Nevertheless, the woman's spitefulness had had an effect on her. Instead of going on with her shopping, Tracy returned to the car, left Margate, and drove back to Sea View.

  Lucille Galland arrived the next day. Ryan drove Tracy to the station to meet her. Her mother was impressed with Ryan, Tracy saw right away. Also a little intimidated, though she had no reason to be, for Ryan was friendliness itself, showing none of the arrogance he had displayed towards Tracy at the start.

  'So you're the man who swept my daughter off her feet,' Lucille said when Ryan was starting the car.

  'Didn't Tracy tell you, Mrs Galland, that she was the one who did the sweeping?'

  Lucille looked at him a little doubtfully, and then she saw his wicked grin, understood the joke for what it was, and a moment later they were laughing together.

  Tracy felt her heart turn over with love for him. Since yesterday she had been imagining him with Freda, tormenting herself with images. Ryan and Freda in the pool, on the boat. Alone together. Ryan, superb in his brief swimming trunks, Freda, sultry and voluptuous, in the gold bikini. In every picture the bikini featured, for Tracy had no doubt now to whom the garment belonged.

  'Right, Tracy?'

  She blinked at Ryan, wondering at the question.

  'It was you who did the sweeping off feet, wasn't it?'

  His eyes were sparkling, and he looked so very handsome, and it was easy to return the smile. 'Rascal,' she teased back. 'You know which one of us is an expert with the broom.'

  And then they were all three laughing, and Tracy knew it was time to banish Freda from her mind. Patsy had been right, the other woman was jealous. Maliciously jealous, so that she had been driven to hurt the girl who had succeeded in winning the prize she herself had been after. Ryan had said the relationship with Freda was a thing of the past, that was where it belonged, that was where Tracy would leave it.

  Marie Demant was waiting for them at Sea View, as warmly welcoming as Ryan. 'I'm delighted to have Tracy as a granddaughter,' she told Lucille. 'And I'm so happy to meet you, Mrs Galland.'

  Lucille was shown to her room, after which they all had brunch together, and then it was time to drive into Margate to see the wedding-dress. 'I feel we're rushing you, Lucille,' Mrs Demant apologised. 'You've only just arrived and you must be tired, but with the wedding so soon there's so much to be done.'

  There was immediate agreement over the dress, as Tracy had- thought there would be. Both Lucille and Marie were enchanted with it, and Tracy herself liked it even more than the first time she'd seen it. 'You'll be a beautiful bride,' Mrs Demant said, and Lucille dabbed at her eyes.

  A veil was bought next, and then shoes. Flowers were chosen, sprays of orchids for Mrs Galland and Mrs Demant. Freesias for Patsy. An especially lovely bouquet for Tracy. The florist promised that the flowers would be delivered to Sea View early on Saturday morning. At last, it was time to leave Margate. There was more to do, but it had been a long day, and Ryan's grandmother was beginning to look tired.

  It was only late that evening, when Ryan had driven back to Umhlowi, that Tracy was alone with her mother for the first time. Lucille, looking tired now too, had gone to bed, and Tracy came to her room with two cups of hot tea.

  'Just what I needed,' Lucille said gratefully. 'I can't believe that it's not twenty-four hours since I left home, so much has happened.'

  'It certainly has.' Tracy framed the question that had been on her lips all day. 'How do you like Ryan, Mom?'

  'He's rather fantastic.' Her mother smiled at her. 'But I think you know that. You love him, don't you, darling?'

  'So much.' It was not necessary for her mother to know that what Ryan felt for her was not love.

  'I like them all. Mrs Demant. Patsy.' Lucille made a gesture. 'These people, Tracy, the way they live… It's all so much more than I could have imagined. A little overwhelming.'

  'But in a very nice way,' Tracy suggested.

  Her mother nodded. 'Oh, yes.'

  A mischievous smile touched Tracy's lips. 'Do you still think that Derrick was after Allison's inheritance?'

  'No.' The smile vanished from Lucille's face. 'You still haven't spoken to Allison?'

  'Ryan will take me to see her after the wedding.'

  'I hope it's not too late.'

  'It won't be. I've told you that.'

  'I hope to God that you're right.'

  A little curiously Tracy looked at her mother. 'I imagined today might have changed the way you felt about Allison and Derrick.'

  'Not at all.'

  'You've met the Demants. Aren't you happy for Allie?'

  'I want you to get her back for me.'

  The terminology struck Tracy as odd somehow. 'Mom—why?'

  'We've been over all that. She's so young, Tracy. Only seventeen.'

  'Almost eighteen,' Tracy said firmly. 'She will be eighteen by the time she and Derrick get married.'

  'It's not right for her. Not yet.'

  'Allie's young, Mom, I agree, but lots of girls marry at eighteen.'

  Lucille moved restlessly beneath the sheets. 'I want you to bring her back to me, Tracy.'

  To me. For me. Why did her mother use these words?

  'Mom, why? If she loves Derrick…'

  'She doesn't know what love is.' Lucille's voice was harsh. 'She thinks she's in love. She doesn't know what she's giving up.'

  Tracy tensed. 'I don't know either.'

  'A career! Her chance to be on the stage.'

  At last Tracy understood. She wondered why it had taken her so long. 'Her dancing.'

  'And her singing. All her life Allison's been working towards a stage career. How can she give it all up now, just to be married?'

  'Perhaps it's what she wants.'

  Lucille turned a distraught face. 'I've worked so hard so that Allie could have her lessons. She's good, Tracy, I know she is. And now, when success is within her reach—she could have a part in the musical, you know she could—she wants to throw it all up for a husband!'

  'Perhaps it's what she wants,' Tracy said again.

  'And I tell you she doesn't know what she wants.'

  'Or perhaps,' Tracy said, and her voice was very gentle, 'it's just that you want it for her.'

  There was a choked sound as Lucille covered her face with her hands. Tracy sat quietly, watching her mother, wishing she could alleviate her distress, knowing she couldn't.

  In the last minutes things had become clear. Tracy had believed Allison's youth and her mother's distrust of Derrick Demant to be the only reasons she had been dispatched to bring her sister back. Now she knew better, and she was filled with an aching compassion for the young girl Lucille Galland had once been. A girl who had given up her own hopes for a stage career to be married. Given them up only temporarily as she had thought at the time. But fate had dealt her an unkind hand. Her husband had died young, leaving her with two small children to support. It had been impossible for the young Lucille to return to the insecurity of stage work, to wait for weeks, maybe months, for a part to come her way. Had she found one, there would have been other problems, for there had been no extended family with whom to leave two little girls while she worked at night. And so Lucille had gone to work in a dress-shop, a job that was more mundane perhaps than the stage, yet infinitely more dependable.

  Tracy had shown no signs of show-business ability, but Allison had begun to dance almost before she could walk. And her mother had encouraged her, had taught her all she knew, had spent more than she could afford on lessons. In her mind all the sacrifices had been worthwhile, for she had seen in Allison the star that she herself had never had a chance to be.

  Would Allison have made it? True, there was a musical in which she had been offered a part. A small part, but small parts could lead to bigger ones, might allow an agent or a producer to discover her. Did her sister have that special quality that made a star? Tracy wondered now. Did she want to be one? Or was marriage to a man she loved more important to her?

  None of these questions were ones she could have tossed about with her mother. At least not now. Lucille Galland could see only that a dream was being taken from her a second time, and she was desperately unhappy.

  But the fact was that going after Allison had become for Tracy a different matter altogether. While her mother wept quietly into her hands, Tracy agonised over what to do. Did she have a right to interfere in her sister's life? No, said one part of her. Yes, said another.

  For there was the matter of Derrick. Patsy had spoken of him as a lady's man, a Casanova who went from one girl to another, a weak person who was seduced by every pretty face and lovely figure that came his way. Ryan, though less eloquent, had spoken about his brother in much the same way. If Derrick was really a good-for-nothing, as Tracy suspected he might be, then Allison could well be heading for disaster. Tracy owed it to her sister to open her eyes for her before she made a commitment from which there was no retreat.

  It did not matter that her reasons for wanting to find Allison differed from her mother's. On Saturday she and Ryan would be married. Then they would go after her sister and Derrick.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  From the moment Tracy flung open the curtains she knew it was going to be a perfect day. The wedding was to take place in the garden at Sea View, with contingency arrangements in the spacious living-rooms if there was rain. But the dawn sky, a misted colour still, was cloudless.

  Tracy thought Ryan might have liked to be wed at Umhlowi, but Marie Demant insisted on Sea View, and already Tracy knew that what was dear to his grandmother's heart was important to Ryan.

  The gardens had never looked lovelier. The roses were in lush bloom. Magnolia and gardenia and a few deep pink frangipani were an exotic backdrop for the elegant clothes of the wedding-party. All this Tracy took in, but only on the periphery of her vision. For as she walked across the lawn, her long white dress swishing the grass, the train held by Patsy, she saw Ryan. And through the sudden wild joy in her heart she saw nothing else.

  He stood waiting for her, taller than any other man there, his face unexpectedly serious, a well-cut dark suit giving him a formal air that she had not seen before. Yet still the Ryan she knew and loved, a man of uncompromising strength and maleness, a man of power and authority together with a sexuality so potent that he set off crazy sensations in her every time she was near him.

  As she walked across the lawn towards him, moving steadily towards the moment when their lives would be irrevocably joined, it seemed incredible that not quite two weeks earlier she had been unaware of his existence.

  Slowly the gap between them narrowed. Behind her she heard Patsy's little gasp of excitement. All around her was the hush of the wedding guests. And in front of her was Ryan.

  She came to him, and looked up, and met the warmth of promise in dark brown eyes. She did not know if he could see her own eyes through the veil that covered her face, but then he said very softly, 'Hello, darling,' and she knew that he did see them.

  They turned their heads forward then, and the ceremony began. Minutes later they were husband and wife.

  The next hour or two passed in a blur. Tracy was to remember only vaguely her mother's happy tears, her kiss and the whispered 'Be happy, sweetheart'; Marie Demant's warm hug accompanied by a similar command. The congratulations of the guests, most of whom she did not know. Patsy's excitement. The popping of champagne corks, and the platters of food. The talk and laughter that filled the air, a ceaseless hum that even drowned out the sound of the ocean.

  One guest did stand out. Freda, magnificent in a silky sheath of bright red that seemed to be moulded to every curve of her body. Smile brilliant, she gave Tracy a cool peck on one cheek, before asking, 'Mind if I kiss the groom?'

  'Of course not,' Tracy said generously, too happy to dwell on the venom which had oozed from the other woman's lips the last time they had met.

  Freda reached up to touch Ryan's lips with her own, the kiss she gave him very different from the one she had bestowed on his bride, but Tracy did not care.

  'Congratulations, darling,' Freda said. 'May your marriage be fruitful—that is what you want, isn't it?'

  Ryan looked down at her, his face impassive, the expression in his eyes difficult to read. 'It's what most bridegrooms want, I think.'

  'But you want it especially. As does your grandmother.'

  Ryan was silent. If the remark was meant to provoke him, he did not rise to the bait. He was not a man to be played with, the thought came to Tracy even through her happiness.

  'I'm sure the lovely bride wants it too.' The smile that swept Tracy's face had not lost its brilliance, but the eyes were cold. 'Be seeing you, Ryan darling,' Freda said, and then she was gone, mingling easily with the other guests.

  As Tracy watched her go she felt a sudden tremor of uneasiness. For just a moment the day lost some of its sparkle. Freda seemed to have a knack for making that happen.

  Then an arm went around her waist, tightened, and Ryan said, 'Enjoy yourself, Tracy. This is your day.'

  Ryan's way of letting her know that Freda was a nuisance, but that she was not to let the woman get under her skirl. 'Our day,' Tracy said, looking up at him in sudden gratitude, and at the same moment the uneasiness vanished.

  It was late afternoon when bride and groom quietly left the wedding party. They came to Umhlowi and Ryan stopped the car on a rise where Tracy could see the house, and the orchards extending on all sides of it.

  'My favourite time of the day,' he said softly. 'I wanted it to be the time of your home-coming.'

  Tracy moved her eyes from the long white house, the roof golden now in the light of the setting sun, to the man at her side. Her husband.

  I love you, she thought. I didn't know I could love anyone so much. Simply she said, 'I'm glad.'

  As she moved towards him on the seat his arm went around her. He was bending to her at the same time as she reached for his kiss. A deep kiss, hungry, searching.

  'I've been wanting this all day,' she said, when they drew apart for breath.

  'Do you imagine I've been thinking of anything else?' His voice was ragged.

  'Ryan…' She was lifting her mouth again, but the arm left her shoulder.

  'Not now, my dearest. I want you too much to be able to stop. And I don't want to make love to you in the car, I want it to be in bed. Our bed.' He grinned down at her, his eyes wicked. 'I think I've earned that right at last.'

  There was silence as they drove further. Tracy was still sitting close beside Ryan, their bodies touching from shoulder to thigh. She looked out of the window, but with little interest now. She was only aware of the longing that gnawed inside her, and her breathing was a little irregular. She did not look at Ryan, she did not have to; there was a tautness about him, and she knew why.

  The house had a deserted air. Letitia, the housekeeper, was at Sea View where the wedding party was still in full swing. She had family near the village, and Ryan had given her the week-end off—for two days they would be quite alone.

  'Just as we were at the start,' Tracy said, and Ryan grinned.

  He did not park in the garage, but stopped at the front of the house instead. Then he got out, came around to Tracy's side, opened the door, and lifted her into his arms. He was kissing her as he carried her up the steps, a kiss that was unbroken as he pushed open the door with a shoulder, and carried her over the threshold.

  'Remember when you carried me out of the pool,' Tracy said shakily, when he gave her a chance to speak.

  'Do you think I could forget?'

  'You were kissing me then too.'

  'Till you pushed me away.' His arms tightened beneath her knees, and his breath was warm on her cheek. 'I'm not likely to forget that day, it was one of life's most frustrating.' His tongue touched a path around her lips, as feather-light as it was erotic. 'Unlike today, my dearest. Today is different.'

  In the bedroom, just yards away from the shower where he had proposed to her, he put her down. His arms went around her, and for a long moment they held each other close. They did not kiss, did not speak, did not move. The only sound in the room was that of their breathing. And there was the beating of hearts that longed for the fulfilment each could give the other.

  At last Ryan pushed his hand beneath the heavy fall of hair that hung loosely on Tracy's shoulders. 'I want you,' he said.

  'You have me.'

  'I want you in bed, with no clothes between us.'

  It was what she wanted too. So much.

  'Let's get undressed then,' she said, and put her fingers on the buttons of her dress.

  'Not like that.' His voice was soft. 'I'm going to undress you, my dearest. And I want you to undress me.'

  Ryan was an expert, she realised, as he began to take the clothes from her body. He knew how to increase the suspense, how to extract the maximum enjoyment from each movement, each second. He did not seem to mind her innocence, appeared content that she followed where he led. And she learned quickly, partly guided by Ryan, partly by sheer female instinct.

  When all their clothes were off he held her against him for a few seconds. She could feel his body taut against her, sensed the passion strictly controlled and yet aching to give way. And then he carried her to the bed and laid her on it.

  For a long moment they looked at each other. She stared up at him, and she was not nervous. She could only think how much she loved him, how beautiful he was. As for Ryan, there was an expression in his eyes which she had never seen, something almost akin to worship. 'You're so lovely,' he groaned suddenly, and then he lay down beside her.

  He covered her body with kisses. And Tracy, losing any inhibitions she still had, kissed him too, moving her body against his without restraint, letting her lips and hands go whenever they wished, revelling in the knowledge that this was just the beginning. Years of lovemaking lay ahead of them.

 

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