The Flesh and the Devil (92 page)

         
'Never?' His hand traced the shape of her breast, and she
was shiveringly still beneath the caress.

         
'You talked of skill when you took me first.' It was hard
to find the words she wanted while he stroked her breast, but she forced her
tongue to obey her, even though it stumbled. 'And when I found that you could -
please me - no matter what I thought of you, I thought that it must be because
you knew how. to please any woman, even one you hated. You said as much once,
on the night I was betrothed
-
' her Breath caught in her throat - 'in
public, in front of Torres and Eugenio, and it made me hate myself for ... for
desiring a libertine.
Please,
 
Filipe -

         
' her voice was growing ragged— 'I cannot think when you. .
. . '

         
'I said much, it seems, but I did not know you had heeded
me.' The twist of his scarred mouth was ironic. 'Softly, now . . . this was
what I wanted all the time you were railing at me, and I was bringing you gifts
in Bartolome's name so that you could not cast them back in my face.'

         
'I could not tell.' Long shivers of languorous delight were
running through her body. 'You were kinder to Dona Luisa, and to poor Michaela,
than you ever were to me -
Filipe!
'

         
'Were we talking of kindness?' The green eyes were
sardonic. 'It is easy enough to be land to those who can be content with that —
you were kind to poor Pedrino, and to Luis's children. Kindness is a painless
thing to give, and easy, a sop to those you do not need. Friendship and
kindness have nought to do with this.' For a moment the look in his eyes, as
brilliant as an eagle's in the harsh inscrutability of his face, terrified her.
'I am not kind to the air I breathe — nor the food I eat — nor to you.'

         
His hold had tightened bruisingly, but she turned even
closer into his arms with a laugh that sounded like a sob, yielding without
hesitation to his breathtaking importunity. He murmured with his lips against
her temple, 'I can hear your voice, telling me,
Ihate you, and I shall
always hate you.
 
Is that still
true?'

         
She reached up to cup his face between her hands, her
fingers gentle and her dark eyes full of light. It was never true, though I
thought it was when I spoke it. I love you, and I shall always love you. There
- that is what you must hear now.'

         
As he stopped to possess her mouth she thought with a
lurking sense of helplessness that that riven mask of a face was inscrutable
even now; its apparent cruelty was ingrained, in the strange, harsh bones and
in the hooded, predatorylooking green eyes. But it was the flame of copper hair
that revealed more of the truth; not a bonfire kindled on ice, as she had once
thought it, but the single fissure that revealed the presence of on inner
volcano.

         
'You sent me away.' His voice was still insistent, but his
tone had softened and thickened as she heard it through the swimming of her
senses. 'Was that to torment me?'

         
She shook her head, but as she did so a sudden chill ran
through her; the words had sounded ironic, as though the notion that she bad
thought she might hurt him was a matter for mockery. It was in that instant
that she realized that he had said nothing that counted. While she prattled of
loving he had kept his own counsel and said no more than what would induce her
to lay her heart open to him, while he confessed only that he had wanted her.

         
And that she had known already, she thought bitterly; in
his arms it was impossible not to learn something of the unappeasable passion
that he kept so tightly reined and hidden behind that Sphinxlike mask of his.
All she knew now was what she had known before, except how soon he had begun to
want her.

         
At least I did not tell him about the child, she thought
with a stab of triumph that was partly pain; and then, as bis mouth found hers,
she was swept into realms past thinking.

         
'They are dropping astern.' The English lawyer's pale face
was alight with excitement as he lowered the folding spyglass from his eye and
turned away from the ship's side. 'I believe we have outrun them at last.'

         
The San Martin had run into the Portuguese blockade on the
second night out from Cadiz. Captain Diaz, despite Senor Oliver's demurs, had
insisted on running his ship without lights after dark and trusting to the blockade
ships' own lanterns, and the sharp ears of his watches, to warn of any
obstructing vessel. It had almost worked; the
San Martin
 
had crept through the mouth of the Gulf
between the enemy's moored ships and reached the choppier Atlantic waters before
the Portuguese had raised the alarm. Two high-prowed galleons had swung round
in pursuit, but the help of a following wind the smaller San Martin had stayed
ahead of them through the hours of darkness. Miraculously, they had not
encountered any other vessel in their flight, and now, with the dawn lighting
the grey rollers to emerald, the thwarted pursuers were falling back to resume
their interrupted watch.

         
'It seems so.' Tristan shaded his eyes to peer after the
gray shapes that were melting into the blurred dawn on the horizon. 'I wonder
why they did not open fire on us? Once we were clear of their own ships they
could have sunk at that range.'

         
'Do not think of it!' Senor Oliver crossed himself
devoutly. 'Perhaps they had no guns.'

         
'I saw muzzles at the gunports when you lent me your glass.
If they had-'

         
'Ach!' A sailor, pausing as he passed, spat jubilantly on
the deck.

         
'Portuguese dogs have no money for powder and shot any
more, senor. I tell you, the Spanish are winning this war!'

         
'Perhaps.' Tristan's faint smile was rather wry as the man
went on his way. He met the lawyer's eye and, shrugged his shoulders, turning
with a deftness that lessened his limp on the swaying deck. 'Shall we
congratulate the captain on his strategy and then set how my wife fares? It is
time that we three talked together, I think.'

         
Juana had been lying on her bunk ever since Tristan had
ushered her into the cabin and left her, telling her to sleep. But she had not
slept; even if she had not had to fight the queasiness that gripped her stomach
with every roll of the ship, hermind would have been too restless to let her
relax. Rather than think of all the dangers that could beset the
San Martin
,
she had concentrated on remembering the strange, fragmentary pictures which
were all that remained in her mind from the last twenty-four hours. Tristan's
ungentle, almost arrogantly triumphant love-making after her unthinking
confession, then the strange, searching look he had given her when he woke to
find her weeping. She had stammered something shout the sadness of leaving
Spain, she remembered, and had been astonished when he had held her and soothed
her tears as gently as if she had been a child, while she sobbed with a mixture
of despair and guilt. Then that hectic hour while they prepared to leave Mother
Salsa's, a whispered turmoil of which all she remembered was Tristan's saying
that he had managed to send word to Placido to take a message to Luis and Elisabeta;
then the walk through the dark street to the harbour, when she had taken off
her wooden shoes so that the noise would not alert the town. It had reminded
her fleetingly of her shame when Tristan had stripped off her shoes and
stockings. That bar had been broken so totally that she had smiled to remember
it, for now she went barelegged as often as not; it was only the rich ones, and
those who had nothing better to do than invent such rules, who could afford
such outlandish modesty.

         
Then she had spent what seemed like an eternity alone while
all the rest were on deck. Now and again sounds of the pursuit had come to her
and she had been on the verge of quitting the cabin to find Tristan before they
were attacked; for the rest of the time she had lain rigid, her eyes wide open
as she revolved her own hopeless plight and tried to distinguish the sounds of
approaching ships from the creaks and groans of the
San Martin
's
 
own protesting timbers.

         
He wanted her enough to keep her with him; there had been
no sign during their hasty departure that he had even considered leaving her
behind. It could not be for loudness's sake, for he had said he was not kind to
her. What would happen, she wondered for the hundredth time, when he learned at
last about the baby, when she grew ugly and swollen and had no claim upon
anything but his kindness and his constrained vows? Every word she had said to
him seemed to jeer at her now, as she saw them through his cynical eyes as lies
that would make safe the child whose existence she had not even confessed. How,
she thought, how could she have forgotten that he would think so?

         
When the door opened her eyes flared darkly and she swung
herself up, not too quickly for fear of how the movement might affect her, her
body as tensed as an

         
animal about to flee. She hardly knew what she expected to
see. Her thoughts had gradually led her into a waking nightmare, and visions of
scorn and repudiation and even of invading Portuguese come to capture the ship
chased each other through her over-tired brain. She was as afraid of the
unknown now, she thought, as she had been when she first set foot outside the
paths laid down for her father's obedient daughter. If Felipe had been hurt
again, if there had been fighting

         
–

         
'All is well, Juana.' Tristan's voice was as calm and crisp
as if he had only left her moments before, but his eyes narrowed as he read the
look on her face.

         
'The Portuguese have turned tail, and we are safe now—our
course is set for England.'

         
'All is well?' Sheer, incredulous anger took over her fear.
'When I have waited here alone for
days
, thinking you might be dead?'
Tears spilled down her cheeks and she bent her head to hide them, but as he
took her in his arms her clenched fists turned to frantic claws that clutched
handfuls of his shirt for reassurance.

         
Tristan said to the top of her head, his tone edged, 'Have
you been awake all night?'

         
'Did you expect me to sleep?'

         
'Perhaps not,' he agreed sardonically, but the hand on the
nape of her neck was surprisingly gentle as he held her hard against him for a
moment, then glanced back over his shoulder. 'Come in, Senor Oliver. My wife
feared for us.'