'Yes, Bella.' For an instant Dina felt stricken and she sat down on the chintz divan nearest to the french windows and felt the garden scents waft across her skin. 'But you're exaggerating the entire episode, I do assure you. Because he happens to be
Italian that doesn't mean that he's some kind of a Mafia ringleader.'
'No one ever knows. No one can ever be sure.' Bella flung out her hands in a dramatic movement so her rings flashed. 'But he's a gambler right enough, you heard him mention the Santa Luisa race track, and his knack for picking a good runner. Dina, how dare you even speak to such a man? Haven't I taught you how to behave with people who aren't our sort?'
'Yes, I'm supposed to give them the cold shoulder.'
'Exactly so.' Bella paused by the long windows with an air of injured majesty. 'I hope I haven't to face the awful prospect that you might let me down, not after all I've done for you, and the way I've cared for you. I have cared, Dina. You've been the child I never had, and it has made me proud that you've grown up so fair and lovely. That's it, of course! A man sees beauty and he either stumbles over his own feet, or he reaches out with greedy hands. This Ventura has reached out, and I'll see him in court, consigned to a cell, before you are touched by his hands!'
Dina's own hands clenched the chintz covering of the divan. 'Please don't say such things,' she pleaded. 'They aren't called for.'
'Aren't they?' Bella moved and came over to Dina, standing above her with eyes like brown stones. 'You know how your father got into trouble, don't you? You aren't innocent of the fact that he became involved with such men—well, I won't stand for it a second time, do you hear me? Lewis, the fool, was ruined by such an association, and I won't allow anything like that to happen to you. I
forbid you to see this man ever again. And if he should ever dare approach you, then you are to tell me and I'll have him stopped.'
Bella leaned down and took Dina by the chin, holding her and looking deep into her eyes. 'Do I make myself clear, Dina?'
'Yes.' A shiver went through Dina and she felt as if ice had collected in the pit of her stomach. Bella Rhinehart had great wealth and friends in high places, and there seemed little doubt that she could cause trouble for anyone who threatened the orderly pattern of the life she had mapped out for her protegee. She had spent time, money and attention on the child whom Lewis Caslyn had consigned to the devil, and Dina's gratitude was shadowed by the feeling that she had lost her freedom and was. as Raf Ventura had said, the prisoner of a castle whose iron bars weren't visible to the eye.
But her heart felt them ... her heart was surely locked inside those bars of iron.
Bella gripped her by the chin, the point of her thumb in the delicate cleft at its base. 'You will not see this—this hotel-keeper ever again.' The words ripped into Dina. I'll have your promise, or you'll be confined to this house, to your very room.'
'I didn't ask him to come here,' Dina said indignantly. 'Why should I be treated like a capricious child?'
'You must have given him some sign—some indication of interest.' 'But I didn't!'
'Men pick up signals, and girls aren't always aware of making them.'
'Bella, I've never made signals to any man—even Bay. I'm not a flirt and you know it!'
'I knew your father, remember, and instincts in the blood are stronger than we realise. You know what his life came to—the sheer waste of it in gambling and speculation, and then living in a cloud of white wine until he ended it all. He cared for you despite his behaviour, but he was weak, Dina, and I don't want to see you following in his footsteps. I'll take severe measures to prevent it.'
'Have I ever let you down?' Dina asked quietly. 'Have I ever been less than grateful for the life you've given me? I know how wild and irresponsible my father was, and how I'd have grown up had he kept me with him-'
Dina paused and couldn't prevent a deep sigh. 'All the same, he might not have taken that final step, had I been there with him.'
'You think not?' Bella frowned and stood there with the sunlight behind her, so that her features looked dark, and her eyes even darker. 'I think he died because he was afraid to go on living. My lawyer had prevented him from going to prison, but there were men who had—I think the Italians have a word for it—a vendetta against Lewis Caslyn.'
Dina stared at her godmother with shocked eyes —that word again, which Raf Ventura had used. That implication of sweet revenge, the day of reckoning, Nemesis.
In that silence filled with heartbeat the sala door opened and a maid in frilled apron and trim lace cap carried in a tray of fresh coffee and the crisp biscuits Bella liked, straight from the oven and folded into a white napkin on one of the Chinese porcelain plates. The maid lowered the tray to the divan table, and once again Dina felt the brief flick
of inquisitive eyes. It was a rare thing for Bella and herself to argue, and the staff would be aware that a dark masculine stranger had appeared at the house and they would guess that he was the apple of dis-cord being tossed back and forth in the sala, usually a room of sunlit harmony underscored by the crackle of biscuit and the pages of the morning papers being turned.
'That will be all, Lilian.' Bella came to the divan. 'I'll pour the coffee myself—oh, and tell Norwich that I shall want the car at the steps by ten-thirty. I have to go into town.'
'Yes, madam.' The maid carefully closed the door behind her, and the strained atmosphere in the sala was increased for Dina by her godmother's remark about needing the car. Bella usually spent an hour in the orchid house before setting off for her appointments in town, and there seemed a hint of threat in her announcement.
'Will you take a cup?' Bella asked, pouring the hot and aromatic brew from the imp-chased pot which Dina had used earlier on, pouring coffee for Raf Ventura into her own cup. A man who had washed dishes in the hot kitchens of restaurants, who had drunk from muddy pools out on the battlefields, and who had come here bringing with him the dark whisper of vendetta.
'No, thanks, I've had mine.' Dina sat there, her spine tensed against the soft cushions. 'May I ride into town with you, Bella? I want to see if my new riding-boots are ready; they have to be broken in for the hunt next Thursday.'
Bella lifted her cup and studied Dina's face over the rim. She sipped in silence for a moment or two then she said: 'Yes, I am going into town to see
Ralph Quinton, if you're curious, Dina. I'm going to ask him to make inquiries about this Ventura person, and if there is anything at all shady about the man, which Ralph can actually use, then I'm going to have him stopped from ever daring to speak to you again. I have nurtured you and brought you to the very threshold of a brilliant marriage with one of the most eligible young men of this county, and I won't have my plans threatened in any way at all. Do you take me for a fool, Dina? Don't you think I know that you aren't head over heels in love with Bay? But what is love? Love! It is more like falling headlong into the jaws of a tiger shark. It can tear you to pieces, scatter your heart from your head, and it just isn't worth that moonlit swim in the seas of rapture that end in torment. Take it from me!'
Bella had never spoken like this before, and it also shook Dina that she had guessed that it was only fondness and respect that she felt for Bay Bigelow. Bella wanted it that way, for she obviously didn't believe that a passionate love brought happiness with it.
'I wouldn't deliberately do anything to hurt Bay or you, Bella.' Dina spoke with a quiet intensity, without a hint of the rebellion that might stir deep in her soul, putting out the tiny quills that brought pain and the awareness of what it might feel like to be totally alive to a man. In place of all that she had security and she couldn't risk it.
'Please, Bella, don't for goodness' sake go and see Mr Quinton. There is no need, and there is the danger—you spoke just now about tiger sharks. Some men are like that. Dare to prod them, or to question their integral strength, and they'll turn
on you. Don't do it, Bella! I beg of you!'
Dina had never felt so sure of any
thing, that if challenged Raf Ventura would turn very dangerous. It had been apparent in his lean command of his body, in his eyes whose metallic grey was like the armour of a gliding shark. He would come close and let her feel the abrasion of his touch, but he wouldn't snap those dangerous teeth and spill her blood ... unless someone forced him to take a defensive action.
'Let's forget him,' Dina pleaded. 'Why make such an issue of the man? As you said yourself, Bella, his type are predatory and best avoided.'
Bella took a biscuit and carried it to her lips. 'Then he frightened you?' she said.
'Not exactly.' Dina shook her head, silvery-fair in the sunlight streaming into the room. Around the expanded pupils of her eyes the amber irises were like rings of gold. 'I was furious that he should dare to use my special rideway, and I don't wish to see his arrogant face ever again. He knows, Bella, how I feel about him.'
Biscuit crunched, the Limoges clock ticked, and Dina silently prayed that Bella would abandon her plan to go and see her lawyer and maybe set in motion what Dina feared ... a real vendetta that Raf Ventura would pursue with all the relentless-ness of which he was capable. No man worked and thrived as he had done without having a relentless nature, and she knew her own sensitive recoil from inflicting hurt on anyone. She would ride with the hunt next week and only the gallop across country would give her any pleasure. The chase itself would be hateful to her, and all the time she would be praying that the hounds didn't pick up the scent
of a vixen, or the fire-red fox with its bushy tail.
Sitting here she had rather a trapped feeling, and could recall vividly her reaction to Bay when he had once presented her with the brush after a successful chase ... she had swung Major away from the laughing crowd in their bright coats and deliberately jibbed him. The horse had dashed off with her and the action had looked genuine enough for Bay to ride after her, bent on rescue. He hadn't guessed to this day that Dina had been repelled by the snapping, clawing hounds, and the terrified inability of the fox to escape them. That was the only time she had really disliked him, and she had sense enough to realise that he wasn't cruel at heart, but had seen and done things in Vietnam that made a fox hunt no more to him than swiping a summer fly that buzzed around a ham sandwich he might be eating.
This dark Italian was something else. Il tigre, she thought, a man who could be truly ruthless ... primitive and unrestrained if driven to it. His desires would be arrogant, and his heart would not be easily moved, and Dina had to control the urge to actually beg her godmother not to use her influence to make some kind of charge against him that of housebreaking, or even attempted seduction of her ward. Dina didn't doubt that he'd be clever enough to disprove the charges, and then having disproved them he'd set out to have his own back on her.
She'd be his victim because she was already vulnerable as the child of Lewis Caslyn. Like turtle eggs, no scandal could be buried deep enough from the tearing claws, and Bella must have seen what lurked in Dina's eyes, a terror of fresh scandal that
might reawaken whispers of the past, for she said grudgingly:
'Very well, I'll not consult Ralph Quinton upon this occasion, but the warning is there, Dina. I want this marriage between you and Bay to take place; it will be advantageous in several respects, and it will set the final seal on your acceptance into society. You're an unusually attractive girl, and in a few more years you'll be one of Pasadena's most stunning young women, and you could influence Bay into following Senator Bigelow into politics. Who knows? In our democracy anything is possible, and what wouldn't I have given to have attracted a man with a political background.'
Dina heard all this without fully taking it in ... her main feeling was one of deep relief that Bella had called off her 'hounds' and wasn't going to start a tiger chase.
She broke into a smile, but in the palms of her hands were beads of perspiration, and her spine felt as if it would crack from the tension she had endured since that moment she had glanced up from her newspaper and seen Raf Ventura ride into the garden court.
She hoped to heaven that she wouldn't see again that proud, hard, passionate face, that raven hair with a metallic sheen at the temples, those Cagli-ostro eyes with their magnetism, their irony, and their steely grey shield that concealed his secrets.
'As Norwich Will be bringing round the car, you might as well use it to go and see about your riding-boots,' Bella said. 'I'm pleased you hunt, Dina. The apparel suits you, for you've the right type of figure. The overly lush female never looks good in
breeches and boots, let alone a well-tailored riding-coat.'
Bella poured another cup of coffee, and she studied Dina from head to heel, as if checking over the points which had made her worth cultivating in the first place. The fey cheekbones tapering to a triangular jaw, the wide expressive mouth and fine eyebrows shading eyes amber and faintly slanting.
'Petite cat,' Bella murmured. 'You aren't like me, are you? You suffer a lot of terrors I never felt, and in a way I envy your sensitive nature and yet feel grateful that I'm harder and bolder. The world is a jungle, and Bay will be a dependable keeper. So be careful, don't start feeling an urge to explore, there's a good child.'
Dina felt as if she had been patted on the head by a firm but basically kind hand. She felt instinctively that some return was due, and she rose and bent over Bella and gently kissed her cheek.
'Thank you,' she murmured.
'For what exactly?' Bella gazed up at Dina and a hint of curiosity moved in her eyes.
'Oh, for being so good to me. Not everyone would have taken such care of a child from a—a criminal background.'
'Lewis wasn't a criminal, he was a fool with too much charm and not enough backbone when it came to facing up to those who led him into games he wasn't tough enough to play. Forget him, Dina. Don't look over your shoulder, but look ahead to the day when you wear white silk and make the society pages as the bride of the year. Time is getting on. We must soon think about choosing the material and having the first fittings for your dress. Something that will go perfectly with diamonds,
for they're your stone and Mamie Bigelow has already hinted that Bay will be buying the Tyler-Brandon stones that are coming up for sale at Tiffanys.'
Bella drew a deep, satisfied sigh. 'Pussinka moiya, you will shine on that day. Doesnt the thought of it make your heart flutter?' 'Yes,' Dina could say, truthfully. It fluttered with a kind of inevitable terror, for the white silk and diamonds were symbols of a love she didn't truly feel, and wanted with a kind of desperation to feel. Security would then be bliss if only she could curl into Bay's arms and give him her soul as well as her slim body.
Oh, she would never cheat him, she was convinced of that... but supposing, just supposing she glanced across a room and looked into a pair of eyes that beckoned her into that jungle which Bella had mentioned. That hot arid menacing jungle of the emotions, where strange whispers and enticing shadows could lead a woman so easily astray. 'I'm off. 'Bye for now, Bella.'
Dina hastened from the sala, and from thoughts that kept whispering that she had glanced across a room and looked into the eyes of il tigre, the most sinister and fascinating occupant of any jungle.
She snatched a coat from the hall cupboard and went out to the gleaming car with its sun roof open. 'I'm using the car in place of Mrs Rhinehart-,' she told the chauffeur. 'Drive at a good pace, Norwich. I want to feel the wind in my mind.' A Freudian slip she was entirely aware of. The chauffeur, smart in his brown uniform smiled as he opened the passenger door and Dina sank down against the beige velour of the up-
holstery. Most of the staff had known her from a child and they treated her as the daughter of the house, with never a hint that it was otherwise. Dina was aware of their liking for her, and their loyalty; what she was unaware of was that her own youthful dignity and kindness made it easy for them to be kind and considerate in return.
'A lovely autumn morning, Miss Dina,' said Norwich. 'Shall I take the coast road into town?'
'Mmmm, please. This is my favourite season of the year, and I almost wish that time could stand still.'
'Only it never does, Miss Dina. It's like the tides, and as certain as the stars—they'll shine come rain or tears; peace or war.'
Norwich took his place behind the wheel and they drove past the pomegranate walk, with its rusty gold fruit and its dappled fountain, leading into the heart of the estate where the jays had their hiding-places, and the red squirrels and some small deer were like vagrants from Disneyland.
Dina knew what love of a house felt like; and she had a warm regard and affection for the woman who had shared Satanita with her ... but born in her soul on this autumn day was a curiosity about that strange and shattering force that sometimes bound a woman to a man.
That she should feel curious was an indication, had she needed one, that what she felt for her future husband was serenely devoid of passion. An affaire aimable, with the feelings as undisturbed as one of the garden pools where the waterlilies floated on their own green islands.
Trust me all in all, or trust me not at all. Was that the meaning of love, that you dived in blindly,
trusting against the darkest odds, risking body and soul in the ecstasy of that plunge into deep, deep waters?
The wheels of the car sang on the wide stretch of coastal road, and there on one side were the sweeping chaparral hills patched with autumn gold and flame, and far below on the left was the ocean, burning like steel in the sun, the unfathomable depths falling away beneath that shimmering surface.
Dina sat silent, staring beyond the window, and knew herself in the grip of a fear that was also strangely exciting. Looking down into the ocean was like being drawn into silvery-grey eyes that beckoned and held subde glints of laughter ... smiling as the devil himself might smile.
'Oh no,' she cried out, silently. 'Let go of my thoughts ... let go of me !'
CHAPTER THREE
Horses, riders and hounds streamed across country like a colourful hunting print which had come magically to life. Dina Caslyn was at the rear of the chase, deliberately holding back her powerful grey Major, determined not to be at the fore if the hounds should suddenly scent a fox.
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