There was no hesitation, no courtship. These were people who had known each other too long, knowing that in the other lay almost everything they had always wanted. Robin had loved Richard to the exclusion of almost all others for ten years. Richard saw in Robin everything that had attracted him so fiercely to Rowena, plus a certain indefinable extra. An extra made up of a heady combination: Robin’s own strong, open character; the fact that she shared all of his interests and preoccupations; the fact that, subconsciously, subliminally, like a child with a beloved parent, she mimicked him in so many ways. The combination would have been irresistible, even had he felt the slightest inclination to resist.
It was a shock to him to see her at dinner on the 10th, dressed as a woman. The sheer magnificence of her left him breathless, choking like some callow boy on his first date. He had seen her under a bewildering breadth of circumstances during the last weeks; seen her fighting him for the position of third mate with vivid passion, seen her turn humiliation into victory over Neptune, seen her throw away her life to help what she thought might be a child in danger. Seen her refuse to give in to the greatest extremes of physical discomfort when all around were helpless. But he had never, until she swept like a princess into the restaurant where he and Martyr awaited her, never seen her as a woman.
They were dining in the hotel on that first night, the three of them together for the first and last time. They had put aside their vexation with the cheerfully intransigent van der Groot, put aside their worries about the others — and some of their suspicions about what was really going on here — and were simply dizzy with the joy of being alive; as would be any group of people who had survived what they had survived.
They were waiting for her in the cocktail lounge outside the Mandarin Room, with their table booked for 8.30. Both of them were in Number One whites, having had no chance to arrange civilian clothing, and individually were quite distinguished enough to be turning a few heads themselves as they sat at their ease at a table near the door.
The first they knew of her arrival was a sort of communal intake of breath. A rustle of movement as every head in the place turned. Richard glanced up with the rest and was suddenly unable to inhale.
She stood in the doorway, framed to perfection, accepting the reaction she was causing as of right — as Rowena had — but waiting there not for effect but because she could not see the others in the gloom. She had had twelve hours longer out of hospital than they, and had used some of that time to the greatest possible effect.
The golden curls had been cropped close to her head, giving the effect of a glistening Juliet cap. Around the long neck, the theme of gold was taken up by a modest chain. Tanned gold too were the naked shoulders and back, the sheer slopes of the breast. And there it stopped, contained in black silk. The dress was by Chanel. It was tulip topped and backless, flowing out from a tight waist in a controlled cascade to the gathers midcalf. It was, like the necklace, simple as only the greatest art can be.
A perfect dress perfectly filled. The raw silk and the gold flesh complemented each other perfectly. Seemed to have been created for each other and probably had been. Richard stood, fighting the most ridiculous desire to applaud, and she saw him. Had she been breathtaking before, now she became incandescent, seeming to light the room as she crossed to him. He stood tall and awaited her, feeling for the first time in many years the cynosure of all eyes. Knowing from experience without a trace of vanity — that couples all around the room were looking at each other and almost nodding. Of course the golden girl was with the dashing, distinguished officer. Such creatures belonged together.
It was a feeling more powerful than the strongest drug.
“Hooks and eyes. At the back. Oh! Quickly!”
He fumbled, clumsy with desire.
They were in each others’ arms at last, in her room simply because it was the nearest, too impatient even to switch on the light. He slid his thumbs between the hot tight silk and the smooth skin, closing the sides of the dress together, twisting them back apart. And her hands were busy too, on his simpler, more accessible buttons.
The slick silk and the crisp cotton slid away miraculously at the same time and each partner paused, reveling in the sensation of skin on skin; of softness crushed against firmness; of heat building upon heat. They kissed again, crushing each other, terrified to slacken their grip in case the beloved slipped away. Yet slacken their grip they did at last, dominated by more than childish fears.
And later, when they lay in a tangle of bedsheets, she curled against him, his hands lazily exploring her back, learning her by feel in the dark like a blind man, he asked at long last, “Robin, what is all this about? Really?”
“I want you. I want you back. That’s why I came out to Prometheus.”
“Only your idea?”
She should have been shocked at the question, he knew: enraged at the implication. But he asked, somehow safe in the knowledge of her.
And she answered. “He’s too proud. And anyway…”
They paused. There was no suspicion between them, no bitterness left. During the last few hours they had also laid Rowena, in the way she would have appreciated most, to rest. It was time for the simple truth, and they both knew it.
And the truth did not seem so very dreadful, after all.
“Oh, Richard! I’m so very worried about him. He won’t tell me — and I can’t find out for sure — but I think there’s something dreadfully wrong. He hasn’t been the same since Rowena died. He seems weaker, somehow; hesitant. But it’s more than that now. He’s been seeing his doctor, usually when I’m at sea and he thinks I won’t find out. He’s had a whole battery of tests and I think he was afraid that he had a brain tumor.”
“And has he?”
“No! Not as far as I can find out. But there is something. And he still does the strangest things…”
“Like buying the oil?”
“Like waiting until I took the first holiday in years and then buying the oil. I was halfway to the Seychelles when I found out. It was quite by accident. I’d forgotten to tell my secretary I wanted complete rest and he telexed me the news. He had my itinerary — he’d booked all my flights — and the message caught up with me on Bahrain. I came south instead of heading on east. Came onto Prometheus instead of onto the beach.”
“Some holiday!”
“Some lifeguard.”
There was a silence, then she continued. “If he was his old self, I might have suspected it all as a convoluted plot to bring us together…”
“With what object?”
“To bring you back,” she conceded. But there was no reluctance about the concession.
“Explain.”
“Well, as I see it, it really takes two to run the company. One in London and one at sea. I can take care of either end. But if he feels he can’t handle the other end, for what ever reason…”
“All this, just because he wants me back as son and heir? Gambling much more than he can afford to lose, if the papers are correct?”
“No. It’s not just that. It’s me, too. It’s what I’ve always wanted. He knows that. He would never have risked it all for himself. But for me…”
Silence.
“I’m all he has left…”
Silence.
“And there’s so much there, Richard! So much to be done.”
A lesser man might have used Crewfinders as an excuse. Someone not so deeply in love, less involved than he. Someone wishing to keep his distance, to retain a sense of proportion; to hold on to a little sanity. But Richard had been too sane for too long. There would be a way to guard his own beloved company and still to help the Heritages.