Violet Winspear
THE SUN TOWER
Dina Caslyn had spent most of her life in the agreeable surroundings of rich Californian society — thanks mostly to the generosity of her godmother, Bella Rhinehart. Now, with her approaching marriage to Bay Bigelow, Dina would consolidate her position. It was not the best of moments for the mysterious Raf Ventura to surge into her life — dark, dashing, ruthless, and making it quite clear that he wanted Dina himself. But Dina cared for Bay; she knew her marriage to him meant everything to her godmother. With everything that was most important in her life atirisk, she didn't dare to fall in love with Raf...
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All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure invention.
The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
First published 1976 Australian copyright 1982 Philippine copyright 1982 This edition 1982
© Violet Winspear 1976
isbn o 263 74092 7
The paper used in this edition has been manufactured in Australia by Australian Newsprint Mills Ltd.
Printed in Australia by The Dominion Press Hedges & Bell, Melbourne
CHAPTER ONE
The music drifted up from the terrace of the country club, and the girl who stood alone in a deep window of the games room softly hummed a few bars of the nostalgic song to which the couples danced. A fine romance, with no kisses. A fine romance, my friend, this is.
A faint smile touched her lips and a pensive look crept into her eyes. No other song could have been so well tuned to her present mood, as if the band were playing for her alone.
Bay Bigelow was good-looking, the scion of a well-off family, and approved of by Dina's redoubtable godmother. But Dina had known from the beginning that she wasn't in love with Bay. The engagement had happened, as these alliances between the younger members of the ruling familes of Pasadena had a way of happening. A kind of drifting with the tide of social and matriarchal pressure, not enforced but urged on with all the inexorable grace of the moon itself, until the young man found himself offering a ring and the girl found herself accepting it. Such alliances often had a charm of their own, but where was the breathless romance? Dina wondered. Where was the exciting clash of personality and temperament?
Then again she owed Bella Rhinehart such a lot. Her godmother had taken her in when she was an infant, after Lewis Caslyn had gone broke and there had been wild talk of a stock market swindle.
For years afterwards Lewis, her father, had lived in a ramshackle cottage at Malibu, until one day he just vanished and it was assumed that he had walked into the sea and drowned all his disappointments. Dina had been made the legal ward of Bella, who had taken full charge of her, bringing her up as if she were a real daughter, paying for her education at exclusive schools, drumming into her that Lewis had been a no-good rake who had driven his wife into an early grave and then involved himself with racketeers who had finally led him into the shadow of prison, where he would have ended up if Bella hadn't paid for his defence by one of the best Californian lawyers.
Dina had never fully understood why her godmother had this love-hate attitude towards Lewis; maybe at some time she had hoped to marry him, but the fact was that in her imperiously charming way Bella made Dina feel beholden to her; as if she owed her that extra bit of gratitude for the bounty of a good home, elegant clothes, and the cool reserve that made her acceptable to the Bayard Bigelows as a daughter-in-law.
Dina knew that with consummate skill Bella Rhinehart had implanted in her a strong sense of duty, so that she allowed herself to become engaged to Bay because Bella wanted it. After all, it was a comparatively small return for the safe and beautiful anchorage of the house at Satanita, which over the years Dina had grown to regard as her home. She loved the place, with its rambling garden of orchards and bird of paradise trees.
She could still remember the disturbances of her early life with Lewis, and then the sudden sweet security of life at Satanita. It seemed that the one
thing she was most afraid of was being insecure ever again—the very thought was enough to send the feel of ice trickling down the straight spine of her slim body.
The drifting music changed to another tune, but Dina hardly heard it. For some quite unknown reason she felt a change in her mood; a sudden tension as if she were no longer alone. She cast a glance over her shoulder, but she was still the only occupant of the room, with a faint light glimmering on the surface of the pool table, where a few coloured balls had been left in abeyance.
Dina returned her attention to the soft darkness beyond the window, and she was staring out there, lost in her thoughts, when beside her own a face was suddenly reflected in the polished glass. She gave a start, for she had heard no footfall across the rope matting that covered the floor of the games room, and she felt as if something clutched her heart as she stared at that reflected face and saw that it belonged to a man. The eyes, even through the glass, held hers with an intentness that was greatly disturbing, and there was no escaping them, for when Dina swung round there they were again, holding a sort of untamed quality she had never seen before.
He didn't speak and neither did she. He was somehow like the Benvenuti painting of il tigre Burton; brown-skinned and hard, with a black moustache and matching brows above the metallic grey eyes. In the silence of that long moment Dina's impression was that a foreign sculptor had made this man and then stood him in the wind and the sun and the adversaries of life and allowed them to weather his face into a dangerous attrac-
tion. He was forceful, not in the least handsome, but instantly riveting.
'It's a game you cannot play alone,' he said, and there was a curiously attractive rasp in his voice; a certain something that touched her nerves and made her feel menaced. What was it she sensed? A relentless, driving energy ... the restlessness of the tiger at nightfall?
'What game are you talking about?' she asked, and she didn't dare to wonder what he really had in mind, this lean and slighdy sinister stranger who found her alone like this, while everyone else was dancing or petting in the grounds of the clubhouse. Where was her charming Bay when she needed him? Probably talking polo with his cronies!
'It could be anything, could it not?' He gestured around the games room, and in his hand the slim cigar seemed to belong so naturally, used to emphasise a point, to punctuate a remark, like a sixth finger only a shade darker than his skin. 'There is the pool table, and another with the Scrabble board laid out. Take your choice.'
'Are you asking me to play?' She looked at him with amber eyes that were set at a slant in her otherwise quiet face; her hair was bobbed and it glinted about her head like silver metal.
'Would you be willing to play?' He raised the cigar and touched it to his lips and the drift of blue smoke played over his face. 'It could be that you have found an opponent who could offer you an exciting bout or two.'
'I don't play pool,' she said in a cool voice. 'And I doubt if you are interested in Scrabble.'
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p; 'Doubting me already, and we have only just met?' He lifted a black eyebrow and the edge of his
moustache followed that quirk. 'If the dancing couldn't hold you, then you must have come in search of something else. To all things a purpose, whether by chance or design.'
'Do you imagine I was pining for company?' She gave him a look that made her eyes look like golden ice. 'I came up here in order to get away from the crush and the chatter for a while.'
'Good, so you are not a chatterbug ' His eyes swept up and down her slim figure in her dress of cool, lovely Kiangsi fabric, then he let his gaze dwell on her delicately clefted chin and wide vulnerable mouth. In repose a reserved face, but when warmed by a smile a sensuous quality crept in, but right now Dina was unsmiling and half inclined to sweep out of the room, except that she resented being chased away by a total stranger. She had never seen this man at the country club before; his was the kind of face that once seen was memorable, if only for the glimmer of sardonic impudence in those grey eyes that were so much lighter than the rest of his swarthy face. That he was a foreigner Dina didn't doubt, and then because something about him touched her on a nerve, she said coldly:
'And what are you, one of the club waiters?'
Instantly the white edge of his teeth clamped on his cigar and a glittering quality came into his eyes. 'You needed to say that, eh? All evening, I would say, you have been in need of a target on which to vent your—dissatisfaction with life.'
'How dare you-?' Her amber eyes blazed and
she could have hit him, a complete stranger to her daring to say things that Bay wouldn't have said had they been married ten years or more. 'Who the devil do you think you are?
'My dear young woman, didn't you just hit the mark?' Blue smoke from his cigar wreathed about his features. 'I am in charge of the dining-room arrangements of the club; I provide the buffet and the liquid refreshment even if I don't serve them. Tonight I had a little business to discuss with the club secretary and that is why I am here. As you are probably aware, his office is on the same floor as this games room and I noticed you as I was about to pass the door on my way from the club, standing alone by a window, absorbed in thoughts that struck me as being rather deep for such a young woman. I thought to myself that you looked like someone who needed to speak to a stranger, for with a stranger we can sometimes be more candid than with a close acquaintance. Ships that pass in the night, which like most cliches has a certain truth to it.'
He spoke deliberately, in that deep voice with a razored edge hidden away in it, and he made her look at him, into those vital and arresting eyes whose metallic grey was a shield for his innermost thoughts. In a moment Dina's quickening pulse was so perceptible to herself that she felt sure he must have sensed it; she felt attacked by an awareness so extraordinary that she couldn't look at him.
'I—I was very rude just now,' somehow she dragged her gaze from his, but even then she could feel his eyes upon her profile, moving up and down her skin under those darkly lashed eyelids. 'I was lost in my thoughts and you took me by surprise. I imagine you must take me for a shocking snob for the way I spoke, but I do assure you that I'm not like some of the other members who regard the club as hallowed ground.'
'Don't be concerned,' he said, a ribbon of smoke twisting from his lips. 'A man in my business learns very early to grow armour-plated skin and you barely scratched me. Now, dove'l dolore, as we say in the Milan from which I originated?'
I don't speak Italian,' she replied, and she was tensely aware that the moment had slipped from her grasp when she could have gone swiftly from the room and dismissed him from her mind. 'What do the words mean?'
'Where does it hurt?'
Her eyes widened and locked with his, for never in her life had any man asked her that; in her kind of circle it was taken for granted that life was dolce and pretty young women the icing on the cake.
'That's a very personal question and you shouldn't ask it.' Her voice shook slightly, and she glanced left and right as if seeking a way to evade him, the pearl drops in her earlobes swinging against her cheeks. Her fingers nervously gripped her chiffon handkerchief and just a whisper of perfume stole from her skin, a delicious Givenchy scent that blended with her look of patrician finish and cool delicacy.
Dina had never been so conscious of her contrast to a man, he so dark that he was bound to be dangerous; she so fair with her amber eyes and the court-page style of her glistening hair.
'I do many things that I shouldn't do,' he said shamelessly. 'Such as speaking to a young woman of the Californian elite. My roots are Italian, attuned to pain, both physical and mental. Yours is of the mind, or should I say the emotions?'
'Is it an Italian trait to be so personal at a casual meeting?' She braved a direct look at him and saw
shades of hedonist and hard worker in that dark face, and she felt a certain fascination at finding herself quite alone with a man who was unafraid of the impulse to approach a stranger and speak so frankly. Ships passing in the night. It was appropriate, for she was Bella Rhinehart's protege, and he admitted that he was in charge of the club menus; they were unlikely to ever meet again after tonight.
'Well,' he murmured, 'what do you read in my face?'
'That you like work, and a little hellfire as well.'
'Yes, I am an entrepreneur and I have several irons in various fires. And what is life without rocks to break, fires to walk through, and honey to taste?'
She flushed slightly at that final analysis, and at once he smiled and there was a sudden dark enchantment to that smile.
'La belle au bois dormant,' he drawled. 'No doubt you know French, for they teach that language at the finishing schools, eh?'
'Yes, and I'm no sleeping beauty!'
'Are you not?' He looked faintly mocking.
'And you most certainly aren't a prince!'
'I never supposed it for a moment. More likely une tour mal gardee.'
'A tower unguarded?' Dina heard herself laugh. 'That you never are !'
'Perhaps not.' He lifted his cigar and Dina stared at the black sapphire cuff-links against his snowy linen. His dinner jacket was of a dark wine colour, superbly tailored to his shoulders, and Dina knew good tailoring and real stones when she saw them.
She thought to herself: This entrepreneur goes his own way, and he doesn't care a fiddler's jig what anyone thinks of him.
'You're probably quite notorious,' she decided to say.
'You bet your sweet life.' His teeth showed their white edge. 'And what are you if you aren't the sleeping princess—a novice nun?'
'In a dance dress and silver slippers?' Never could she recall having this kind of duel with a man before; a verbal duel that was subtly more exciting than brushing off the physical attentions of a man.
'Some women have the cloistered temperament whether in shantung or a coif. Is that what is bothering you? You cannot make up your mind whether you want wedding bells or your freedom?'
'How do you-?' She paused as he gestured at
the diamond ring on the third finger of her left hand. She glanced at the ring with its neat grouping of precious stones, which Bay had presented with his charming grin, and which Bella had viewed with such satisfaction. All at once Dina felt stifled, as if she would have given anything to ride fast through the night in the cool breeze and pretend that she was free.
'Who are you?' She pushed up her chin and resumed a look of cool haughtiness. 'Cagliostro the magician?'
'I am Raffaello Ventura, and there are some people who are permitted to call me Raf.' He looked directly into her eyes, holding them with his magnetic grey irises. 'I don't imagine it would surprise you, honey, that my grandfather was of the scugnizzi of Milan, scavenging for a living in the alleys and crumbling courtyards of the palazzi. He came to America—he established himself. I am part of that. That is what I am.'
'You look as if you'd be at home among the briganti of a Mediterranean isle.' He had got under her skin and a kind of fear of him
vibrated through her bones. In every way he was a man— possibly a hurting man, and yet her ankles felt clamped to the rope matting where she stood and she was caught and held by him as if those lean fingers were holding her.
'Grazie,' he murmured. 'It takes an innocent to recognise a sinner.'
'You're welcome,' she rejoined, and felt that she had scratched below the surface of his armour-plated skin, as he had called it.
'But only as far as the threshold, eh? If I dared to overstep the mark, then you would step on my clay heel?'
'Have you clay in your granite?' 'Hasn't every man?'
'I haven't that wide knowledge of men. Some could be quite saintly, I imagine.'
'Saints get more of a kick out of crosses than kisses.'
'You would know, of course, being the very op posite to a good man.' 'A man of sin?'
'A man who doesn't let sin or saintliness rule him.'
'What does rule me?'
She let her eyes flick up and down his lean blade of a body, and because she was acquainted with young men who kept fit on the tennis court and on the polo field, Dina knew a male body in perfect trim when she saw one—even though this man was quite a few years older than Bay and his friends.
'Work, ambition to get ahead in your particular
field. You don't let the grass grow under your heels, do you?'
'An assessment hardly in keeping with being called a brigand. They take what they want and scorn to toil and spin for a dollar.'
'I said you looked like a brigand, I didn't say you were a stealer of other people's valuables.'
'What about another man's woman?'
'In that area you would probably be less scrupulous.'
'We are quite alone, you and I,' and as he spoke his eyes moved up and down her slim figure in the soft pale fabric of her dress. 'What if we put to the test your judgment of me—with regard to women?'
'My fiance has boxed with professionals, signore. Would you fancy to have your Italian nose put out of joint?'
A glimmer of impudence stole into his eyes and he fingered that bold Roman feature of his face. 'You are forbidden territory, eh, with a diamond brand on you?'
The Sun Tower Page 1