The Vision of Desire Part 36

"But I don't--I don't love you at all. Let me go, Brett!" She made another futile effort to release herself, but his grasp never slackened.

"You _shall_ love me!" he declared violently.

With the imperative need of the moment Ann found her courage returning. She realised now that it was to be a battle between them, and she was filled with a cold fury against this man who tried to enforce his will on hers.

Suddenly she ceased to struggle, and, bending her head back so that she could see his face, confronted him with a cool, proud defiance.

"I shall hate you if you don't release me at once," she said quietly.

Her face, so close below his own, was milk-white in the moonlight, and her hair glimmered with strange, lurking lights. Wavering gold of hair and eyes and scarlet line of lips--they roused the devil in him. His mouth crushed down on hers once more.

"You may hate me--but, all the same, you'll marry me! I swear it!" he said with grim a.s.surance.

"I wouldn't marry you if you were the last man on earth."

It was very quietly uttered, but the absolute conviction of her answer seemed to arrest him. He loosened his clasp of her body, but with the--same movement his fingers slid to her wrist, prisoning it.

"Who would you marry?" he demanded.

She stood perfectly still, unresisting to the grip of his hand on her wrist. There was a mute suggestion of scorn in this very surrender to physical coercion, a poise that a.s.serted an utter freedom of spirit--a freedom of which he could not rob her.

"You don't expect an answer to that question, do you?" she returned.

"Is it young Brabazon--Tony Brabazon?" he pursued, ignoring her reply and speaking with an odd kind of eagerness.

Ann was silent. The instinct of her s.e.x was working in her--the instinct to conceal her real hurt, to throw dust in the eyes of the man who was seeking to tear her secret from her. So she remained silent, and the sudden gleam in Brett's eyes showed that he believed he was answered.

"Then you have thought of marrying--Tony Brabazon?" he said searchingly.

"Perhaps I have," she admitted, reflecting with a brief flash of humour that, in this particular instance, the simple truth was quite the most misleading thing imaginable.

Brett regarded her with a peculiar expression in which resentment and a certain need of indulgence were strangely mingled.

"And you've thought better of it?" he continued, rather as though he were stating a fact of which he had some intrinsic knowledge. Ann felt a trifle puzzled. He and Tony were only card-room acquaintances, and it seemed unlikely that the latter would have confided in him. Yet Brett certainly spoke as though his cognisance of how matters stood betwixt herself and Tony were based on something more substantial than mere guesswork.

"That, also, is possible," she answered non-committally.

"And just as well," commented Brett. "He's a harum-scarum rake of a boy.

All the same, as I told you once before, the past doesn't matter to me.

It's the future that counts."

He paused, as though he expected her to volunteer some reply. But she merely eyed him with a look of steady indifference.

"You understand, Ann?" he said, with a species of urgency in his tones.

"It sounds quite simple," she replied shortly. "I think I understand plain English--though what you say doesn't interest me. Do you mind releasing my wrist, now?"

"You won't run away if I do?"

She shrugged her shoulders.

"Where could I run to--on the yacht? Besides, I've no wish for every one to know about this ridiculous scene," she added scornfully, with a downward glance at her prisoned wrist.

His eyes glinted as he released his hold, but he allowed the contemptuous speech to pa.s.s without remark. She lifted her arm, frictioning her wrist where his grip had scored a red mark round it. A tumult of anger against him seethed inside her. Her lips felt soiled and she put up her hand and rubbed them distastefully. He interpreted the action with lightning swiftness.

"No," he said, a note of grim triumph in his voice. "You can't undo it."

"I wish," she said with quiet intensity, "I wish I'd never set foot on board your yacht."

"It wouldn't have made a bit of difference," he a.s.sured her unconcernedly.

"If it hadn't happened here, it would have happened somewhere else. Just as it doesn't matter in the least your refusing me--by the way, I suppose I'm to understand you _have_ refused me?"--mockingly.

"Certainly I've refused you."

"Very good. But even that won't make an atom of difference. You're going to marry me, you know, in the long run."

"I'm not--" she began, then checked herself wearily. "Oh, don't let's go over it all again!" She was very pale, and there were dark shadows of fatigue beneath her eyes.

"We won't," he replied amicably. "We'll go down and see how those reckless penny-a-hundred gamblers are getting on, instead."

With one of the amazingly sudden transitions of which Ann had already discovered he was capable, he dismissed the whole matter as though it were of no importance, and, gathering up her wraps, preceded her in the direction of the companion-way. Here they were met by the bridge players.

Their game finished, they were all coming up on deck, laughing and talking as they came. Ann drew back, nervously unprepared for the sudden encounter, but Brett covered her momentary confusion by genial inquiries as to who had won.

"I've won two and fivepence," announced Miss Caroline in satisfied tones.

She appeared supremely contented with the evening's harvest.

"These tiresome people are talking of going, Brett," complained Lady Susan.

"Do stop them."

"Of course I'll stop them," he replied promptly. "They've all got to drink my health and good luck to the _Sphinx_ before they go. It's her birthday, to-day, by the way," he went on, addressing everybody collectively, "and I insist upon the occasion being properly honoured."

He continued pouring out a stream of light-hearted nonsense, focussing every one's attention on himself, and thus giving Ann time to recover her poise. When, finally, she joined in the general conversation, she was quite composed once more, although she still looked somewhat pale and tired.

The scene with Brett had exhausted her more than she knew. The man's sheer vitality and force were overwhelming, and his efforts to impose his will on hers, to force from her some response to the flaming ardour of his pa.s.sion, had left her feeling mentally and spiritually sore and bruised, just as, physically, she had ached all over after the buffeting she had received from the waves at Berrier Cove. She longed inexpressibly for the peace and quiet of her own room, and she felt thankful when at length the moment for departure actually arrived.

Lady Susan glanced keenly at her once or twice as they were rowed across the bay to the now deserted quay, but she refrained from making any comment on the girl's appearance of fatigue. It was only as they were walking up the tarred planking of the jetty together, somewhat behind the rest of the party, that she asked with a queer mixtures of tenderness and humour:

"May I guess, Ann?"

"There's--nothing--to guess," said Ann bluntly.

Lady Susan came to a standstill and stood looking down at her with eyes that laughed.

"So you've turned him down?" she queried.

Ann nodded silently.

"Well"--incisively--"it will do him a whole heap of good. He's much too inclined to think the entire world is his for the taking."