White Heat (18 page)

‘And now that the nightmare is ended I would like to thank you, Mr. Willoughby, for reaching such a sensible decision about us last night. You were absolutely right about emotions getting the upper hand in primitive surroundings ... and at least once we’re on board there,’ nodding towards the packed decks of the
Ariadn
e’s
sister ship, the
Caroline
,
‘we’ll be more or less back where we started. No changes, everything back beautifully to the beginning again. And I’m referring to you and me, of course!’

Kent said nothing.

‘If ever we look back upon the past few days we’ll shudder a bit, and regard them as a nightmare ... But I expect we’ll quickly forget them, don’t you?’

‘I expect so.’

Karin decided that she was torturing herself, but she didn’t really mind.

‘Just now you congratulated me on behaving myself, but I’ve hated every minute of
it ...
I really have!’

Once more Kent said nothing.

Karin clenched her hands until they were small fists pressed fiercely together in her lap.

‘
Every — single — minute of it
!’

They were received on board the
Caroline
by a full complement of excited passengers and a band of attentive officers, and every amenity the ship boasted was placed at their disposal. A luxury cabin on the most exclusive deck was allocated to Karin, and she had an idea that Kent was equally comfortably accommodated. No sooner had they set foot on board than a couple of telegrams were handed over. Karin’s was from Mrs. Makepiece, now safely arrived in Sydney, and anxious that she should rejoin her as soon as possible. Kent’s, judging by the gratified expression on his
face, was from someone whose friendship he valued.

He looked up at Karin when he had read the message and smiled at her with a hint of his old quizzicalness.

‘Mrs. Montague,’ he said. ‘She’s been plaguing the
Ariadne’s
offices and the rescue ships almost without ceasing, or so I gather. I’ll have to get in touch with her.’

‘Yes, I should do that,’ Karin replied, and even she didn’t realize how much acidness there was in her tone. ‘I should do it before she has a chance to get really upset.’

‘Oh, I’m sure she’s been very upset by my disappearance,’ Kent returned, but the quizzicalness had gone and he didn’t smile. He merely looked at Karin as if she had suddenly become a stranger to him, or he had not even had her pointed out to him for the first time.

Karin returned to her cabin and soaked herself for a long time in a bath. Then she rang for the stewardess and got her to make a hairdressing appointment for her, and to bring her a selection of clothes from the ship’s shop. Actually, the company had already given orders that she was to be provided with everything she required, and quite a wide range of garments was brought to her immediately. Apart from underthings she was able to select cotton dresses, a couple of silk afternoon frocks and an evening frock that felt so deliciously feminine and luxurious to the touch that she marvelled that she had been able to exist without such things for very nearly a week. According to Mrs. Makepiece’s message all her things were safe aboard the
Ariadne
,
and would be restored to her when she reached Sydney, whither the
Caroline
was bound, and as for jewellery she could do without that until she reached port.

She spent so long in the beauty parlours and under the hair-dryer that it was after six o’clock by the time she was what she considered presentable, but even then she made no attempt to go up on deck or to contact Kent Willoughby. She sat in her stateroom until it was time for dinner, and just before she left it an enormous bouquet of creamy-pink roses was handed in to her. Attached to the roses was a card which said: ‘From a Fellow Sufferer,’ and after that were the initials K.W.

Karin tossed the bouquet on the bed. If it had been Sarah who had undergone privations with him he would have sent her red roses. Even if Sarah had not undergone any privations he would probably have sent her red roses.

And then she relented because the roses were very lovely, and in any case they couldn’t be allowed to die without water, so once more she
rang for the stewardess and got her to place them in a vase. Then, an overpowering sensation of shyness taking possession of her, she decided to have dinner in her stateroom, and not to submit herself to the ordeal of having every pair of eyes in the dining-saloon gazing at her in open curiosity. If Kent was there he would probably take little or no notice of her, but that would prevent her enjoying her dinner ... And although she had very little appetite for it it would be the first properly cooked meal she had enjoyed for days.

The stewardess seemed to understand her shrinking from the public eye, and a most tempting dinner was served to her in seclusion. After that, as soon as the light started to die out of the sky, she made her way on deck.

During the course of her journey she bumped into Rolands, already completely back to normal and looking very jaunty in a crisp white jacket, with a lot of hair-cream keeping his hair close to his head. He seemed delighted by the sight of her, and passed on to her the information that his master had been wondering what had become of her.

‘But I told him you were probably having a good sleep,’ he said. ‘In a bed, for a change, and not on hard sand!’

Karin agreed that she had been tempted by the thought of a nap, but she had found plenty to occupy her without that. The dress she was wearing was midnight blue with some touches of gold embroidery, and with her newly washed hair and her beautifully made up face she looked wholly desirable. Rolands, who had always been an admirer of the fair sex, allowed his look to tell her so.

‘
’P
on my word, miss, if you don’t mind my saying so, Mr. W.’s going to have a pleasant surprise when he sees you!’

Karin smiled at him gratefully.

‘Thank you,’ she said. And then it occu
r
red to her to ask him whether his master was still in the dining-saloon. ‘He’s still having dinner, I expect,’ she said.

Rolands hesitated for a moment, appeared to glance for a moment above his head, and then shrugged his shoulders.

‘I wouldn’t know, miss,’ he said. ‘But you could be right. For the moment I’m off duty. The guv’nor’s given me the rest of the day off.’

Karin passed him with a smile and went on her way up to the deck. And because he was the very last person she expected to meet at that hour she started as if something had bitten her when she cannoned into Kent at the ship’s rail.

He was leisurely smoking a cigarette and gazing out to sea. But he turned the moment he heard her footsteps, and moved swiftly to greet her.

‘Ah!’ he said. ‘So here you are at last!’

Her grey eyes looked puzzled.

‘I thought you would be having dinner...
’

Kent smiled wryly.

‘And so you decided it was a safe moment to appear on deck!’

Before she could answer he took her by the shoulders and looked at her, coolly and deliberately. And then he let out a sigh that sounded as if it was compounded of pure pleasure.

‘You look lovely,’ he said simply. ‘But then you always do!
’

‘Even when my clothes are hanging on me in rags, and I’ve a shine on my nose?’ She would never forget that he had once described her appearance as an offensive “mess”. ‘Surely, Mr. Willoughby, you must be getting less fastidious if you believe that?’

He smiled wryly.

‘So you haven’t forgiven me.’

‘What do you mean?’

He still held her lightly by the shoulders, and she tried to back away from him.

‘Oh, I suppose it’s because I put things badly, and you’re very feminine. But last night could have been perfect if only it had been tonight!’

‘Wh-what do you mean?’ she stammered.

He had already observed that her neck was bare, and that she was without any form of adornment, and he put a hand inside the breast pocket of his newly acquired dinner-jacket and produced a slim morocco case. He held it out to her.

‘Last night we were alone
—
except for Rolands. And you had a right to protection. Tonight, if I do something of which you don’t approve, you have but to raise your voice to bring a crowd on deck.’ He watched her gazing in astonishment at the case. ‘Open it,’ he urged softly. ‘They’re not as fine as I would have liked for you, and they’re not real. But they’re cultured and not processed, and they’re the best the ship’s shop could provide. I realized you had none of your own trinkets handy, and so I thought these would do until we can get you something better.’

Karin lifted the row of milky pearls from the velvet bed of the case and said something which sounded slightly muffled.

‘But you can’t mean ... they’re for me?’

‘Of course they’re for you. Who else?’ a little dryly.

She lifted perturbed grey eyes to his face.

‘But
—
but ... And you sent me the roses,’ she said stupidly.

‘There again, I had to make the best of what was available,’ he apologized. ‘There were no red ones, not even a solitary red one! So I hope you liked the pink? In a way, they’re a little bit like you. You’ve always made me think of a creamy-pink rose.’

‘H-have I?’

He stood smiling down at her from his superior height, and because she made no attempt to fasten the pearls about her neck he took them out of her hand and secured them about her neck for her. They felt cool and silky as they lay against her throat, but his fingers were warm. He said with a kind of boyish enviousness: ‘They’re luckier than I am. They’re close to you. Really close!’

‘Oh, Kent!’ she faltered, and suddenly her grey eyes were swimming in tears. Before one of the tears could spill over and roll down her cheek he took her in his arms and held her comfortingly close.

‘I know, I know,’ he said soothingly, apparently understanding perfectly. ‘I didn’t say “I love you”, and I didn’t prolong the agony last night. As a matter of fact,’ breathing quickly into her hair, ‘I don’t think I quite trusted myself, and I know you haven’t the smallest idea how utterly desirable you are. But for a certain pigheadedness on my part I’d have succumbed weeks ago ... right, I suppose, from the minute we met! But after one unfortunate experience I’ve prided myself on my ability to withstand temptation. It took last night, and the loveliness of you
—
the helplessness, too, I think
—
to make me realize with a painful clarity that I was no better than the worst of them, and when a man’s in love he has little real conscience about his beloved. He only knows he wants her!’

She put back her head and gazed up at him, and the tendrils of her dark red hair brushed against his face. In the purple dusk her eyes were like stars.

‘If I’d only known,’ she breathed jerkily. ‘If I’d only known!’

‘You were intended to have faith,’ he told her. ‘All women are intended to have faith.’

‘Yes,
but...’

‘But what, my darling?’ a trifle whimsically, playing with one of the soft curls that smelt like a garden of roses to him. ‘Out with it! Don’t let’s have any more misunderstandings now that the atmosphere is clearing at last.’

‘I thought you were in love
—
had been in love
—
with someone else, and that you hadn’t yet got over it,’ she confessed.

‘A reasonable thing to suppose when I told you about Sarah,’ he commented. ‘I suppose you thought
my life had been blighted by Sarah?’

‘I thought she once meant a lot to you.’

‘She did,’ he admitted, ‘at a very immature stage of my existence. I must have been about eighteen when I fell for her badly, and at that time she was a good ten years older than I was. It’s true I besought her to marry me, and as I had a lot of money I thought she’d be tempted ... but she turned me down flat and married someone else. She is beautiful
—
she’s all the things I’ve told you, and she’s looking forward to my staying with them in Africa, b
u
t she has been married for nearly twenty years, and so far as I’m able to judge she intends to stay married. So you see, Karin, my loveliest child, my heart’s darling, you never really had a rival at
all ...
and it was pure disinclination to turn my back on a comfortable bachelor existence that prevented me proposing to you two days after you were so cruel as to smack my face.’

‘Really?’ Karin breathed.

‘Really!’

There was one moment when she hid her face against him and an abject desire to apologize to him really humbly took possession of her, and then he was growing impatient and lifting her chin. As on the previous night the velvety mantle of darkness began to close in on them, and although they were now a couple of very civilised-looking human beings, and an orchestra was playing near to them and filling the air with magic, and couples were dancing on the lower deck, they were in actual fact alone high up there on the
boat deck.