Forgotten Passion

She felt him tense, and in the moonlight saw the dull colour edging up under his skin.

He was about to say something when the door opened and Mama Case came bustling in.

‘You all right?’ she asked Lisa. ‘Tossing and turning like nobody’s business you were.’

‘I was having a bad dream,’ she admitted. ‘But I’m fine now.’

‘You always did feel fine when Master Rorke was around,’ Mama Case chuckled. ‘Even as a little girl. Every time you fell over, he always had to be the one to kiss you better.’

She was still laughing as she left the room, but Lisa felt as though her heart was being squeezed in a vice. Rorke was watching her intently, and to her dismay he lifted his hand, tracing the outline of her jaw and smoothing the untidy curls back off her hot face.

‘You put me on a pedestal, Lisa,’ he said huskily, ‘and now you can’t forgive me for falling off it, but I could still try to kiss you better.’

Lisa wouldn’t allow herself to believe that that was a plea she could hear beneath the quiet words.

‘It’s too late, Rorke,’ she told him icily. ‘Five years too late.’

She had turned her back, but she heard him get up and move around the room, and there was a tight bitterness in his voice as he said slowly, ‘I suppose I ought to have expected that, but somehow I hoped you wouldn’t say it. I’ll get Mama Case to come up and sit with you. Goodnight, Lisa.’

When he had gone she wanted to cry, but couldn’t. She had cried too much already. Somehow she had to find a way to leave St Martins with Robbie, and quickly. If she could just get to St Lucia. But how? And then it came to her. She could telephone over to St Lucia and get them to send a plane for her. She could tell them that Rorke wanted it. There was a kind of bitter satisfaction to be found in letting him pay for their escape. Tomorrow she was going to the hospital to see Robbie and to find out from Dr James how long it would be before the little boy could leave, and nobody, but nobody was going to stop her.

CHAPTER TEN

LISA was dismayed to realise how shaky she felt. Mama Case had shaken her head when she told her she was going to the hospital, but nothing she could do could dissuade her.

Rorke had been away, down at the harbour supervising some work on Lady, so Lisa got one of the boys to drive her to the hospital.

Robbie was cheerfully happy to see her, and kept asking about Rorke. How was he going to react when he learned that he wasn’t likely to see his father again? Would he hate her for it? After all, he was Rorke’s son, and seemed to have inherited from him Rorke’s love of St Martin’s. But she couldn’t allow Rorke to take him away from her. She just didn’t have that kind of strength.

Dr. James explained to her that they wanted to keep Robbie in for a few days, but told her that she could come and see him as often as she wanted. ‘But what about you, lassie?’ he asked gently. ‘You’re tearing yourself apart and it isn’t doing you any good.’

‘I’ll be all right,’ she assured him, brushing aside his concern. The only thing that could ever make her ‘all right’ again was Rorke’s love, and she was as likely to get that as she was to fly to the moon.

She was just leaving the hospital when she saw Rorke crossing the road towards her. She turned blindly away, not wanting to confront him again before she was able to get herself under control. The sun was shining in her eyes and she was vaguely aware of the sound of a car horn, and then

everything blurred into a mist as something seemed to hit her in the solar plexus and she collapsed, gasping for breath.

When she came round she was back in the hospital with Dr James smiling wryly down at her.

‘Lassie, lassie, what were you thinking of? he chided. ‘Have you forgotten what side of the road we drive on over here?’

She had done, Lisa realised guiltily, and she had darted across the road in her anxiety to escape Rorke, without looking properly.

‘I did,’ she admitted shakily. ‘Did something hit me?’

‘Not “something” but someone,’ Dr James told her grimly, ‘Fortunately Rorke has quick reflexes. He managed to get to you before the car did, and took the brunt of the impact. You were winded when he pushed you out of the way. He saved your life, Lisa,’ he told her quietly, with a look in his eyes that told her he saw more than she had thought.

‘I… is he all right?’ she asked shakily,

‘Apart from a nasty bruise on his thigh and a knock on the head he’s fine. But I want to keep him in for a few days—just in case there’s any delayed concussion. Funny thing, concussion.’

‘Yes, so I believe,’ Lisa agreed, smiling bitterly. She already knew the potentially disastrous effects of concussion. How feverishly she had read up on the effects of it in the months leading up to Robbie’s birth.

Dr James told her she could go and see Rorke, but added that he was under sedation and so Lisa refused, offering as an excuse the fact that she wanted to get back and reassure Leigh that everything was all right before he heard a garbled and embroidered version of what had happened via the island grapevine.

She found him in his study, and although he paled a little when she told him what had happened he was quickly reassured.

She knew she ought to tell Leigh what she was planning, but she simply couldn’t bring herself to do so. Perhaps if she were to write him a letter explaining? She had no wish to cause him any pain—far from it, but she was determined that she wasn’t going to lose Robbie. As she left her eye was caught by half a dozen familiar dust jackets on the shelves with the other books—her own illustrations! How had they come to be there? Following her glance Leigh turned—‘Rorke bought them,’ he told her quietly. ‘They were all he had of you.’