Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away impatiently. Even if she had wanted to leave the Isle de Luc, her brother’s yacht had left and she was committed to the impulse which had brought her ashore. She must stay tonight, at any rate, and a pine-scented soak would induce the good night’s rest she needed.
Almost an hour later, pink and sleepy, she yawned her way out of the bathroom and made for Number 16. Ah, there it was. She had not locked her door and upon slipping inside she tossed off her bathrobe without bothering to switch on the light. The moon cast enough of a glow for her to feel her way into the nearest of the single beds. Tiredness clung to her senses like cobwebs, and with a little sigh of relief she settled down to sleep, slim and lost beneath the pavilion of tropical netting.
A travelling clock ticked on the table between the two beds, and there wafted in from the balcony of the room the smoke of a cheroot, but Kara did not smell it. And when in a while a tall figure loomed against the moonlight, she wasn’t aware. She slept on—a small figure lost beneath cloudy netting—unseen by the man who tossed off his pyjama jacket and slid beneath the netting of the other twin bed.
CHAPTER TWO
KARA awoke suddenly. Fingers had rapped the door and now it opened arid a voice said: ‘Your morning coffee, m’sieur.’
The figure of a waiter appeared outside her netting, then he was between the beds and Kara drew aside the netting to let him see that she was not a m’sieur. She was about to reach for the cup of coffee, when to her utter consternation the netting of the other bed parted and a muscular male arm reached out for the cup and saucer. A tousled head and a broad pair of shoulders appeared at the same time, and Kara felt a shock to her marrowbone as she met the eyes of the man in the bed.
His eyes were a diamond-hard grey with green fires at their depths. They held her motionless as they flicked . her hair, her mouth, the open collar of her pyjamas, and came back again to make captives of her immense Greek eyes. ‘Another cup of coffee for the young lady,’ he said calmly to the waiter.
‘Of course, m’sieur.’ A knowing smile flitted across the waiter’s face. The door closed behind him, and Kara was alone with the lordly stranger whose dark red hair curled close to his scalp, and who looked as though he had never been embarrassed in his life.
‘How unexpected.’ He spoke in French, though she had the feeling he was not a Frenchman. ‘A guest for breakfast.’
Kara sat gaping at him as though he were speaking Hottentot, and then her voice came back with a rush. ‘This is my room,’ she gasped. ‘What do you think you are doing in it ?’
‘I am sorry to contradict a lady,’ he looked sorry about nothing, and his smile was dangerous, ‘but this happens to be my room. Take a look around you.’
She did so and alarm flooded her. There was a man’s white shirt thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, brushes and belongings on the dressing table that were undoubtedly masculine, and no happy family photograph on the bed-table. A blush of intense confusion ran from Kara’s throat to her temples.
‘I’m so sorry—’ She started to scramble out of the bed she had no right in, and in a voice like the flick of a whip he ordered her to stay where she was. His grey-green eyes were on her feet, poised like startled birds just above the floor.
‘What absurdly small feet,’ he said, and then his eyes were raking her lingering blush. ‘You are not an amoureuse, I take it?’
‘Are you disappointed?’ she flashed. ‘This is a genuine mistake, m’sieur. I—I must have mistaken the number of your door for mine.’
‘My number is nineteen. What is yours?’
‘Sixteen.’ Her eyes were like those of a trapped forest creature as she watched him swing out of bed and stride in bare feet and torso to the door. He swung it open and took a look. Then he laughed. It was deep-throated, devilish, as though he enjoyed a situation that put other people at his mercy.
‘The number o, must have been loose,’ he drawled. ‘It has dropped down and it looks like a G — all the same, young lady, you are not leaving my room just yet.’
‘W-what do you mean?’ She scrambled instinctively behind the bedclothes as the door snapped shut and he stood with his back to it, tall, with wide ranging shoulders and a deep chest. His waist and hips were lean in comparison … there was a rampant maleness about him, a sun- and wind-browned look of a man who spent most of his life in the open air.
‘If you were a gentleman,’ Kara could feel her toes curling beneath the bedcovers, ‘you would let me return to my room this instant—’
‘Don’t you think I look a gentleman?’ His left eyebrow quirked wickedly above mocking green eyes, and as Kara looked at him a pulse beat quickly under the clear honey skin of her throat.
‘You look as though you could be a devil,’ she gasped, ‘but a waiter is on his way with another cup of coffee—and I have a good pair of lungs for screaming.’
‘How Victorian and amusing, coming from a girl who has just spent the night in a stranger’s bedroom,’ he mocked. ‘I don’t think the waiter would be very impressed by your screams—being a Frenchman he would assume that it was a little late for you to be rescued. Que c’est risque, little one, to get involved with Lucan Savidge. The people of the Isle de Luc will tell you that he asks mercy of no one, and gives none in return.’
‘You are Lucan Savidge?’ she exclaimed.
‘At your service.’ He gave her a mock bow, and despite the fact that he was wearing only black silk pyjamas there was about him the assured, plantocratic look of a man who was used to giving orders, who liked spirited horses to ride, and red wine in crystal. Kara scanned the strong, tanned bone structure of his features, and she could well believe that he made his own rules and lived by them.
‘I can see that you have heard of me, though you are a newcomer to the Isle de Luc’ As he spoke, he drew away from the door and shrugged into a dressing-gown and sought his slippers. He seemed to take it for granted that having ordered her to stay where she was, she would do so and not make a dart for the door. The urge to escape was strong in her, but instinct warned her that she dealt with a man as quick and tempered as a jungle cat. He would leap after her and take hold of her with his large brown hands … a thought that made her go small in the bed that was only a yard or so from his bed. He sat down on the side of it and appraised her.
‘I can’t quite place your nationality,’ he said, ‘but you put me in mind of a faun. Is it your ears, or your eyes?’
‘My name is Kara Stephanos,’ she said with dignity. ‘I am taking a holiday in the Caribbean, and my homeland is Greece.’
‘Ah,’ his eyebrows slanted together, darker than the foxfire of his hair, ‘so you are Grecian. Is there not a Greek word for the fateful chance that throws two people together?’
She gazed at him with wide and wondering eyes. ‘The word is moira,’ she said, and was both relieved and confused to hear a tap on the door, followed by a discreet cough and the entrance of the waiter. He carried a laden tray.
‘I took the liberty, m’sieur, of bringing breakfast—for two.’
There was a pot of coffee on the tray, hot croissants, butter and fruit. There were two cups, two plates, and an unconcealed smile in the waiter’s eyes as they flicked from Lucan Savidge to Kara. Her cheeks burned. Nap had said last night that the man with the savage name was a man people whispered about.
‘The sun is on the balcony, so we will eat our breakfast there.’ Lucan Savidge gestured at the bathrobe Kara had tossed off last night, so sleepy from the fun of the fair, and her bath, that she had wandered into a stranger’s bedroom and spent the night there.
Her breath caught in her throat, for as she followed the tall stranger on to his balcony the sun fired his hair and she remembered the sibyl’s warning. She had spoken of an encounter with a man with fire in his hair; she had advised Kara to leave Fort Fernand before morning.
Kara had not heeded her warning; now morning had come and she had encounte
red Lucan Savidge with a vengeance.
He pulled out a wicker chair from the matching table, and Kara slipped into it. The sun was in the crests of the patio palm trees, and little tongues of fire peeped from the hibiscus bells. The sky was a clear, reassuring blue, and Kara felt much safer out here under the sky with this intimidating man.
She poured their coffee and watched him break a croissant and spread it with butter. ‘It is curious that we should be sitting here like this.’ A smile turned to a glint in his eyes. ‘I would be very suspicious if you were not so—but then coquettes have been known to be innocent-looking.’
‘I shall have my cup of coffee and then go,’ she said coldly. ‘No doubt you are a good catch, Monsieur Savidge, but a coquette would have to be innocent if she thought you could be compromised.’
‘You don’t like me at all, do you?’ He smiled and added brown island sugar to his coffee. ‘You are thinking that if I were gallant I would not have allowed the waiter to assume the obvious. My dear girl, I could hardly smuggle you back to your room as though the fellow had not seen you at all—looking all big-eyed and fluffy in the bed next to mine.’
Kara took several quick sips of her coffee. ‘You could have explained that you slammed your door last night and made the number 9 fall down to form a 6, and that I mistook your room for mine.’
‘Why did you stay silent when you could have given the same explanation ?’ he inquired.
‘I—I was lost for words,’ she said helplessly. ‘Try being a girl—though I can see that would be hard — who wakes up in a strange hotel to find she has slept all night beside a stranger.’
His answering laughter relished the situation.
‘I shall leave the Isle de Luc today,’ she said.
He stopped laughing and his fingers paused on the mandarin he was peeling. ‘Running away?’ he taunted.
She flicked crumbs off the table and did not answer.
‘Is that why you are here on the Isle de Luc?’ His glance seemed to touch her skin like the flick of a whip. ‘Are you already in the process of running away from someone?’
‘It’s none of your business, Mr. Savidge.’ She bore his scrutiny as long as she could, then flushed and looked away from him. The sun was firing the sea, but she felt too disturbed to appreciate the view from Lucan Savidge’s balcony. Her love for Nikos, his love for someone else, was something she could not talk about to this man who looked as though he had never loved anyone.
‘Don’t worry, little martyr eyes,’ he mocked, ‘your girlish romance is of no interest to me. But what of your family? Don’t they mind that you are alone in the Caribbean, where men of my stamp are likely to be met with?’
‘Sugar kings, m’sieur? I thought they were part of another century, another time. I had no idea they still ruled in Great Houses amidst their canefields and cocoa groves.’
His mouth pulled to one side in a smile that left his eyes a cool grey-green. ‘The Savidges of Dragon Bay are part of the history of this island,’ he said. ‘Our roots go deep into the soil with the cane and the cocoa. We came from Ireland as rebels, and we stayed to found a dynasty.’
‘On slave owning?’ she said scornfully.
‘The Caribs were our workers and we never made slaves of them.’ Now he was looking arrogant—cool, hard and arrogant, his wicker chair tipped back against the ironwork of the balcony. ‘I asked you a question about your family. Do they let a child like you roam where she pleases ?’
‘In the first place I am not a child, Mr. Savidge. In the second place my parents are dead.’ She wiped the juice of a paw-paw from her lips. ‘Nap, the young boy who works here, told me about your brother—’
‘About him being crippled,’ the deep voice bit out the words, ‘and that I was blamed for his accident?’
‘You were blamed?’ Kara’s dark eyes seemed to devour the fine contours of her face.
‘Yes.’ Lucan Savidge surged to his feet and towered over the table, his hair a brand in the sunlight, his eyes fiercely alight, the hard bones jutting beneath the sun-browned skin of his face.
‘Yes,’ he said again, and he stared past Kara to where the sky met the sea far out. ‘We used to be inseparable, Pryde and I. We rode our horses like a pair of demons, we did everything together, trying I suppose to outdo one another in daring and skill. We thought of ourselves as out of the age of heroes and giants because We were the Savidge twins. We shared a common heritage, a worship of our history and our home.’
He began to pace back and forth, and Kara sat watching him from her seat at the table, her chin propped on her hand.
‘It wasn’t until I was seventeen,’ he said, ‘that I fully realized that Pryde was the heir to all I loved because he was the elder by an hour. Our Negro Da was annoyed with me for the usual reason that I was never as tidy as my brother. "Good t’ing you born last," she said. "Pryde is more fittin’ to be master at Dragon Bay".’
‘It hit me, slashed at me like a whip. Close as I was to Pryde, I was brought to my knees that day by the painful realization that we did not share everything. We were home from our school for the holidays and running wild as usual, and I agreed when Pryde challenged me to a climb up the cliffs that rise sheer from the side of Dragon Bay to the crest on which the Great House stands. We always said that one day we would attempt the climb. It was a challenge, and I felt utterly reckless of the consequences—if one of us fell.’
Kara heard the harsh sigh that left the hard lips of this man she had met so strangely. She couldn’t take her eyes from him … her heart felt as though it were beating in her throat, and quite unaware her hand was holding her throat.
‘God’s heaven, if only a point in time could be erased, never to have been.’ Lucan Savidge leaned his arms on the balcony rail and his brooding profile was turned to Kara, hard-boned, with a small crescent of a scar standing out against the tanned skin. ‘Those with Irish blood in their veins have premonitions of trouble, and I had one as Pryde and I began to climb that cliff. Being twins we shared some of our emotions, and Pryde gave a laugh as he swung himself upwards. "You look chickeny," he said. "Want to cry off—little brother ?" ‘
‘It was always "little brother" when Pryde was feeling cocky about that hour’s difference in our ages, and I was still choked up from what Da had thrown in my face. "I’ll be first in this if it kills one of us," I threw back at him. I climbed as though I had a whip across my shoulders, and we were three-quarters of the way up, and I had a short lead on Pryde, when—when Pryde had his fall!’
Lucan Savidge swung round to face Kara, and only once before in her life had she seen that expression of naked regret on a person’s face. ‘Pryde fell to the rocks and broke his back,’ he said harshly.
‘Oh no!’ Kara masked her eyes with her hand, for something was in them, a blaze of something she had to hide from this man who told her these things because—like passengers on a ship or a plane—they would not meet again when they parted.
You could never have seen a wild young stag crashing into a net in wildest pain.’ The Irish imagery made the scene unbearably vivid for Kara. ‘Your heart can ache for the strong with much more intensity than for the weak.’
‘Yes, I know.’ She spoke huskily, and remembered the pain of seeing her brother Paul lying helpless in a hospital bed, robbed of his strength, and having that strength put back by the love and the will that blazed in Domini.
‘Your brother did not die,’ she said.
‘No.’ Stamped on the lean brown face was an expression of irony and pain. ‘Fate is the great farceur. It can take a whole man and turn him into half a man within the same time that it takes you or me to take a bite out of an apple. Pryde has the use of his upper body; from the waist down he is helpless.’
‘Dante’s "dark wood midway in the journey of our life",’ Kara murmured. ‘Your story is a terrible one, Mr. Savidge.’
‘And I am a terrible person, eh?’
She looked at him gravely,
but could not put into words what she thought. He was pacing the sun-shot balcony, vital and restless as a caged creature—more caged than the brother in his wheelchair, for his was the innocence, this man’s the guilt. It would always be the guilt because he had gone on with the climb; because he had said he would win if it killed one of them.
Jealous as Lucan! He was aptly named.
She jumped to her feet. ‘I — I must go, m’sieur.’ She addressed him that way because she had glimpsed the Gallic in him, wedded to the Gaelic. ‘To say it is a shame about your brother would be inadequate, but don’t—please don’t be too bitter.’
She was making for the stairs that led down to the patio, and then up again to her room, when in a stride he barred her way. ‘You can’t just go,’ he said. ‘We must meet again. Tonight. We’ll dine together—not here at the hotel but somewhere else.’
‘I don’t think it would be wise for us to meet again—’ her dark eyes lifted to his face with its sun-darkened features, a small etching of lines beside the crystal-green eyes, the scar on his cheekbone adding to his diablerie.
‘I think we must.’ His fingers shackled her wrist, and she knew it to be an inescapable grip though his touch was only a promise of steel against her wristbone. ‘Are you afraid of me, Kara—or of yourself?’
‘W-what nonsense!’ The jerk of her heart was in her voice. ‘Please let me go, Mr. Savidge. You have had your fun in keeping me here, and I have listened to you and been sympathetic—’
‘Sympathy?’ he laughed, a flash of scorn in his eyes. ‘Do you think I care two hoots about that? I told you about Pryde’s fall because I wanted you to know exactly the kind of man I am — because I want no secrets between us. We will meet again this evening.’
[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 2