‘No—’ she tried to wrench away from him, and in an instant, with the strength of the uncaring, he caught her to him and she felt as though her bones would give way.
‘This evening,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t run away, Kara, because if you do, you will always wonder what I might have asked of you.’
‘Why should I wonder, or care?’ Her voice shook with angry fear, and close to him she was aware of a strength and resolution she had never felt in Nikos. ‘Do you think I owe you something because of last night?’
‘Perhaps we owe last night to forces we shouldn’t oppose.’ A smile pulled his mouth to one side. ‘Are you worried about the wagging tongues of Fort Fernand? Running away won’t set them at rest.’
‘It won’t set them at rest if I stay,’ she rejoined.
‘Do you care what other people say about you?’ He tilted back her head with his hand, and his gaze travelled from her eyes to her lips. ‘People have been saying things about me for years. Do you know how I got the scar on my cheek ? My own mother lashed me when I ran to the Great House to give the alarm about Pryde. She was in the hall, still in her riding clothes, and she lashed me across the face and said that the Savidge Dragon always took care of his own.’
He laughed, deeply, carelessly, then he let go of Kara and made for the door that led into his room. ‘Go on, little girl, run away,’ he threw over his shoulder.
She ran down the patio steps and up the other side, and she didn’t look back. Safe in her room, with her clothes scattered about, and that reassuring family group on the bed-table, she breathed with shaky relief. She would leave the Isle de Luc today, before she got involved any further with Lucan Savidge.
She was throwing her belongings into the suitcase she had unpacked yesterday, when there was a tap on her door. ‘Entrez!’ she called out.
Nap came into the room, carrying a sealed envelope with her name scrawled across the front of it. ‘You want guide for the day, mam’zelle?’ He handed her the envelope and gazed hopefully at her.
‘No,’ her fingers clenched the envelope. ‘No, I don’t think so, Nap.’
‘Okay. I around if you change yo’ mind.’
Directly the door closed behind Nap, Kara tore open the envelope and withdrew the folded note inside. The writing on it was dark and decisive. ‘Let me at least give you a farewell dinner,’ Lucan Savidge had written. ‘To say good-bye, as the French say, is to die a little.’
There ran through Kara a swift urge to tear the note in shreds, to save herself from another meeting with the unsettling stranger whose face was etched with disturbing clarity in her mind’s eye. Her fingers crushed his note. Why should she care if a stranger went to the devil because of something that had happened when she was still a schoolgirl, running wild with Nikki on the island of Andelos ? She had a hurt of her own to get over. …
She sank down on the side of the nearest bed and stared at the floor. It flooded over her in cold little waves that Nikos was far away, and now the husband of a girl called Cicely. Nikki, with his long, lively face that was so good-looking when he laughed.
She tried to bring his face into focus, but the brown eyes went diamond-hard and green; the boyish features hardened and grew bolder, beneath a crest of foxfire hair.
Lucan Savidge … a man whom people spoke about in whispers, who carried on his cheekbone the mark of his mother’s whip.
There is only a little dusk in the tropics. The sun shatters in a web of colours, and then night falls and the stars come out, a retinue for the moon this second night of Kara’s visit to the Isle de Luc.
The small open carriage drew up at the entrance of the Painted Lantern, and white teeth flashed against an ebony face as the driver accepted his fare from Kara’s escort. Then the whip lightly cracked and the horse-drawn carriage moved off.
‘The last time I drove in one of those was in Athens.’ Kara bit her lip, for Nikos had been with her instead of a tall, wide-shouldered man in cream drill worn with a brown silk shirt and tie. She felt his fingers under her elbow as they entered the restaurant, and was very aware of how erect and lithe he was.
‘I promised you an unusual evening,’ he said, and her eyes widened as she gazed around the softly lit room, with teakwood tables in alcoves, bird-painted screens, and pergolas entwined in frangipani. Coming towards them was a Mandarin figure in a long silk gown, long-nailed hands clasped together, his smile oblique as he bowed them to a secluded table.
‘It is a great pleasure to see you again in my humble restaurant, Mr. Savidge,’ he said.
‘It is my pleasure, Mr. Yen, to be a visitor again in your house of soft lights and excellent food. I hope you have duck meat with lotus seeds on your menu tonight?’
‘Always we have what your heart most desires.’ The Mandarin figure bowed again, and his eyes were dark as lacquer as he smiled and clapped his hands for a waiter. Hands that might have been painted by a brushstroke artist.
Kara let out her breath very slowly as the silk-robed Mr. Yen was lost behind a beaded curtain. ‘Did I dream him?’ she murmured, a small, shy smile in her eyes. Am I dreaming? she wondered. Did I really agree to dine with a man who looks fierce even by oriental lantern light?
As if reading her thoughts, he gazed deliberately across at her and took in her simple dress tied at the waist with cherry ribbons—a little-girl dress, which she had donned deliberately.
‘Have you ever had Chinese food ?’ he asked.
She shook her head.
‘Then it will be a new experience for you.’ And something in his voice, his eyes, seemed to add that experiences shared with him would all be new to her. Her heart beat as rapidly as a cicada wing, and she glanced away from the lean, audacious face with its mark of Cain.
‘A menu, sir, and one for madame.’ A Chinese waiter was at the table, and Kara opened her menu and gazed in perplexity at the Chinese script.
‘Will you put yourself in my hands?’ asked Lucan Savidge, and again she was aware of some deeper shade of meaning in his deep voice.
‘Yes, you choose my dinner for me.’ Her smile pulled at the nerves of her lips. ‘Only don’t order anything too exotic’
‘Are you scared to take a chance?’ he mocked. ‘A girl from the land of pagan gods and nymphs.’
‘That was long ago, Mr. Savidge. Now our gods are domesticated and our nymphs very cautious,’ she said demurely.
‘How disappointing.’ There were green devils in his eyes as he looked across at her, then he turned to the waiter and Kara listened as he ordered—she was sure — the most exotic edibles on the menu.
‘Do you want to try bamboo k’uai tzu?’ he asked solemnly.
‘Whatever does that taste like?’ As she looked at him, wrinkling a dubious nose, he laughed. She glanced at the waiter and saw a smile in his oblique eyes.
‘K’uai tzu are chopsticks, madame.’ A slight inclination of his head made her look in the direction of a nearby table, where a couple were eating with dexterous movements of their chopsticks.
‘Bring two pairs with the chow fan,’ ordered Lucan Savidge. ‘And rice wine right away, to settle madame’s nerves for the ordeal in store for her.’
‘What a terrible person you are!’ Kara said, when the waiter had left them alone. ‘I think you enjoy making a fool of women.’
‘You look like a small girl,’ he said carelessly. ‘How did the knight of your girlish dreams treat you, as a rose, waiting in your bower of thorns to be plucked? Is that why you ran away from him, because he hesitated a little too long?’
‘I don’t intend to share with you what is private to me,’ she said tensely, and her nostrils flared with anger and the fragrance of the witch-white frangipani.
‘We can’t pretend to be strangers, Kara.’ He smiled devilishly. ‘Last night we shared the same room, remember. What would your Greek sweetheart have to say to that?’
‘Very little, Mr. Savidge.’ Her lips were tense around the words. ‘Nikos happens to be ma
rried to someone else, if you must know. He met her in America, and she possesses all that I could never hope to compete with golden hair, a perfect figure, and a lovely face.’
‘So if you had golden hair you would now be wearing a golden ring?’ Lucan Savidge looked quizzical. ‘How long have you known this boy?’
‘All my life.’
‘And you think your heart is broken, eh ?’
‘I think you are the most cynical man I have ever met,’ she flashed. ‘I don’t think you have a heart to break.’
He quirked an eyebrow, and then said lazily: ‘Here comes the waiter with our wine. It is called Shau-shing, and is said to warm the coldest heart—not mine, of course.’ His teeth flashed white against his tanned face. ‘I tick over on a different system from other people.’
The warm amber wine was poured into little porcelain wine cups, and Kara was shown how to raise the cup lightly in her hands and to drink every drop with a backward tilt of her head. The oriental wine caressed her throat and then ran like a gentle fire through her veins. A pleasant sensation that soothed away her tenseness.
Their chow-fan was a delectable mixture of spiced egg and rice, and Kara found that if she picked up small pieces with her chopsticks and held the bowl near her chin, some of the chow-fan found its way into her mouth.
‘You had better use a spoon,’ said her companion drily.
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘I am just beginning to get the knack. Mmmm, this is tasty.’
Afterwards they had duck with lotus seeds, tiny mushrooms, and other vegetables she could not name, and then a dessert into which pieces of ginger had been inserted. It wasn’t until their hands had been refreshed by hot towels, and Chinese tea brought to the table, that Kara realized how the meal had relaxed her. She breathed the jasmine in her bowl of tea, and listened as Lucan Savidge talked of his home at Dragon Bay.
It stood on a crest above the plantations of sugar and cocoa, and a drive bordered by Royal Palms led to a columned portico and a great front door of teakwood, enduring as the stone of which the house was built. It was three-winged, with covered flagstone walks joining the wings to the grand patio.
‘It might be a Babylonian palace from your description of it,’ Kara smiled.
‘It stands out against the blue sky like a feudal stronghold—it even has a ghost.’ His smile was a sideways pull of his bold, hard lips. ‘A lady dressed in gold, who steps out of a painted window above the stairs. She died tragically in a fire at the old sugar mill, where she was said to meet her lover.’
‘How fascinating.’ Kara’s gaze fell away from his and she sipped at her jasmine tea, aware of the quickening of her pulses, of the magnetism this man could exert when he was in the mood. ‘You must love your home very much,’ she murmured.
‘Can a man without a heart love anything?’
She glanced up, into eyes that were as cool and still as sea-water that holds unimaginable depths and danger. ‘It’s a mistake to think that we know anyone,’ she said, ‘and a presumption to pass judgment on an acquaintance of only a few hours. You must forgive my Greek impetuosity, Mr. Savidge.’
‘Are you often impetuous?’ He signalled their waiter as he spoke, and she assumed that he was about to settle the bill and announce that their farewell dinner was over.
‘I sometimes do things that I don’t stop to think about,’ she admitted. ‘It is in the Stephanos blood—my father married my mother after knowing her only ten days. She was English, but I am mostly Greek.’
Lucan Savidge ran his green eyes over Kara’s long dark hair, pale gold skin, and tiny rings in the lobes of her ears. ‘When the waiter brings our liqueur,’ he said, ‘he will also bring the fortune cards. The Chinese are great believers in omens and portents—are the Greeks ?’
‘But of course.’ She gave a slightly nervous laugh, for at the fair last night a dark sibyl had forecast a strange meeting that had come about. A meeting with a man whose hair in the lantern light held glints of fire; whose rebel ancestors had clawed what they had out of the very earth and set their nest high, like eagles.
Their Chinese waiter brought the fortune cards to the table, and there was a rattle of a bead curtain as Mr. Yen reappeared, solemn as a Mandarin. He poured their liqueur from a lovely old stone bottle and handed one cup to Kara and the other to her companion. They drank in unison, and then they each took a card from the pack and placed it on the table for Mr. Yen to interpret.
It was an intriguing game and nothing more, Kara told herself, but all the same her heart beat fast and her eyes dwelt wonderingly on the oriental figure in the wide-sleeved gown. ‘I see a feast of lanterns in the house of the dragon,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me, young lady, do you expect soon to attend a wedding?’
‘A — wedding?’ Her fingers clenched around her wine cup. ‘It has already taken place, Mr. Yen. I could not attend because it took place a long way from where I live.’
Mr. Yen tapped her fortune card with a long index nail, and then he nodded. ‘Yes, some of the lanterns are dark, so someone has wept.’ With a swift movement he turned Kara’s card face down and gave his attention to that of Lucan Savidge, who sat regarding the procedure with a sardonic expression in his eyes.
‘Am I to be wedded, or wept over?’ he murmured, with his sideways pull of a smile. ‘Both would be unique procedures.’
‘I fear that you have chosen the gambler’s card, Mr. Savidge. You must choose another—’
‘No.’ Lucan Savidge shook his head and gave a laugh that held a note of savagery. ‘Fate’s a tiger, Mr. Yen, and something tells me tonight not to look it in the teeth.’
‘As you wish.’ Mr. Yen bowed and swept the cards all together. ‘I hope the humble service and food of the Painted Lantern did not disappoint either of you?’
‘The meal was out of this world, Mr. Yen, and the service beyond reproach.’
‘It was delicious,’ said Kara with a shy smile. ‘I shall take away a fascinating memory when I leave the Isle de Luc’
A few minutes later she and Lucan Savidge left behind them the soft lights of the Painted Lantern, and the scent of frangipani, a flower out of pagan temples.
They walked along the waterfront, where the rigging of a sloop was ablaze with fairy lights and noisy with song and laughter. A party was in progress and Kara could see couples dancing together on the deck, some cheek to cheek, others apart in the modern manner, swinging their hips to the Caribbean rhythm.
‘Well,’ said Lucan Savidge, ‘what do you think of the Caribbean ?’
‘It is colourful, interesting—and unexpected.’ The music died away behind them, and he gave her a hand down some shadowy steps to the beach. The sands crunched beneath their shoes, and the moonlight hung in the crests of the palm trees, slender and always slightly bowed before the wind gods.
‘But all the same you intend to leave.’ He bent and picked up a conch-shell and she heard his fingers scraping at the sand on it. ‘Will our unexpected encounter be among the memories you spoke of taking away with you ?’
‘Yes,’ she said honestly. ‘How could I forget this morning, or this evening at the Painted Lantern? Or a man with unhappy memories ?’
‘The deeper the scar, the harder grows the skin,’ he mocked. He handed her the empty conch-shell and told her to hold it to her ear. ‘What do you hear?’ he asked.
‘The sea in huge breakers, pounding,’ she said after a moment.
‘Like the sea beyond Dragon Bay,’ he murmured.
‘Why do you stay at the Hotel Victoire when your home is at Dragon Bay?’ she asked curiously.
‘I have been on a trip, and I go home next week by Carib raft.’ He slanted her a smile, his face lean and rakish in the moonlight, his eyes a haunting green. ‘Sounds primitive to you, perhaps, but the journey to our bay is always made in the old way. It is part of the Savidge tradition; a need in the blood to cling to the colourful and to repudiate the machine age.’
‘I can understan
d,’ she said. ‘Back home in Greece I love all the old ways. The goat-boy piping in the hills. The olive harvest and the engagements that always seem to follow. Swimming at night in the purple-dark water and grabbing handfuls of reflected stars.’
‘The Caribbean at night is like champagne to swim in.’ He stood tall beside Kara, gazing out across the water, and her glance was free to roam the moon-etched line of his profile. Boldly defined, with a rebel’s mouth that never smiled without irony. His hair a helmet of bronze, his strong throat merging into a deep chest against which long ago he would have carried a bull-hide shield. …
Odd thoughts, which caused her to be suddenly aware of their isolation on this beach. They had wandered a long way from the lights of the town, and there are few things more intimate than a honey moon above water, and a girl alone with a man who slightly unnerves her.
‘We should start walking back,’ she suggested. ‘It’s late, and I intend to leave early tomorrow—’
‘Don’t leave.’ He swung to face her, and he wasn’t smiling or coaxing, or looking anything but rather harsh. ‘Don’t run away from the Isle de Luc because of other people and what they may think.’
‘It isn’t that,’ she protested.
‘Is it me?’ He came a step closer, and Kara had to fight not to retreat from his tall, arrogant figure. ‘Or is it that you’ve cocooned yourself from more hurt, and I look the sort who hurts?’
‘Nikos did not mean to hurt me,’ she defended him quickly. ‘It was just that his heart wanted someone else—hearts are like that, they open a little way to some, and all the way to others.’
‘And with your heart left empty, you are now roaming through the Caribbean enjoying a little martyrdom?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Empty rooms invite cobwebs and echoes, Kara, and you strike me as too vibrant and alive to want an unfulfilled emptiness inside you.’
She shivered, and saw the loneliness of the sea, still and sobbing a little under the distant caress of the moon. Nikki, cried her heart, why did you take me half-way into your heart and then reject me?
‘Wherever you go,’ said Lucan Savidge, ‘the memories will follow. I know.’
[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 3