CHAPTER TEN
HER heart was pounding as she tried to pull away from him, but his hold was too strong to break. She was like a willow caught by the wind ... like foam tossed on a wave ... drowning in the sea-blue eyes as he bent to her and his lips caressed her neck to her earlobe, and took from her lips her whisper of protest.
The tang of the sea was on his lips, and she seemed to hear the lash and roar of the tide. In the storm that was his kiss, she was helpless to do anything but submit to him, and when it was over she was as shocked as a Victorian miss kissed against her will. Her reaction was equal to her sense of outrage - she struck at him with her fist and caught him a blow across the cheek.
He laughed ... laughed and held her, his hair tousled on his brow, his eyes shimmering a flamy blue behind his smoky lashes.
'Who are you trying to punish, me or yourself?' he taunted.
'I hate you!'
'What, for waking you out of the dream into which you fell when Powers touched you? Did you really think his kisses so unique that you'd never respond to any other man-even to me?'
'You forced that kiss upon me!'
'And you liked it! You don't yet know yourself, Ruan Perry, let alone what makes a man. You don't want someone who bends the knee being gallant and tragic. You won't admit it, but the kiss taken is sometimes a lot sweeter than the kiss given. Who wants it to be tame and gift-wrapped? No real woman, and certainly no man with a bit of vitality in him.'
'No!' she flung back at him. 'What you want is a plaything. You're used to girls who think of love as a mere dalliance, like plucking a papaya from a tree, or taking a swim in a lagoon, but this isn't a tropical island and I'm not a papaya girl!'
He gave her that sardonic half-smile of his. 'You've got me all figured out, haven't you? The sea-rover who for the past fifteen years has lived and loved wherever his fancy took him. In some respects you are right, but in all my years of travelling I never left a broken heart behind me when I sailed away on the Pandora. Being no saint, I yet have not been quite a satyr.'
He let her go and walked over to the table on which he kept a few decanters and glasses. A glass stopper clinked in the ensuing quiet, and then she saw, through the moist mist of half-strange tears, that he was pouring wine into a couple of the glasses. He returned to her side, his fingers looped about the stems. 'This will settle your shaken nerves,' he said mockingly. 'I guess it isn't every day that you get kissed so thoroughly by a man you can't stand.'
'Wine - in the afternoon?'
'There's no set time for any sort of pleasure, Ruan.' He held out one of the glasses in which the wine had a ruby tint. 'I'm a Talgarth, remember. My grandmother used to drink champagne at breakfast.'
'I believe you take after her.'
'Do you?' His smile was enigmatical. 'Because she pleased herself and did as she fancied all her life?'
"You know what you want and you set out to possess it - as you repossessed the chateau and old treasures belonging to your family.'
'I'm an obstinate man, but I know there is a limit to what I can claim and what I can -win.' As he spoke he handed her one of the glasses, and the stem was warm from his touch. 'There's a dream I have, but being a Celt I know that certain things are in the hands of destiny and I can't force her hand.'
'You told me that dreams were not as satisfying as realities.'
'They aren't, Ruan, if they have to remain dreams.' He drank some of his wine. 'Perhaps you and I are doomed to it, tied to the mast of a dream ship we can never bring to harbour. I want to reach out for what I long for, but for the first time in my life I'm afraid. I think I would sooner keep half my dream than lose all of it, and I wouldn't have made such a compromise when I was younger. I'd have said "to the devil" and taken what I wanted. Tomorrow wouldn't have mattered to me.'
'Because you had the Pandora to sail away on?'
'I still have the Pandora. I may still sail away, taking but half a dream as my cargo.'
He tossed back his wine and brooded over the Persian puzzle that lay on his work bench, moving with lean fingers the ivory and ebony squares. 'Life is composed of lights and shades; of a daytime and a night-time. We can't snatch daylight out of the night sky, we can only wait for the dawn and hope it will be a shining one.'
He swung his glance to meet hers. 'Laugh, Ruan! You have heard Talgarth being sentimental and profound.'
But she didn't feel like laughing. Cradling her wine glass, she walked to a window that overlooked the sea, where the sun had faded away and misty violet shadows were creeping inland to enfold the chateau. How lonely it must be in the wintertime, and how cold then the sea for a man from the tropics.
She glanced at him as he removed the damp muslin from the half-finished figure of Undine. He met her wondering eyes. 'Would you like to pose for half an hour? I might as well try and get this finished before the roof of the cottage is mended and you return to Pencarne.'
'I - I'm not in costume.'
'You'll do as you are ... please sit for me on that leather hassock.'
She took the pose that now came naturally to her, her profile outlined by, the flow of her hair, a waiting look about the slim line of her body. It helped her to sustain the pose if she allowed her thoughts to wander, and upon this occasion they wandered to Avendon, to her stepsister Charme, who had beauty but was hardly the fragile figure of a man's dream. If Eduard had really wanted her, he could so easily have taken her away from Simon Fox ... but he hadn't bothered.
'He just wants someone to share the chateau with him,' Charme had said. 'Anyone will do ... even you, Ruan.'
Charme for once had been wrong about a man. Eduard was in love with a woman and uncertain of her. If he couldn't have her, he meant to sail away on the Pandora. Who was she, this dream girl he dared not treat lightly?
'All right, Galatea,' his voice seemed to come from a distance, 'you can relax now and go and get your dinner.'
She gave a little shiver and realized she was cold. Her left foot was numb as she stood up, and a sudden gust of wind launched itself against the walls and windows of the tower.
'It sounds as if a blow is getting up.' He veiled Undine in her clinging muslin and left her like a ghost in the studio. Lower down on the gallery they could hear the waves battering the cliffs, and from a window they saw the intermittent flash of the lighthouse that stood some miles beyond the long curve of the bay. A lonely sentinel guiding the ships past the rocks.
'What does it feel like,' Ruan asked, 'to be on a ship with a tempest blowing?'
'Frightening, but with an edge of excitement to it that makes one realize how good it is to be alive when the danger is past. The Pandora once rode out a typhoon that left her battered and becalmed off a small island I mapped and would like to revisit, some day. It was as if we had to go through those hours of hell in order to find that small paradise. If we'd seen it on an ordinary tropical morning, we'd have probably sailed past and forgotten it.'
'Then you believe that only in danger, or grief, or from being hurt, that we come alive to the wonder of being alive?'
'You have it in a nutshell, Ruan. How can there be a great love, for instance, unless we've known a lesser love? One that seemed to offer heaven while it lasted, but gave only a glimpse of the real thing. You can't be a ship's captain until you've been a sailor. You can't fall completely in love until you've fallen half-way.'
She looked at him, compelled by his eyes, drawn into them. 'What are you saying - ?'
'You know very well what I'm saying.'
She knew, and she didn't want to hear any more, she didn't wait to listen, and upon reaching her room she closed the door hastily behind her, as if to shut him out. But he hadn't pursued her. Only his words had done so, and they wouldn't be silenced as the wind grew rougher and the waves sounded as if they were clawing their way to the chateau.
The gale increased in force as Ruan and Yseult ate dinner together. Eduard didn't join them, and Jancey looked curiously grim as she served their pudding. They lingered awhile in the salon, but each gust of wind shook the windows and made them jumpy. 'Let's go to bed,' said Ruan, and they fled across the hall like a pair of half-frightened children. The door of Eduard's study was firmly closed, and there was no sign of Medevil. A clock chimed. It was half-past ten, and not a night to be on the moors, or the sea. '
Ruan was sleeping restlessly when long wails of distress awoke her. She sat up sharply and realized that they were coming from outside in the gale-lashed night. Someone flung open her door. 'Ruan, are you awake?' Yseult stood breathlessly in the doorway. 'I went down to find out what that fearful noise was, and Jancey told me a ship had gone on the rocks. Eduard and Medevil have gone off to help. Isn't it awful! People might be drowned!'
Ruan got quickly out of bed and began to fling on her clothes. Yseult switched on the lamp and stared at her. 'You look as though you've been crying,' she said.
'Let's go down. Those sirens sound close by and it's more than likely rescued passengers will be brought here to the chateau and we'll help Jancey make sandwiches and beds.'
These words acted like a spur and the next instant the two girls were racing downstairs to take their orders from Jancey, who was calm and practical and as a fisherman's daughter accustomed to these sudden disasters. When the seas were rough, she said, a ship could be swept into trouble in a matter of minutes, but the men of the lifeboat team would do their utmost and there would be few casualties if those Cornish lads had their way.
By midnight Yseult had fallen asleep, worn out on the sofa in the salon, but Ruan and Jancey were still busy in the kitchen, where a large pan of soup was simmering, along with pots of coffee. The table was loaded with meat and egg sandwiches, and as many beds as possible had been made up in readiness.
It wouldn't be long now before passengers off the ship began to straggle up the cliffs to the lighted comfort of the chateau. A couple of men had been up from the shore to say that the ship was a privately owned vessel from America, which had been heading for port when she had got herself snarled up on the rocks off St. Avrell. There was damage to her side and she was listing, but the lifeboat had now taken off her passengers and was heading back with them. The lifeboat would then return to the ship to take off the crew.
Ruan and Jancey exchanged a grave look, for in another hour or so the damaged ship would be half under water and it would be a dangerous task to land her crew. 'Have a mug of tea, lass.' Ruan took it gratefully and stood by the great fire drinking it, nervously alert, and trying not to let her imagination picture the high waves sweeping over the sloping decks of the ship, her sea-wet passengers now huddled together on the rescue boat that had to make its way around the cruel rocks to reach the shore, and safety.
They arrived half an hour later, a cold, shivering bunch of people, clutching a few belongings and weeping a little after their ordeal.
As they were ushered into the great warm kitchen, Ruan was ready with coffee, blankets, and a warm word of comfort. There was a couple of children whom she quickly stripped, towelled down, and tucked into a bed comfy with hot-water bottles. She fed them with onion soup and left them sound asleep, returning at once to the kitchen where a *******ed Yseult was handing out food and asking eager questions.
Everyone was eager to talk now they were safe on dry land and under the strong roof of the chateau. Ruan heard all they were saying in a kind of dream, in which she didn't cease for a moment to offer hand and heart to their troubles. One woman had lost her pearls; another was deeply concerned for a fellow passenger who had stayed with the crew for fear of overloading the rescue boat.
'He just wouldn't leave that sinking ship, honey. He said he'd wait for the return of the lifeboat, and that he was sure the good Lord would see to it that everyone was saved.'
'He sounds very brave,' said Ruan, folding a blanket closely about the woman's shoulders. 'Would you like another cup of coffee, or a rum toddy ?'
'Coffee, my dear.' A ringed hand caught at Ruan's. 'You Britishers come right out of your shells when other folks have got trouble, don't you? That boy on the ship ... he's English and the most charming creature. If anything happens to him, I shall be cut to the heart. Why, if I were thirty years younger-'
She winked, but had dozed off in her armchair before Ruan could pour out her coffee.
By half-past two the rescued people had been bedded down for the night, and the kitchen had grown quiet, with an air of waiting. Yseult yawned on a stool in front of the fire, but couldn't be persuaded to go to her own bed. 'I must wait up,' she said drowsily. 'I must see Eduard and be sure he's all right.'
'Mr. Eduard will be right as ninepence,' said Jancey. 'He's a seaman all through, and it's my belief that he pines to be back behind the helm. He's a Talgarth from the old days, when the men of this family were as rugged as my own two brothers, both of whom were out with their boat when the soldiers were brought off the beaches at Dunkirk. What a sight that was, to see the hundreds of little boats returning at dawn with those poor tired lads. We wept and we cheered - ah, I'm getting old, Miss Ruan, and I dwell on my memories, but it's good to have them, if a bit sad.'
Ruan listened to the wind and the pounding of the seas, and tonight her own memories seemed extra poignant. She gave a nervous start as the clock chimed and she counted the three strokes. The tide would be high and the lifeboat would have a struggle to bring those men ashore. Oh God, let them be safe, she prayed. Captain and crew, the lifeboat team, and that man who stayed with the sailors.
The wind had fallen and the first pale shadows of dawn were patching the sky when the sound of voices broke on the stillness ... male voices, hearty with relief, some of them laughing, and yet with a weariness underneath.
A few minutes more and the kitchen was humming with activity and redolent of wet clothing, the smell of the sea, and hot rum toddy. All was bustle and confusion as tall men clustered around the fire and took great bites out of man-sized sandwiches and gulped down the warming soup and coffee and hot sweet tea.
Ruan handed out blankets and searched the flock of men for Talgarth himself. He wasn't to be seen, but over by the door one of the rescued men caught her eye and she gave a strangled little cry of recognition. He was lifting a coffee mug to his lips and he saw her at exactly the same moment.
'Ruan!'
'Tarquin!'
She couldn't believe in the reality of him until she had pushed through the crowd of men and was actually touching his arm, and then clutching his hand. 'It was you!' she gasped. 'You stayed on board with the crew!'
'Yes,' he laughed. 'Ruan, this is unbelievable. You are real?'
'Of course.' He was the Tarquin of their very first meeting, his grey eyes brilliant in his handsome face, aware of her, remembering all and every moment of their friendship, up until the time the lightning had struck her from his memory for painful weeks. 'You recognize me,' she exclaimed.
'From the moment I saw you, a nymph among all those tousled sailors.'
'You didn't know me, Tarquin, after your accident at the theatre.'
'That was the strangest thing, but just now it all flashed back to me. Ruan - dear nymph."
'I'm so glad you're all right, and safe. It must have been awful, down there in the water. Tarquin, I'll get you a blanket-'
'No,' he caught and held her back. 'I had a sou'wester and I'm not too wet at all. Stay a moment more. Tell me what you're doing here - this is the house of Eduard Talgarth.'
'Yes - he was with the lifeboat crew. Did you see him?'
'Yes. Big dark chap doing the work of three men getting us off that tipsy ship. She had keeled right over when the Captain left her. I expect Talgarth is with Captain Lake right now. There were coastguards down on the beach, and several officials, and he seems himself to be the nabob of St. Avrell.'
She smiled a little. 'He's just Talgarth, and other people seem to lean on his strength and all that he knows about sea craft. I - I'm glad he's all right.'
'You haven't told me what you're doing here in Cornwall.'
'I'm holiday companion to Yseult - she's over there ladling out soup for that young sailor. Tarquin,' her eyes searched his, 'I heard you had gone to America. Mr. Strathern told Eduard-'
'Eduard?' he said whimsically.-'You were looking very pale and tense until I told you he was safe. You used not to like the man. He was your stepsister's beau, wasn't he?'
'No.' She was shaken by her own emphatic denial. 'She was only a distraction - just as I was.'
'You, Ruan?'
'Yes,' and she could even smile as she added, 'for you.'
'That isn't true,' he protested. 'We found so many things we both liked. Whenever we met it was like a holiday. Whenever we kissed it was as if the sun came out.'
'But love is a storm,' she heard herself saying, 'not just half a day's sunshine. Love is knowing that roses fade as well as bloom, and I think we wanted no more than those sunny hours on the river. We never looked beyond them.'
'We couldn't, not at that time.'
She looked into his eyes and saw a sadness steal into them. She guessed, then, why he had returned from America.
He nodded. 'My wife died very quietly, and it was a release for both of us. She could never have got well.'
'I'm so sorry, Tarquin.'
'But, Ruan, we can go to Rome. I asked you once before and you said you'd come and keep me company.'
'A holiday companion?' Her smile was curiously mature in that moment, and she saw beyond the attraction he had had for her at Avendon and beyond the lonely girl she had been at that time. He was so handsome, but now she knew that the prince had kissed her only half awake.
'You must be hungry,' she said. 'I'll tell Jancey you'd like some soup, or sandwiches.'
'Ruan-'
But she had turned away, and when she reached Jancey at the table she said to her: 'That nice-looking man by the door would like something to eat - I'm taking a flask of soup down to the shore. Mr. Talgarth is there and he'll be cold and famished.'
Jancey gave her such a warm look. 'I was that worried about him and was about to ask someone to take him a bite of food and something to drink. There's some cold fowl in the larder, Miss Ruan.'
'Put it between bread and add some pickles.' They smiled like conspirators. I'll go and put my raincoat on.'
'Yes, wrap up. It's a drear morning and misty it'll be down on the shore.'
The gale of the night had died right away, but the dawn had brought mist with it and through the haze the wailing of the seabirds had a desolate sound. Ruan's raspberry-red coat was a splash of colour on the path leading down to the shore, and the trees were rather like ghosts.
There was an oak tree at the bend of the path, where on a bright morning it was good to stand and take in the sea view. Ruan had just reached the tree when something moved, and she gave a startled little cry. A tall figure emerged from the other side of the ancient trunk, a shiny sou'wester dispelling the illusion that he was a spirit of the dawn.
They stood looking at one another, with the tails of mist twining around them. The mist was on his hair and it was unruly and very black. Beads of moisture clung to his cheekbones, and his eyes were intensely blue, like chinks of sky peeping through the early morning haze.
When he didn't speak, she held up the basket of chicken sandwiches and flask of hot coffee. She had decided that he would welcome a cup of coffee. 'I brought you something to take away the chills.'
'You brought yourself,' he said, in that voice that went dangerously soft whenever he spoke to her alone. 'I thought you'd be cosily chatting about old times with a certain friend of yours. Quite a surprise - for both of us - that he was aboard the Florina.'
'Has she gone right down, Eduard?'
'Yes. Nice little craft as well, but the rocks of St. Avrell are dangerous and they bit her in the side. She slowly flooded.'
'It was a miracle that her passengers and crew were saved.'
'A miracle for you, Ruan?'
'For me?'
'Tarquin Powers was among them.'
'I know.' She approached him under the tree. 'Shall I pour you a cup of coffee? It's strong and sweet, the way you like it.'
"You're being very nice to me,' he said whimsically. 'Grateful that I helped save your boy-friend ?'
'Don't-'
'You're always saying don't to me. What did you say to him?'
'That I was so glad he was all right - Eduard!' She cried out and dropped the food basket as strong, hurting hands took hold of her and crushed her against the oak tree, a prisoner in a red raincoat, her misty hair clinging like autumn leaves around her temples and her slender neck. 'Eduard-'
'So it's glad you are that he's safe and well, and when, may I ask, do the pair of you leave for Rome? I take it his memory is restored and you'll take up where you left off?'
'If you don't leave off bullying me-' Suddenly the strain of the night was taking its toll and tears filled Ruan's eyes. 'I was so worried - all night - even when there was so much to do - and now you're being mocking and cruel.'
'Worried - about me ?'
'Yes, is it so hard to believe?'
'You'd worry about a fly on the hob.' And then he fell silent and his blue eyes were roving her face, taking in each contour, each feature, especially the tears that crept down her cheeks until one of them disappeared inside her dimple. "You odd child, laughing and crying, and down here with me instead of up there with Powers.'
'Yes, isn't it crazy? Why do I bother to bring you coffee when he's so handsome and gallant - and no longer a married man?'
'Is that a fact?' Eduard's eyes narrowed dangerously. "Well, it looks as if you'll be taking him coffee from now on. I suppose this morning is just a bit of good will, because I helped to save him for you?'
'Brute!'
'Do you think he'd miss a kiss from the bride-to-be? All heroes get kissed.'
'Devil!'
He laughed - laughed and held her, there beneath the great misty canopy of the oak tree, and when he kissed her it wasn't anything but stormy heaven. All she felt was the touch of his lips on hers, warm and vital and tangy from the sea. She forgot everything else, even the dream girl about whom he had spoken in his studio last night.
'Ruan,' it was like the surf murmuring her name, 'you'd better not tell Powers about that kiss.'
'I never shall,' she murmured. He'll be leaving the chateau quite early, I think. I expect he has to be in Rome quite soon.'
'Where you'll be Joining him?'
'No. I shall be here in Cornwall, companion to Yseult, model for Undine.' She drew back a little and looked into Eduard's blue eyes. 'Who is she, the girl you can't have, who might send you sailing away with half a dream as cargo ? I feel I'd like to know.'
'Maybe you have a right to know.' He stroked from her wondering eyes a russet strand of hair. 'She's quite a bit younger than the leathery sinner who loves her. She has a heart that shines in her eyes, and a mouth that's like a rose to kiss. She has a tender spirit, and also a fighting one, and the second time I saw her I came close to carrying her off with me to my lonely chateau. I don't know why I didn't, but at that time she couldn't see the moon for the stars in her eyes, and I wanted her to love me.'
He paused, and then said softly, 'If she couldn't love me of her own free will, then the Pandora was always ready and waiting. If you can't love me, Ruan,. I'll sail away
with half a dream.'
'Me?' she whispered.
'Yes, from the moment you gave toe the cold shoulder in the foyer of the Mask Theatre, all eagerness to get to your seat to see the entrance of your princely actor.'
'But you came to Avendon to see my stepsister.'
'I came to see a girl called Ruan. St. Cyr talked about you, and I was intrigued by your name and I wondered if it could belong to a girl equally rare and lovely. Ruan,' a smile slashed his brown cheek, 'as a Celt you're supposed to have second sight. Couldn't you tell that I cared?'
'You were never as kind to me as you are to Yseult.'
'Yseult is a child, and a man isn't kind to the woman he loves - he's so full of wanting that he can't be anything but a little cruel. If you only knew, Ruan. If you only cared-'
'I do care!'
The world was blue in an instant, no clouds, no mist, no harsh waves pounding the shore. A ray of sun broke through from the east, and the birds began to wheel about with cheerful cries.
'This morning when I saw Tarquin it made me happy to see he was safe and well - but it made me come alive all through my body to hear that you were unhurt. Eduard, it isn't possible to love greatly until we have loved romantically. Tarquin was my romance ... you are my love.'
His eyes were brilliant when she revealed at last what he had waited to hear. With a vibrant tenderness he enfolded her in his arms, and her hair blew against his cheek as they stood together and watched the sun arise. The day would be a shining one, and the years ahead for both of them would be lonely no more.
'Eduard,' she murmured, 'your coffee will get cold.'
03-12-07, 06:26 PM
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