Candle in the Wind Page 11

  Her father had been content to sit in the background while they talked, but during lunch he joined in the 'conversation more and Sam could see how much he enjoyed the company of the younger man, laughing and talking social chit-chat, but taking care to tell Sam who they were talking about.

  'We must go to Sam Lord's Castle soon,' Paul was saying, and then, seeing Sam's puzzled frown, explained, 'That is a house that once belonged to a Regency buck called Sam Lord. It is said that he gained the fortune to build it by luring ships on to Cobblers Reef, but now it has been turned into a luxury hotel. You will come dancing there with me, will you not, cherie?'

  Sam looked rather helplessly at her father and he smiled and nodded. 'Of course you must go. I want Samantha to go out a lot so that she forgets these last few weeks as soon as possible.'

  Sam gripped her hands together under the table; did he really think that she would ever forget?

  After lunch her father had to go back to his office, but Paul suggested a walk round the gardens and Sam joined him willingly enough. It was pleasant to have someone to talk to, someone who seemed to have time to spare for her and didn't have to rush away as her father did. Also Paul had travelled a lot and he talked so eloquently of the places he had visited that Sam's imagination was caught and she listened to him with interest. Also he sometimes made droll remarks that made her laugh and she found that the afternoon passed quickly and pleasantly, so that when he asked if he could call again tomorrow she readily agreed.

  They turned to walk back to the house, passing between some bougainvillaea bushes near the surrounding wall that were a riot of mauve and purple flowers. Suddenly a man whom Sam recognised as one of those whom Mike had stunned stepped out in front of them menacingly. He apologised at once as soon as he saw who it was and moved back out of sight, but not before Sam, with a sick feeling inside, had seen that he carried a gun in a shoulder holster under his jacket.

  Paul called to take her for a drive round the island the next day but looked rather deprecatingly at the American car he was driving. 'Shall we go in this or would you prefer to take your own car?'

  'My car?' Sam asked in surprise.

  'Why, yes.' But then he raised his hands in a Gallic gesture. 'Imbecile I You must forgive me, cherie, I forgot that you might not have seen, it yet. Come, I will show you.'

  He led the way round the side of the house to a courtyard surrounded by garages that Sam hadn't seen before. A black chauffeur who was washing down a limousine turned to greet them and Paul said imperatively, 'Mademoiselle's car.'

  The man jumped to push back the doors at one side of the garages and Sam walked through, turning to give the chauffeur a smile and a word of thanks. There were four cars in the garage, but Paul led her to a low- slung, Italian sports job that stood out like a jewel among the more sedate sec}ans.

  Sam gasped. 'You don't mean to tell me this is my car?'

  'But of course. It is beautiful, n'est-ce pas?' Paul said enthusiastically. 'It is a De Tomaso Pantera. You can get it up to a hundred and seventy-five miles an hour on a straight run, but unfortunately there are few roads on Barbados long enough for that,' he added regretfully.

  He opened the driver's side door for her to get in, but Sam drew back. 'I can't sit there. I can't drive.'

  'But of course you do, you are an excellent driver.'

  'Oh, no, I—I just can't. Please, won't you drive?'

  'Well, I will be pleased to, of course, but before——' he shrugged, 'well, you always hated anyone else to drive your car.'

  'I did?' Sam's forehead creased into a frown. 'That— that must have been very selfish of me. But I certainly don't want to drive it now. Why, it looks more like a lethal weapon than a car.'

  'Don't worry, ma chere, you will be quite safe with me.'

  He helped her into the passenger seat and pushed back the sliding roof to let in some air. They drove sedately down the long drive flanked by lofty and graceful casuarina trees and through the iron gates. As they turned out into the road Sam saw another car coming out of the garage but took little notice of it. They turned north and headed up Highway One to the stretch that Paul told her was known as the Platinum Coast where the rich came only in the winter and which had now begun to be filled with large hotel complexes. Paul drove slowly through Speightstown where the streets still retained some of the atmosphere of earlier Barbados with their old colonial houses, the balconies overhanging the street and giving shade to hawkers who sold mangoes and limes from open trays while conversing animatedly with their neighbours.

  As they drove further north the island became less populated with correspondingly less traffic on the roads, and the countryside became a mass of fields of sugar cane with here and there a windmill turning busily in the trade winds, the 'winds of God' as the native Bajans called them. Paul pulled up at the extreme northern point of the island and for a while they stood and looked out at the miles and miles of open sea, but this reminded Sam too vividly of her time adrift in the dinghy with Mike and she turned hastily away.

  'Come, you must see the Animal Flower Cave, it is one of the first places you took me to see,' Paul told her as he led the way towards a flight of stone steps.

  The cave was really two caverns bored through the rock by centuries of pounding Atlantic waves at high tide. But now the tide was down and they could see the curious formations of stalactites and stalagmites and admire the reflection of the blue sky on the translucent pool in the far cavern. They sat on a rock and Paul told her the pools in the cave had once been an underwater garden of sea anemones, marine creatures that resembled flowers when their tiny tendrils were expanded so that the natives called them 'animal flowers'. And when anything came near them they Withdrew their tendrils and became just an inconspicuous rubber-like tube, but generations of curious prodding fingers had discouraged them so that now they inhabited remote sea gardens in less accessible parts of the coast.

  They were alone in the caverns and it was very quiet, the only sounds the gentle lapping of waves against stone. Paul put his arm across her shoulders, but Sam immediately drew away.

  'No, please. Do not be afraid.' Paul's handsome face looked at her intently. 'It is just that I must say something to you1. But it is difficult for me to find the words.' He paused and then went on slowly, 'Cherie, before —before you were taken away we had become very close, in fact we were on the point of announcing our engagement. No, do not say anything yet,' he added, lifting up a hand. 'I want you to know everything. It may be that you will meet others whom you used to know who will tell you that your father arranged the match. Eh bien, it is true that your father arranged that we should meet and would, I think, be very happy if we did marry, but, cherie, I want you to know that from the first moment we met we were attracted to one another.' He gave a half-rueful and very attractive smile. 'At first I was afraid to let you know how much I liked you, but when you let me see that you were not—how do you say it—indifferent to me, then I could contain myself no longer and told you how much I loved you.'

  Sam flushed and sat up very straight, the memory of these same words said by another man searing into her brain. That man hadn't meant them, had used them as a weapon almost, but that didn't make Paul's avowal any more believable.

  'I have told you this, ma chire, because it is a part of your past, I hope a very important part, and I think it is your right to know. But I also understand that now I am a stranger to you for whom you feel nothing. And I want you to know that I won't hold you to anything, that if in time you still feel nothing for me, that you have changed so much that even your old feelings are gone, then I will leave your father's employ and go away. I will not bother you again and even though I would be sad to leave you I would still be a very lucky man for I would have all the precious memories of our growing love and happiness, whereas you, ma pauvre petite, have had them taken from you.'

  'Oh, Paul!' Sam looked at him, her eyes misty. 'Do you really mean it?'

  'I give you my word,' he ans
wered solemnly. 'And one thing more before we go. Your father is a very determined man, cherie; he loves you very much and it is his great ambition to see you married to someone deserving of your youth and beauty and, yes, position too; so it may be that he will try to coerce you into marrying either before you are ready to make a decision or even, completely against your wishes. If he does then I want you to promise me that you will not try to face him alone, that you will tell me at once so that I can talk to him. And if he will not listen then I will leave so that he has no weapon with which to bully you.' He took her hands and held them. 'Will you promise me that, Samantha?'

  Sam nodded gratefully. 'Oh, yes, Paul. And—and thank you.' She laughed a little. 'That's the first time you've called me by my name.'

  He pulled a comically woeful face. 'It is very hard for a poor Frenchman to get his tongue round Samantha. So you will have to be content with cherie, I'm afraid.'

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him to call her Sam, but something held her back. That was what Mike had called her; she could almost hear him now as he used to say her name on their island in a dozen different ways, sometimes exasperated, sometimes commanding, and sometimes—sometimes with his voice thick and breathless with desire. Damn it! Why did she always have to think of Mike? Abruptly she stood up and then shivered. Immediately Paul was contrite.

  'But you are cold! I have kept you too long in these caverns. Come, let us go back into the sunlight at once.'

  They emerged once more into the constant eighty degree heat and got into the car to continue their tour. As they pulled away another car fell in, behind them and Sam recognised it as the one that had followed them from the house. She pointed it out to Paul.

  He glanced in the driving mirror and shrugged. 'It is on your father's orders. They are to follow us to help protect you.'

  Sam looked at him askance. 'You mean to say that I'm to be followed wherever I go?'

  'You can hardly blame your father, cherie. It hit him very hard when you were kidnapped. He is terribly afraid that it might happen again, that it might give other people ideas. On the other, hand he does not want to stop you having pleasure, to confine you to the house, so he does the best he can by providing you with as much protection as possible without restricting you in any way.' Paul's hand came out to cover hers. 'Believe me, ma mie, his only concern is for your happiness and safety.'

  He squeezed her hand and held it until he had to put his own back on the wheel, and, almost to her own surprise, Sam didn't draw away. She felt overwhelmingly grateful to Paul; he was the only one who had shown any understanding of her feelings and difficulties. Both Mike and her father—Mike of course for his own reasons—had plunged her headlong into the relationships they had thrust upon her, explaining nothing, giving her no time to gradually build up the relationship again; even now her father had told her nothing of her mother, her grandparents or any other relatives, and he seemed to know next to nothing of any other of her friends except Paul, and spent little time at home. If he had wanted her back so badly why did he spend so little time with her? Sam thought resentfully, but then was immediately ashamed of herself; he had probably spent a great deal of time searching for her and now had to catch up with his work. And it must be a terrible responsibility running such a huge business empire.

  So Sam was able to excuse him, and now that she had Paul to keep her company her father's absence wasn't so marked. Paul seemed to be able to devote as much time to her as he wanted, until Sam began to wonder just what his position was in her father's business, but these thoughts were pushed to the back of her mind because she was so glad to have his company. He was fun to be with, cheerful and always charming and she was the recipient of several envious looks when he took her dancing at Sam Lord's turreted castle at Long Bay. Here they joined another couple whom she had known, and, although the conversation was necessarily stilted at times, she was pleased to think that she was picking up her old life again.

  She met other friends when Paul took her racing in Bridgetown and to the Yacht Club, but he seemed to like to be alone with her and once or twice they spent the afternoon lying on the private beach a hundred yards or so from the house and screened from it by woodland. Here the white coral sand was soft as talcum powder underfoot and the water was warm and welcoming. Occasionally a fleet of bouffant clouds came cruising over the horizon, but somehow they never seemed to obscure the sun.

  Sam liked the place so much that she began to go there every day alone, preferring it to the house where she somehow never seemed to be completely at ease; it was more of a showplace than a home. A raft had been anchored out in the sea and she often swam out to it to lie and sunbathe, but not in the nude; she was pretty sure that at least one of her father's guards was keeping an eye on her from the shade of the trees.

  So one day she lay on her stomach on the raft while she flicked through the pages of a magazine, and contented herself by undoing the strap of the red bikini she was wearing so that her back would stay evenly brown. Alter a while a boat puttered slowly along quite a bit farther out to sea and anchored in the mouth of the bay. Sam glanced at it idly and saw a fishing line being cast from the stern, although the fisherman was hidden from her sight by the canopy. Uninterested, she returned to her magazine and presently dozed a little in the sun.

  The raft rocked violently and Sam awoke with a start and then opened her mouth to scream at sight of the monster that was coming out of the sea towards her! . But then a hand was clamped over her mouth and her heart gave a sickening jolt as she realised that it was a man in goggles and breathing apparatus, his oxygen tanks strapped on to his back. And even with all the scuba-diving paraphernalia obscuring his features she recognised him.

  Mike said, 'Don't scream, Sam. Do you understand?'

  She nodded and he removed his salty wet hand from her mouth. Holding on to the raft with one hand, he reached up to take off his goggles. His wet hair stuck damply to his forehead and drops of water clung to his eyelashes. He blinked them away and then his eyes, as blue as the sky, gazed intently at her face. 'Hi, sweetheart,' he said softly. 'You look better.' He lifted his right hand and gently stroked her cheek.

  His touch brought Sam back to life. She trembled violently and drew away. 'Why did you have to come here? Don't you ever give up?' she asked bitterly.

  His face hardened. 'Not where you're concerned. You happen to be all I have in the world that's worth fighting for.'

  'Oh, Mike!' Sam shook her head in exasperated bewilderment. 'You're crazy. Don't you know that my father has men watching me all the time? There's one back on the beach now. If they catch you…'

  Mike gave a wry grin. 'Why do you think I chose this method? I've been sailing past here several times a day for the last week in the hope that I'd find you out here alone.'

  'But why? What's the point?' She backed away from him. 'If you think you can carry me off again without me making a fuss, you're mistaken. The guard would inform the police and you'd be picked up within an hour. And don't think you can persuade me to go with you willingly, because I won't. I'm not going to let you dupe me again,' she added bitterly.

  For a moment a bleak, fed-up look came into Mike's eyes, but then his jaw tightened and he said. 'That isn't why I'm here. I told you once before that I never forced myself on anyone; if you won't come with me of your own free will then I'm not going to make you. But I have to talk to you, tell you my side of what happened when we left Barbados. And that I think I have the right to demand of you.'

  Sharply Sam retorted, 'You have no rights whatsoever where I'm concerned.'

  Mike looked at her grimly. 'I seem to remember you saying that you owed your life to me. I don't like having to remind you of a debt, Sam, but in the circumstances I have no choice. You at least owe me the right to talk to you.'

  Sam stared into his determined face unhappily, then shrugged. 'All right, go head. What do you want to say?'

  'Not here,' Mike said rather wryly. 'It hardly makes a conge
nial venue for the things I have to tell you. You must meet me in Bridgetown tomorrow.'

  'In Bridgetown? No, I won't! This is just another cheap trick to lure me away and…'

  Again his hand went over her mouth. 'Keep your voice down,' he warned. Their heads were very close and slowly he removed his hand and slipped it round the back of her neck. Deliberately he drew her head down to his and kissed her. For a moment she resisted, holding her head stiffly, but as she felt the warmth and sensuality of his mouth she slowly relaxed, her lips moving against his in a sudden, urgent need.

  At last he let her go. 'You'll meet me tomorrow?'

  Her eyes opened and she looked at him resentfully. 'Do you really think that using sex will make me do what you want?' she asked jeeringly.

  'My poor Sam. Is that all you think it is?' His mouth suddenly broke into a broad grin. 'In that case I'd better not tell you that your bikini top fell off five minutes ago.'

  'Oh!' Hastily Sam packed up the scrap of material and put it back on. Then she sat up straight and looked down at him with a frown on her face. 'Suppose I do arrange to meet you—how do you know I won't tell my father and let him have you arrested?'

  'He can't, I haven't committed any crime—other than marrying his daughter of course, which I must admit is a crime in his eyes. He wanted to use you in another way.'

  'What do you mean—use me?'

  'Well, I would call wanting to marry you off just to further his business interests using you, wouldn't you?' But he added quickly before she could speak, 'But that's something we can talk about tomorrow. There are a great many things about your old life that you should know, things that I wanted to keep from you if I could because we'd left them all behind us. But your finding out who you were and going back to the Very place and people you were escaping from has changed everything. Will you come?' he asked again.

  'How can I be sure that you won't try to take me away from my father again?'