'I should have thought that was obvious.'
'I don't mean now, you over-sexed wench! What are we going to do with each other when this is over . . . This isn't what I do normally.'
'I should hope not!'
'Be serious, Faith–just for a moment. You know what I mean.
What you call a game–I shall go on playing it if they'll let me. I think it's important and I'm not going to give it up. But you hate it, don't you?'
She frowned, and then came over and knelt in front of him, taking his hands in hers.
'Dear David, you're not a very masterful lover, are you? You want dummy4
to be approved of as well as loved, and the two don't necessarily go together these days, you know!'
'Then I'm old-fashioned. And that's because I'm too old for you. So it wouldn't work, would it!'
'It's up to us to make it work. And that's a lot of balls about your being too old. I'm not a schoolgirl exactly, you know. It's no good telling me I'm too young–and I'm the one who decides whether you're too old. And I think you're just pretending to be old: it's a bad habit of yours I'm going to have to break when we're married.'
She was so matter-of-fact that he almost didn't believe what he'd heard.
'I know you haven't even asked me yet–I know! But if you're really so old-fashioned you'll have to get round to it sooner or later. It's called 'making an honest woman of me'. And I shall accept because I can't possibly have you glowering around the way you did when we arrived here!'
Audley groped for the right thing to say. He had known her for three days and he had never known anyone like her. He had argued with her and lost his temper with her. He had used her as a pawn in his game and he had used her body as much to comfort his fears as to alleviate hers. He could not begin to explain to himself why she had somehow become dear to him; she was not in the least his type of girl. Yet the thought of losing her now was not to be borne.
Yet she was Steerforth's daughter.
Slowly she withdrew her hands from his.
'Me and my big mouth!' she said lightly. 'It's all a joke really, dummy4
David–forget it. Don't let it spoil the fun we can have tonight, anyway.'
She began to fumble with the hooks behind her back.
'Here! Do you really think it's fair to describe me as 'flat-chested'
— those hulking step-brothers of mine used to, you know!'
Audley reached forward and grabbed her arms clumsily, pulling them forward and sliding his hands down to imprison hers. But somehow he became entangled in a strap, and only succeeded in helping her prove that she would never be a rival to Raquel Welch.
'For God's sake, Faith!' he said thickly.
It wasn't the idea he shied away from, but the sheer indignity of the situation. A man simply didn't propose clad only in his shirtsleeves to a half-naked girl in an overheated hotel room in the middle of an incomprehensible job. Not a man like himself, at least, who liked to calculate the odds and hated to be wrong-footed.
Not a man like himself!
What a pompous, stupid bastard I've become, thought Audley in a flash of clarity which completed the earlier moment in the Land-Rover. Dignity and reputation were like the Emperor's Clothes–a mere self confidence trick. If he surrendered to this delightful beanpole of a girl he would never be able to wear them again, but in any case they would never again fit him comfortably if he let her escape. He needed her much more than she needed him.
'My dearest Faith–if you and Mrs Clark both agree, who am I to question your decision? Will you make an honest man of
She nodded, wide-eyed. 'David—'
dummy4
'The job still goes with the man, remember.'
'The job still goes with the man.'
He raised her hands to his lips. It was a marvellous thing for once to have no reservations about a decisive decision.
'And the man, my dear, is going forthwith to his Hilton-standard bed. We've got a lot to do tomorrow.'
He started to raise his hand to forestall what he guessed she was going to say, only to find that his thumb was still entangled by the strap of the ridiculous rainbow brassiere.
'I know–I know! We've got a lot to do tonight, too! Come on, then, Mrs Audley . . .'
It was only much later, on the threshold of sleep and lulled by that soft snore to which he must henceforth accustom himself, that he thought again of Steerforth.
Somewhere out in the darkness, under the grass and the sheep not far away, lay the treasures of Troy. Priam's gold, Schliemann's gold and Steerforth's gold. And if, by some unlikely miracle, it came to the light again, it would be Nikolai Panin's gold.
And there was the unresolved puzzle, plaguing him still. The motives of the owner, the discoverer and the plunderer were crystal, but Panin's were opaque—
The Gold I gather
A King covets
dummy4
For an ill use.
That was among the runes on Welland's sword—
