Free The Passionate Sinner by Violet Winspear Page B

will be all right with Lon, and I am staying here.’
    ‘You know what I’d do with you if I had my sight like other men?’ He looked grim as he stood there, his shirt and trousers moulded to his body by the wind, the pillars of the veranda making of it a proper setting for a dramatic scene.
    Yes, she thought, you’d see me, recognise me, and not merely march me out of your house but throw me out, into the storm! T know I’m being obstinate,’ she said. ‘But could you leave someone alone in a typhoon while you streaked off to a hole in the ground, someone who couldn’t see to defend himself? What do you take me for, mynheer}’
    ‘A damned little fool! All right, expose yourself to danger, but don’t come howling to me for comfort when the furies are let loose, and by God they’ll be let loose before very long. Was there any information on the radio about that?’
    ‘Lon said the news was that the typhoon was in this area, but he also said that they’re unpredictable phenomena and it might pass in another direction.’
    ‘Let us pray so! All the same the winds will be bad—
the villagers know that and they have taken sensible pre
cautions. Now why don’t you do as you’re told?’
    ‘No chance, mynheer.’ She glanced across the compound, where the water was cascading out of the sky rather than falling like the rain she had known in England. ‘You can hear the rain.’
    ‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘You must be wet?’
    ‘Somewhat.’ She felt her shirt with a wry smile. Beneath it her skin was uncomfortably damp and her hair was still dripping.
    ‘Then you had better go and dry yourself. I am going around the house to make sure all the shutters are in place—the heavier ceiling lamps were taken down before the boys left, and pictures and ornaments put safely away. Go to your room and get dry.’
    ‘Am I to stay there—as a sort of punishment?’
    ‘Now don’t add petulance to foolish disobedience,’ he rejoined. ‘When you have changed your clothing you will see about some lunch for us, while I decide where best we might find a little sanctuary from the tumult when it arrives. Go! Take a hot shower. A chill in this sultry atmosphere is easily come by.’
    Merlin left him and made her way upstairs to her room, feeling a trifle exhausted by that battle of wills. Whatever lay in store for them in the coming hours, at least they would be together. She wouldn’t have to endure the torment of knowing he was alone up here, entombed in a darkness made into a nightmare by the baying winds, like hell hounds let loose, their fangs tearing open the sky in rips and gashes of scarlet.
    She stood at the windows of her room and there above the valley, through the pelting rain, it was as if Krakatoa had burst again and lit the sky with ominous fire. Flickers of flame-tipped lightning through the bruised, deepening darkness. Soon it would be like night, and she shivered, dragged off her wet things and hastened into the bathroom that was fitted into a curving alcove of her bedroom. She stood under the shower-head and turned the tap, the warmth of the spray gradually taking the chill from her body. Wrapped sarong-like in a large towel she returned to the bedroom, walking across the creamy rugs of the blackwood floor. She lit the lamps of opal glass on copper bases, watching as the wicks bloomed, bringing some illusion of cosiness back into the room, with its carved furniture and vast bed of teak and ivory brocade embroidered with scarlet poppies.
    She had just laid down the match box, for all the lamps in the house were lit by kerosene, when a movement in the mirror caught her eye. She gave a start and swung round to face the figure standing in her doorway. Paul! She gripped the towel closer around her, as if her body was visible to him.
    ‘W-what do you want?’ Her voice shook uncontrollably.
    ‘It’s all right,’ he drawled. ‘I haven’t decided to make an orgy of what might be my last few hours on earth.