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‘What is in this drink?’ she asked, after a moment, to break the silence between them.

‘Rum and fruit juices,’ he told her.

‘It’s delicious. I always imagined rum to be a sailor’s drink.’

Suddenly he set his glass on the side table next to the sofa on which he was sitting. ‘I must go and see about Marcelle. One moment, please.’

Jade, sipping her rum and fruit juices, watched him. Well, she asked herself, what had she expected? That Laurent should sit and make flighty talk over the wind and rain and smashing and tearing noises, while Marcelle tried to cope with her migraine and the worry about her mother?

She was walking about the room, drink in hand, when he came back into the room. Without turning she said, 'I’m admiring the beautiful assemblage of objects and furnishings. I hope you don’t mind?’ She knew that her voice had only succeeded in sounding tight, instead of careless, which was which she had intended it should be.

Immediately she had come into this room, her eyes had searched for the white jade phoenix which he had described to her, but when she had spotted it she had been determined not to remark on it.

‘Marcelle is far from well,’ he said. ‘She is very upset over this whole thing.'

‘Well,’ Jade could not stop herself from saying, ‘I guess she isn’t the only one on this island who happens to be very upset right now. Perhaps, on top of everything, she’s upset that I’m here?’

‘Don’t be sarcastic with me,’ he snapped. ‘I am not in the mood for it. Take my advice, make the best of things here.’

‘Oh, but I am.’ She spoke lightly, but her blue eyes were furious. ‘I’ve changed, as you can see.’ She turned round and her amber-gold silk caftan swirled outwards. ‘I’m having a drink; I’m admiring your beautiful collection. I was hoping that Marcelle would make use of this caftan,' she shrugged. ‘However ....'’

Suddenly he caught her wrist and impelled her to look at him. ‘In other words, you are bothered by the fact that she is wearing one of my silk shirts?’

‘Not at all,’ she replied. ‘What would you like me to say—
yes
, I
am
bothered?’

Suddenly the lights flickered and went down and, just when they thought they were going out, they brightened. They stood listening to the water noises and the force of the wind, which seemed to shake the house to its foundations.

Laurent released her wrist. 'Tell me,' she said mockingly, ‘what would happen if the house came down?’

‘Seeing that I have told you that mine was the sort of house a knowledgeable Mauritian would build to see himself through cyclones, I would feel very embarrassed.' He had, she noticed, changed into dark low-belted slacks and a soft bronzey-melon coloured shirt which emphasised his exciting dark skin. His eyes went over her. ‘You wear this caftan with a romantic air.

Let me get you another drink ... and then we will see about this meal.’

While he passed her the glass he said, ‘So you like my house?’

‘Very much.' She still did not know how to take him. I am one of those fortunate people whose professional occupation coincides with their private tastes. I like to live with these things.' He sat down on the opposite sofa. ‘In a way, I regard myself as a custodian.'

‘Your shop in Curepipe must surely enjoy an international reputation,' she said.

‘It does,' he replied, and at that moment the room was plunged into darkness and the lights did not come on again. ‘One moment.'

Apparently they both moved together—Jade from fright—and then, still holding her glass, she found herself in his arms and the warmth of his body against her own was like an electric shock. Because she felt she ought to, she tried to draw away from him, but her heel caught in the hem of her caftan and to prevent herself from falling, her free hand went to his arm.

‘Don’t fight me,' he said.

‘M-my glass,' she murmured. ‘Be careful, Laurent, your carpet ....''

In the darkness she felt him take the glass from her fingers and knew that he was groping for a place to set it down.

When his arms tightened about her and his lips came down on her own she felt herself go weak all over. 'Don’t muddle my life,' she whispered.

‘That shouldn’t be hard, because let us face this, you don’t love Marlow Lewis.'

Against all the dictates of common sense she allowed him to cup her small breasts with his hand, for she realised that to him she was just one of many. And then his fingers were in her hair and, as her lips parted for him, she made no effort to control the excitement he aroused in her, that almost suffocated her. He strained her thighs tight against him and something in the tenseness in his lean body made her realise that he was experiencing the same sensation. Her heart was thumping so hard that she was afraid he could feel it through his silk shirt.

When she managed to free herself she said, ‘You frighten me so much when you kiss and hold me like this.’

‘Why is that?’ He reached for her in the darkness again.

‘Because, right now, I want it so much. Tomorrow I’ll hate myself.’

‘In Mauritius we have a saying,’ he said, ‘and that saying is—tomorrow belongs to no one.'

‘Laur-rent?’ It was Marcelle. ‘The lights have failed now. Oh, I cannot see a thing with all the shutters fastened! Come and get me,
please
... ! ’

Swearing softly, Laurent released Jade. ‘I am searching for matches,’ he said. ‘There are candles all over the place, but I have mislaid the damn matches.'

Jade stood perfectly still, hating him, hating herself and hating Marcelle Fabre for the shock her voice had caused to her clamouring nerves.

Laurent lit one candle and then another, and soon the beautiful room was glowing with flickering light. The French silk sofa pillows in sunset shades appeared jewel-like on the off-white sofas.

‘I’m terrified,’ Marcelle whispered, ‘Although I was born on the island I cannot get used to the weather we have at times..... This, of course, is the real thing, not just a storm. I must take my sleeping pills. I must escape from all this!'

‘Don’t he nervous.' Laurent went over to her. ‘It will take a lot to flatten this house, and try not to worry about your mother. Your brothers were on their way to your mother's house, after all. If we managed to get here in time, they will have got there in time.'

‘We shouldn’t have come here,' Marcelle went on, her voice rising. ‘If you had not gone to Marlow Lewis’s house we should be at
my
house, right this minute. I’ll never forgive you for what you have done! ’ Suddenly she began to sob hysterically.

‘Tell me where your kitchen is,’ said Jade, wanting desperately to escape from this scene. ‘I’ll—if you give me a candle, I’ll go and see what I can do so far as preparing a meal is concerned....' She flinched as the tempo of the wind increased, and bit her lip.

‘Stay where you are,' Laurent snapped. ‘Let me get this girl settled and then we’ll see about food. Sit down!' He stared at Jade, who stared back at him. She knew her voice would tremble if she spoke back to him, so she kept quiet.

She sat on the sofa and Laurent was gone for some time, then he came back into the room. ‘She is asleep,' he said.

Jade’s look was hurt and enquiring, as she looked up at him. ‘We’ll go to the kitchen now,' was all he said.

His kitchen was in earth-tones and bore the stamp of efficiency. Many of the utensils were copper and glinted in the candlelight. Opposite the wall-fitments and usual accessories there were floor-to-ceiling windows, but these were completely shuttered. Whoever looked after Laurent Sevigny's house in his absence had been to work at the first radio warning that the island was directly in the path of a cyclone. Laurent lit a kerosene lamp. It was nothing short of nerve-racking in the kitchen which seemed to be taking a smashing on the window side, and Jade knew without being told that had those windows not been tightly shuttered, and if any of the wind from outside had got into the house, the entire glass wall would have been sucked out—or blown in, she was not sure which. The thought caused her to tremble as they prepared salads and cheeses.

‘What about Marcelle?’ she asked, when they had made the coffee on a spirit stove.

‘There is nothing for it but to let her sleep,’ he replied. ‘She was insistent that she take a sleeping pill. I supervised this—in case she took more than the prescribed dose. She can eat when she wakes up.’

They carried everything through to the dining-room with its round oak table and Windsor-back chairs.

Hanging from the beamed ceiling a heavy iron chandelier mocked them, reminding them that there were cyclonic conditions and a power cut.

Laurent opened wine and glanced at Jade. ‘I probably have too many plants and flowers and too many candlesticks in my home, but I like them, and that is why they are around.’

‘To me it’s all perfect.’ She spoke in the carefully modulated voice she always used when she had been hurt and felt unsure of herself. ‘It’s all very English. It makes me feel just a little homesick, actually.’ Her eyes went to the eighteenth-century pine Welsh dresser and English Derby plates and part of an impressive cache of copper. Then, because she had been hurt by his attitude, she said, ‘We sit here and talk about too many this and too many that—plants and flowers and candlesticks, when all the time
I
know and
you
know that bringing me here was merely the act of a damned fool.' She expelled an angry breath and looked down at her plate and tried to fight the tears which threatened to come.

‘Well,’ his voice was hard, ‘aren’t all men fools, when it comes to women?

‘Marcelle resents my being here,’ she said.

‘Marcelle manages my shop, not my life,’ he answered curtly.

Outside, the wind carried the sound of something being snapped in two.

‘It must be quite late,’ said lade. 'How much more of this?’

"It is after ten,’ he told her, and they drank their coffee in silence and once, when their eyes met and held, she dropped her lashes—and with them her hopes that she would ever get over Laurent Sevigny.

‘Would you like to go to bed?’ he asked.

‘I’ll rest on top of the bed, after I’ve done these dishes. It would be impossible to sleep in these conditions. In the end you begin to feel your nerves are snapping. Apart from the cyclone, I’m hating this now.’

‘I am not exactly enjoying the situation myself,’ he answered. ‘I didn’t exactly intend this—the three of us in this house. You could call it a mistake.’ There was a small quirk at the corner of his mouth.

‘What you mean is that you meant to drop one girl off first. Is that it?’

‘Yes,' he replied, with a deliberate, brutal carelessness.

A wildness came over her. ‘Which one?’ She condemned him with her blue eyes.

‘I have learned one thing: you never tell a woman too much. I’m too much of an expert to answer such a question.' His eyes brushed over her.

‘There’s that girl in there,’ she went on, unable to stop herself, ‘and there’s Nicole de Speville, a woman much older than yourself, but very beautiful, and that’s all that counts with you....'

‘Let me make a suggestion,’ he said, ‘keep Nicole out of this. You are treading on thin ice, I am warning you.’ There was, she thought, looking at him, something about him which indicated that he was capable of a steely violence. In fact, in his dark, low-belted slacks and soft silk shirt, the colour of an over-ripe melon, he must surely resemble the handsome, dashing corsair types who had lived by plundering the high seas.

'I find you insulting,' he said. ‘So do me a favour and keep quiet.’

Wide-eyed and thoroughly aroused, she retorted, ‘I won’t keep quiet! You had no right to bring me here. I was the one who was insulted. I offered Marcelle something to wear and she ignored my offer and you went one better ... you refused outright. You’d rather have her walking about half-naked in one of your silk shirts than wear a caftan of mine.
I
am the one who’s been insulted. This house must be to you like—a lair was to the French swashbuckling corsairs ... a springboard for your affairs.'

Suddenly he stood up and came round the table to her side and, grasping her by the shoulders, forced her to stand up next to him, so close that their bodies were touching. ‘Don’t attack me with barbed remarks,’ he snapped, those strange dark, sea-green eyes blazing down at her. ‘You make me want to lose my temper.'

‘I’m not afraid of your temper,' she stared back at him, ‘and that must bother you quite a lot!'

‘Let us put it this way,’ he told her. ‘I am afraid of my own temper, and for this reason I will react by curbing it ... this way.’ She watched him, as he bent his head to kiss her. He kissed her sensually and slowly and she did not struggle, except to keep her lips cool and unresponsive beneath his own. His arms tightened about her and she felt the shivering waters of desire for him. It was an effort to bring up her lashes and she allowed them to rest on her cheeks. Suddenly her mind took precedence over the demands of her body and she struggled free.

‘You are a dangerous character,' she told him, her voice shaking. ‘A man of experience. A man, once he gets going, who has the know-how to take a girl out of her depth, before she quite realises what it is that’s happening to her.’

‘And you don't consider Marlow Lewis a man of experience?’ His voice was hard and mocking.

‘Marlow happens to be my future husband. I accept him for what he is.’

‘Because you are in love with him?’ His eyes mocked her.

‘Yes.’

‘So? You are in love with him.' It was a statement, but the tone of his voice was disbelieving. ‘There have been times when I have found this hard to believe.'

‘I regret being involved with you,’ she said. ‘For— allowing you to—touch me.’ She almost spat the words at him.

‘So you have felt yourself—involved?’

‘You know perfectly well what I mean. You made sure that I was involved with you. To a point, I admit you were successful, but let’s just put that down to the fact that I was feeling let down, because Marlow was away, and—
bored.'
She bit her lip, longing to take the words back.