Sweet Seduction (21 page)

"Are you all right?" he asked, taking in the situation immediately.

"A few cuts," said Kira, so relieved to see him safe. He looked strong; nothing could touch him. She wanted to ask him so much but she was too tired to say a word.

"I’ll do that," he said, taking the tweezers from one of the smaller girls. "Get the magnifying glass." With infinite care and patience, he removed the slivers of glass from the palm of her hand. His hair was plastered to his head and drops of rain fell onto her hand, diluting the blood.

Dolores smiled at Kira. She kept the children busy with little errands. There was no power in the house but the cane-burning stove produced the coffee and an oil lamp provided the light for Kira’s clean-up. Giles was meticulous, painstakingly picking out each piece of glass and putting it on a wet rag.

None of the cuts were deep but they were sore and Dolores produced some soothing ointment. Kira realised how lucky she had been. A foot or two nearer the window and any sliver of glass could have made a fatal impact.

"Kira, I want to talk to you," he said, picking up his coffee mug. "It won’t take long. But we have to get this straightened out."

Kira shivered, hardly knowing whether it was fear of the hurricane outside or what Giles might be going to tell her. "Can’t it wait?"

"No. It has to be now."

He led her down a passageway and into another vaulted cellar. It had once been full of wine but the racks were empty.

"I sold the wine some years ago," he explained wearily. "I needed the money."

"Do we have to?" Kira asked. "I’d rather be in the kitchen. Look, I can understand your annoyance that night in the windmill. I behaved in a way which would upset any man. I realise that you are not over the moon about Benjamin being my grandfather. But it doesn’t make me a different person. I am the same Kira Reed you met on the plane from St Lucia."

Giles took no notice of her desperate words. He stood listening to the raging storm outside. "You know about the feud, don’t you?"

"The feud was between Benjamin and Reuben. Your father and my grandfather. We don’t come into it at all."

"Do I have to spell it out to you?" said Giles, rubbing his eyes. He was bone tired.

"Yes, you do. I’m not interested in guessing games, Giles. I have to have it in black and white."

"You know what the feud was about?"

"The new sugar factory, I suppose. Or money."

"That was only part of it. It was all about Dolly, the wild beach girl. They both loved Dolly, passionately and in their own ways, but the crucial thing was that my father, Reuben, slept with Dolly the night before the wedding. They were so much in love. They couldn’t think straight."

"They slept together? You mean, they made love?"

"Yes, Kira. My father and your grandmother, Dolly and Reuben. They made love, here at Sugar Hill, all night."

Twenty-Nine

"They slept together? Are you sure?"

Giles took her hand and gripped the long, slender fingers. "Dolly and Reuben were childhood sweethearts. They went to school together, grew up together, swam, played on the beach, went to barbecue parties. Falling in love was the most natural thing in the world for them."

"I understand," said Kira. "I don’t blame them. But Dolly then married Benjamin. That’s so strange."

"It went round the island that she married him for a bathroom but I don’t know how true that is. She was young and confused. They were so different. My father was young, sensible, down to earth and hard-working."

Probably madly good-looking, like you, Kira added mentally.

"Whereas Dolly was
. . ." he hesitated.

"Wild and untamed. I’ve heard," said Kira. "She was quite a handful, I should imagine. Always rushing to the sea even when she had a small baby to look after."

"No-one knows how it happened," said Giles, wryly. "They were all crazy about each other. Reuben was crazy for Dolly. Benjamin was crazy for Dolly. And Dolly . . . she wasn’t sure who or what she wanted."

"I’m sure she loved Reuben," said Kira quickly. "And perhaps she was very fond of Benjamin, in her own way."

"My father was in no position to take on a wife. He was barely twenty and had no money of his own. He had a new factory to get on its feet. There were money problems. There are always money problems with sugar."

"So Dolly married Benjamin, a man of means, a man much older than herself, a man with a bathroom. I suppose she did it to spite Reuben, to show him that someone wanted to marry her even if he didn’t."

"I don’t think she knew why she did it. She was a creature of impulse, they say."

He paused, turning Kira’s hand over, staring at the delta of lines on her palm. He stroked the pale skin lightly.

"So they slept together," Kira said gently. The storm was still howling outside but it seemed so quiet in the wine cellar. They were in a cocoon, isolated in time and the stillness of focussed thought.

Giles nodded. "It’s common knowledge that Dolly and Reuben spent the night together at Sugar Hill, the night before her wedding. They didn’t seem to hide it. Everyone knew, except Benjamin of course. There were servants and village people. You can’t keep secrets on an island this size."

A coldness came over Kira like a shroud. Suddenly she knew what he was going to say. It was about Dolly, Tamara . . . and herself.

"So Dolly might have been pregnant on her wedding day, but only just," said Kira, her throat tightening. "And Reuben might have been Tamara’s father, not Benjamin. So where does that leave me?" Kira added with a choked sob. "Oh, Giles, what does it all mean?"

Giles took her soberly in his arms. It was a gesture of comfort, nothing else. She lay momentarily against his chest, listening to the storm that was almost obliterated by the pounding of her heart.

Then it changed and he was kissing her, tasting her lips, stroking her hair. She was being crushed in his arms, so close that her breath came in ragged gasps. Giles, wet and dirty, bloodied but in one piece, was kissing every inch of her face with a devastating hunger that sent her heart soaring. It was a burning sweetness that held her totally captive.

His strong face was lit by a flickering light from the oil lamp and she touched the firm outline of his jaw in a great wave of tenderness. She loved him. She did not want to lose him, whatever he had to say.

"You see, I shouldn’t be doing this. Don’t you realise? Oh Kira, why did you have to be who you are? Reuben did marry eventually, a planter’s daughter called Elise, and I am their son. Reuben was my father and everyone believes that he also fathered Tamara. Your mother was my half-sister."

"Your sister?" Kira almost choked on the words.

"It’s a forbidden relationship. I cannot marry my blood-line niece.
Leviticus, Chapter 20. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s sister, nor of your father’s sister: for he uncovereth his near kin. Change the sexes, say he for she. Thou shalt not uncover the nakedness of your mother’s brother
. That’s me. I am your mother’s brother."

"I don’t believe it! I don’t! I don’t!" Kira clamped her hands over her ears to shut out the awesome commandments and the crescendo of storm noise making the windows rattle and the glass stream with water. "It can’t be true. Someone has got it all wrong. It’s only a rumour, after all. No-one has proved anything. Forbidden? It can’t be when I love you so much."

She wept in his arms and Giles, distraught with his own anguish, did not know what to say. They both knew that the island’s strong religious roots would not tolerate their union. And there was no way he could leave Sugar Hill or the island which had always been his home, the factory and the workers who depended on him. Give up everything for love of a woman, for Kira? And there was his mother, slowly becoming paralysed.

"Now I understand why Benjamin refused to help my mother when she was in trouble," Kira went on, more sadly. "It was years of bitterness surfacing. He was prepared to look after her when she was a child, for Dolly’s sake, but he washed his hands of Tamara when she was grown-up. She had left Barbados and married a Russian dancer, almost on impulse. It probably seemed like Dolly hurting him all over again."

"You look so like Dolly. Those paintings by André La Plante. They could be you," said Giles. "That’s why you seem so familiar."

"I look like Dolly? Not my hair. Her hair was dark."

"The face, the smile, those dimples by your mouth, just like Dolly. The chestnut hair is from your Russian father. I think Ben’s always been angry, hurt and humiliated, even after Reuben’s death. All that gossip about the accident must have hurt him. But there was nothing to substantiate the rumours. There was never any enquiry. It was recorded as accidental death. Everyone knew that Reuben was tired, overworked, depressed. He fell, a momentary lapse that cost him his life."

"Are you going to tell me what happened?" Kira went even colder. What else had happened? Reuben’s death? No-one had ever mentioned it before.

"Some people think Ben pushed him but I don’t even want to think about it. We’ll get you back to the kitchen and the more cheerful company of Dolores and her brood. My coffee is cold."

"So is mine," said Kira, standing up unsteadily. "But I won’t stay, Giles. I think my grandfather needs me, even more now. Fitt’s House is very exposed and so near the sea. He’ll be getting the worst of the hurricane. I’ll call for a taxi."

"For heaven’s sake, woman, don’t be a fool. The telephone lines will be down by now. And no taxi driver in his right mind would come out in this, even if you could get through. You’re not going anywhere."

"But I am, Giles. I must. He’s an old man. I can’t let him be alone in this hurricane. He might die. He’s my grandfather and the only family I have."

She ran out of the room, along the corridor, now awash with water and debris, towards the front door.

"Stop, Kira. Don’t go out. It’s madness," he shouted. "Benjamin’s a tough old man. He’ll cope."

"But I must," she called back. She pulled open the heavy front door and was swept off her feet by the force of the storm. She saw a gust half lift the Mercedes off its wheels and crash it down on the drive, doors swinging open wildly. Debris was being tossed across the drive, palm leaves, branches, broken fencing. A whirlwind of sand enveloped the house.

Kira drew back, tears stinging her eyes, coughing, her mind blank with misery. She could not go out in this. She woul
d not last minutes on her feet.

Hurricane Erica was in full force. She lashed the island with primitive fury; gusts of over 100 miles an hour ravaged the southern half. A great storm wall of sea water raced through the coastal districts. Flashes of jagged lightning lit up the dark, threatening clouds, splitting the sky apart.

She crouched against the wall, mesmerised by the scene of destruction, unable to move, unable to think. Somehow she had to get to Benjamin, to tell him that she understood, to tell him that she forgave him.

Giles brushed passed her. "I’ll get Benjamin," he said brusquely. "Don’t worry. You stay here."

"I’m coming with you," she said, ducking her head against the wind, holding onto his belt. He turned and said something angrily, but the words were flung away. He tried to shake her off but it was no use. She had found a surge of strength that made her cling on to him. She could do it. Together they could do anything. "I’m not leaving you."

She climbed into the car, wrestling with the door to close it. Giles got in, switched on the ignition and the finely-tuned engine responded with a low throb. He thrust the car into gear and planted his foot on the accelerator. The engine strained.

"I don’t know if the car will make it," he said grimly. "But she’s big, heavy and powerful. So long as a tree doesn’t come down on us."

A root was hurled across the low bonnet, narrowly missing the windscreen. Kira ducked automatically.

"Want to go back? You could sit in the kitchen drinking my best rum."

"No, I don’t want to go back," said Kira, trying to keep the fear out of her low voice. "I want to be with you. Don’t you realise that? There’s no-one in the world for me but you. And I don’t care who you are."

She was not sure if Giles heard her. Now that they were out in the hurricane, the noise was deafening. Rain streamed down the windscreen, the wipers unable to cope with the torrent. Giles was driving on instinct, picking his way with caution; any rash move might land them in a ditch.

"The electronic window button has jammed," said Giles, sounding more calm than he probably felt. "Can you wind it down, manually, and put your head out? Tell me if you can see anything ahead."

Kira did what she was told. It was like putting her head under a shower. At first she could not see anything and her eyes were soon glued with water. But by half shading her eyes, her vision cleared enough to guide him.

"There’s a tree down, about twenty yards ahead, on the left. Some of it is across the road. A bit more to the right . . . steady now, that’s it. We’re past. Heavens, there’s a bicycle coming towards us, slewed on its side."

It was a nightmare drive through the back roads. They were both drenched with sweat and rain. They were nearing the narrow back lane to Fitt’s House when a ferocious gust caught the side of the Mercedes and slewed it across the road and into a stone wall. The beautiful bodywork crunched and groaned. The engine whined, protesting, whimpered, then cut out.

"I think she’s had it," said Giles, sitting quite still, clutching the steering wheel. "Are you all right?"

"I’m OK. Oh Giles, I’m so sorry. Your beautiful car."

"It’s only a car," he said. "Come on, get out. We can walk it from here. Hang onto me and don’t let go. What do you weigh? Practically nothing, so you won’t be any help as ballast."

"I’ll drag a rock around if you insist," said Kira, but the words were snatched away.

She closed her eyes and hung onto Giles, letting him take the brunt of the force with his body. They were so near. Surely they could make the last few yards?

The sea was sweeping up the lane, wave-lashed, swirling round their ankles, cold and unpleasant. Palm trees were bent almost double under the savagery of the wind. A striped beach umbrella skittered passed like a frantic ballet dancer who had forgotten her steps.

"Nearly there!" Giles shouted.

Kira hardly recognised what was left of the garden and the drive. Giles was helping her climb, one by one, up the front steps, shielding her with his shoulders and arms, clearing a path through debris with his foot.