Ryman, Rebecca

by Olivia

  "You should not love a man such as me."

  "You are the only man I can ever love!"

  "Don't tempt your fates, Olivia. As it is you have produced turmoils in me that defeat me."

  Then allow those turmoils to lead you to love me! Her passionate plea remained unsaid. Instead, the hurt she felt emerged as anger. "And you cannot tolerate to be defeated in anything, is that it?"

  "I have never been defeated in anything." Supreme arrogance cemented the lines of his face into an aloof mould. "You ask for the impossible, Olivia," he repeated with a return to cold hostility.

  She was unbearably wounded. "I have never asked you for anything," she cried, "except for crumbs of your precious time!"

  "You ask without asking and I cannot refuse. It makes me angry that I should not be able to refuse even those crumbs."

  "Then don't see me anymore!" she flung back in his face. "I can do without you, Jai Raventhorne, believe me I can!"

  "In that case," he grated under his breath, "you shall." He vaulted into Shaitan's saddle and thundered off in a cloud of dead leaves and dust, leaving her choked with unexpended fury.

  Olivia cried silently all the way home. For three whole days after that, although she wandered the countryside far and wide in desperation and fear and bitter, bitter remorse, she did not see Jai Raventhorne. Her sense of loss was almost too much to bear.

  Once more they had come full circle.

  But then, on the fourth morning, he was with her again. Without a word he gathered her in his arms, crushing her to him as if he would never let her go again.

  "Wipe out everything I said," he whispered huskily, covering her face with fierce kisses with lips that trembled. "Erase every damned word from your mind as if it had never been said. Forgive me, forgive me . . ."

  She already had. With the magic wand of his touch the sorcerer had broken one spell and rapidly woven another to enmesh her once more in tangles of enchantment. She kissed away every line of unhappiness from his ivory face looking so wretched, to whisper back meaningless phrases of comfort.

  "It is a novelty for me, this ... relationship," he groaned, not letting her go, smoothing the hair back from her forehead. "Your love is like a mechanical toy for me. I see that it works but I am baffled at how. You should not make me angry like you do."

  She laughed at his stern frown, his aggrieved expression. "I make you angry?" She kissed the corners of his mouth. "You do have such infernal gall, my darling!"

  His sombre, worried grey eyes lit up in smiles. "Were it not for my infernal gall, would you love me at all?"

  "Perhaps not," Olivia conceded, starting to purr like a kitten just surprised with a bowl of cream. "But a little less gall would make me love you so much more."

  "Love me more?" She laughed delightedly at his alarm as he swore. "I cannot assimilate what you give me now. How can you punish me with even more?"

  But she knew that he teased her, for in his eyes there was tenderness such as she had never seen before. He had brought her a gift, glass bangles in an iridescent display of startling colours that winked at her as they caught the early sun.

  "Oh, Jai..." She was profoundly moved. "They're so lovely, I can't bear the thought of wearing them in case they break." Nevertheless, she allowed him to slip them over her wrist one by one, his huge brown hands clumsy in the unfamiliar effort.

  "I have given you nothing," he lamented, once again unhappy, "can give you nothing to compare with what you give me. Tell me what would please you, anything at all—jewels, gold, beautiful clothes," he spread his hands helplessly, "anything."

  Give me part of yourself. . .

  She held up her hand and turned it around slowly, thrilling to the gentle tinkles as the glass bracelets nudged each other. "What you give me now is enough. I have no need for jewels or clothes."

  "But I thought all women liked jewels and pretty clothes."

  She surveyed him coolly through narrowed eyes. "The kind of women you are used to no doubt do. I would be obliged if you would not include me among them."

  "Christ!" He threw up his arms. "I thought I had learned everything that could be learned about women in my travels, but a sassy upstart from California now tells me that my education is incomplete! All right," he leaned and kissed the tip of her nose, "since I insist on giving you something in return at least for crumbs of your precious time, name it."

  Olivia felt her throat tighten as she stared back into those bottomless dove grey pools of haunting tenderness that ravaged her dreams each night. Just tell me once, only once, that you love me . . .

  She smiled. "I would like to know more about these travels on which you received such a comprehensive education in women," she suggested. "It might suffice to wipe out your crippling debt to me."

  He laughed. It was one of those rare mornings when nothing disturbed the harmony of their communion, when he was willing to open up to her at least that part of his life that he considered dispensable. Gratified even to be admitted into the fringes of his carefully camouflaged world, Olivia listened entranced. With charm, with humour, he regaled her with anecdotes of his adventures in China, in America, in the Pacific, tantalising her with mention of women who had crossed his path but without ever elucidating, obviously pleased with her occasional displays of stabbing jealousy.

  "You should be ashamed of making so many immoral admissions," she told him petulantly at one point.

  "Would you be better pleased if I were celibate?"

  "I don't think you could be, even if you tried!"

  "Not so." Not even a dent showed in his complacency. "I could be anything if I tried."

  "In that case, try not to be so conceited!" she snapped.

  "You see? You do ask the impossible!"

  It was a flawless morning. Olivia wanted it never to end, but then it did. He swept her up in his arms and held her close, that hated leash loosening in a rare moment of impulsiveness. His cheek against hers was stubbled but in that roughness there was such sensuality that Olivia felt almost giddy. "We might have been in the same town in America and not know it, do you realise that, Jai?"

  "Unlikely. I would have known; the wind would have carried your scent to me."

  She went weak with the feel of his flesh, with the caress of his groping fingers. "Even though I might have been in pigtails?"

  "Even though you might have been unborn. Olivia, I . . ." The words stuck in his gullet like a fish bone that would not be expelled.

  Say it, say it, please my darling one ...

  He could not. Instead, he smiled and shook his head and, one last time, kissed her with that fragile restraint hanging by a thread. And then he was gone. But with gratitude Olivia swept up the crumbs he had left behind; when starving, even a morsel or two helps.

  Borne aloft on clouds of uncertain direction, in her linear preoccupations Olivia noticed little of what was happening in the house. She was vaguely aware that her aunt and Estelle barely spoke to each other and that her uncle was seldom home except at night. Therefore, it was with a considerable sense of shock that she returned from her ride one morning to find Lady Bridget crying. Olivia had never seen her aunt in tears. It was a sight that she found horribly distressing. She knelt and took her aunt in her arms, plunging straight into the heart of the matter. "Estelle?"

  Lady Bridget nodded but it was some time before she could speak. "I don't know what to do with her, Olivia, I just do not know what to do!" Eyes streaming, she blew her nose and looked at her beseechingly. "He's a frightful man, Olivia, that Hicks. You've met him; you saw how he slurps his tea and drops his aitches. I couldn't understand anything he said! And Estelle seems besotted with him, at least with the idea of going on that stage ..."

  For all Olivia's sympathy for her aunt, it was difficult to know how to console her. Despite the unsavoury Mr. Hicks, whom she had met once when he came to tea, she couldn't help feeling it was all rather an overblown storm. Also, as she pointed out now to her aunt with as much diplomacy as she
could muster, if most of her friends had been given roles in the pantomime, what was the harm if Estelle had too?

  Lady Bridget smarted. "I'm surprised that Celia Cleghorne should allow Marie such licence! One could not, of course, expect any better from the Smitherses considering . . ." Her mouth tightened as she broke off.

  "But Charlotte is a very good friend, Estelle says. Surely—"

  "Good friend, my eye! She's meeting Clive behind my back, you know. Jane Watkins saw them on the river one evening. He was holding her hand."

  Loyally, Olivia tried to salvage the situation. "Clive is a fine young man, Aunt Bridget. With his commission in the Navy he has a good future ahead of him."

  "You don't understand, Olivia!" She looked aghast. "Herbert Smithers might be a big gun in the Company but it's no secret that his grandmother was the daughter of a native woman who kept boarders, one of whom happened to be a Smithers. Of course they deny it, but blood tells, you know. Sooner or later they'll have a tarred baby in that family, mark my words, and I'd rather strangle Estelle than risk her being its mother!" Suddenly her anger vanished and, with a quiet sob, she buried her face in her hands. "Oh God, oh God, how I wish we had never come to this bloody, benighted country!"

  Olivia was taken aback by the obvious depth of her aunt's unhappiness; she had never known Lady Bridget to curse before. "Estelle is going through a difficult transition," she said comfortingly. "It's a passing stage; she'll get over it soon. We all did, you know."

  "You did?" Her aunt's puffy eyes welled again as she pressed her hand. "My dear, there was a time when I was concerned about your influence on Estelle, but I was wrong. You have come as a blessing for her. If she is refusing to benefit by your example, it is she who is to blame. How I wish Estelle had some of your moral strength!"

  Olivia flushed and quietly left the room.

  Driven by guilt at her thoughtless negligence and her aunt's painful sufferings, however trivial, Olivia determined to tackle Estelle without further delay. With her cousin's increasing absences from the house, the evening sorties along the Strand had become infrequent. Now, manipulating another carriage drive, Olivia plunged into her self-assigned duty with blunt lack of preamble. "Are you sincerely interested in Clive, Estelle, or is it just another frivolous flirtation?"

  Estelle's smile was secretive. "Wouldn't you like to know!"

  "Yes, I would! You're being dreadfully unfair to John, who isn't here, and you're making your mother very unhappy."

  "Good! I'm sick of people taking me for granted."

  "Nobody takes you for granted, Estelle. On the contrary—"

  "Papa does! He doesn't even know whether I'm dead or alive."

  "That's self-pitying nonsense! He's been very busy with all these problems at work. As for your mother—"

  "I'm going to do that pantomime, Olivia," her cousin interrupted, her chin set with stubbornness. "Mama will not stop me this time! Hicks has agreed to all the costume changes Mama wanted, but you can't go on stage without these special cosmetics, Clarissa says ... Oh, hell and damnation!" She slumped back angrily and crossed her arms. "I can't understand what all the blasted fuss is about."

  As a matter of fact, neither could Olivia. "Well, it's not me you have to convince," she said, sighing wearily. "Why not put it to your father and get him on your side?"

  "Papa?" Estelle's laugh was ugly. "Papa can't see beyond that precious coal of his. He certainly can't see me anymore!"

  "But you know that coal is important to him, Estelle."

  "Oh yes, I do know that—far more important than his daughter!"

  Olivia searched her cousin's face, suddenly surprised to see in it signs she had not noticed before. There were dark smudges beneath her usually sparkling eyes, now dull and listless. Her childish features were drawn, her moon face somehow thinner. Unhappiness, tension—these were now writ large across her expression instead of mere brattish discontent. Estelle was obviously as unhappy as her mother: That she had not had the sensitivity to observe that before filled Olivia with renewed remorse. Quickly, she pulled her cousin into her arms.

  "You must never, never think that your father doesn't love you anymore, darling," she said, now identifying the nub of Estelle's brooding misery. "You are dearer to Uncle Josh than anything else in his life, you must know that."

  Slouched against her shoulder, Estelle's body trembled. "Not anymore, Olivia, not anymore." She began to sob.

  "You silly goose. People who love you don't always tell you that they do, do they? The language of the heart is often silent, you know."

  Estelle paused in her sobs. "It . . . is?"

  "Of course. One just has to close one's eyes and listen."

  "But that isn't enough . . .!"

  The carriage was clip-clopping leisurely along the river front. Unconsciously, Olivia gazed over her cousin's shoulder to where the lofty multi-masts of Raventhorne's provocative clipper raked the low-slung clouds. "Sometimes one has to make it enough, Estelle ..."

  Sitting up to dry her eyes, Estelle seemed to accept Olivia's well-meaning platitudes. "Yes, I suppose you are right," she said with a long sigh that was wistful and resigned. "I too will try to make it enough for me."

  Olivia shifted uneasily at the blithe facility of her cliches: Had she been able to make it enough for herself . . .?

  Without saying anything further to her woebegone cousin, Olivia decided to accost her uncle with his aberrations towards his daughter some day soon.

  Jai Raventhorne did not appear by her side the next morning, nor the morning following that. Balanced precariously over an abyss of doubts and uncertainties, Olivia was devoured by conjectures and apprehensions. Was he ill? Merely too busy? Suddenly no longer caring...? It was this last with which she punished herself into renewed fear and penitence. Had she offended him in any way, said something that had made an unwonted dent in that seemingly unbreakable carapace? Had he tired of her, perhaps?

  Once more Olivia panicked. Jai Raventhorne to her now was like an addiction as deadly and as demanding as that of the opium he despised so passionately. She could no longer survive through the day without even those pathetically fleeting moments upon which hung her sanity. He had become her opiate, her daily ration of fulfilment both physical and mental. And in the realisation of her mortifying dependence on his whims, anger stirred and stayed. He had no business to subject her to such arbitrary and undeserved torture. She had every right to seek him out and demand some straight answers. She could not, would not, continue with these debasements—waiting upon his fancies, dancing to his tunes, sublimating her good sense in the erratic patterns of his perversities. She had forgiven him too often. She would not do so again.

  Against all her better judgements, Olivia did something she had never done before. She rode out to Chitpur early one morning and banged resolutely on the large black gate. The man who irritably swung back the smaller inner opening was neither Bahadur nor any other of Raventhorne's staff she could recognise. "I wish to see the Sarkar." Spurred by the anger she no longer took trouble to conceal, Olivia spoke firmly in Hindustani and referred to Raventhorne as she had heard others of his staff do. But behind her haughty mask there was diffidence; was he perhaps still in bed? With Sujata . . .?

  "The Sarkar, I regret, is not at home." The man had obviously recognised her. A note of respect had replaced the earlier irritation.

  She felt her spirits tumble and in her bitter disappointment Olivia became negligent of what this man might think of her probings. Was the Sarkar, perhaps, on the Ganga? The man thought it possible but he could not say for certain. When was he likely to return to the Chitpur house? He was unable to make a commitment, for the Sarkar had made none. She knew the man was stonewalling, and very possibly under instructions. It was only because of her galloping panic that Olivia lowered herself to ask the one question she had vowed not to.

  "Is . . .," what would it be appropriate to call her? ". . . the lady then at home, perhaps?"

  There was
no noticeable change in the man's expression. "No. The lady has gone away."

  Panic surged again—gone away? With him? Why, it was cruel! How could she ever bear that? "Do you know where she has gone?"

  A flicker appeared in the man's eyes. Amusement? He shook his head. "She has gone where she came from."

  Olivia knew it was hopeless. She left without leaving a name, aware that she had made a fool of herself. Sitting desultorily by the riverside, alone and utterly wretched, she spent an hour cursing Jai Raventhorne for having reduced her to such a pitch of humiliation, then another hour cursing herself for allowing him to. And then she returned home to lock herself in her room to feign a migraine and to cry. Jai had turned her into a brainless puppet, a slave; she would not see him again. If it was the last thing she did, she would exorcise him from her heart, erase him from her mind, excise him forever from her life.

  But in the morning, near the temple in Kalighat, Jai Raventhorne suddenly materialised beside her out of thin air. One moment she was riding through the street on her own and the next moment Shaitan was almost rubbing flanks with Jasmine who, out of surprise, nearly reared and threw her. Olivia gave a startled cry but Raventhorne had already galloped out of earshot with a careless look over his shoulder. Dazed into submission, Olivia followed him out of the bazaar. As soon as they were safely in the open, she flung herself off her mount and into his arms, shaking, sobbing, crippled with relief that he had not abandoned her after all.

  He gentled her with loving hands and soothing words, surprised by the force of her passion. "Why were you looking for me yesterday?"

  "Why?" Olivia wrenched herself free from his grasp and, reminded of her exploding rage, pummelled his chest with a shower of flailing fists. "How dare you ask me such a dumb, stupid, infantile question! It is an eternity since I have seen you!"