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‘Oh, how lovely! Mistletoe—where on earth did you get it?’ Dita reached for it, but he held it just out of her reach.
‘Magic.’
She could believe that. The ship pitched and she stumbled towards him and was caught in his free arm. ‘Will you trust me with a kiss now?’
‘I thought you didn’t want me. You said you did not.’
‘I said that the way I kissed you then was simply a reaction to danger, to fighting. It was wrong to have done it like that, then. But I would have to be dead not to want to kiss you, Dita.’
‘Oh. I see. I thought—’ So he does want me, just as I want him. ‘Yes.’ Her heart soared and she did not hesitate now. Trust him? It was herself she could not trust, here in the semi-darkness, but she was not going to fight the way she felt. He was so close, and what she could not see clearly she could read with every other sense. He smelled of wine and smoke and she leaned a little closer to inhale clean, hot male and the scent that was his alone. His breathing was slow and calm, but she could detect just the slightest hitch in it as though he was controlling it consciously. And touch—solid, strong male in clothing she wanted to rip from his body.
Around her waist his hand held her steady and she fought the need to press against it, to feel those long fingers move on her skin. She wanted them on her, all over her. In her. Dita blushed in the shadows, hot with desire and shaken by her own imaginings and memories.
Alistair’s free hand moved and touched her hair and she felt him fasten the mistletoe sprig in amongst the heaped curls before he drew her to him with both hands.
‘Just a kiss,’ he murmured as he bent his head.
‘Yes,’ she agreed and reached up her own hands to touch his hair. It was soft and strong, thick and rebellious under her fingers and she recalled the unruly length of it when he had been younger, long enough for him to tie back with a cord when he was outside. When they had been in bed together she had untied the cord and run her fingers into the silk of it. ‘I like this short, it feels like fur.’ She stroked as she would a cat and he pushed against the caress, his eyes hooded and heavy.
Just a kiss, a Christmas kiss. The taste of him when he touched his mouth to hers had her closing her eyes and opening her lips. The darkness was arousing, gave an edge of danger now she could not see him, only feel and smell and taste. Alistair kissed her as deeply as he had in the rickshaw, but with no desperation, as leisurely as he had on the maidan, but with no mockery; she sighed into his mouth as their tongues met and tangled and stroked, sharing the wet heat and the intimacy and the trust.
Just a kiss, he had said. Dita wanted more, more of him. She pressed close, feeling the ache as her breasts crushed against the silk of his waistcoat, the heat as his erection pressed against her and she rocked into him, moaning now because a sigh was not enough for the need inside her. The man knew how to tantalise and prolong as his young self had not.
‘Dita.’ He lifted his head and she caught his ear between her teeth as he bent to kiss her neck, his hands sliding up to cup her breasts. Stephen had done that and she had recoiled and his hungry grasp had hurt her; now the pressure made her want to rub herself shamelessly against Alistair. It was an effort not to bite and she forced herself to concentrate on licking, nibbling, probing the intriguing whorls of his ear.
‘Perfect,’ Alistair murmured as his fingers found the edge of her bodice and began to stroke the aureole of her nipple. Her breast ached and swelled, heavy and tight in the silken bodice, and she moved under his hands, restless, needing to be free of corsets and camisole, needing his hands on her bare flesh.
He bent to kiss the swell of her breast above the silk, his teasing fingers fretting at the nipple until it was tight to the point of an exquisite pleasure that was almost pain. Dita gasped and Alistair lifted his head, his eyes glinting in the lantern light. ‘Did I hurt you?’
‘No. No … kiss me.’
It was almost too much, the heat of his mouth on hers, the demanding pressure, the tug at her breast that went deep, deep into her belly, down to where she felt the heat building and twisting into something that made her arch to rub against him—but that only made the ache worse. Her back was against the panelling now, Alistair’s weight pressing her, the thick length of his erection just where she needed him to be.
There was something behind her, digging into her back, and she shifted, felt it move and the wall vanished.
Alistair caught her as she stumbled back. ‘The door must have been unlocked,’ he said as she stared about her, confused. ‘It’s an empty cabin.’ There was just enough light to see. Alistair reached outside, lifted a lamp from the wall and came in, closing the door behind him. She heard the click of the key as he stood there, the light spilling out over the bare deck, the unmade bed with its coir mattress. ‘Alistair—’
‘Yes,’ he said, putting down the lantern and coming to pull her into his arms. ‘What do you want, Dita?’
‘I don’t know.’ She tugged at his waistcoat buttons. ‘You.’
‘I want you, too,’ he said as she undid the last of them and began to pull his shirt from his waistband. ‘I only meant to kiss you: I should have known it wouldn’t stop there. Trust me a little more, Dita? Trust me to pleasure you?’
‘Yes,’ she said, not quite understanding what he was asking, what it meant. ‘I need to touch you. Aah …’ Her hands slid around his waist against the hot skin and she stood there, resting against him, catching her breath and feeling him tense under her caress.
That evening so long ago, there had been no time to simply hold each other. He had reached for her, she had stumbled into his arms, thinking to give comfort for whatever was causing him such pain, finding her innocent intentions going up in a blaze of scarce-understood desire in the arms of a young man who had been, it seemed, as desperate as she had been and who had somehow found the control to be gentle despite their urgency.
Alistair moved and lifted her and then they were lying on the bunk and her skirts were around her thighs and her hand was cupped around his erection through his trousers and he groaned as he stroked up her legs. She trembled as he pressed them apart, opened her, slid his fingers into the slick folds that parted for him with no resistance. She had fought Stephen off before he touched her with such intimacy; now she had no shame and no fear, only the desperate need for this man.
That time before she had been passive and uncertain under his seeking hands and urgent mouth; now she wanted to touch him, all of him.
‘Touch me,’ he said against her mouth, echoing her thoughts, and she struggled to understand for a moment. She was touching him. Then she found the fall of his trousers and somehow undid them, slid her hand inside, found the hot, hard length of him and closed her fingers. ‘More. Dita …’
She squeezed and stroked and he shuddered and slipped one finger inside her as she clung to him. Then another, and his thumb found a place that felt hard and tight with tension and stroked and she cried out until he stopped her mouth with his, pressing into her circling hand, stroking and squeezing until she screamed silently, arching upwards as everything broke inside her and he surged in her grasp and shuddered above her and the world spun out of its orbit.
‘Dita, sweetheart. Are you all right?’
‘Hmm?’ She was on a bed, in a strange cabin, with Alistair, and he had made love to her—and she had made love to him and it had been everything she remembered yet different. ‘Yes. Yes, I am quite all right.’
He was sitting up, putting his clothing to rights and she lay there, just looking at him in the lamplight. Beautiful, mysterious, male. Even more mysterious now he had let her come so close to him again. As close, almost, as it was possible to be. Alistair gave her his handkerchief and got up, his back turned, while she tidied herself and got unsteadily to her feet.
‘Are you all right?’ He turned to look at her in the lamplight and she smiled. ‘That wasn’t what I really want, you know that.’ He reached out and began to put her hair into order. ‘There. I’ll leave the mistletoe in place for some other lucky fellows to snatch a kiss.’
‘What do you want?’ she asked, ignoring her hair, not caring about any other men and their kisses.
‘To make love with you, fully. But I won’t take that risk, Dita. You said it yourself—one slip would be fatal to your reputation. This was certainly a slip—but I think we’ll get away with it.’ He pulled her closer. ‘Was it all right for you, our loving, even though it was not complete?’
She answered him truthfully. ‘You gave me more pleasure just now than Stephen did in two days and nights.’ You gave me as much pleasure as that boy had done, so long ago, even though I ache because I need you inside me.
Alistair laughed and caught her to him for another kiss. As they stood there, her arms twined round his neck she said, ‘Do you want your gift?
‘Of course!’ He sounded eager, almost the young Alistair that the present had been intended for all those years ago.
‘Where is my reticule?’ They found it on the floor and she pulled out the package and handed it to him and watched as he flattened out the crumpled label.
‘Happy birthday?’
‘I was going to give it to you the day you left home. I tossed it into the secret drawer of my jewellery box when I realised you were gone. Then I found it again, quite recently. I thought it might amuse you.’ She shrugged, ‘I will not vouch for the embroidery—I think I will have improved since I was sixteen.’
‘You were sixteen when I left?’ He frowned at her. ‘I suppose you must have been. Dita, did we quarrel, that last day? There was something, some memory in the back of my mind that I cannot catch hold of. Dreams like smoke. A kiss? But that cannot be right: I would not have kissed you.’ She thought he muttered, Let alone more, but she was not certain. ‘God, I was drunk that night. The whole thing was such a hellish mess I can’t recall properly.’
‘Yes, we quarrelled,’ she lied. He does not recall making love, his anger, the things he said afterwards. He must have been beside himself. ‘And I cried and you … I left.’
‘Ah.’ The tarnished silver paper flashed in the light as he turned it over in his hands. ‘What are you going to give me for my birthday this year if I open this now?’
‘It depends upon what you deserve,’ she said, and tried to keep her voice light to match his tone.
‘Mmm.’ The low growl held a wealth of promise as the paper tore away to reveal the comb case, wavy stripes of amber and gold and black on one side, on the other a tiger, copied painstakingly from a print in her father’s library. The stitching was a little uneven, the sewing not quite smooth.
‘You made me a tiger?’ Alistair slid the comb out and then back, turning the case in his hands. ‘You had powers of prediction?’
‘No. I always thought you had tiger’s eyes,’ she confessed. ‘When I was a little girl I used to dream you would turn into a tiger at night and stalk the corridors of the castle.’
Alistair stared at her from those same uncanny amber eyes. ‘I frightened you that much?’
‘No, of course not. I thought it was exciting. You know you never frightened me, even when you were angry with me. You looked after me.’
‘I did, didn’t I.’ There was a silence that was strangely awkward while he stood there, quite still except for the restless fingers that turned the comb case over in his hands. Then, just as she opened her mouth to break it, he pushed the gift into his pocket and took up the lantern.
‘We shouldn’t have done that, Dita,’ he said flatly. She stared at him as he turned the magic of their lovemaking into an ill-judged romp with his matter-of-fact words. ‘You look a little ruffled—we had best go up the companionway at the end here and account for that with some sea air. Ready?’
It was as though another man entirely had come into the cabin: brisk, efficient and practical. ‘A good idea,’ Dita said, chilled, and followed him as he stepped with wary care into the corridor.
Chapter Nine
Alistair looked from the charming, slightly clumsy piece of embroidery in his hands and up to the generous mouth he had kissed until it was red and swollen. And then up again and into the green eyes that were Dita’s, just as they always looked, unchanged even though he had taken her with careless lust. He had seen the sophisticated, adult Dita at Government House and somehow she and the girl in his memory had seemed separate individuals; now, with her gift in his hand, the two slid together, became one.
It had been very strange, that feeling that they had done this before, that she had lain in his arms, that his lips had tasted the tender skin of her breasts, stroked those long, slim legs. It must be because he had known her so well. And those frequent dreams: confused, erotic, troubling dreams touched with anger and betrayal, all mxed with the memories of how he had left home.
The last thing he needed was her becoming in some way attached to him. Lovemaking was all very well, but perhaps he had underestimated her experience. His brain felt as though he had a fever, but one thing was clear: Dita might not be a virgin, but she was inexperienced. The man she had eloped with had obviously been a clumsy boor and now he had shown her a glimpse of what lovemaking could be like. He suspected he had given her her first orgasm.
Alistair led her up the companionway and on to the foredeck. Other passengers had come out, too, but they were laughing and talking and listening to the sailors playing, not paying any attention to two of their number who appeared to have strayed a little further along the deck to catch the warm breeze.
‘There—safe,’ he said, giving his neckcloth a final tug.
‘Indeed.’ Dita was a good actress, he thought with gratitude. Her voice was cool even though she looked flushed and a little … a little loved. He had thought her still a skinny beanpole, but now he had caressed those slight curves he knew he had been wrong: she was perfect and made for his touch. Her skin glowed under its slight golden tan, her lower lip pouted with a fullness that held the promise of passion with its potential still unfulfilled. Dita raised one hand and curled the loose ringlet around it and his body tightened at the memory of those slender fingers circling his flesh, the ache to sheathe himself in her tight, wet heat.
Perhaps he had been worrying unnecessarily and she was sophisticated enough for these kind of games. He would wait and see.
Some of the passengers had begun to dance a country jig. Alistair caught Dita’s hand and almost ran down to join them, whirling her into the end of the line next to the elder Miss Whyton and Lieutenant Tompkins.
‘Mistletoe!’ Miss Whyton cried as Dita was spun past her, on down between the row of dancers by the lieutenant. ‘Wherever did you get that?’
But she was safely down to the other end now and Alistair made himself focus on the steps as he caught her hands and waited for their turn to dance to the other end.
By the time the fiddler drew out the last chord everyone was flushed and laughing, the ladies fanning themselves, the men pretending to pant with exertion. Alistair saw Callum Chatterton admire Dita’s hair ornament and then snatch a kiss, followed by his brother. A positive queue of gentlemen formed.
‘I will lend it to you,’ Dita said to Daniel, ‘and then you may go and make mischief.’
Averil began to unfasten it for her, then stopped, the spray in her hands, and stared. Alistair strolled a little closer.
‘But these berries are pearls, Dita! Real pearls—you could make an entire necklace there are so many.’
Callum took the spray out of her hands and turned it close in front of his eyes. ‘And fine ones at that. You should have them locked in the strongbox, Lady Perdita, not be dancing a jig on the open deck in something this valuable.’
‘How lovely they are.’ Mrs Bastable came over to join the group, her arm linked through that of her taciturn husband. ‘But you ought to replace the pearls with glass beads, for safety. Who gave them to you, dear?’
‘Someone I was friends with a long time ago.’ Dita said. ‘I don’t think I know him any more.’ She looked up from the mistletoe and caught Alistair looking at her. Her eyes were bleak. ‘Excuse me. I will take your advice and lock them away.’
Alistair held the door to the cuddy open for her and she paused on the threshold. ‘I would have lain with you for glass beads, or none,’ she said in a vehement whisper. ‘You had no need to buy me with pearls. I am not a professional. Nor am I an innocent girl who has no idea what is happening when a man kisses her. Don’t behave as though we have just done something regrettable; something silly. If you want someone to patronise, go and flirt with Dotty Whyton.’
‘Damn it!’ The accusation was so unfair, and yet such an accurate stab at his conscience, that Alistair let go of the door and it slammed, shutting them off from the others.
‘Give them back, then,’ he said, smiling, not troubling to keep that devil out of his eyes.
‘No.’ She put up her chin. ‘I shall keep them to remind myself of the folly of passion. They will make a very lovely necklace.’
They were fortunate with the weather, everyone agreed. The wind held, the storms were not severe and they reached Cape Town a week ahead of Captain Archibald’s most optimistic prediction.
‘I will be so glad to stretch my legs on a surface that does not go up and down,’ Averil said as she tied her bonnet ribbons under her chin and tried to see the result in the small mirror that hung on her wall.
‘The land will go up and down just as much as the ship seemed to,’ Dita told her from her perch on Averil’s bunk. ‘You have got your sea legs now. What do you intend to do today? The captain says we have two days here.’
‘Lord Lyndon has asked me to form one of a party going to the Company’s gardens. Apparently they have the most wonderful collection from all over the world, and a menagerie as well. But surely he has asked you, too?’
‘He did, but I have shopping to do, so I refused.’ Dita met Averil’s questioning gaze with a look of bright interest. ‘I saw the gardens on my way out. They are very fine—you will enjoy yourself.’
‘I am sure I will.’ Averil stuck a hatpin in her pincushion and fidgeted about tidying her things. Dita waited for the next question.
‘Shopping for two days?’
‘I have something to take to the jewellers and then I must collect it the next day.’
‘Is there something wrong between you and Lord Lyndon?’ Averil went slightly pink; she was not given to intrusive personal questions.
‘Yes,’ Dita said. There was no point in lying about it.
‘Since Christmas Eve.’ Averil nodded to herself. ‘That is what I guessed. Whatever is the matter?’
‘We had a … a misunderstanding.’ Or, at least, I misunderstood. I thought he cared for me and wanted to make love to me because of that. How naive! He wanted to make love and so he seemed to care and once he had, then he was all cool practicality. It was a mercy he had held back from entering her. She was shamefully aware that she would not have stopped him.
‘I thought you liked him very well.’
‘I do … did. I find him too … attractive for prudence with a man like that.’
‘Oh.’ Averil fiddled some more, dropped her gloves and blurted out, ‘Did he overstep the mark?’
‘Overstep it? Yes, I think you could say he over-leapt it. I should have known better—’ Dita broke off, but the sound she heard had been from above their heads, not from anyone returning to the roundhouse, and the windows were closed.
‘Dita—you didn’t sleep with him?’
‘Absolutely no sleeping occurred. Oh, I am sorry, I should not be so flippant. No, if you mean did anything occur that might lead to, say, pregnancy. I was more intimate with him than I should have been, and, it is fair to say, we are both regretting that now.’
‘So he kissed you very passionately?’ Dita reminded herself that Averil was a virgin, and a well-behaved one at that, and nodded. ‘But if you are both regretting it, could you not put it behind you now?’
‘It is one thing both of you regretting something at the same time,’ Dita said, jamming her own hat on her head as she got to her feet. ‘That indeed might lead to eventual harmony. What is not … flattering is when the man shows every sign of wanting to run a mile within moments of the encounter.’
‘Oh, no! How—’
‘Humiliating, is the word you are looking for. The fact that this is, of course, the most sensible and prudent outcome does not help in the slightest.’
‘No, I can see that.’ Averil gathered up her parasol, reticule and shawl and opened the canvas flap. ‘What a pity. I thought he was perfect for you.’
Perfect. He is beautiful and insanely courageous and intelligent and apparently rich and he makes love like an angel and he … he is no angel. An angel would bore me.
‘Lady Perdita, Miss Heydon. Good morning.’ It was Dr Melchett, a tough old survivor of everything India could throw at a man. Except possibly tigers, Dita thought.
‘Good morning, Dr Melchett. Are you going with the party to the gardens?’
‘I am not, Lady Perdita. I have seen them several times and I have every intention of buying gifts for my godsons. Might I escort you ladies, if you are also looking for bargains? Ostrich feathers, for example?’
‘Thank you, I would be glad of your company, sir. Miss Heydon is bound for the gardens, so I will be your only companion.’
He was a dry and witty escort, Dita discovered, and the perfect antidote to troubling and handsome young men. He tempted her into buying a huge ostrich feather fan and plumes for her next court appearance and then enchanted her by taking her to a wood carver to buy amusing carved animals for his godchildren.
‘Oh, look.’ It was a small oval box, no bigger than a large snuffbox, with Noah’s Ark carved in low relief on the lid. When the lid was opened it was full of minute animals, each in exquisite detail and so small that she could sit the elephant on her little fingernail.
Dita played with it for several minutes before she found the pair of tigers and remembered Alistair and her reason for coming shopping.
‘Is there a good jeweller’s shop, do you know, Doctor?’ Reluctantly she slid the lid closed and handed the box back to the dealer. She already had a number of larger carved animals for nephews and nieces and they were all too young for anything so delicate.
‘You are not intending to buy gemstones? You would have done better in India. There is one along here, I seem to recall. Ah, yes, here we are.’
‘I need a necklace stringing,’ she explained as the jeweller came to greet them. ‘These. They are already drilled.’ She poured the pearls out on to the velvet pad on the counter. ‘Can you do it for tomorrow? I want them in one simple string.’
‘I can do it for tomorrow morning, madam.’ He produced his loupe and picked up a handful. ‘These are very fine and well matched. Indian?’
‘Yes.’ They agreed a price and she let the doctor take her arm and find a carriage back to the ship.
‘Your mistletoe pearls?’
‘They are.’ She gazed out of the window, willing the doctor to change the subject.
‘Interesting young man, that. And generous.’ So he had guessed who had given them to her.
‘We knew each other as children.’ Talk about something else. Please.
‘And yet you are no longer friends.’ The old man rested his clasped hands on the top of his walking cane and regarded her with faded blue eyes. ‘A pity to fall out with old friends. When you reach my age you appreciate the value of all of them.’