Fragrant Flower (10 page)

“You must know that I would never do anything to hurt you,” Lord Sheldon said reassuringly, “but are you not running rather grave risks?”

Azalea thought he was referring to her Chinese lessons.

“Papa always thought it most important to be able to converse with people in their own language,” she said. “He could always talk to the Indians in Urdu or in several dialects, with the result that they came to him with their troubles and he was able to help them.”

“And you want to help the Chinese?” Lord Sheldon asked.

“I want to learn about them, to understand what they think and feel.”

Even as she spoke Azalea realised again how indiscreet she had been.

Had she not heard with her own ears Lord Sheldon’s sentiments regarding natives when he had talked with Captain Widcombe?

It must be because it was night and he had taken her unawares that she had been so unguarded. Quickly she tried to cover up her mistake.

“I – I am speaking about – reading,” she said. “It is unlikely I shall have a chance of – talking Chinese except perhaps to – servants.”

Lord Sheldon looked at her.

“There is no need for you to be afraid of me,” he said quietly.

“I am – not!” Azalea replied quickly, and realised that was not the truth.

She
was
afraid of him – afraid because he was different from any other man she had ever met, afraid because she told herself she disliked him – and yet he had managed to evoke in her the most wonderful feelings she had ever known.

“P – please – please,” she said hesitatingly, her eyes very large in her small face, “please – forget what we have said. Forget that I have spoken to you here tonight. I was not – thinking clearly.”

“If you are honest you will admit you were speaking the truth,” Lord Sheldon said, “and the truth is what I always want to hear.”

“Sometimes it is difficult to know what is the truth,” Azalea said, thinking of him. “It may seem to be one thing, and yet be another.”

“Perhaps, like the Chinese, you seek for the world behind the world,” Lord Sheldon said.

He saw the question in Azalea’s eyes and went on,

“The thought behind the word, the motive behind the action. It is something the Chinese have known and understood since the beginning of their civilisation.”

“That is what they try to paint,” Azalea said softly.

“And to carve, to think, to feel and to live,” Lord Sheldon said. “They are a very remarkable people.”

Azalea looked at him in astonishment.

“You can say that? But you said – ”

She was about to quote what she had overheard him say to Captain Widcombe. Then, thinking back over that conversation, she realised for the first time that when he had spoken of “showing white superiority” it had been in answer to Captain Widcombe’s question, “What does the War Office think?” How stupid she had been, she told herself.

Lord Sheldon had been speaking with that mocking note in his voice and she had not realised he was being sarcastic. In case she had made a mistake she said tentatively,

“You speak as if you – like the Chinese.”

“I admire them,” Lord Sheldon replied. “Do you realise they were printing paper money when we in England were still walking about in woad!”

He paused and then he went on,

“The majority of them have high principles, integrity and a strong sense of honour.”

Azalea clasped her hands together.

“That is what Mama said, but I thought – ”

“I know exactly what you thought – Miss Osmund,” Lord Sheldon said with a smile. “You made it quite clear at our first meeting.”

“I am very sorry,” Azalea said. “It was very – rude of me.”

He did not answer and after a moment she said,

“It was foolish of me to be so impetuous, to make up my mind so quickly. But I despise the attitude – some people – have of looking down contemptuously on people of other nations.”

“I agree with you,” Lord Sheldon said quietly.

“Then I can only – apologise for having – misunderstood what you said when I should not have been – listening to your – conversation.”

“You are very disarming, Miss Osmund,” Lord Sheldon remarked, “but there are still quite a lot of unanswered questions where you are concerned.”

“Why should you – think that?” Azalea asked in surprise. Then it suddenly came to her mind that perhaps he was about to ask her how her father met his death.

He had been in India, where gossip where a Regiment was concerned was passed from one soldier to another and from bazaar to bazaar. It might be that something he had heard had made him suspicious.

She knew then that she could not let him ask her any questions of which her uncle would disapprove.

Sir Frederick had told her that the secret must go with her to the grave, and if either he or her aunt knew she had been discovered speaking Russian they would be furiously angry.

In the starlight Azalea looked up into Lord Sheldon’s eyes.

They were searching her face in the same strange, unaccountable manner they had done before, and quite suddenly he seemed large and overwhelming.

He was very near to her and she wondered if once again he might put his arms around her and kiss her.

If he did so, she thought, if he even touched her, she would be only too willing to tell him anything he wanted to know.

Ever since he had been talking to her, she had felt her heart beating frantically within her breast and had been conscious of a strange weakness because he was so near. Now she saw the danger of it.

She realised how much he had learnt about her already and how easy it would be for him to learn so much more. And yet, it seemed, his eyes held her spellbound and she could not escape. Then she thought that his hand went out, although that might have been an illusion.

She made an inarticulate little sound and before he could prevent her she turned and ran away from him as she had run from him once before.

There was the sound of her feet on the deck, the decisive click of a door closing behind her, and Lord Sheldon was alone.

Chapter Four

It seemed incredible to Lord Sheldon that anyone could be so elusive.

He wanted to talk with Azalea – he wanted to go on trying to solve the mystery about her and the secrets which he felt he could almost see hiding in her dark eyes, and yet he could not get near her.

From the moment she had run away from him after they had talked together on deck, she seemed to vanish.

Lord Sheldon had travelled on many ships and he had found it almost impossible to escape from the importunate women who sought his company and, when possible, his embraces.

He had often cursed because a ship was so small that there was nowhere to hide and he felt like a hunted fox. But Azalea, apparently, found it quite easy to avoid him. He discovered from the steward in the Dining Saloon that either she had her meals at such irregular hours it was impossible for him to catch her at the table, or she had them sent to her cabin.

He did not realise that Lady Osmund found her a lot of needlework to do and thus deliberately kept Azalea away from the Dining Saloon, because she wished him to concentrate his attentions on either Violet or Daisy.

During the hot, moist nights when the sky was a panorama of stars and the ship moved slowly through the still waters of the Red Sea and out into the Indian Ocean, Lord Sheldon walked every night round and round the decks hoping to find Azalea, but in vain.

As he had expected, as soon as the ship reached calmer waters and the parents of the children were no longer seasick, Azalea did not need to keep them amused in the Writing Room of the Second Class.

And yet hopefully Lord Sheldon often looked in, only to find the room occupied by old men playing whist or occasionally a tight-lipped spinster writing home of her experiences on board.

Finally when Hong Kong was only forty-eight hours away, Lord Sheldon swallowed his pride and wrote a note to Azalea.

It was very short and when she opened it she found it contained only four words, “I must see you! – S.”

Lord Sheldon managed to slip the note under the door of Azalea’s cabin when everyone had gone to dinner.

As usual, she was not at the Captain’s table, and he noticed that her unoccupied chair had been removed.

All his life Lord Sheldon had been the hunter as well as the hunted.

He might be pursued by women who did not interest him, but when his own desires were aroused he pursued the object of his affections with an ardency and expertise which made him invariably the victor.

Now he found himself uncertain as to what would be the outcome of this particular pursuit.

He waited eagerly and, although he would not admit it to himself, apprehensively for Azalea’s reply to his note. There was nothing in his cabin when he went there after dinner. But very much later that night when he had walked round the deck and waited for a long time in the place where he had talked to Azalea before, he entered his cabin to find a small piece of paper lying on the floor.

It contained one word:

“No!”

He stared at it for a long time and then his lips tightened. He had no intention of being defeated.

He who had tracked down Russian agents in India, who had surmounted innumerable hazards on dangerous journeys including one across the snow-capped mountains of Afghanistan, was not going to be defied by one small dark-eyed girl who had aroused his interest.

“Dammit all!” he told himself, “I will get to the bottom of this if it is the last thing I ever do!”

But the ship was nearing Hong Kong, and he had the feeling that once Azalea was installed at Flagstaff House, Lady Osmund was going to prove a prickly barrier to prevent him from contacting her.

The last night aboard, Lord Sheldon went down to the Third Class deck to say goodbye to Mrs. Favel.

She was pathetically grateful for all his kindness.

“I hopes I never has to go to sea again, my Lord,” she said, “and if my husband’s sent to any more of these heathenish parts I’ll not go with him, and that’s a fact.”

“Now, Mrs. Favel,” Lord Sheldon said soothingly, “you know as well as I do that the Sergeant-Major cannot manage without you, and besides the children would miss him.”

Mrs. Favel protested, though somewhat feebly, and Lord Sheldon was sure that when the time came for her to accompany her husband again she would do her duty.

He gave her some money to buy presents for the children, then climbed the narrow companionway up to the Second Class deck.

He actually had his foot on the stairs to go higher, when, looking down the passage, he saw a figure he recognised come out of a cabin at the far end of it and start walking towards him.

He waited a little while until he was sure it was Azalea, and then he walked towards her.

Her head was bowed and she was obviously deep in thought, so that she did not see him until she actually looked up to find him barring her way.

She gave a little gasp of surprise.

“I have been trying to see you.”

“I – I have been – busy.”

“Why are you avoiding me?”

She was about to say that she was not doing so, when, as she looked into his face the lie died on her lips.

“We have a lot to say to each other, Azalea,” he said quietly and she did not realise that he had used her Christian name for the first time.

“I – have – to pack.”

“I am certain that has been done already,” Lord Sheldon replied, “and anyway it is of little consequence. How can I see you when we reach Hong Kong?”

“You cannot!” she answered. “My aunt would not allow it, and – anyway, I do not wish to – see you!”

“Is that the truth?” he asked.

Despite her resolution not to do so Azalea found herself looking into his eyes.

Once again she felt that strange weakness because he was so near her – because he was so large and overpowering and it was impossible to escape him.

She had an uneasy feeling too that she did not really wish to do so.

Then she told herself frantically that the one thing she wanted more than anything else was to be free of him. Yet it was impossible to move and almost impossible to breathe.

His eyes were on hers and once again she felt as if he hypnotised her and was drawing her to him although he had not moved.

Even before his arms went round her she felt as though her whole being melted into his. Then it seemed as if without the conscious volition of their wills, without either of them being aware of what was happening, she was close against him and his lips were on hers.

He kissed her as he had done before when they had been in the Study, and yet now his lips were more demanding, more insistent, so that it seemed to Azalea that he completely possessed her and she was no longer herself, but part of him. Now it was not a warm tide that flowed from her heart to her breast and from her breast to her throat. It was rather a fire, a streak of lightning, something which burned and flamed until it ended against his lips and became part of the fire within him.

How long they stood there Azalea had no idea.

The ship had disappeared. There was not even the sound of the engines – only a music which seemed to come from within herself and yet be part of the whole world.

Nothing else existed – nothing else remained, except the wonder he evoked in her, a feeling of ecstasy which was divine.

As she felt his arms tighten about her, there was a sudden chatter of voices, masculine laughter, and a party of passengers came noisily from the Saloon.

Slowly, reluctantly, as if he could not bear to let her go, Lord Sheldon took his arms from Azalea until, as the passengers reached them, he released her.

They separated to stand back on either side of the passage as the people passed them, looking curiously at Lord Sheldon as they did so.

There must have been over a dozen of them and by the time they had filed by, the women lifting the trains of their long skirts, the men with their hands in their trouser pockets, Azalea had vanished!

Lord Sheldon caught one last glimpse of her gown as she ran up the stairs which led to the First Class deck, and although he started to walk quickly down the passage after her, he knew it was too late.