Free The Karma of Love (Bantam Series No. 14) by Barbara Cartland Page A

looking into her soul and believi ng it to be smirched and dirty.
    ‘ I cannot bear it! I cannot meet him!” she whispered aloud and yet there was nothing she could do.
    She was caught! The ship was a cage from which there was no escape.
    Wildly in her imagination Orissa thought of diving overboard and swimming ashore to disappear into the desert, but that was only a fantasy.
    Tomorrow would bring reality. She must meet him again, know that she had been compliant to his will and apparently not outraged by the manner in which he had treated her.
    “I must have been mad!” she told herself, but she knew that if it had been madness it was very sweet.
    Never had she realised that she could know anything so magical and entrancing.
    Never had she imagined that her whole being would throb because a man touched her lips. Or that all the poetry and all the beauty of the world could be contained in a feeling that had run through her body when it seemed no longer to be her own but to belong to him.
    “It cannot have happened!” Orissa cried despairingly.
    But it had!
    And there was nothing she could do about it !

 
    CHAPTER FOUR
    Orissa approached Lady Critchley early the next morning.
    “I think,” she said, “that Neil would eat a better meal if I gave it to him alone. It is clear that he becomes distracted by people talking and I am very anxious he should put on weight before he arrives in India.”
    “Perhaps that is a good idea, Mrs. Lane,” Lady Critchley agreed.
    Having managed to avoid seeing Major Meredith at luncheon Orissa had no compunction about saying she would dine in her own cabin and not come down to dinner.
    There were only seven days left at sea before they reached Bombay. During the night when she had remained awake going over what had happened, she decided that if she were clever, it should be possible, even though they were confined in the ship, to avoid meeting Major Meredith.
    She had the idea, although she was not certain, that he took his exercise early in the day before the majority of the passengers were up.
    She did not know why he spent so much time in his cabin. She guessed it had something to do with reports, perhaps making adverse comments on Charles’s behaviour when he was in London!
    When she thought of it she tried to hate him but found it impossible!
    She had only to remember the way he kissed her to feel again that strange warmth steal over her body and know the sudden rapture which had made her his prisoner.
    Yet she was determined not to think of it, or of him, if she could possibly help it.
    She forced herself to pay more attention to little Neil; to play games with him when they went on deck when the other passengers were about and she was quite certain there would be no sign of Major Meredith.
    Neil enjoyed Deck-Quoits and she tried to teach him Badminton. She borrowed a pack of cards from the Card-Room and built him card-castles in the cabin.
    The book which he was painting for his mother was nearly filled, with strange animals and people who had only sticks for arms and circles for faces.
    They in no way compared with the expertise of the ship which Major Meredith had sketched.
    Orissa also finished sewing her dresses and altered the others she had brought with her so that they looked more fashionable.
    They acquired a grace and elegance when she wore them which was however more due to the fact that she had a perfect figure than to anything else.
    Fortunately there were quite a number of books in the ship’s library which she wished to read; but even so, she would find herself staring at a page for a long time and realising she had not read a word.
    It was very hot in the Red Sea. One evening it became so stifling in the cabin that even Mr. Mahla complained of it.
    “Why should we not have our lessons on deck?” Orissa asked, realising that she too felt confined in the airless State-Room.
    It was getting late and she thought there would be few passengers on deck and when they