An All-Consuming Passion

‘If he cares to look,’ responded Holly irrepressibly, lifting one golden tanned shoulder. ‘Did you hear what I said? Just toast and coffee for breakfast. I want to have my meal and be out of here before Mr Morgan Kane shows his face.’

Lucinda looked, if anything, even more reproachful. ‘You ain’t going over to Charlottesville today!’ she protested fiercely. ‘Holly, you know that man’s come all this way to see you. You can’t just walk out on him. Not on his first day!’

‘Leave Mr Morgan Kane to me, will you, Luci?’ Holly suggested lightly. ‘Like I said, toast and coffee——’

‘I heard what you said,’ retorted Lucinda impatiently. She shook her head. ‘I don’t understand. Last night you seemed to be getting on with him real fine.’

‘Last night?’ Holly’s lips tilted. ‘Well, yes. But we didn’t do much talking over supper. Mr Kane was too tired, and as soon as we’d finished, he went to bed.’

‘I know that.’ Lucinda sniffed. ‘Oh, well. I suppose you know what you’re doing. But your Daddy’s not going to like this. He’s not going to like it at all.’

Holly merely smiled and withdrew, but her smile disappeared as she ran up the stairs. Thank heavens Andrew Forsyth had never had a telephone connected to the house. Pulpit Island was reassuringly remote, and by the time Morgan guessed what she was doing, it wouldn’t matter.

Although she normally took a shower after her swim, this morning she contented herself with simply washing her face and hands. The shower was noisy, and as it was next to Morgan’s room, she couldn’t afford the risk. Besides, she didn’t really have the time. In fifteen minutes she was downstairs again and seated at the kitchen table.

‘Your hair’s still wet,’ said Lucinda, maintaining her disapproval, and Holly ran careless fingers over the hastily tied pony-tail.

‘It will dry,’ she said, spreading butter and peach jam on her toast. ‘Did Micah check the radiator in the buggy? Yesterday it was running pretty hot.’

‘He checked it,’ said Lucinda laconically, apparently deciding she was wasting her time. ‘And will you pick up the oil from Parrish’s? As you’re going in anyway, it will save Micah a journey.’

‘I will.’ Holly added cream to her coffee and took a considering sip. She didn’t think she had forgotten anything. She had brought the exercise books downstairs the night before, and stowed them in her holdall in the hall. The text books she might need were already in there, along with the flask of iced tea Lucinda always made her.

‘What time will you be wanting supper this evening?’ asked the housekeeper now, folding her arms across her generous breasts. ‘You will be in for supper, won’t you? You ain’t planning on spending the evening with the Brents?’

‘Of course not.’ Holly’s eyes twinkled as she stuffed the remainder of the slice of toast into her mouth and sprang to her feet. ‘Now—you look after Mr Kane for me, won’t you?’ she added mischievously. ‘If he asks where I am, just tell him.’

‘Oh, thanks.’ Lucinda’s tone was full of irony. ‘That’s good to know. I don’t have to lie.’

‘Would I ask you to do a thing like that?’ asked Holly irrepressibly and, giving the black woman an affectionate hug, she sauntered out the door.

She met Micah in the cobbled yard at the back of the house. As well as attending to the upkeep of the house, he also looked after the two cars, shared garden duties with Samuel, and cared for the animals. As well as the chickens and two goats, Holly had also managed to rescue three of the horses from her grandfather’s stable. Left to run wild after her grandparent’s death, the two mares and one stallion had not been easy to tame. But, with Micah’s help, she had succeeded. Now, one of the mares had had a foal which Holly had called Hummingbird, and she could imagine what her father would say if he found out how she was spending the allowance he made her.

‘You leaving?’ Micah exclaimed in surprise when Holly shouldered her bag into the back of the little beach buggy, parked in the shade of a huge flame tree. ‘Does Mr Kane know where you’re going?’

‘No, he doesn’t,’ said Holly flatly, unwilling to get involved in another argument. ‘I’ll see you later, hmm? After I’ve been to Parrish’s.’

Micah’s wide nostrils flared, but he made no comment, and Holly gave him a rueful smile. ‘Trust me,’ she said, reaching out to touch his sleeve, and the man shook his head somewhat resignedly before raising his hand in farewell.

The journey to Charlottesville was not quite as enjoyable as it usually was. Although she knew a sense of satisfaction at having outwitted Morgan Kane for today at least, Holly was aware of a troublesome sense of conscience. She couldn’t afford to have a conscience, she told herself, as the buggy bounced its way along the forest track. People who wanted to succeed had to ignore the finer points of decency. Just because the Fletchers had some misguided notion that she should be polite to their visitor was no reason to be diverted from her purpose.

The road to Charlottesville took her through some of the most beautiful scenery on the island. For a while after leaving the overgrown plantation, her route took her along a bluff overlooking the jagged rocks of Angel’s Point. Once, when she was younger, she had asked her grandfather why the most dangerous part of the coastline should have been named Angel’s Point, and he had laughed. ‘Well, it’s to be hoped the poor devils went to the angels,’ he remarked, referring to the fishing boat which had floundered there only days before. ‘You wouldn’t want them going to the devil, now would you?’

From the point, the road turned inland again, skirting the sprawling mass of Pulpit rock before descending in a corkscrew to the little harbour town that nestled at its foot. Most of the residents of the island lived within a ten mile radius of Charlottesville, only the other planters like the Turners and the Brents having larger establishments further from town.

Holly was used to the road, which would have deterred the most enthusiastic of drivers, and reaching the comparatively gentle slopes above the harbour she drove more sedately to the Charlottesville Mission School. Here, she taught art and cookery three times a week, using the skills she had learned at the finishing school in Switzerland to teach boys as well as girls to appreciate the finer points of the culinary art. She doubted again whether her father would approve, but she didn’t really care. Teaching had given her back her confidence, had made her aware of her own worth as a human being, and erased the blank uncertainty that had coloured her early years.

The Charlottesville Mission School was not really a mission school at all. Not any longer. It was supported by the local education department and the church authorities and, as island schools went, it was very good. The children were taught arts and crafts, as well as more academic subjects, and the percentage of pupils who went on to do further education on one of the larger islands was quite high. Holly had been teaching at the school for almost eighteen months now, ever since Stephen Brent had visited the house and seen her paintings.

The Brents and the Gantrys were the oldest families on the island. When Holly visited the island as a child, her grandmother used to take her to visit the Brents, and she and Stephen, and his younger sister, Constance, had all been friends. By the time Holly returned to the island however, Stephen’s father was dead, too, and Stephen had married Verity Turner.

Even so, they were still friends, and it was Stephen who had suggested Holly should offer her talents to the education authorities. Although the Brent plantation was not in such a run-down state as the Gantry’s, he himself spent four mornings a week at the school, teaching English and history, and their liking for one another had been cemented by their mutual interests.

Stephen’s car was already parked on the dusty lot beside the schoolhouse when Holly drove the buggy in to join it. Although it was barely eight o’clock, school started early in the islands and, apart from a fifteen-minute break mid-morning, it continued, uninterrupted, until two o’clock.

As she got out of the buggy, Holly paused a moment to look at the view. She often did so thinking, as she did now, what an ideal location it was. Set above the harbour, with waving pandanus palms as a backcloth, and the sloping roofs of the little town sweeping down to the mast-dotted careenage below, it was an infinitely pleasant place to be, and she appreciated her good fortune. Determinedly putting all thoughts of her father and Morgan Kane to the back of her mind, she hoisted out her bag and crossed the sun-baked parking area. mounting the steps that led into the building with a slightly lighter heart.

She found Stephen in her classroom, propped against her desk, examining the sketches she had drawn for the play the children were hoping to produce at Easter. In his middle twenties, Stephen Brent was everything Morgan Kane was not, she thought reluctantly, despising herself for allowing that man’s image to intrude yet again. Sturdily built, and about her own height, with curly brown hair and blue eyes, he was different in every way from the lean, dark-haired Englishman. Morgan Kane would top him, as he did her, by at least four inches, and whereas Stephen was broad and muscular, Morgan looked nothing like an athlete. Yet, for all that, he did have a toughness the West Indian lacked, a rapier-honed hardness that shortened the odds between them considerably. Holly suspected it was the life he had led—the constant changes from one time zone to another; the shortage of sleep; the hastily snatched meals; the ravages of junk food and alcohol, and too many late nights. But whatever it was, in any physical contest between them she would be loath not to choose Morgan as the victor; the simple result of any conflict between a sleekly fed tabby and an alley cat.

Ignoring the small voice inside her that probed her reasons for even contemplating such an eventuality, Holly walked firmly into the schoolroom and dropped her bag on the desk. ‘Good morning,’ she said, easing the straps off her aching shoulders, and Stephen looked up.

‘Hi,’ he said, surveying her somewhat windswept appearance with evident enjoyment. ‘You look ready for anything. What happened? Didn’t your visitor arrive?’

‘Oh, he arrived all right.’ Holly flopped down on to one of the children’s chairs and pulled a face. ‘How could you think otherwise? He is my father’s creature, after all.’

Stephen looked sympathetic. ‘And have you decided what you’re going to do?’ He frowned. ‘You’re not leaving, are you?’

Holly sighed. ‘I don’t know. It—depends.’

‘On what?’ Stephen put the sketches aside and straightened away from the desk. ‘Surely your father can’t make you do anything you don’t want to. You’re over eighteen, Holly.’

‘I know.’ She grimaced. ‘But it’s not that simple. I may be five thousand miles from England, but I’m still living in my father’s house.’

‘Mm.’ Stephen grunted. ‘That’s what’s so bloody unfair. I’m sure the Gantrys didn’t intend Andrew Forsyth to get control of their property.’

‘No.’ Holly shrugged. ‘Perhaps not. But they did give it to my mother before she died, never dreaming she would pre-decease them.’

‘And your father inherited,’ muttered Stephen grimly, shaking his head. ‘It’s barbaric!’

‘Yes—well—’ Holly made a dismissing gesture. ‘That’s all past history now. The house does belong to my father and there’s nothing I can do about it. Not to mention the fact that my salary here is hardly enough to live on.’

‘Money!’ Stephen’s jaw hardened. ‘It all comes down to money, doesn’t it? I bet that spineless pimp Forsyth has sent out to do his dirty work for him gets a damn sight more than you do!’

‘I—wouldn’t call Morgan Kane a spineless pimp,’ murmured Holly reluctantly. ‘Really. He’s quite—nice.’

The word almost stuck in her throat, but it occurred to her that she might need Stephen’s help to accomplish her purpose, and he would never agree to be a willing party to her subterfuge.

‘Nice!’ he echoed now, his lips twisting. ‘Holly, how can you say the man is nice? He’s a puppet! A yes-man! You said yourself he was your father’s creature.’

‘Well, yes, he is.’ Holly licked her lips. ‘But what else can he do, when all’s said and done? My father is his employer, and—he does have a family to support.’

‘You sound like you’re defending him,’ said Stephen coldly. ‘Are you saying integrity has a price?’

Holly lifted a hand, palm outward, and rose abruptly to her feet. ‘I’m only saying he has a job to do, and he’s doing it. Be reasonable, Steve. I don’t suppose you’re proud of everything you’ve done in the cause of the Great God Mammon. I seem to remember the case of a family your father had evicted, just to appease Horace Turner.’

Stephen hunched his shoulders. ‘That was different.’

‘How was it different?’

‘Turner was threatening to cut off our water supply, you know that. If he had, countless other families would have been affected.’

‘So you consider the end justified the means?’

‘In that case, yes.’

‘Oh, Steve!’ Holly gazed at him impatiently. ‘Can’t you see? Put Morgan’s family in the place of your employees, and what have you got? An identical situation!’

‘That was a long time ago, Holly.’

‘I know.’ Holly gave him a wry smile. ‘Since when, you’ve married Verity Turner, and secured your irrigation rights.’

Stephen turned red. ‘That wasn’t why I married Verity, and you know it.’

‘That’s not what you said two weeks ago, when you drove me home from your house,’ Holly reminded him flatly. Then, relenting, she ran her fingers lightly over the sun-bleached hairs on his arm. ‘Oh—I’m sorry,’ she said, realising she was being abominably cruel to someone who had always treated her with tenderness and affection. ‘I don’t mean to be bitchy, but you rubbed me up the wrong way. Just don’t judge Morgan so harshly. He’s only earning his salary.’

‘You sound as if you’re attracted to the man,’ muttered Stephen grudgingly, his eyes moving possessively over the honey-gold skin exposed by her button-through poplin tunic. ‘Since when did you call him by his first name? You always used to refer to him as Mr Kane.’

Holly had hardly been aware she had said Morgan, and now she found her own colour deepening. ‘I mean—Morgan Kane, of course,’ she said shortly, turning her attention to the contents of her holdall. ‘Look, I really ought to be getting these things sorted out. The children are starting to arrive.’

Sure enough, a handful of boys and girls had already gathered in the playground, and Stephen regarded their presence with some impatience. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I realise we haven’t got time to talk now, but in spite of everything, I want you to know I meant what I said.’

Holly stacked a pile of exercise books on the desk. ‘Steve——’

‘I mean it.’ His hands clenched and she knew that, were their conversation not being monitored by a dozen pairs of dark eyes, he would have been more forceful. ‘No matter how amusing it might seem to you, I do care about you, Holly. I wasn’t just—making a pass, when I drove you home the other evening. All right, maybe my father did have something to do with my marrying Verity, but I did think I loved her then. It was only when you came back to the island—when I saw you again——’

‘What’s going on in here?’

To Holly’s relief, Stephen’s impassioned outburst was stemmed by the arrival of a third party. Paul Bergerac was another of the teachers at the school, an ex-pupil himself, who had continued his education in the United States and returned to the island a year ago to join the staff. He came into the room now, his dark face alight with curiosity, and Holly had the greatest difficulty in finding a suitable excuse.

‘Oh—Steve and I were just discussing the play,’ she tendered at last into the awkward silence that had fallen. ‘I—er—I’ve made some sketches of the costumes I think we’ll need, and we were wondering whether we’ll be able to find what we need in Charlottesv——’

‘Bullshit!’

Stephen’s angry protest interrupted the explanation she was giving and, while Holly looked aghast at Paul’s grinning face, the other man charged out of the room.

‘Oh, dear!’ Paul was the first to recover himself, and his teasing smile was reassuring. ‘Methinks, the game’s afoot!’ he misquoted, deliberately mixing his lines. ‘Our chief of men has been sent about with a flea in his ear!’

Holly shook her head. ‘It’s no joke, Paul. You don’t understand.’

‘I understand that he’s in love with you—or thinks he is,’ he retorted softly. ‘We all are, you shameless wench!’ He chuckled. ‘So, put us out of our misery: which of us are you going to choose?’

‘Oh, Paul!’ A reluctant smile lifted the anxious corners of her mouth. ‘What would I do without you?’

‘Mon plaisir, mademoiselle,’ he responded gallantly, effecting an exaggerated bow. ‘Now, shall we invite the pupils inside or shan’t we? After all that drama, I don’t know if I can keep my mind on something as ordinary as work!’

In spite of Holly’s misgivings over the conversation she had had with Stephen, the morning passed without incident. Her painting lessons with the younger children and more advanced charcoal sketching with the older ones took her up to break, and afterwards two cookery classes completed her schedule. She also helped Hannah Dessai, the sports mistress, with her games instruction, and made preparatory lists of the scenery they would need for the coming production. The school was like that. Although the staff had regular duties, they all took a part in the general running of the establishment. There were no lines of demarcation here. They all wanted to do the best they could for the eighty or so pupils.

To her relief, Stephen did not attempt to speak to her again privately before she left for home. At break, he was his usual friendly self, and she hoped she showed by her attitude that she appreciated his restraint. In all honesty, she had never taken Stephen seriously before. She had treated his overtures of affection with the inconsequence she had thought he expected, and she had been stunned to learn he had taken her remarks to heart. No doubt it was her fault, she sighed. She had initiated his declaration. But his hypocrisy had irritated her, and she had used the only means at her disposal to prick his pompous balloon.

The headmaster, Gerald Frost, caught her just as she was leaving. ‘Oh, Miss Forsyth,’ he said, loping across the car park towards her, his cassock flapping in the breeze. ‘Could I have a word with you? It is rather important.’

‘Of course,’ said Holly, turning from loading her belongings into the buggy. She hoped it was nothing to do with Stephen. It would be terribly embarrassing if he had confided his feelings to someone else.

As well as being in charge of the small school, Reverend Frost was a minister of the Methodist church. A graduate of Trinity College, Oxford, he could have enjoyed a more academic career, but twenty years ago he had come to the island for a holiday and decided to stay. A shy man, he had never married, and his spare, angular figure was a familiar sight in Charlottesville. Paul always said—rather irreverently—that he wore his ecclesiastical robes like an actor wore his costume: because they provided a character he could hide behind.

‘I’m so glad I caught you, Miss Forsyth,’ he said now, panting a little as he came up to her. ‘You’re not in tomorrow, are you? Isn’t it one of your free days?’

‘That’s right.’ Holly nodded, still somewhat apprehensive. ‘What can I do for you?’

‘It’s more in the nature of what I might be able to do for you,’ murmured the headmaster ruefully. ‘Stephen tells me you may be leaving.’

‘Oh——’ Holly’s tongue circled her upper lip. ‘Well, nothing’s been decided yet.’

‘No. So I understand.’ Reverend Frost took a deep breath. ‘But, if I were to speak to your father, explain what valuable work you’re doing here, he might conceivably look more favourably on your desire to stay.’

Holly hesitated. ‘What exactly did Stephen tell you, Reverend Frost?’

‘Oh—only that your father is eager for you to return to London, and that you don’t want to go.’ He sighed. ‘I can understand how he feels, of course. Your father, I mean. He must miss you terribly. I know I—we—would, if you were to leave.’

‘Thank you.’ Holly gave him a grateful smile. His suggestion was well meant, but she doubted it would carry much weight with Andrew Forsyth. Nevertheless, it was kind of him to make her feel wanted. It was not a sensation she had often experienced in her short life.

Looking into the minister’s concerned face, she reflected on the irony that this man was probably only a couple of years older than Morgan Kane. Yet, she never thought of Reverend Frost as an equal. In all honesty, she seldom thought of him as a man at all. Not that he was at all effeminate, but simply because his sex was usually obscured by the character he had created for himself.

‘Well, anyway,’ he added now, ‘if there is anything I can do, you have only to ask me.’ A trace of colour entered his face, accentuating the freckles that arched across the bridge of his nose. ‘I—we’re all very fond of you, my dear. In a comparatively short space of time, you’ve become an integral part of our community.’

CHAPTER THREE

IT was almost four o’clock by the time Holly got back to the house. Calling for the oil at the chandlery had taken longer than she had anticipated, Mr Parrish insisting she couldn’t leave without taking a glass of his home-made maubi. Although it was supposed to be non-alcoholic, the cocktail, derived from boiling tree bark, nutmeg and cinnamon, and adding it to a mixture of seagrape juice, ginger and cloves, was very potent, and Holly felt decidedly heady as she drove into the stable yard.

Still, it was not an unpleasant feeling, she reflected, lugging her heavy bag to the back door. In spite of her bravado, she had not been looking forward to facing Morgan Kane on her return. Now, however, she felt agreeably anaesthetised, and if her father’s satellite was waiting for her, breathing fire, then she was suitably fortified against his wrath.

But to her surprise, and annoyance, Morgan was not there. ‘He found that old sailing dinghy in the boat-house,’ Lucinda informed her, not without a trace of smugness, lifting scones off the griddle on to a wire tray. ‘Soon as he knew you wouldn’t be back until this afternoon, he rigged up the sail and took himself off across the bay. I gave him a packed lunch, of course. So’s he wouldn’t get hungry.’

‘How kind.’ Holly’s sarcasm was palpable. ‘Who told him where the boat-house was?’

‘No one did.’ Lucinda shrugged. ‘It’s big enough to see. ain’t it? And what with that hole rotting in the side, that padlock your Daddy put on it ain’t much use.’ She paused. ‘Surely you don’t mind, Holly. I can tell you, Mr Kane ain’t the kind of man to sit around all day waiting for no woman.’

‘Is that so?’ Holly’s lower lip jutted truculently. ‘Well, I’m pleased to hear you’ve changed your mind about him. My father would be proud of you. It’s exactly what he wanted.’

Lucinda straightened from the table, her dark eyes flashing indignantly. ‘You’ve got no call to talk to me like that,’ she exclaimed hotly. ‘I’m not saying I like the man, and goodness knows, I don’t want him whisking you off to London, you know that. But I did warn you it wasn’t wise to antagonise him. He looked pretty tight-lipped when I told him where you’d gone.’

‘Did he?’ Holly’s impatience with the housekeeper evaporated, and with a rueful gesture she put her arm around Lucinda’s neck and hugged her. ‘I’m sorry. I’m being totally unreasonable. But whenever my father takes a hand in my life, it’s a disaster!’

‘You can hardly blame your father for you jumping to the wrong conclusions,’ pointed out Lucinda mildly, but she returned the girl’s embrace and gently stroked her cheek. ‘Now—I suggest you go and take a shower and tidy yourself up before Mr Kane gets back. Maybe if you take a bit of trouble with yourself, he’ll overlook the fact that you’ve deliberately avoided him all day.’