Forgotten Passion

‘If you aren’t going to get up of your own volition, perhaps I ought to help you. Funny, I seem to remember you were always something of an early bird in the old days.’

As he spoke he wrenched back the covers, leaving Lisa feeling ridiculously exposed in her thin cotton nightgown. Robbie, unaware of the friction between the two adults, bounced on the bed beside her, cuddling up to her in a way that reminded her that for all his sturdy independence he still hadn’t actually left childhood very far behind.

Having stripped off the bedclothes, Rorke hadn’t moved. He simply stood there staring down at them, arms folded across his chest, like a pirate with his human booty, Lisa thought bitterly, and then he moved and just for a moment the expression in his eyes made her heart turn over in sympathy for his anguish. He was watching Robbie, and Lisa stilled an urge to go to him and tell him again that Robbie was his son, but she stifled it almost at birth. Rorke wouldn’t believe her, if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his own eyes. If she told him Robbie was his son he would only think she had some ulterior motive for doing so, and besides, she knew now what the truth would do to him!

‘Daddy, why are you looking at me like that?’ Robbie piped up, frowning up at Rorke. ‘Daddy looks sad, doesn’t he, Mummy?’ he appealed to Lisa.

Avoiding Rorke’s eyes, Lisa said hurriedly, ‘Get off the bed, Robbie, there’s a good boy, then I can get dressed.’

‘Daddy, why are you sad?’ Robbie persisted.

Lisa had to walk past Rorke to get to the bathroom and there was no way she could avoid looking at him, surprised to see the tide of dark colour running up under his tan.

‘Rorke, is something wrong?’ she questioned. She touched his arm as automatically as she might have touched Robbie’s in a gesture of comfort and compassion, but Rorke tensed against her, as he might have done a scorpion, and it was her turn to colour heatedly, withdrawing from his obvious rejection.

‘Nothing’s wrong, Lisa,’ he told her grittily. ‘You’ll just have to make allowances for me occasionally, when I make the mistake of remembering how things should have been—that Robbie should have been my son. He’s a fine boy,’ he added abruptly. ‘A lot like you.’

‘He has my eyes,’ Lisa replied absently. To judge from Rorke’s words it almost sounded as though he regretted their break-up, but he had never to her knowledge made any attempts to trace her or come after her, and surely if he had loved her as she loved him, he would have done so, Mike or no Mike?

‘There’s very little of Peters about him.’ Rorke’s voice sounded almost jerky, as though saying the words were a mental and physical agony.

‘I think he looks very like his father,’ Lisa told him—after all, it was the truth. He did look like Rorke, although the latter couldn’t seem to see the resemblance—couldn’t or wouldn’t, she thought bitterly. Rorke would never want to acknowledge Robbie as his son, not when he was so obviously still involved with Helen. Would he marry her eventually? Lisa forced herself not to think about the future. She was back in the Caribbean and for Robbie’s sake she intended to make their time there a happy one—for Robbie’s sake and for Leigh’s as well. Leigh! She had written to him from London when she first arrived there, explaining what had happened, but he had never replied to her. Did he hate her as much as Rorke had done; did he too believe that Robbie was Mike’s child?

‘Peters certainly didn’t lose much time in joining you,’ Rorke added tauntingly. ‘I saw him before he left, when I came back from St Lucia without you. He came to see me; told me that he’d begged you to tell me the truth. He was most concerned for you, but not concerned enough to give you his name, eh, Lisa?—he left that little task to me. Why did you marry me?’

Robbie was staring at them wide-eyed, taking in every word, and Lisa glanced pointedly down at him before responding lightly,

‘Oh, all the usual

reasons, Rorke. I thought I loved you, for one thing.’

The bitter anger she saw in his eyes made her freeze where she stood. ‘Liar,’ Rorke breathed harshly. ‘You never damned well loved me, Lisa, otherwise you…’ He broke off, and Lisa was amazed to see how pale he had gone beneath his tan, his face almost grey in the pure morning light.

‘You’d better get dressed,’ he added coldly, ‘otherwise we’re going to miss the plane. Having returned from St Lucia once without you and faced the consequences, I’ve no desire to do so again.’

What had he said when he returned home without her? Lisa wondered. In the first few weeks after her flight she had been too distressed to give that a thought, and then later she had firmly put her past behind her, refusing to allow herself to think about it, refusing to admit to the pain the memory of Rorke always brought. Why, even now… She bit her lip. Even now what? Even now she wasn’t wholly indifferent to him? Even now her body trembled betrayingly just because he was in the same room? Mere physical response, that was all; that there was nothing left of the love she had once felt for him. There couldn’t be!

* * *

Nothing had changed, Lisa thought drowsily as she clambered out of the small twin-engined plane and down on to the airstrip of St Martin’s. They had flown in over the house, and Lisa now wondered nervously what her reception would be. Had Leigh really been asking for her? If so, why had he never answered her letter? Or was it simply that he had owed more loyalty to Rorke and that now he regretted it?

Even Robbie seemed to be affected by the sombreness of her mood, clinging to her skirt as Rorke talked to the pilot of the plane.

She had changed into a silky cotton two-piece for the last leg of their journey. It was softly patterned in misty blues and lilacs on a white background and Lisa knew it suited her blue eyes and fair colouring. Despite Robbie’s birth she was as slender as she had always been, only the firm fullness of her breasts against the fine fabric betraying the fact that she was no longer a girl.

Rorke came to join them and Lisa was conscious of the pilot eyeing her admiringly. Fending off unwanted advances was something she had grown used to in London, and she rarely bothered even to acknowledge male interest now. Even so, she was surprised by the icy glint in Rorke’s eyes and the contemptuous way they raked over her body.

‘Just remember you’re coming back here as my wife,’ he drawled, grasping her arm in a parody of an embrace. ‘We’ve just been reconciled, Lisa, with all that the word implies, and don’t you forget it!’

Even then, the full meaning of his words didn’t sink in properly. She was too concerned about the reception awaiting her at the house; about Leigh’s health and his reaction to Robbie.

She had expected to find Leigh confined to bed, but the first person she saw as the car drew up in front of the porticoed entrance was Leigh; an older, gaunter Leigh, it was true, leaning heavily on Mama Case’s supporting arm, but Leigh nonetheless, and the tears that had been threatening for so long started to slide helplessly down her cheeks as she looked through the car window.

Robbie with typical youthful curiosity and lack of tact chimed brightly, ‘Why is Mummy crying?’ drawing Rorke’s immediate attention to her averted profile.

She expected him to make some cynical comment, and held herself rigid to ward off the anticipated pain, but instead he said softly, ‘I don’t know. Why are you crying, Lisa? It’s too late for regrets now—if you ever had any.’ His voice had taken on a hard note again, and she wasn’t prepared for the warmth of his arm round her shoulders or the tender concern in his eyes as he produced a handkerchief and carefully dried her damp face. Robbie watched the whole proceedings with round-eyed interest, and Lisa felt the world around her blur again as fresh tears started. What was the matter with her? What was she crying for? Her lost innocence? The love she had once thought hers? And that tenderness in Rorke’s eyes—all false, of course. They were ‘home’ now, and they were reconciled, and he was obviously determined that she would play her part.

‘You could almost be sixteen again.’