Read Online The Passionate Sinner by Violet Winspear - Free Book Online Page B

mottled in patches and the sun had a sulphurous look.
    ‘Has the daylight darkened?’ Paul demanded.
    ‘Yes, it has.’ For a startled moment she wondered if he could see a little.
    ‘I thought so! The sun has cooled against the skin, which means it isn’t direct any more but is being diffused by a thickening haze. Am I correct?’
    ‘Yes—does that mean?’
    ‘Assuredly. Can you see anything of Ramai? He should have been back by now to tell us what Lon has picked up on the radio.’
    ‘I can’t see him about—should I go and look for him?’
    ‘Ja.’ Paul struck the rail of the veranda with his fist. ‘I feel so helpless, damn it, having to rely on others to do what I would due done with more efficiency. Curse the gods for this! Curse that little bitch for what she did to me!
    Merlin closed her eyes against a deep stab of pain. ‘I—I’ll go and find Ramai.’ She was about to dart away when Paul’s voice arrested her.
    ‘Shoes!’ he rapped at her. ‘Go and put them on before you go down to the valley in search of the boy—no, better to find Lon. Ramai has parents and a batch of siblings in the kampong and he may have gone first to them with possible bad news. Find Lon!’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘And don’t worry too much. These things—blow over.’ His smile was sardonic as he turned away from her and seemed to be looking at that bruised sky. His profile might have been sculptured except for the muscle that worked in his jaw; he was a man of action who hungered to do something decisive, but he knew that being blind he could only get in the way of those who would have to set about shuttering the house and making it as secure as possible.
    Merlin hastened indoors and ran upstairs on trembling legs. She felt as if the typhoon had already set up its storm in her heart, more potently filled with Paul than ever before, brimming with a love she had to keep bottled inside her. There in her room she flung open the cupboard in which she kept her clothes and quickly laced her feet into a pair of plimsolls from her nursing days. Before leaving the room curiosity made her take a look at her reflection in the mirror that stood on a carved chest ... she stared at herself as if at the face of a stranger, seeing the shadowed hollows under her cheekbones and the poignancy of her own mouth. She realised that what she felt for Paul had fined her face to these interesting contours and subtle shadings; she had a new kind of look, not exactly a prettiness, for there was a coy sweetness to being pretty, but noticeable, eye-catching, something that would induce an observer to wonder about her.
    She lifted her hands to her cheeks in an uncertain way, and her own eyes seemed to quiver with mocking little lights. Little fool, had she thought that she could feel so ardently about a man and not have it show? She had come in pity to Paul van Setan and now she found that pity had turned to passion. He had only to enter a room and her heart seemed to turn over ... she hadn’t known that love could be so physically tormenting, and had truly believed she could serve him and it would be enough to be a sort of—acolyte.
    But this was Paul, not some kind of ascetic parson, and there was no way to end the torment except by being tough enough to pack her belongings and leave him.
    Leave Paul ... she backed away from the distress that sprang into her reflected eyes, those flecks of gold giving her brown eyes a fevered look. She turned and ran from the room, down the stairs, finding Paul gone from the veranda as she made her way in the direction of the tea valley.
    There were gashes of crimson in the sulphurous sky and the heat was like a pressure on the head. A tropical weight of air laden with the scent of tea-bushes, and what the rising wind was stirring out of the jungle where many kinds of trees were entangled in webs of liana, a long rope-like vine that wove itself in and out of the branches, lacing them together and studding them with