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She was quick to notice the click of surprise in his eyes. Almost in one step, he came over to where she was standing. His face was very close to her own and she froze with the completely unexpected fury she had apparently just unleashed in him. ‘I have never been willing to settle for second best. There is enough in life that is second best.' I don’t have to settle for that.’ Because she was nervous, Jade took a sip of her drink and stared back at him, resting the rim of the fragile glass against her lower lip, after she had done this. In her billowing caftan, the background of the beautiful room they were in was melodramatic and appropriate. His skin, which was like copper, was perfect for the clothes he was wearing—dark slacks and a white silk shirt, open at the chest. His dark hair was elegantly long in the neck.

‘Is that what
you
want?’ he asked, his green eyes going over her. ‘Second best?’

‘No. That’s just it—I don’t want second best,’ she replied, taking the glass from her lips.

‘No? Well, it is something you might well have to learn to cope with.’ His voice was dry. ‘But not with me. When I take you you will be yielding, with none of the unyieldingness of jade. There will be that luminous quality of jade about you, however, and I don’t have to supply you with a reason as to why it will be there ... but while it is there, there will be no ifs and buts floating about in your mind. But forget about this now. Forget, also, about wash-aways and cyclones and the destruction caused by them.’ He took her glass from her. ‘One more drink before dinner. No ...’ he held up a hand, ‘they are really very light.'

She had been shocked by his temper, she found herself thinking as she stood there helplessly, watching him as he poured drinks. He was the most devastatingly handsome man she had ever seen in her life. Everything about him was exaggerated in her mind. His eyes were so strange, darkly green one moment, and yet, with the tawny lights in them, much lighter the next. His mouth was perfectly moulded, but there was nothing soft about it. Jade had seen it looking more than just a little hard from time to time. He was completely male and, despite his leanness, gave the impression of great physical strength.

Without turning, he said, 'Don’t look at me like that, Jade. And do not be nervous of me. I have been ready to quarrel with you, but let’s forget that now.’

'No,’ she said, ‘we should have had a quarrel before now. Now we both know how we stand.’

'We do?’ Turning, he laughed softly. 'So? We know how we stand?’

'Yes. At any rate, I’ve come to my senses,' she told him.

'About Marlow Lewis?’

'Yes, about Marlow. And about you.'

‘What about Marlow?’

Her long dark hair slipped forward as she looked down at her bare feet. ‘Well, I realise that I—love him.’

'And me?’

‘I've come to my senses about you. What do you want me to say?’ Her eyes were troubled rather than angry.

'You must answer for yourself. However, there is no need to give me an answer. Women are natural liars, anyway.’ He laughed softly, but his eyes were cool. 'Here is your drink.’

'You mix drinks with cool expertise,' she said, taking it from him. 'I thought island cocktails were potent? I shouldn't be having this.’

‘This caution of yours!’ He sounded frankly irritable. ‘It is a pity you did not put it into practice before coming here to marry a man you hardly know and one so much older than yourself.'

‘As usual you go to extremes,' she answered.

After dinner, which really was very good, considering, Laurent said, ‘I have a very good tape recorder, operated by batteries—for an emergency such as this. I think we could do with some mood music. We will go, I think, to my den.'

When they were there Jade remarked, ‘It's hard to believe that this beautiful beamed room, with its attractive bar, used to be a garage. I love your plump blue and white sofas and chairs. The Persian carpet, of course, is perfect for them.’

‘As you can see,' he said, ‘I also collect blue and white ginger jars and antique plates.'

‘And plants,' she smiled, and bit her lip.

‘I am very French and from France,' he said, ‘and in many ways this looks like a room might very well look in France. I wanted this room crowded with everything I like.' He began looking out tapes. ‘At night, lit by candlelight, it is a kind of paradise on a paradise island. I have too many plants and too many flowers, when I happen to be here and when my garden has not been flattened by a cyclone, and I have too many candlesticks and too many blue and white ginger jars. I know all this, but I don't care.'

Jade found herself laughing easily with him. ‘I think the whole house is beautiful,' she said.

‘I enjoy a dialogue between all these objects,' he went on. ‘It's a place of poetry and,' he shrugged his shoulders, ‘privilege, if you like, for I feel privileged to own so many beautiful things. Nevertheless, they are here to be enjoyed and looked after—not worshipped, by any means. Good, here are new batteries. Let there be no mistake, while I enjoy candlelight from time to time, I also enjoy the benefits brought to us by electricity.’

Jade walked about the room, which they had not used while Marcelle had been there, admiring everything. ‘How beautiful,’ she said. ‘Bronze leopards inlaid with gold, isn’t it?’

‘My own appreciation of them is high,’ he told her.

When the music started she felt her nerves tighten, for the tune he had chosen was
The Way We Were,
which someone had whistled as the plane had lost height and prepared to land in Mauritius. It was also a tune which she had grown to identify with the island, for she had heard it constantly since her arrival. She was surprised when Laurent said, 'It seems a long time since somebody whistled this on the plane.'

When the excitement she had felt on hearing this particular tune had died away she almost hated Laurent Sevigny for awakening the feelings she had been trying to tame.

The candlelight did dramatic things to her blue eyes and they widened a little as he walked towards her. For several moments, in the flickering light, they studied each other and then, tentatively, their lips met, very gently at first and then finally with abandon as his arms closed about her.

Her fingers went to his dark hair which was springy where it grew down to his neck. His body, lean and hard against her, made her feel as if she was drowning. Behind the lids with their extravagantly long lashes her blue eyes were blind with fright as she realised the longing he had aroused in her.

‘Don’t,’ she whispered. ‘Unlike you, I can't accept the male point of view about my physical needs.’

’Don’t push me too far,' he snapped. ‘You do not know what you want. Forget the games and let’s get down to self-honesty.' He held her away from him and looked into her eyes.

‘Second best doesn’t seem to worry you, after all,' she said, on a hard little breath. ‘You—you’ve
got
to believe me! I don’t know how I've allowed myself to drift into this, but I’m—enormously in love with Marlow. I’d never forgive myself if....’

‘That is a strong statement. You want to get yourself together.’ There was hostility in his voice. ‘However, I find you more than just a little useless and I have no intention of haggling with you. Haggling is an act of trade. One haggles in Port Louis when one wishes to buy something and therefore it is not undignified. But I do not want to buy
you
with fancy phrases and fancy set-ups.’

Jade watched him while he switched off the tape-recorder and as he left the room. She was shaking and her eyes were suddenly wet. A rare carving of malachite, the colour his eyes had turned as he had released her, Shi Shi lions, playing with the sacred jewel, wavered before her.

In the morning he took her back to the hotel. The l| road was a nightmare of wash-aways and this alone "prevented conversation, but something told her that even if they had been on a magnificent motorway, Laurent Sevigny would have had nothing to say to her.

Many
of the poorer people, living in tin shanties, had been left homeless and were still in packed cyclone refugee centres.

The hotel gardens, too, had suffered and many of the palms had been left standing but were stripped away, on one side. Others had been toppled. Filao trees had been uprooted or stripped of all foliage.

Several times on the journey, jade had thought that Laurent would have to turn back because, in places, there just seemed to be no road upon which to travel. However, searching for a way out, he seemed intent on getting her back to the hotel.

Finally, when they had reached the hotel, he turned to look at her. ‘You know where to find me,' he said.

‘Thank you—for rescuing me,' she said, confused and upset. ‘I would have been terrified otherwise.'

‘For sure.' His voice was polite, nothing more.

As she got her key from reception she tried to Ignore the feeling of emptiness in her. Staff members were still busy in a kind of mop-up operation but, strangely enough, apart from the stripped gardens and temporarily ruined pool everything seemed fairly normal.

There was, unbelievably, hot water and she suspected that the hotel must have its own emergency generator. After a shower, she changed into slacks and a halter-top and went to the health clinic. Here, amid louvred doors, exotic plants and lotions, the conversation was mostly ‘Cyclone Fraziska’. Most of the Creole staff were absent—cut off from the hotel. There was no sign of Nicole de Speville.

One of the clients was saying in a pettish voice, ‘I was led to understand that most cyclones pass Mauritius by. I wouldn’t have come, otherwise.’

‘Mauritius lies in the south Indian Ocean cyclone belt, mod-dom,’ the Creole beautician answered, 'but it is true, most cyclones do pass Mauritius by. You can’t judge us by this one.’

Nicole came to the clinic the following day, wearing one of her caftans, and apart from shadows beneath her eyes, she looked beautiful. ‘When did you get back?’ she asked Jade.

‘Late yesterday afternoon,’ Jade replied. ‘It was a marvel we got back, actually.’

‘I looked everywhere for you,’ Nicole went on. ‘I was going to take you to my house at the first warning, and then I heard that you had gone to Marlow’s house.’ Her voice sounded flat.

‘I decided to spend the weekend there,’ Jade told her. ‘I thought I’d find something to do there—you know, like washing curtains.’ She felt suddenly foolish.

‘Laurent arrived,’ Nicole said. ‘He was rushing up to Curepipe and when I told him where you were, for I had found out by that time, he said he would contact you.’

‘How did you cope during the cyclone?’ Jade asked.

‘Oh,’ Nicole shrugged, ‘I was alone. We all got cut off somehow. My brother stayed here.’ Her voice sounded almost accusing now. Obviously, Jade thought, Laurent had put Marcelle and his business before Nicole.

For days the island was busy mopping up and repairing the trail of damage caused by Cyclone Fraziska. There were many sunken boats to salvage. The famous Garden of Pamplemousses, lying beneath the Moka Mountains and which had been created in 1767, had been greatly damaged. Beautiful mountain rose trees had been stripped or blown down, it was reported. Spice plants and bushes, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pepper and ginger had been flattened. Ornamental trees, palms, creepers and shrubs had either been greatly damaged or completely destroyed. Fraziska had torn her way through this place of peace and calm, flattening and tearing up crotons, teak trees, raffia palms, camphor trees, shanties, buildings, crops and whatever lay in her path.

In the health clinic, louvred doors swung open and swung closed again. Water noises came from rooms with cool tiled walls and floors. Things were back to normal and Jade went back to her salon in the vaulted arcade.

Surrounded by flattened cane fields, Plaisance International Airport, which means the Place of Pleasure, was open once more and Mauritius, the island of pungent spices, white beaches, violet, mist-veiled mountains and forests, had once again become a busy crossroads of the ocean. Regular arrivals and departures of jets flying in—and out—from Africa, Europe, Asia, Australia and neighbouring islands of Reunion, Madagascar and the Seychelles were in operation once more.

Marlow Lewis flew in from the neighbouring island, Reunion.

Jade was in her room when he knocked. She had bathed and was dressed for dinner and when she opened the door she caught her breath.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘Remember me?’

‘W-when did you get back?’ she stammered. ‘Come in.’ She stood to one side, to allow him to pass into the small corridor, with the bathroom to one side and walk-in wardrobe to the other. Closing the door, she said, ‘Where would you like to sit—in my room, or the balcony?’

He remained standing and then, placing both hands upon her shoulders, he kissed her very lightly on the mouth. ‘I’d forgotten how young you are,’ he said.

Because she felt it was expected of her she said, ‘Not so young, really.’

There was, she found herself thinking, a faintly chilling quality about Marlow, which she had not noticed in Australia—but then she hadn’t been engaged to him then. Was it this deadpan coolness about him which accounted for the fact that he was well known, here on the island, as a hunter? His hair was still the reddish-blond colour she remembered, like his beard and moustache, and although he was in his forties, he seemed to have an instinct for contemporary fashion and was very ‘with it’.

The hardness about Marlow was for real and it was difficult to believe that she and Jeffrey had lived with him in Australia and that he had been broken enough by Elisa’s death to give up farming and to leave Australia for Mauritius. What was even more strange was that he had, after a period of corresponding with her, asked her to join him on the island and to marry him.

Still standing, he said, 'I am sorry I couldn’t be here when you arrived.’

'Oh,' she shrugged and tried to smile, ‘I know it couldn’t be helped.’