A Multitude of Sins

by Margaret Pemberton

  Elizabeth would be furious, of course, when she was led to his table, but he was confident that she wouldn’t walk away. That she would, at least, stay and have lunch with him. It would be the first time that he had been able to arrange matters so that they were on their own. His drink was finished, and he ordered another. It had been a long time since he had been in such determined pursuit. Women were to be enjoyed and not taken too seriously. The last thing he wanted was a heavy-weather love-affair. He usually knew, instantly, whether a woman would be troublesome or not, and it his sixth sense gave out alarm bells, then he left her well alone. He wanted fun, not a divorce or a rift with Julie.

  He sipped his whisky and soda thoughtfully. It was hard to tell whether Elizabeth Harland would be trouble or not. There was something about her that teased and tantalized him, something he couldn’t quite define. There was a self-contained, untouched quality about her that he found sexually very disturbing. A woman so sensually beautiful had no right to carry with her such an air of unconscious innocence. Not for the first time he found himself wondering what her sex life with Adam Harland was like, his penis swelling hot and hard against the tight line of his trousers. My God, but there were one or two things he’d like to do to her that would take that untouched look from her eyes! He wondered if her pubic hair was as silver-blonde as the hair she always wore so sleekly coiled. Why the devil did she never wear it down, loose around her shoulders? He imagined it sliding through his fingers, brushing across his stomach, his thighs.

  The doors at the far end of the room swung open, and she stepped into the room. The maítre d’hótel was at her side instantly. He saw her ask for Julienne’s table, her eyes flicking around the room in an effort to locate her. He saw the maítre d’hótel mouth the words, ‘This way, madame,’ and begin to lead the way between the white-naperied tables and carver chairs, to where he waited for her. As they approached the maítre d’hótel’s eyes were expressionless. Ronnie’s generous tip had ensured his wholehearted complicity.

  Elizabeth’s eyes met his, and he saw a pucker of puzzlement crease her forehead. A brilliant turquoise skirt swirled around her long sun-kissed legs; a silk shirt of palest mauve tantalizingly skimmed her breasts; her sandals were high and delicate, tiny gold straps so insubstantial he wondered how on earth she could possibly walk in them.

  He rose to meet her, his smile wide. ‘I’m glad you could make it, Elizabeth. You look fantastic.’

  Her green-gilt eyes were uncertain. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Where is Julienne?’

  The maítre d’hótel was pulling out her chair. Ronnie waited until she was seated, and then, sitting opposite her, said: ‘Julienne was called away. She asked me to take her place. Are you familiar with the menu here? The seafood is out of this world.’

  Elizabeth wasn’t interested in the seafood. She said coldly: ‘I don’t believe you, Ronnie. You’re lying.’

  His grin widened. ‘Of course I am,’ he said with what he hoped was endearing charm, ‘I always do.’

  She pushed her chair back, about to rise to her feet, and he shot his hand out, circling her wrist restrainingly. ‘Don’t go, Elizabeth. I want to talk to you. Please stay.’

  For once he looked and sounded sincere. She sank back in her chair. Perhaps he really did want to talk to her. Perhaps Julienne really was in trouble.

  ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly. ‘Could I have a Martini, please? With lemon.’

  He ordered her drink, ordering himself another whisky and soda. He was beginning to feel pleasantly inebriated, and his words were slightly slurred as he said: ‘You really are the most difficult girl to speak to alone, Elizabeth. I had no choice but to resort to subterfuge.’

  The waiter was impatient to take their order. ‘I’ll have the melon and a plain omelette,’ Elizabeth said, without looking at the leather-bound menu. She was wrong in thinking that Ronnie wanted to talk to her about Julienne. He was making yet another pass, and the sooner she could decently take her leave of him, the better.

  ‘I’ll have the mixed hors-d’oeuvres, the beef Wellington, and a bottle of burgundy,’ Ronnie said, feeling eminently pleased with himself. As the waiter departed, he took her hands across the table. ‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth, beautiful Elizabeth, don’t look so cross. I only want to spend a little time with you.’

  She tried to pull her hands free, but his grasp tightened. She wondered how much he had had to drink.

  ‘We’ve been through this scene before, Ronnie,’ she said with as much patience as she could muster. ‘I like you a lot. I think you’re amusing and good fun, and I definitely do not want to have an affair with you. Now can we let the subject drop? Otherwise we’ll no longer even be friends.’

  The wine waiter poured the wine. Ronnie tasted it and signalled him to fill their glasses. ‘You have entirely the wrong idea about me,’ he said, ignoring his hors-d’úuvres and drinking the wine appreciatively. ‘I’m not at all the womanizer I’m made out to be. The fact is’ – he imprisoned her hands once more, the slur in his words more pronounced than ever – ‘that I’m terrified of women. What I need is a woman to be a friend to me, to understand me, to.…’

  She didn’t hear the rest of his sentence. Over his shoulder at a nearby table was a familiar figure. She felt her cheeks flush scarlet as Ronnie continued to grasp her hands tightly and as Raefe Elliot’s eyebrow quirked enquiringly.

  ‘Ronnie! For God’s sake let go of my hands!’ she hissed, aware that it wasn’t only Raefe who was casting a curious look in their direction.

  Ronnie was reluctant to do so, but the impossibility of both holding her hands and drinking his wine prompted him to acquiesce. He reached out for his glass and accidentally sent it flying. A crimson stain flooded the virgin-white tablecloth, sprinkling her turquoise skirt with ugly dark spots.

  Ronnie looked at the damage in bemusement. He was drunker than he had thought. Which was foolish of him when there was so much at stake. Elizabeth was pushing her chair away from the dripping table, a waiter was rushing over to them with a clean cloth, and Raefe Elliot was standing over them both, saying to Elizabeth in lazy amusement: ‘Glasses are very unstable things in your vicinity, aren’t they, Mrs Harland? Allow me.’ And he took a napkin from the table and unceremoniously blotted the stains on her skirt while the waiter stood by superfluously.

  ‘I think this lunch has come to its natural end, don’t you?’ he said in a matter-of-fact tone and, without waiting for her reply, took her hand, drawing her to her feet.

  ‘Give my good wishes to Julienne,’ he said laconically to Ronnie, who was gazing at him in open-mouthed bewilderment. ‘Tell her I’ve escorted her friend home and that no damage has been done.’

  ‘Just a minute…,’ Ronnie protested. ‘What the hell…?’

  The expression on his face was so comic that Elizabeth found herself laughing.

  ‘’Bye, Ronnie,’ she said and, feeling as if she were drunk herself, she allowed Raefe Elliot to lead her from the room and out through the Peninsula’s marbled lobby and into the street.

  Chapter Nine

  He made no attempt to release his hold of her as they stepped out beneath the porte-cochére. She was aware of the doorman bidding him a respectful goodbye; of a long, low and sleek ice-blue Lagonda sliding to a halt in front of them; of the bellboy who had driven it from its parking-place stepping out and opening the passenger-seat door for her.

  She tried to regain control of the situation; to behave with her usual cool dignity.

  ‘Thank you for escorting me from the restaurant,’ she began, her voice so shrill and cracked she barely recognized it as her own. ‘I’m very grateful, but I have my own car and—’

  ‘I’m sure you have.’ There was a quirk of laughter at the corner of his mouth and utter assurance in his eyes. ‘But as I couldn’t help but notice that you had left your lunch untouched I thought we would rectify matters.’

  ‘I’m sorry, I couldn’t.…’ Her throat was so dry she could
hardly speak. Dear God in heaven! If she couldn’t sustain a rational five-minute conversation with him, how could she ever hope to survive lunch?

  ‘I insist,’ he said and, though his amusement at her resistance was naked, his dark rich voice brooked no argument.

  ‘I have engagements.…’

  His hand was beneath her arm. He had replaced the bellboy at the door of the car and was standing so dose to her that she could smell the faint tang of his lemon-scented Cologne, feel the warmth of his breath on her cheek. She was excruciatingly aware of his lean hard strength, of whipcord muscles beneath his lightweight jacket, of his fingers on the bare flesh of her arm burning like a brand.

  ‘Break them,’ he said, and she could see flecks of gold near the pupils of his eyes and a tiny white scar knifing down through his left eyebrow.

  Her breath was so tight in her chest that she could hardly breathe. No one, ever before, had held her in quite such a way. There was ownership in his fingers. Utter assurance. She knew she couldn’t possibly go with him. Adam would be furious. They would be bound to be seen, and she had told him that she was lunching with Julienne. The complications when she tried to explain to him would be endless. His fingers tightened fractionally on her arm, and she felt a sudden giddy surge of elation. She didn’t care. It was only a lunch. She was doing nothing wrong. Nothing she need be ashamed of.

  ‘All right,’ she said, sitting down in the passenger-seat, her legs trembling violently. ‘I will.’

  He grinned down at her, white teeth flashing in his sun-bronzed face. He had never had the slightest intention of allowing her to refuse. He strode round to the other side of the car, opening the driver’s door and slamming it behind him.

  ‘Now,’ he said, as he punched the engine into life, ‘tell me what the hell you were doing having lunch with a womanizer like Ronnie Ledsham?’

  Never had she believed it possible for anyone to drive down Nathan Road at such speed. Richshaws, taxi-cabs, bicycles, hawkers, all were circumnavigated with a skill and dexterity that left her breathless.

  ‘It was unintentional,’ she said as they rocketed past Kowloon Park and the road that led to Helena’s little flat ‘I thought I was going to meet Julienne.’

  He shot her a swift glance, and she looked away from him quickly, disconcerted by the immediate understanding she saw in his eyes. It was as if there was already a bond between them; as if they were already speaking in the verbal shorthand of long-married couples. But not all couples. Adam would not have understood her so completely. He would have been puzzled. He would have asked her what she meant. Why she hadn’t met Julienne as she had intended. Why Ronnie had been there in her place.

  She said, trying not to think of Adam, hating her feeling of disloyalty: ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To a small restaurant I know near Sham Tseng.’

  His hands on the Lagonda’s wheel were sure and strong. She wondered what such hands would be like on her naked flesh, and was appalled at her lasciviousness. Panic swamped her. She shouldn’t have come. She should have thanked him for extricating her from Ronnie’s company and she should have declined his invitation to lunch and driven straight home by herself. She wasn’t Julienne, she wasn’t accustomed to dealing with a man as fast and sophisticated as Raefe Elliot A man who kept his own wife a prisoner. A shiver ran down her spine. Who was to say what he would do with her if she was to disappoint him?

  ‘We’re nearly there,’ he said, and as he shot her a down-slanting smile her panic ebbed. She was behaving like a sixteen-year-old on a first date. Nothing was going to happen to her. She wasn’t going to disappoint him, because he wasn’t going to ask anything of her. They were going to have lunch together. They were going to exchange the kind of conversation they would have exchanged if they had met at one of the Nicholsons’ or one of the Ledshams’parties. And afterwards she would tell Adam and they would laugh about Ronnie’s idiocy and its unexpected consequences and she would probably never see Raefe Elliot again, not on his own.

  The Lagonda slid to a halt outside a small plain-fronted building, its windows covered by blinds. ‘It’s all right,’ he said as he saw the expression on her face. ‘It’s not a Triad-run gambling-den. It’s a very respectable restaurant.’

  When they stepped inside she wondered if she were dreaming. Small tables were covered with white damask tablecloths; glasses sparkled; silver gleamed. It was like being in a small restaurant on the Left Bank in Paris, not a Chinese restaurant fifteen miles from the centre of Kowloon.

  He ordered dim sum and an ice-cold bottle of Mou Tai, and it was obvious that he was as well known to the head waiter as he was to the head waiter at the Peninsula and at the Repulse Bay.

  ‘It’s little-known but patronized heavily by those who do know it,’ he said as the waiter hurried away with their order.

  ‘And who is it that knows of it?’ she asked curiously.

  ‘Government officials, high-ranking civil servants, people who want to get away from the tumult of Victoria and Kowloon for an hour or two.’

  She nodded. She could see at a glance that it was both exclusive and expensive. She had asked for a Cinzano, and as she sipped her drink he said: ‘Until now, you’ve never given me a chance to say how sorry I am for hurting your feelings, but I am. However’ – his eyes held hers steadily – ‘I’m not sorry for what I said. It still stands. If your husband thinks he can come out here and enjoy a skirmish with the Japs that will enable him to return to England a hero, he’s badly mistaken.’

  She wondered why she felt no anger. She said, returning his gaze unflinchingly: ‘My husband was awarded the Military Cross in the Great War. He is already a hero.’

  ‘I never said he wasn’t a brave man,’ Raefe said placatingly. ‘Only that he was ignorant of the situation out here, and that his view is a foolish one.’

  The dim sum were wheeled to the side of their table on a trolley. As the steaming bamboo baskets were transferred to their table, she said stubbornly: ‘Maybe so, but it’s a view that is held by a lot of people who have far more experience of the Orient than Adam. Sir Denholm Gresby is in agreement with him, and Alastair Munroe, and no one could accuse Alastair of being a fool.’

  ‘I could,’ said Raefe with annoying equanimity. ‘Alastair is a military man, and like most military men he isn’t over-blessed with imagination. He’s been told by his company commander that the Japanese pose no real threat, and he accepts what he is told. But he’s wrong.’

  ‘And Sir Denholm?’ she asked, knowing very well what he would think of Sir Denholm.

  He snorted in derision. ‘Denholm Gresby is a classic example of British obdurateness. He actually believes that the Japanese can’t see in the dark and that we need never fear any night attacks from them! He’s an old buffer who should be pondering the mistakes his kind made in the last war, not seeking to repeat them if there’s another!’

  She suppressed a smile. He was almost as vehement about Sir Denholm as Sir Denholm was about him. She said with genuine curiosity: ‘Have you lived in Hong Kong all your life?’

  ‘I was born here, but I was educated in the States.’

  ‘And you’ve never considered returning to America to live and work?’

  The grin was back. ‘No, Hong Kong is in my blood and in my bones. It’s where I’m happy and it’s where I belong.’

  She suppressed a smile. Ronnie had said that the Elliots were an old New Orleans family and, although Raefe was adamant that Hong Kong was where he belonged, she could quite easily imagine him strolling down the Vieux Carré, his hair curling low in the nape of his neck, as swashbuckling and as handsome as a legendary riverboat gambler. There was a fearlessness about him, a daring, an insolence towards life that both excited and intrigued her. She couldn’t imagine him ever compromising, ever settling for less than he wanted. Raefe Elliot wouldn’t have abandoned his studies at the Royal Academy to please anyone. Nor would he have left London for Hong Kong if it was in London that his future car
eer was being forged.

  His hands reached out across the table and took hers, and at his touch an impulse of sensuality went up inside her like a flare.

  ‘What are you thinking about?’ he asked disconcertingly, ‘Your eyes are unhappy. I want to know why.’

  She said, with an ease that stunned her: ‘I was thinking about my music. About how music long to be back on a concert platform again. How desperately I resent the opportunities I am missing!’

  ‘You’re a pianist?’ There was surprise in his voice, and then he looked down at her hands. At the long, slender, supple fingers, the short oval-trimmed nails, and he said: ‘Tell me about it. Tell me all about yourself. Your dreams. Your wishes. Your fears.’

  She made no attempt to free her hands from his. She said: ‘For as long as I can remember, I have played the piano. It is so much a part of my life that I cannot imagine existing without it. It is what I am. A pianist. And when I am deprived of the opportunity to develop my talent and to progress, as I am now, then I feel.…’ She opened her hands expressively. ‘Then I feel as if I’m being bodily starved.’

  He nodded, and she knew that he did not think she was being histrionic. That he understood. She said: ‘I think I was born with the ability to play the piano. My mother was very musical and she taught me from when I was very small. Later, when I was six, I was professionally taught, and once it was explained to me how the lines and dots worked I was able to read music very quickly, and by the time I was seven I could sight-read. I learned so fast once I had started that it was as though it was something I already carried inside me, as though I knew how to play without needing to be taught.’

  ‘What happened?’ The dim sum was forgotten. The waiters were watching them with resignation, sensing that it was going to be a long time before they took their leave.