongolia. And Lamoon would suffer even more. She would be forced into a marriage of her father’s choice. At least this way we still see each other. And we can still hope.’

  They walked back into the hotel, and Elizabeth was relieved to see that the corner table on the veranda was empty. Raefe Elliot and his Malay girlfriend were presumably disturbing the Sabbath elsewhere.

  ‘What did you think of Raefe Elliot?’ Elizabeth asked Adam as they drove back home up the mountain road towards Wong Nie Chung Gap.

  Adam shrugged dismissively. ‘Not much. An arrogant devil, I should imagine. I thought it was a consummate nerve his asking you to have lunch with him.’

  Elizabeth stared reflectively out at a bank of wild blue irises. ‘Would you mind very much if I accepted?’ she asked at last.

  The car swerved slightly. Adam righted it and looked across at her in stunned amazement.

  ‘Of course I would mind! He’s a married man and a notorious womanizer! Your reputation would be in shreds if you were out alone with him!’

  She took his arm, immediately repentant. ‘I’m sorry, darling. Of course I don’t want to have lunch with Raefe Elliot. I can’t think why I even contemplated it.’

  They sped down the curving road that led towards Happy Valley and the racecourse, and into Victoria. A small smile touched Adam’s mouth. ‘Perhaps you suggested it because you want me to be jealous?’

  Her eyes darkened, and she tightened her hold on his arm. ‘No, Adam,’ she said fiercely. ‘I never want you to be jealous. I shall never do anything that will make you unhappy. Not ever!’

  Chapter Eight

  Alastair Munroe pressed his foot sharply down on the brake of his battered old Austin, swearing volubly. There were times when negotiating a way through Kowloon’s crowded streets was next to impossible. Taxi-cab horns blared as a bevy of rickshaw-boys blocked the street. A squawking hen, chased by a small Chinese boy, darted between the temporarily halted cars, a flurry of feathers in its wake. A hawker, his wares dangling from both ends of the bamboo pole that arched across his bony shoulders, took advantage of the lull in the traffic and accosted Alastair through the open window of his car.

  ‘Fresh prawns, fresh mussels. You like?’

  Alastair shook his head. ‘No, thank you,’ he said, averting his eyes from the grimy pails of shellfish.

  The hawker persisted, and Alastair shook his head, pressing his palm down on the Austin’s horn. Why the devil Helena had moved from the privileged peace and quiet of Victoria Peak to the mayhem of Kowloon was beyond him. The protesting hen was caught. The rickshaw-boys dispersed. Traffic began to move again, and the hawker philosophically trotted off to tout his wares elsewhere.

  Alastair took a left turn into Nathan Road. At least the flat was near to a park. It would be easy to take Jeremy there for a game of football. Beneath his trim moustache his mouth tightened. He wanted to do far more for Jeremy than act as if he were merely a benevolent uncle. He wanted to become a father to him, and to Jennifer, and he knew that he would make a damned good father.

  He swerved to a halt outside a block of recently constructed flats. There had been rumours that the Royal Scots were to be stationed elsewhere. If it were true, then he wanted an official understanding between himself and Helena before they were separated for months, or even years. Not for the first time he wished that she had been widowed for longer than fourteen months. If she had been, he would have felt able to be far more forceful in his demands that she marry him. As it was, it was only reasonable that she wanted to wait a little longer. She was still grieving for Alan, still in love with him. And he knew she felt that to marry again so soon after his death would be an act of disloyalty.

  She had only been in the flat a week, but already it looked like a home. He walked into the large sunlit sitting-room, noting the silver-framed photograph of Alan that held pride of place on a lacquered cabinet. The children ran up to him gleefully.

  ‘Can we go to the park, Uncle Alastair? Can we play football?’ Jeremy asked, barrelling into him.

  Alastair swung him high on his shoulders, taking Jennifer’s podgy little hand and walking with them out into the garden where Helena was busy transferring geraniums from pots into a freshly dug flowerbed. ‘Trying to create an English garden?’ he asked with a grin.

  She smiled up at him. She was wearing a halter top that had seen better days, and a pair of shorts that looked as if they had once been Alan’s. There was a smudge of dirt on her cheek, and her hair hung in its usual untidy mess, cascading thickly over her shoulders.

  ‘And why not?’ she asked, rising to her feet to greet him, her full heavy breasts straining against the cotton of her halter top, a trowel still in her hand. ‘I find the sight of familiar flame-red geraniums distinctly comforting. I only wish primroses and violets would flourish here as well.’

  He didn’t kiss her, although he wanted to. She had, very early in their relationship, insisted that no sign of physical intimacy be demonstrated between them in front of the children, in case it disturbed them. He had respected her fears but was becoming increasingly frustrated by them. His mouth twisted ironically. He knew the conclusion Tom had drawn when Helena had announced she was moving into a flat of her own. He had assumed it was because they wanted more priv
acy in which to conduct their affair. He had been wrong. Although Helena had become his lover with a hunger and abandon he had found unnerving, nothing on earth would have induced her to do so beneath her own roof, where the children would be in earshot and where, by some freak chance, they might not only be overheard, but also seen.

  ‘I want to talk to you,’ he said, swinging Jeremy to the ground.

  ‘Oh, can’t we go to the park?’ Jeremy wailed disappointedly.

  Alastair ruffled his blond curls. ‘Later, Jeremy. I want to talk to Mummy for a little while.’

  At the expression on his face and the determination in his voice, Helena felt her heart sink. Why, oh, why couldn’t he be content with things as they were? He was the one who would be hurt by forcing matters to a head; the one who would feel rejected. And there was no need for it. She was happy in his company, he slaked her awful desperate sexual loneliness, but he wasn’t a replacement for Alan, and never could be. Now he was going to force her to say so.

  ‘Let’s find Jung-lu, children,’ she said wearily, ‘and ask her to look after you for a little while.’

  ‘Don’t want to stay with Jung-lu,’ Jennifer pouted, toddling at her side. ‘Want to stay with you and Uncle Alastair.’

  ‘Later, poppet.’ Helena gave her a kiss on her chubby cheek and handed her over to the amah. ‘Look after them for half an hour, Jung-lu. I shall be in the sitting-room with Major Munroe and I don’t want to be disturbed.’

  She led the way into the sitting-room and lit a Du Maurier, inhaling deeply. ‘I know what you’re going to say to me, Alastair, and I don’t want to hear it. Why can’t we continue as we are?’

  ‘Because the battalion may be moved soon and, if it is, I want there to be a formal understanding between us before I have to leave.’

  She looked across at him in affection and despair. He was so punctiliously correct, even now, when he was about to propose marriage. She knew that his reserved demeanour was occasioned by shyness, and it was one of the things she found endearing about him. He was so competent and in command in his professional life, and so vulnerable when it came to his personal life. She said, trying gently to steer the conversation away from themselves and on to a more general topic: ‘Why do you suppose the Royal Scots are to be moved? There won’t be many troops left for defence if they do go.’

  ‘The general opinion is that we’ve been here too long and that it’s a waste of our time. If war breaks out, it’s going to be in Europe, and that’s where the action will be. Not here. We’ve been warned to stand by for a return to England.’ He took the cigarette out of her hand and crushed it out in a nearby ashtray. ‘I want you to marry me,’ he said, a faint touch of colour on his cheeks betraying his inner agitation. ‘I know that you think it’s too soon for you to make such a decision, but circumstances aren’t normal, Helena. I don’t want to find myself whisked back to England with no idea when I will see you again. I want to know that I will see you again.’ He took her hands. ‘Please, Helena,’ he said gruffly, ‘I’m not very good with words, but I love you and I want to look after you.’

  A lump rose in her throat, and she felt her eyes begin to sting with tears. He was so good and so honourable, and she hated knowing she was going to hurt him. ‘I’m sorry, Alastair,’ she said, and her eyes weren’t on him but on the silver-framed photograph that stood on the lacquered cabinet. ‘It’s too soon for me. Please try to understand.’

  He swallowed hard. He had been speaking the truth when he had said that words did not come easily to him. He wasn’t a man who felt at ease in female company and, although he was thirty-two, there had been very few women before Helena, and none that he had considered marrying. It was Helena’s lack of strived-for glamour that had first attracted him. She was so fresh and open, so totally without guile. ‘I’m not asking for an early marriage, Helena,’ he said stubbornly. ‘I know that it would be too soon for you, but I want a commitment from you that we will marry some day.’ He took a ring-box from his pocket and added awkwardly: ‘I don’t know whether the size is right, but.…’

  It was a solitaire diamond. The tears fell down her face. It was so typical of him that he should have bought it, striving to please her, and that it was the very worst thing he could have done, for to be able to wear it she would have to remove Alan’s ring. She shook her head. ‘No,’ she said, her voice strangled in her throat. ‘I couldn’t.…’

  And then he took her right hand, and said: ‘On this hand, my love, just for a little while.…’

  His understanding shattered her, and she crumpled against him, crying unrestrainedly. He knew that she was crying for Alan. He rocked her against him, and when her tears subsided and he lifted her right hand and slipped the ring on to her fourth finger she allowed him to do so.

  ‘We’ll move it to the left hand later,’ he said, ‘whenever you are ready to do so.’

  She gulped and nodded, and wondered for the first time whether she really was a fool for refusing him. ‘Let’s have a cup of tea,’ she said thickly, and went into the kitchen to make it. Strong and sweet, and with milk, just the way he liked it.

  Julienne arched her spine, her spicy red hair curling damply around her face, her eyes closed, her lips parted as she cried out with pleasure.

  Derry Langdon lay naked beneath her, his large strong hands on the pale flesh of her buttocks. She was straddling his face, the glossy mat of her pubic hair skimming his nose and mouth as her hips moved with increasing speed. His mouth was open, hungry for her sweet juices, for that tiny pearl embedded in the velvety soft flesh. She moved faster, her eyes tight shut, her pretty, feline face contorted with pleasure. His fingers gouged into her buttocks, pulling her down, down, down on to his lips, his searching tongue, his nibbling teeth.

  ‘Bon dieu! D’un bon dieu!‘ Julienne shrieked ecstatically as his rough hot tongue lapped her clitoris, his lips sucking, his tongue probing. Her hips gyrated frenziedly as she slipped and slithered over his sweat-soaked face and then, with a scream, she arched backwards, her orgasm stabbing victoriously through her.

  His hand slid up to her hips and he twisted her beneath him frenziedly, his hard pulsating cock ramming deep within her throbbing moistness, his sperm shooting from him as he gave a long harsh cry of release.

  ‘That was good, n’est ce pas?‘ she said, her eyes dancing as she leaned on one elbow, looking down at him.

  Derry grunted, unable to speak, his heart slamming against his chest like a sledgehammer, his breathing that of a man who had just sprinted a mile in under four minutes.

  Julienne giggled and wound a lock of his hair around her finger. It was not straight and sleek like Ronnie’s hair, but crisp and curling and coarse-textured.

  ‘Perhaps you would like to do it again?’ she asked, her voice full of suppressed laughter.

  He opened one eye and looked up at her. It was the first time they had made love. He didn’t know what sexual athleticism her previous lovers had been capable of, but he was not going to try to compete with them. Death from a coronary in bed with another man’s wife was not part of his plans for the future.

  ‘You must be joking,’ he said expressively, and Julienne gurgled with laughter, sliding down beside him, her head on his chest, her lips against his sweat-damp skin.

  After a little while, when his breathing had returned to normal, he said: ‘Where does Ronnie think you are?’

  Her shoulders lifted against him in an expressive Gallic shrug. ‘I don’t know. The club… shopping.…’

  He slid his arm from beneath her and pushed himself up against the pillows, reaching for the cigarettes and lighter on the bedside table. ‘It’s some hell of a marriage you two have. Does he never question where you’ve been or how you’ve spent your time?’

  Julienne sighed. It was always the same. Sooner or later her lovers all became obsessed with curiosity about her marriage. Derry was simply displaying his interest much sooner than most She kneeled up on the crumpled sheets and faced him, her brea
sts high and pert, her nipples a rich ruby red, her hands clasped in pagan demureness on her naked lap. ‘I do not talk about my marriage with anyone,’ she said with a seriousness so out of character that he raised his eyebrows. ‘I am very happily married. I love Ronnie. Ronnie loves me. Whatever you and I do is fun, but it does not affect my marriage. Do you understand?’

  ‘Not in a million years,’ Derry said truthfully.

  A tiny frown puckered her brow, and he reached out for her, drawing her close against him. ‘OK, sweetheart. If that’s the way you want it, that’s the way it will be. No talk of Ronnie. Who the devil shall we talk about?’

  ‘Melissa,’ Julienne said promptly. ‘Do you know yet where she is? Is Raefe really keeping her a prisoner and, if he is, why are you not doing something about it?’

  This time it was Derry’s turn to frown. Melissa was his sister, and he hated the trial and the sordidness that had been publicly revealed, almost as much as his father had done.

  ‘Melissa is OK,’ he said abruptly. ‘She found the trial an ordeal, and who can blame her? She doesn’t feel strong enough to face people yet, not after some of the accusations Raefe’s defence counsel threw at her.’

  Julienne ran the tip of her finger down his sternum and on to the smooth hard flatness of his belly. ‘You mean he isn’t keeping her in the New Territories against her will?’ she asked disappointedly.

  ‘No.’ Her fingers were feather-light in his pubic hair, and he felt his heavy flaccid sex begin to stir.

  ‘That is a pity,’ Julienne said regretfully, cupping his testicles in the palm of her hand, enjoying the feel of the weight of them, watching with satisfaction as his splendid cock began once more to stir and swell.

  He closed his eyes. It was impossible that she could arouse him again and so soon but, all the same, it was pleasant to lie back and allow her to try. He had no intention of giving her any information about Melissa. Melissa would have to survive her own hell herself. He certainly wasn’t going to cross swords with Raefe Elliot and demand that he bring her back to the Elliot home on Victoria Peak.