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“Be careful, Harriet, be careful what you say! Victorine’s daughter—part of my Victorine, all that’s left of my only love. But not my daughter, sister dear, as you well remember I’m sure. Gavin’s daughter! You remember your old beau Gavin, don’t you? Sure he was going to marry you, the way you kept him dangling in spite of my warnings. So sure of yourself and him you let him meet my Victorine. Did you know you were playing procureuse when you did, Harry? Did you?”
“Martin, there’s no use in going over and over the dead past. Dead, brother. Like Victorine.”
“No! D’you understand that? No! She’d never leave me—promised me. She loved me—ah yes, she did when she knew how patient I could be, how gentle with her. When she knew how much I loved her she started to love me too! Did that make you jealous, Harriet? That why you hated my Victorine so? Gavin wasn’t her fault. Yours! She was so innocent; not at all worldly wise as you were, even then, with your books and your clever tongue and the bon mots that made everyone laugh. But what did that get you? You let Gavin seduce my pure little angel, and you were so damned blind you did not even see what was happening under your nose until it was too late!”
“You’re losing control of yourself, Martin. Victorine’s gone and the past with her. Alexa...”
“Alexa? Ah yes—my little Victorine. Still unspoiled. Still untouched. Still is, isn’t she? You watched over her in Colombo? You didn’t let any man get too near her? Alone with her?”
“Martin, don’t you see that you have to—you must forget this—this unnatural obsession of yours. Yes, it is unnatural! I cannot allow...”
“Allow, did you say, sister? And—‘unnatural’? Alexa’s not my daughter, is she? Not my name on her birth certificate as father, is it? Not incest, my dear Harriet, if that’s your devious meaning. And it’s not for you to allow or disallow me anything! You understand? Do you?”
She was backing away from the door, step by step. Hands over her ears to cut out the sound of the voices. In her nightmares Alexa always tried to put up her hands to block them out before they could begin, but the words came through her damp palms to fill her ears. Halfway down the hall there was her door, standing open. Ayah standing there shaking her head at her, her grumbling scold like a rescue. She would keep Ayah with her. “Quick!” she told the old woman. “Bring your sleeping mat up as quickly as you can to missy’s room. Yes, now!” She must sleep here all night. If he came—if his voice came through the door, pleading and wheedling and calling her “little Victorine...”
But it was only Harriet’s voice that called, “Alexa? Alexa, you must let me in,” through her bolted door this time.
“Alexa, there are certain things that you do not understand yet, but I can only hope
that you still retain enough trust in me to do as I must advise you to do, without asking too many questions.” Harriet’s face, so gaunt, suddenly so old-looking. She had never really looked at Harriet before, had she? She had always been just “Aunt Harriet”—always there.
“I was outside his door when you were talking. So I think I do understand now. I have to go away.” Alexa’s voice, even in her own ears, sounded dead. In her nightmares the other voices were still beating against her mind, crawling into it like the ugly coconut beetles with their spiky, clinging legs.
Harriet’s voice seemed to rise and fall like sea waves or the sound of the wind outside in the monsoon season. Now only certain words, certain phrases repeated themselves in her nightmares and her memory.
“I was afraid this might... For the last few days I have been... Letty Dearborn...”
“Letty?”
“Yes. I suppose she had started to— wonder. Wrote to him, I don’t doubt. Not that she has any right to interfere, but what’s done... Anyhow, he’s staying there instead of coming straight here as he usually does. Had a note by one of her coolies a while ago, but of course I did not tell Martin. It’s the best thing for you now, though. Never mind anything I said before. It’s all changed now....”
“He? I don’t know who you mean!”
“I do hope you have been paying attention!” A return to the old, acid-tongued Aunt Harriet. “I just told you, I’m sure. Sir John Travers. Must have been Letty, but anyhow he’s here. Wants to call tomorrow. And better he than... At least I’m sure he’ll be kind to you. And you’d have everything you want too, as Lady Travers.”
“Lady Travers? Lady Travers! Ma’am?”
Alexa started up in bed, wondering why there was no movement beneath her with some part of her mind while the rest of her reveled at escaping from the nightmare.
“Ma’am? I wouldn’t have awakened you except you told me eleven o’clock...”
When she opened her eyes with slow, deliberate anticipation she was back to the present again, thank God. She had escaped after all and she was Lady Travers; sitting up in bed in her sheer silk nightgown and stretching arms luxuriously above her head as she smiled at the worried face of her maid.
“Was it another one of those nasty nightmares, ma’am?” Bridget had been with her for a little over three months now, long enough to know that sometimes her mistress had nightmares that made her toss and turn violently and moan out loud in her sleep, the poor young lady. And so young she was; to be married to a man old enough to be her father; but they always seemed to be more than happy in each other’s company, at least, with never a lack of things to talk about for all that they didn’t share a bed nor even the same room. None of her business, Bridget always told herself. All she knew was that if they hadn’t rescued her that time in India, only God knew where she’d have ended up by now. There were some things it was better not to think about, Bridget believed fervently, and it was a real pity that her poor young lady had the nightmares to haunt her with whatever it was she was trying to forget.
Bridget was fiercely loyal, and closemouthed into the bargain. The first morning glimpse of Bridget’s round red face with straying wisps of red hair escaping from under her carefully starched white cap was always capable of lifting Alexa’s spirits; especially after one of her nightmares.
“Oh, I’m so glad to be awake and know that this is real!” Alexa glanced around the room with its pale brocade-covered walls and exquisite furniture and with what seemed to be a whole wall of windows that opened out onto a small wrought-iron balcony. Gauzy curtains blew inward before a soft breeze, and the smell of breakfast assailed her nostrils. Coffee and croissants. She was in Paris!
“Your bath’s ready for you, madam. And hot enough so you can enjoy your breakfast while it cools a trifle.”
“Do you know, Bridget, for a moment f imagined we were still at sea. It seems as if I’ve hardly been off a ship since I left.”
“Well, it’s glad I am, milady, that we’re off that ship. I’d never have made a sailor if I’d been a man.”
Immersed in her copper bathtub behind the gold and ivory screen that matched the walls of her room, Alexa frowned a trifle thoughtfully as she stretched first one leg and then the other out of warm, scented water and began to soap them. Man. Sailor. Why did she have to remember with almost startling clarity a certain moon-bright night, a rock-circled pool, the riding lights of a ship beyond the reef. And a sailor from the ship (or so she had thought) who had called her a mermaid and a sea nymph while he kissed her; their wet, naked bodies lying against each other. And the next time—and the last time after that when the whole chain of events that had brought her here had begun, in a way. Nicholas. She preferred his full name to the crudely American short form “Nick.” What was California like?
“Shall I be bringing you a towel now, milady?” Perhaps it was just as well that Bridget’s voice from behind the screen changed the train of her thoughts. Later—Alexa thought. Later! For in herself she knew that it was not finished between them yet and that she would encounter him again some day. But this time, now that she knew and understood so much more—this time they would be on equal footing!
