'Drink it and you will feel better.'
She drank and felt the warmth stealing back into her body. 'What will happen, Raf?' she murmured. 'Will there be—trouble?'
'Yes. It can't be avoided as the youth was caught —as these people sometimes are, being unable to resist the fascination of the fire they create.'
'Oh, what am I to do?' Dina wrapped her hands about the brandy bowl and stared into it as if seeking some answer to her cry. 'I grew up in her house. I was treated like her daughter—and there's Bay! He doesn't deserve to be hurt by all this.'
'Do I, Dina?'
She glanced up at Raf and there sprang into her eyes a quick flame of compassion, and love. 'No, not you—not you! But it must be done with honesty and honour, Raf. I must see both of them. I can't just walk out.'
'You follow the straight road all the way, don't you, carissima}' Raf sat down at her side and he smiled at her with a shattering gentleness. 'I can afford to be generous, I think, if I am to have at last the dream and the reality in the shape of my Dina. I love you with all my heart, my dearest dear. I love your sense of pride and honour. I love your
eyes and the feel of your hand in mine. I shall be a man so much in love that my parents will forget to be disapproving and they, too, will take you to their hearts. I wonder, would you like to live in Italy with me?'
'With you, dear Raf? Far away from all you have built? Your sun tower, for instance?' Dina reached out to touch his face, running her fingers down the line of his hard jaw. 'Would you want that?'
'With you, Dina, anywhere would be heaven, and what is a sun tower by comparison to a towering love? Finish your brandy and we will face the dragon—together.'
But it wasn't to be that Dina would ever confront her godmother again. After that long and hazardous drive through the thick mist, that clung in tear-shaped globules to the windows of the car, they arrived at Satanita to find Bella in a coma. She didn't awake from that last sleep, self-induced by a certain drug, but she left a letter for Dina; and it simply said:
'I couldn't bear it that any man should take Lewis's daughter away from me. Bay would not have done so, but Raffaello Ventura will have all of you. He meant to on the morning he rode into my garden like a black angel on horseback. I have hated him even as I have watched you grow to love him. I wish he could have been at Adam's Challenge when it went up in flames. I'd like him to burn in hell, but instead he'll be with you—love is heaven, I suppose.'
Raf read the letter without saving a word, then he placed it on a table and involuntarily they walked out together into the dawn-lit garden, from which the mist was lifting to reveal the shapes of
the trees.
Breaking their news to Bay lay ahead of them, but with Raf's strong arm around her Dina knew that she could face the world. She flung up her head and looked at him ... yes, she had known intuitively that the strands of her life would become interwoven with his, creating a design that her godmother would find disastrous. It had been fated to happen that way, and because Dina was generous she would remember the good times at Satanita and gradually she would forget the last sad moments of being here.
Today she would go with Raf to the sun tower, to book in there as a guest until they had a licence and could drive off quietly to be made man and wife.
So would it be, and she stood there, folded into his arms as the sun rose over the treetops. As the day brightened and the dark shadows retreated, Dina drew a deep breath and felt Raf's arms tighten around her.
'Time will mend the memories,' he murmured. 'I will see to it, my darling, believe me.'
'I do—utterly.' She turned to him, knowing his need of her to be as strong as her need for him. It would, after all, be a fine romance, with many, many kisses.
'Oh—Raf!' Her breath was lost in the warmth of his loving mouth. All doubts were gone as the sun broke into a golden blaze.
The Sun Tower Page 16