The Passionate Sinner (4 page)

‘Too many sessions sluicing out certain containers, eh?’ A smile caught at his lips. ‘There are aspects to nursing that can be very unglamorous, but it’s worthwhile work. A woman has to be dedicated to it, just as a surgeon has to be wed to his scalpel. I was at times a taskmaster,
mevrouw,
to myself and others.’

He drew a deep sigh, and Merlin wished with all her heart that she could run to him and cradle his sun-bleached head against her breast. She wanted to take away the hurt, but she had to stand where she was and act the part of a middle-aged workhorse, a stranger to him who had never seen those strong hands make firm and healing incisions in twisted flesh. Working with him would be a kind of daily rack on which she’d be stretched, torn by being so near to him, denied the relief of burying kisses in his eyes and begging him to forgive her.

‘Afraid I shall be your taskmaster?’ he taunted, as if her silence provoked him and made him curious. ‘There is every possibility, for I’m in virtual charge of this island and the people call me the
tuanbesar,
which means the master. My word is law.’

‘I’m sure it is, Mynheer van Setan.’ She made herself sound primly obedient, and didn’t add that Lon had also told her that he had another nickname. There was something lean and dangerous about his body that did put one in mind of a tawny tiger. She could no longer visualise him in one of those perfect grey suits, Hermes tie knotted to perfection against a tailored white shirt, standing there in the express lift as it swept him to the ground floor where his car would be waiting to take him to dinner at the Ritz or the Hilton. More than once she had stood in the same lift with him and he had been entirely unaware of her, locked in thoughts of an operation he had performed, or in anticipation of his date with a charming, well-dressed, entirely civilised woman whose voice would be beautifully modulated, along with her emotions.

Now he lived on a tropical island teeming with spicy scents, lush with wild orchids, rampant with jungle life, and Merlin felt sure there had been brought to the surface of Paul van Setan an awareness of sensual things His very touch had become acutely sensitive, and she could still feel a residue of tingling where his fingertips had gone over her hand, a sightless seer reading her palm by touch alone.

She gave an uncontrollable shiver, and at once he sensed it. ‘You must be feeling quite exhausted after your long journey, Miss Lakeside, and those stopovers that don’t really bring any relief. Come, we must go indoors and have some tea—our very own tea that we grow in the valley that you would have seen on your way here.’

‘I—I should indeed like a cup of tea,’ she said, glancing round for his pilot and finding that Lon had slipped away, no doubt to see about the sale delivery of her baggage. She had brought with her a portable typewriter, feeling sure that there wouldn’t be a good English machine on the island, and had stocked up as far as her finances would allow on tropical clothing.

‘The tea valley is very beautiful’ she added, ‘and heavenly scented.’

‘Its beauty I must imagine, but its scent is like a gust of heaven, especially so when the sun goes down and the heavy dew of the tropics starts to settle on the tea bushes. That scent will rise to your balcony, Miss Lakeside, for your room overlooks the valley.’

He had paused at the top of the veranda steps as he spoke and Merlin was suddenly aware of being very close to him; she could see in detail the lashes around his sightless eyes and they were darker than his silvery hair. He towered over her and her eyes measured his shoulders and saw their smooth hardness under the open shirt, and the thrust of chest hair going down under his belt. She found herself breathing with a soft rapidity, and felt as if her bones had gone hollow and were being filled with liquid silver. The single flaming truth of that terrible incident of his eyes had been that she loved him, but then it had been a kind of hero-worship, a shy adoration of the clever and confident surgeon, around whom she spun a few impossible dreams, but right now she found herself aware of him in a totally different way. He wasn’t a god or a knight whose sword was a scalpel ... he was a man, and a very potent one, and she saw the sun stroke along his bare arm, so deeply tanned that the crisp hairs looked like tiny spears of gold. Her fingernails dug into the palm of her hand, for she felt a sensual urge to run her palm along his forearm and feel the delicious stab of those little golden hairs. Her legs trembled and she stood there hollow and expectant, as if at any moment his hard arm would curve itself around her and she would be drawn against the hard bone and sinew of him in her thin dress.

It was like a slap across the face when he said in the polite voice of the host, ‘I always dine at eight-thirty, Miss Lakeside, and as I have an Indonesian cook I hope you won’t mind that
rijstaffel
is usually served. To your English palate our food might seem a little spicy at first, but it grows on you, unless of course you have any dietary problems and would, perhaps, prefer to cook for yourself. That could be arranged,
mevrouw.
I do realise that foreign fare can be unsettling to someone like yourself.’

Someone getting on in years, with the staid and unexciting habits of the spinster to whom rice on the table meant milky pudding with a baked skin on top!

‘Oh, I’m not finicky when it comes to food,
mynheer.’
Her cheeks burned and she managed to keep her voice steady even if she still felt shaken up ... heaven help her, she was going to have to keep a grip on her feelings or he’d sense something and think himself the target for the uninvited longings of a repressed virgin! Heaven forbid, she thought wryly, that a virgin of any age should show signs of having normal feelings; they were reserved for the initiated wives, and spinsters had to act as if they belonged to a breed who were stuffed with straw and had vinegar in their veins. Some people even seemed to believe it, and were actually appalled by the idea of a spinster aunt having a real body under her pin-striped blouse.

She wondered what Paul van Setan’s reaction would have been had she suddenly said to him: ‘Do you remember Sister Whitney in Ward Nine, and all that nine-days’ wonder when she ran off with that neighbour of her mother’s? It was a joke and then a shock that she wasn’t a tartar after all, but someone who had longed to be loved as much as those pretty nurses in their sheer black stockings.’

Had he ever bent his ear to any of the hospital gossip, she wondered, as she was beckoned ahead of him into the house she was going to share with him ... a gauche spinster, as he believed her to be, with whom it was quite safe to live in close proximity.

Wind-chimes on bamboo strings tinkled above her head as she walked into the long shady lounge, where in the high ceiling the wings of large fans were rotating. She saw teakwood cabinets with a trim of shell, low tables of ebony wood, cane-braided long chairs with brilliant cushions, and walls hung with rain masks and strange carvings, and also one or two oriental swords with curving, lethal-looking blades.

‘Please to take a chair, Miss Lakeside.’ As he spoke Paul bent to a table on which stood a silver bell. He found it with his fingers and rang it. ‘The houseboy will bring tea in a very few moments. What do you think of my living-room?’

‘Very nice,
mynheer,
cheerful and comfortable.’

‘And not quite what you expected, eh, of a bachelor living in the wilds—a blind bachelor. I must make it explicit,
mevrouw,
that no one here avoids the fact that I am this way. No one gets embarrassed if they happen to speak of something that I can’t see and share with them in the obvious sense.’ He walked to a Dutch marquetry cabinet, making his way with an unhesitating firmness, and she watched as he ran his hand over the inlaid wood. ‘This is from Holland and it belonged to my grandmother. I know there are tulips inlaid in satinwood and if you watch me you will see my fingers trace those tulips. It’s amazing, Miss Lakeside, how potent touch becomes to a blind person; my fingertips can feel the subtle variation in the silks of the woods, just as I know each intricate pattern on the hilt of this knife.’

As he spoke he toyed with a
samurai
dagger which had lain on the cabinet, and his strong, memorable hands wandered over the lovely but lethal weapon. ‘This was here in the house when I came to stay, and then it was the blade I was interested in, sharp and unerring, putting out the pulse of my heart as the light had been put out of my eyes—ah, you caught your breath just then. Does it shock you that I speak of such a thing?’

‘Yes—no.’ She was staring in horrified fascination at the dagger. ‘I—I think I can understand how awful it must be to be shut off from the light, but I don’t think you’d end it all—in that way.’

‘Why not?’ He said it almost harshly.

‘You aren’t that sort of man,
mynheer.
You spent your life saving lives, so you wouldn’t wantonly waste your own. You have learned to live with your affliction.’

‘You think so?’

‘Of course. One can hardly tell by looking at you— your eyes aren’t marked.’

‘Why should they be marked, Miss Lakeside?’ His voice had sunk down to almost a menacing note and his jaw was so hard it might have been made of iron.

‘Y-you had an accident, didn’t you,
mynheer’?’
Her heart was racing and her nerves were all on edge again. ‘I remember reading about it in the newspaper, but I—I don’t know all the details.’

‘Then allow me to supply them.’ Still toying with the
samurai
weapon, he began to come towards her across the room having judged the position from her voice, until with unerring precision he stood above the chair where she sat. ‘Always after the performance of an operation I used to wash the fatigue from my eyes with a mild boric acid solution, and one afternoon a fool of a girl gave me the wrong stuff and I tipped it into my eyes ... I won’t go into those details, for your stomach might be turned, but if I could have got hold of that little fool I’d have choked the life out of her. Instead I was flat on my back for some time, for I had to go under the knife so my eyes would at least look like eyes again even if they could no longer function. My work was very important and I had plans that can never be realised ... oh yes, I have come to terms with the darkness of my sight, but not quite with another kind of darkness. Does the word vengeance appal you, Miss Lakeside?’

Merlin gazed up at him and she felt as if the skin of her face had been tightened over her bones. Terror gripped her. Somehow he knew ... he had to know, or he wouldn’t be talking like this to someone he considered a stranger. The knife gleamed in his fingers and she felt as if the tip of the blade had been put against her throat... and she also knew that if he put it there she wouldn’t struggle as it sank into her flesh.

‘Yes, I can feel it, that you are appalled,’ he said, and he seemed to be looking right at her, and each word seemed meant for her alone. ‘I need to have you know the kind of man I am,
mevrouw,
for we’ll be working together for some months. I shan’t always be kind or patient, and I want it understood between us now that you won’t howl if I snap at you. I can’t abide the tears of a woman. They told me that criminal fool of a nurse broke down and cried uncontrollably at the inquiry, but tears can’t wash away the acid of hate, and you might as well know, Miss Lakeside, that you’ll be working for a man whose heart is black with it ... black as his vision. That was why I needed a sensible woman out here, someone capable of putting up with an embittered man. Are you capable of that?’

For seconds on end Merlin was incapable of replying to him. He had lifted her to a peak of terror, and now he dropped her into a pit of relief. She struggled there, to find a voice that wouldn’t shake all over the place and make him wonder why a stranger should be so frightened.

It was at that crucial moment that the houseboy entered with the tea trolley, wheeling it straight to the table beside Merlin’s chair, as if he understood without being instructed that she would take charge of the tea pouring.

‘Ramai, this is the Mevrouw Lakeside who will be residing here with us. She has come from England and will feel strange among us for a while, so do all you can to make her feel at home.’

‘Ja, mynheer.’
The boy stared at Merlin, running his quick dark eyes all over her, as if he was wondering why on earth the
tuanbesar
should address her like that and not as
jonkvrouw,
the young miss that she undoubtedly looked as she sat there in the cane chair in her simple white dress, unringed hands clenching the arms of the chair. Panic spiralled again in Merlin as she caught that look of the houseboy’s, and then she saw him shrug his shoulders in the white tunic, as if he had already learned that European men and women had funny ways with each other and were not direct like island people when it came to the relationship of the sexes.

‘Tea and cakes for the
mevrouw,
as ordered,
tuan.’
He smiled up at the big Dutchman as if he could be seen, and Merlin noticed that it was a smile of unquestioning respect. ‘Will that be all,
tuan?’

‘For the moment, Ramai. The
mevrouw’s
suitcases have been taken to the Jade Room?’

‘Ja,
and I will unpack them if the—the
mevrouw
so wishes and lets me have the keys.’

‘No, that’s kind of you,’ Merlin said hastily, ‘but I prefer to do my own unpacking.’

‘As the
mevrouw
instructs.’ The boy looked directly at her and this time his smile was faintly impudent. Then he left the room, and biting at her lip Merlin proceeded to pour the tea. How long, she wondered, would it be before Paul discovered that he was being deceived and that the object of his ‘black hatred’ was installed in this house and acting the part of his middle-aged secretary?

Her wrist shook and she had to force herself to some sort of control. ‘Do you take sugar,
mynheer?’

‘One cube and a slice of lemon,’ he replied, and he sat down in a long chair facing her, and as she picked up the little sugar tongs to place the cube in his cup Merlin was so unbearably conscious of his large frame that she did what she had tried so hard not to do, dropped the tongs so they clattered on the table. Good job it hadn’t been his cup of tea, she thought, as she retrieved the tongs.