Bonds of Matrimony (11 page)

She felt very inexperienced and vulnerable. Did he -could he possibly know how much she had liked the helpless sensation of being on the receiving end of his kiss? Mustn't he now realize that he could so casually bind her to his whim because she couldn't believe that it was more than that - with bonds as real as if they had been forged in

steel?

CHAPTER SEVEN

HERO hadn't understood a word Benedict had said. She puzzled over it all morning and could hardly bring herself to come to the lunch table at all. He couldn't want her to be a real wife to him, because he had told her that he was in love with somebody else. A pretty little snake, asleep in the sun, was how he had described this other girl, and he had also said she was rather a darling. Hero couldn't imagine such a combination, but she thought that Benedict might well be attracted to such a mixture, and if he had been referring to Betsy she could understand the attraction. Betsy was pretty enough, and she liked her place in the sun, and there was always a spice of danger in her company because if she saw a warmer place to bask in, she would be up and away without a qualm for her former admirer. If Benedict thought he could take her to his hand, drawing the fangs with which she was apt to dismiss those who displeased her, then Benedict was welcome to her!

She wanted to tell him so as they ate their lunch in an uncomfortable silence. She looked up, determined to say something to break the endless circle of her thoughts, and found that he was looking at her in a way that made the words die on her lips. She pulled uncomfortably at the collar of her shirt, fingering the gold medallion that she always wore round her neck.

'What's the matter?' With a great effort, she made the words sound prosaic.

That's what I was wondering,' he drawled. 'I thought you were going to truck topsoil this morning?'

'Yes, I was,' she admitted.

'But you changed your mind?'

She nodded. 'I wrote to Betsy. I asked her to bring Bob with her. I like Bob very much! He's a very kind person.'

'I expect he's found it easy enough to be kind to you,' Benedict replied. 'What have you ever asked of him?'

Hero shrugged her shoulders. Why should she have asked anything of him? She wished Benedict wouldn't look at her in that appraising way. It reminded her that if he chose to think that he had the right to make an intimate study of her form, she was quite unable to prevent him from doing so.

'He's taken me out to dinner several times! Things like that,' she answered. 'He's - rather special.'

'Not to you, he's not!' Benedict said with a slight smile. 'You can't hide behind him, so don't try!'

She lowered her gaze to her plate. 'I don't know what you mean!' she declared.

'No?' It was outrageous that he should sound amused that she might find Bob Andrews attractive. 'I'm trying to tell you, in the nicest possible way,' he went on smoothly, 'that if you play with fire, you'll get burned. I'll see to that.'

'It's nothing to do with you!' Then, when he said nothing, she asked in puzzled tones, 'Is it because I'm

your wife?'

'Not entirely.'

'Because if it is, don't you think I might do the same by you because you're my husband?' She didn't look at him because she was-afraid that he would guess her true feelings.

'You can try!' he mocked her.

'That's not fair!' she flared.

But he only laughed and changed the subject by asking her if she had seen Lake Nakuru since it had become the first national park in Africa established specifically for the protection of its bird life. For an instant she tried to resist the bait, to tell him that she didn't consider herself answerable to him in any way. More, that she wanted a date for her departure to England there and then, so that she could begin to plan for it and work towards it.

'I saw President Kenyatta open it,' she said. 'It was a tremendous thing for the government to have done. They collected flamingo feathers from the side of the lake and sold them for pennies to children all over the world. Everybody helped. Everybody who's interested in wildlife, that is.'

'How many flamingoes are there?'

She knew he was deliberately drawing her out, but she had already swallowed the hook. She was happy to tell him everything she knew about the new park.

'More than anywhere else, I think. It's one of the few self-sustaining ecosystems in the world. They don't need anything from outside the lake. The lesser flamingoes live on a type of blue-green algae, which reproduce themselves so rapidly they can double their numbers every few hours. The flamingoes return to the lake about fifty tons of droppings every day, which decompose and are processed by bacteria and sunlight into food for the algae, which are eaten by the flamingoes at the rate of about a hundred and sixty tons a day! The only blot on the horizon is man who's busy polluting the lake!'

'Perhaps you'd rather go there than to Nanyuki?' Benedict suggested.

Hero stared at him in a tongue-tied silence. She pushed her plate away from her and rose to her feet. 'I don't want to go anywhere!' she exclaimed. 'Only to England. I can't

wait to go there!'

He raised his eyebrows. 'I thought you'd changed your mind about going to England?' he reminded her.

'No! Oh, no! I only meant that I saw that you couldn't take me there at once, but now I don't want to stay a minute longer than I have to! You can't make me stay! You promised!'

'Because I kissed you?'

'No!'

'Then why?'

How could she possibly tell him that? She took to her heels and ran out of the house, flying over the ground in her hurry to get away from him. She had not run like that since childhood, throwing all caution to the winds and pressing away from the earth with every step, until she was breathless and exhausted but, curiously, more alive than she had been for a long, long time, as one sometimes feels after a sudden spurt of physical activity.

When she could go no further she sat down, panting, under a thorn tree, her back to its trunk and drawing up her knees to try to get into the small piece of shadow that was all that the tree had to offer. But, although she might have run from him, Benedict Carmichael's presence was still with her. The way he looked and, even more, the strange effect he had on her refused to go away. It was like trying to jump off one's own shadow to get rid of him - an impractical impossibility!

The heat of the midday sun made her drowsy. In a few minutes, she told herself, he would have left the house and she would go back and collect her letter to Betsy and start the long drive into Isiolo. But the few minutes came and went and she was still sitting there, listening to the endless, high-pitched noise of the bush. Somehow, she decided, she would wring an apology out of him, and then she would feel better. She would put it to him straight that she couldn't go on living on the farm with him if she couldn't be sure that their relationship would go on being platonic and - and dull!

A crackle in the dry grass made her turn her head, afraid. She didn't know what she had expected to see, but even a lion would have been preferable in that moment to Benedict Carmichael!

'What do you want?' she demanded.

He folded his arms across his chest. 'I came to see if you were going to Isiolo, or if you had changed your mind about that too?'

Hero hugged her knees, frowning at a long trail of ants that were travelling through the dust not far away. She hadn't noticed them before and she was extremely glad that they had not decided to come her way.

'Of course I'm going to Isiolo!'

'When?'

Her frown deepened. 'As soon as I was sure you'd left

the house!'

'I see,' he said.

'I don't suppose you do.'

He held out his hands to her and, when she put her own into them, pulled her to her feet. 'Nothing's changed,' he said.

She thought it had! He had changed, for one thing, and he had changed her for another!

'I don't want to talk about it!' she said.

'Not now,' he agreed. 'But we have to talk about it some time.' He put a hand under her chin and raised her face to his. 'You can't run away from your own shadow

all the time we're together!'

Hero blanched, thinking of her own analogy of how it was like trying to jump off her shadow to try to escape him. 'No.'

'So what are we going to do about it?'

She shook her head, not knowing what to say. 'Benedict, if I could only understand you better. But you shut me out of anything that matters to you. You didn't even tell me what you did in the Sudan.'

'I didn't think you'd be interested.'

'Of course I want to know!' She looked at him through her lashes. 'I've never known anyone like you before. I like your book!'

He threw back his head and laughed. 'How much of it do you understand? You're not really impressed because I've spent most of my life collecting some high- sounding degrees, are you?'

'Why not?' she said simply.

He stopped laughing, his hands tightening on her shoulders. 'You really do think it's an achievement!'

'Of course I do! I know that much about it. I'm not as silly as you think!'

'I can hardly call you silly for that!' he said with a touch of self-mockery. 'I'm not used to people wanting to know about my work—'

'No, but I do understand some of it. I know going to an agricultural college isn't the same thing, but it helps. And then farming here has many of the same ingredients as some of your chapters. You have only to look to see the results of erosion around here!'

'Then if it isn't my book that's put you in fright, it must be a certain incident between us?'

That was hitting below the belt. 'Of course not!' she exclaimed.

'There's no of course about it,' he retorted. He wound a curl of her hair around one of his scarred fingers and smiled at her. 'Didn't it occur to you that I might want to exert my rights as a husband sooner or later?'

She licked her dry lips and shook her head. 'It - it wasn't in the deal we made.'

'It was always a possibility, though. Surely you knew that?'

'I trusted you—'

'Why? I never said I wouldn't make love to you!' 'You didn't have to!' she gasped. 'You told me you were in love with B — with someone else!'

'Nevertheless, you must have expected something of the sort when you thought of marrying me. I am your husband, after all!'

'But not a proper husband!'

He tapped her lightly on the cheek. 'What's the difference?' he asked her.

'I should have thought it was obvious!' she retorted. She put up a hand and pulled his away from her face, looking down at the scars that ran along his fingers. 'I thought you might have been in prison when I first met you.' She tried to get off the subject. 'How did you hurt your hands like that?'

'Why should you be interested?'

'I wondered, that's all. You don't have to tell me if you don't want to.'

His smile was mocking. 'Why did you marry me if you thought I'd been in prison? Did you think you could reform me?'

That was surprisingly difficult to answer. 'I don't know,' she said at last. 'I don't know where I am.' 'But you don't dislike me anymore?'

She was silent and he ran a finger down her nose, looking amused. 'What about the other times?'

Hero swallowed, very conscious of the effect on her of his touch. 'I don't think of you as a husband.'

Benedict gave a gentle push to her chin, catching her behind the head and kissing her quickly on the lips. 'Perhaps I can change your mind about that?' he suggested.

She couldn't bring herself to answer one way or the other. 'If I don't get started, the bank will have shut before I get to Isiolo. Please - please don't, Benedict!' 'Afraid?'

'It's your own fault!' she retorted. 'You should never have married me, loving somebody else! You might have known that you'd lose her and that you couldn't have me! I don't intend to be an also-ran to anyone!'

He pulled her violently into his arms, stopping her mouth with a kiss that shook her right down to the soles of her feet. 'I don't consider my wife an also-ran either!' he said, 'so take care what you say!' His mouth came down on hers again, more gently than before, drawing a shattering response from her that she couldn't begin to hide from him. The trickle of excitement became a flood that submerged all else but the need to return his kiss and to make it easier for him to explore the curves of her back, her hips, even her breasts, before reality returned and she tore herself free, turning on him with a strength loaned to her by sheer panic. She kicked his shins and slapped his face.

'I won't have you make love to me!'

He had her hands behind her back in a flash, holding her with a humiliating ease that brought the tears to her eyes. 'Won't you indeed?' he mocked her. 'Don't be too rash, Liebling. You might not have any say in the matter, and what would you do then?' He bent his head and kissed first one side of her mouth and then the other. 'Mrs. Carmichael!'

'It isn't fair!' she protested. 'I don't think you love anyone but yourself! You couldn't—' she gulped, not daring to look at him - 'not if you were really in love with Betsy. You're a narcissus!' she ended wildly. 'In love with yourself!'

'How obsessed you are with Betsy,' he observed. He let her go and she rubbed her wrists, sure that he must have hurt her and wondering a little because she couldn't feel any pain.

He made an exasperated sound. 'Little fool!' he muttered. 'You ought to be ashamed of yourself! What would your mother say about your indulging your vulgar curiosity so that you imagine you know all about my past love life? Oh yes, you were!' he went on when she looked as if she might argue the point. 'The only thing you know is that I married you; the rest is mere speculation, and not very flattering to me as your husband ! You'll be telling me next how the way I kiss you compares with the way I kissed some other girl-friend I may have had in the past—' 'Benedict! I wouldn't!'

'You'd better not!' he returned swiftly. 'Nothing about my past life is any of your concern. Your only interest is how I treat my wife, here and now, and in giving me the respect you'd naturally give the man you'd married, and that doesn't include any childish conjectures on how. I