a stir in the hospital, and she knew some of the nurses assumed she saw Willard as something of a gift horse. There were others, closer friends, who thought she was mad tossing up a promising career just because Doctor Compton was making life difficult for her. But Beth reassured them, and herself, by making the point that there were equally successful careers to be found in private nursing.
In fact, her life changed more drastically than she could have imagined. A week later, Willard asked her to marry him, and although she did not immediately accept, she knew she was not entirely surprised by his proposal. The attraction, the mutual empathy between them, was no temporary infatuation and she knew she had been dreading the day when he would leave the nursing home for good. But whether they were sufficient grounds on which to accept his offer, she had not been sure, and she was plagued with doubts and uncertainties. Then Willard had suggested that as he could not offer her a ring, their engagement should remain unofficial until he returned to Sans Souci, but that she should accompany him. It would give her time, he said. Time to get to know him better, time for her to decide whether she really would like to live in surroundings so utterly different from what she was used to. That was when she had felt she really loved him, that she had not made a mistake by leaving St Edmunds, that after a brief engagement she would marry him because he cared for her feelings more than his own …
She rolled on to her stomach now, and banged her pillow into shape. She wondered what he would say when he discovered she was a virgin. Although his illness had prevented their relationship from developing far along those lines, she guessed he imagined she had had a lover. Mike Compton, for instance, had behaved as if he owned her, and besides, these days women with her looks were expected to be experienced. But she wasn’t.
She sighed, and rolled on to her back again, feeling the moistness of her hair against her skin. If she didn’t sleep soon she would look a hag in the morning, and she had to look her best to meet Willard’s daughter.
His daughter!
She grimaced into the darkness. Barbara! How would Barbara react to her father marrying someone four years younger than herself? She doubted she would be pleased. And trying to be charitable. Beth had to admit that put into the same position, she might not like it either. After all, it wasn’t altogether nice to think of one’s father as having those kind of appetites, particularly not for a girl young enough to be his daughter.
But then, she argued equably, just because a man had been married and made a widower it did not mean he had to remain celibate for the rest of his life. It was possible that he might even want more children, and there was no earthly reason why she should not give them to him. Not immediately, perhaps, but soon.
She sighed. There were bound to be problems, and of a kind she had not even considered because she didn’t yet know what the situation was. She knew a little about the island, of course. She knew about the sugar plantation, which was its mainstay economy, and about the smaller banana plantation, that needed so much less cultivation. She knew he found it hard to keep workers these days, with world-wide inflation running at such a terrific rate, but he had told her that he had granted sufficient land to the men who stayed with him so that they could grow their own crops, and Beth thought affectionately how typical this was of him, of his generosity.
But apart from these impersonal details, he had not told her a lot about his relationship with his daughter. They apparently lived in quite a large house that stood in its own grounds, but again Barbara had to do her own housekeeping as servants were so hard to find. This had made Beth wonder how the situation would develop after she and Willard were married. Would his daughter want to hand over her authority to someone else? And if not, what would she, Beth, do?
She kicked the cotton sheet aside, and smoothed her gingham night shirt down over her hips. She was being unnecessarily pessimistic, she told herself fiercely. She didn’t even know the girl yet, and already she was anticipating her hostility. It was ridiculous. Barbara might well welcome another white woman about the place, but somehow that particular supposition had a hollow ring.
Sans Souci rose from the sea in a graceful curve, its hinterland thickly wooded and deeply green. Only the upper slopes of the rugged hills that rose inland were shadowed purple in the noonday glare, the rest of the island shimmered in a shifting haze of heat. Groves of palms and the twisting roots of mangroves grew down to the water’s edge in places, and beyond the headland the coral purity of the sickle-shaped beach was lapped by creaming surf.
As they neared the quay, Beth’s attention was caught and held by the colourful harbour of Ste Germaine, where yachts and fishing vessels vied for space within the curving arm of the sea wall. Beyond the quay where there was constant activity, market stalls could be seen, and above, the winding streets of the small town were lined with stucco buildings colourwashed in every imaginable pastel shade. Tumbling bougainvillea, in colours of pink and violet, grew in careless profusion while the more exotic petals of the hibiscus grew from pots and urns or along the wrought iron rails of overhanging balconies.
The motor launch which had brought them from St Lucia drew alongside the quay, and Willard put his hand beneath Beth’s arm.
‘Well?’ he said, and it was a challenge. ‘Do you approve?’
‘Do I approve?’ She looked up at him helplessly, shaking her head in a confused gesture. ‘Oh, darling, I love it already.’
‘Darling,’ he repeated with some satisfaction, sliding the back of his hand along her jawline, and then the pilot was smiling at them and indicating that it was time to disembark.
Beth had chosen to wear pants for the journey. Climbing in and out of motor vessels was easier when one did not have to worry about billowing skirts, and she hoped Barbara would not think her jeans were a sign of disrespect. Teamed with a navy body shirt, they threw her intense fairness into relief, and she had secured the silvery rope of her hair with a silk scarf at the nape.
Their arrival had aroused a deal of interest, and as Beth thanked the dark-skinned pilot for his assistance on to the quay a crowd of people clustered around them, shaking Willard’s hand and asking about his health. Apparently everyone knew about his illness, and Beth was disarmed by their obvious concern. She herself came in for a lot of curious scrutiny, but Willard was beginning to look strained and she looked about them anxiously, hoping to break this up before he started introducing her.
She saw a car parked along the quay, and a man leaning against its bonnet. He was tall and lean and dark, dressed in rough cotton trousers and little else, and she thought at first he was a mulatto, but when he moved to push a drooping cotton hat to the back of his head, she saw that he was probably only darkly tanned. He was watching them with a curiously insolent expression, she thought, resenting the way he was staring, and deciding rather irritably that men like him were the same the world over. He probably imagined she was interested in him, she conceded impatiently, and looked away from his decidedly arrogant features. He looked cruel, she thought uneasily, and then chided herself for letting his attitude spoil what had been such a spontaneous welcome to the island.
She wondered where Barbara was. Surely she wouldn’t let her father return home after two months’ absence and an illness which had been severe enough to kill a weaker man without coming to meet him. If she had, it did not augur well for good relations.
‘Excuse me …’
It was the man from the car. He stood before her indolently, his thumbs pushed into the hip pockets of his pants, his weight resting without effort on one booted foot. This close she could see the shadow of beard already growing along his jawline, and the over-long darkness of his hair pushing out below the cotton hat. That same darkness was repeated across the width of his chest and followed an indeterminate path down to his navel. His eyes were a curious shade of green, unusual in one so dark, and shaded by thick dark lashes. They were slightly hooded eyes, but everything about him was aggressively masculine.
Beth glanced hesitantly towards Willard, but for the moment he had not observed the man’s approach, and she decided it was up to her to show him he was wasting his time on her. She had met men like him before, she thought contemptuously, men who imagined any woman would fall over herself to be friendly towards them.