Part 10 (1/2)

'I'm-just going up to my room, for-for a book.'

Lily nodded and resumed what she was doing while Catherine walked quickly across the room and ran lightly up the stairs. But on the gallery, she paused. Did she really intend invading his studio? Dared she do such a thing? And what if she was discovered?

She sighed impatiently, angry with her own indecisiveness. No one knew she did not have permission to enter the studio, and she intended no harm, after all. She just wanted to see where he worked, to examine some of his canvases.

She walked along the corridor she had seen Susie taking with the tray with an outward confidence it was hard to simulate. But if she was seen, it would be better to look as if she knew where she was going.

She reached the end of the corridor without incident and there it was-the narrower flight of stairs leading to the second floor.

Taking a deep breath, she lifted her foot on to the first step, and dismissing the twinges of her conscience climbed to the top.

She was on a narrow landing with only two doors opening from it. Which to choose? She bit her lip and turned the handle of the first. It was a bathroom, and she closed the door again quickly, and reached for the second.

She found herself looking into an enormous apartment which seemed to stretch across half the width of the house. Long windows on three sides could let in the maximum amount of daylight, but right now shafts of sunlight only filtered through the slatted blinds. As in the beach house, the walls were stacked with canvases, but there were also drawing boards, tables bright with jars and tubes of colour, oils and enamels, varnishes, bottles containing brushes, pens and charcoal, palette knives, pads and drawing tablets, all the paraphernalia a.s.sociated with the craft. It was a veritable Aladdin's cave, and Catherine closed the door and leaned back against it, savouring the delights of exploration.

An easel stood in the middle of the floor, bare of any canvas. She guessed Jared had taken whatever had been on it with him. The portrait of the governor-general's lady, perhaps. The commission which was demanding his undivided attention.

She sighed and straightened, walking across the floor boards lightly, unwilling to alert anyone downstairs to an awareness of her whereabouts. She guessed this room had been specially designed to meet Jared's needs, but she doubted it was soundproofed.

There was a door at the far side of the room, and it opened, as she half expected, into a second corridor with more doors opening from it. Probably at one time, this top floor of the building had had similar proportions to the lower floors, but the need to expand the studio had divided the house. She wondered why the studio had not been built at this side of the house, but as she retraced her steps, her question answered itself. The windows at the side of the studio commanded a magnificent view of the distant ocean.

She walked across the room again, bending to examine some of the canvases leaning against the walls. They covered an amazing variety of subjects-some portraits, some landscapes--figures imprisoned forever in scenes alive with pa.s.sion and colour. The workers in the cane fields, scythes catching the sunlight, faces dark and alert, teeth white and realistically uneven. The yachts down at the Careenage, the harbour policemen in their uniforms, the sh.e.l.lfish squirming in their pots. There were fishermen and sailors, market vendors with their goods, the wobbling wheels of the 'Jackals' carts had a dimension Catherine had seldom seen.

Windmills and ruined plantation houses, the sails of a schooner in the sunset, and the seething, rolling thunder of the surf.

She was enthralled, entranced, fascinated by a talent so tangible she could actually feel it. On her knees, she turned over the canvases, feeling no sense of intrusion, absorbed as in an exhibition that had to be shared.

Behind the canvases, she came upon a handful of sketches, swiftly executed things of charcoal, pushed away where no one might be expected to see them. She turned them over rapidly, eyes widening in disbelief as she recognised their subject. Her own face stared back at her in a dozen different moods, sad and wistful, alert and excited, sulky or just plain provocative. But not just her face -her body as well, unclothed, and burgeoning with motherhood.

Her lips parted on a gasp, half admiration, half dismay, and as she sat there with the sketches in her hands, she heard footsteps on the stairs, and a moment later the studio door was thrust open. She had expected it might be Susie, Henry even, or at the outside, Elizabeth. But Jared stood there staring at her, and her hands trembled uncontrollably at the look in his eyes.

'What are you doing?' he demanded, striding across the floor and s.n.a.t.c.hing the sketches out of her grasp. 'Who gave you permission to come up here? Where's Liz? I don't believe she would do such a thing?'

Catherine remained on her knees. She had not seen Jared since she had ridden away on his motorbike leaving him stranded at the beach, and the enormity of both offences momentarily paralysed her. He looked down at her angrily, tall and disturbingly masculine in a denim waistcoat and jeans, the rolled up sketches beating a tattoo against his thigh.

'Well?' he said 'Are you dumb as well as deaf? What are you doing up here?'

Catherine expelled her breath on a sigh. 'I should have thought that was obvious. I wanted to see where you worked. I was curious. Is that unreasonable?'

'You should have asked me if you wanted to come up here.'

'Oh, yes?' She looked up at him bitterly. 'And I suppose you'd have granted my request?' She bent her head again. 'Well, anyway, it's done now. I'm sorry if you object.'

'Are you?' The sketches were thrust aside, and he hauled her unceremoniously to her feet. 'Don't pay lip service to me, Catherine! I know you too well. You're not sorry-except perhaps that you were caught!' His hands were heavy at her armpits. 'Well, I hope you're satisfied now!'

She looked up into his lean dark face, and fear had no part of the emotions she was experiencing now. She was remembering what had happened between them before she leapt on to his motorcycle and rode away--remembering his unleashed pa.s.sion, the same pa.s.sion she had just admired in his paintings, in those sketches that mocked the savagery of his anger.

'Are you?' she breathed huskily, and felt his fingers tightening as they moved down the sides of her body to her waist and lower.. .

He was looking down at her, heavy lids shadowing the grim frustration in his eyes, his mouth twisting as he acknowledged her awareness of his weakness. 'You're supposed to be at the beach house,' she whispered, her tongue appearing to moisten her upper lip, and he nodded his head in bleak resignation.

'I know, I know. But I had to come back. There were things I needed. ..' A pulse beat rapidly near his hairline, and his jaw was clenched tight.

'Wh-what things?' she probed, stretching out a hand to explore the hollow of his navel, but he knocked her fingers away and with a supreme effort thrust her away from him.

'Get out of here!' he commanded violently.

Catherine began to tremble again, but she refused to let him see how he had hurt her. 'What are you going to do with those sketches?' she asked quietly, and he swung round to face her.

'These?' He picked up the sketches from the table nearby where he had tossed them minutes before. His expression was cold and sardonic. 'What am I going to do with these? Why, what I always do with things that don't please me: I destroy them!' And before she realised his intention, he had torn the charcoal drawings into shreds and thrown the pieces into the waste bin.

Catherine was appalled. They had been so brilliant, so alive, so much a part of her that his destruction of them seemed like a partial destruction of herself.

'You-you swine!' she choked, staring down into the bin, seeing the scattered sc.r.a.ps of paper like some fantastic jigsaw puzzle that could never be solved.

'Now perhaps you'l keep away from me,' he snarled. 'You have to live in my house-but that's enough!'

Catherine stared at him blankly. 'You don't honestly think it's as easy as that!'

'Don't I?'

'You drew those sketches.'

'Yes, I did. And you know why.'

'Pagan motherhood? Oh, yes, I remember. But I never posed for you. Does Laura know about this?'

'Keep Laura's name out of it!'

'Why should I? She's so proud of you.' Catherine's voice broke on the words, but pride and something else, something she did not want to acknowledge, was driving her on. 'I'd have thought she would be the first to compliment you on the vividness of your imagina-'

'Shut up!'

With a tormented groan, he reached for her, and shuddered.

His hands slid over her shoulders and down her arms, finding her hands, and gripping them tightly. 'Oh, Catherine-Catherine!'

He spoke her name against her mouth, his breath filling her throat, parting her lips with his tongue and caressing them with his own. His eyes were open, looking into hers, but when she moved against him, she saw the darkening emotion narrowing their tawny penetration. His hands closed on the tops of her thighs and she felt the iron hardness of his body. She lifted her arms to his waist, hooking her thumbs into the low waistband of his jeans, pressing herself closer.

He seemed to have been holding himself in check, but the yielding softness of her body against his own released the need inside him. His mouth hardened into pa.s.sion, possessing hers with a rousing urgency that left her weak and clinging to him.

'This is madness!' he protested against her hair, but she s.h.i.+vered convulsively beneath his questing hands. 'Dear G.o.d-kiss me!

Again! Catherine, you do know what I'm going to do to you, don't you? Oh, G.o.d, of course you do. . .'

'Stop tormenting yourself, Jared,' she breathed into his chest.