She looked at him and wondered what it was he wanted of her, a stranger without the prettiness that might attract a casual affair. A girl on the run from all those who knew how she had worshipped a tall boy with black hair and a gay, lopsided smile.
She gazed with inquiring eyes at this man whose memories were more ruthless than her own. She knew about the myths that could surround a strong and picturesque personality; how they could grow from threads into cords that strangled the real truth. What was the real truth? Was this man so savage … or did he guard a heart as broken as his brother’s body ?
‘Next week I go home to Dragon Bay,’ he said. ‘Why not stay until then, Kara, and let me show you around Fort Fernand?’
In the breeze along the shore, a lovelock danced on her forehead. Her throat tightened, for something in his voice had got to her and shaken her resolve to leave the Isle de Luc.
‘Perhaps,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose I shall find anything more or less on any other island. The sun will shine as bright, the palms will bow to the same wind-gods, and the sea will be as good to bathe in.’
‘Did you know,’ said Lucan Savidge, as they turned in unison to walk back towards the town, ‘that all islands are supposed to be flung up by wrathful sea-gods?’
She smiled and listened to the sea-talk within the conch-shell he had given her. Angry, a roar in it, like the waters of Dragon Bay. She was still carrying the shell when they paused outside her room at the Hotel Victoire. ‘The number 9 has been nailed back into position on your door,’ she said.
‘So I noticed.’ His smile made creases at either side of his mouth, there was a winged devilry to his brows, a wickedly amused gleam in his eyes.
Kara unlocked her door and withdrew inside. ‘Thank you for taking me to the Painted Lantern,’ she spoke rather breathlessly. ‘It was an unusual experience.’
‘Because of the food, the fortune, or the company?’ He leant forward and flicked his eyes over her face. ‘Well, Kara?’
Her fingers tightened on the handle of her door and she wanted to ask him why he wanted her company. Was he just amusing himself with an unsophisticated girl, or did he need her friendship? If only she could be sure, but Lucan Savidge had a face that was not easy to read. A lean, hard face, with a whip scar on the right cheekbone, and eyes that changed in different lights from green to the colour of stone.
‘You think too much, do you know that?’ He laughed, and it seemed to her that he laughed carelessly, as though it didn’t really matter to him whether she stayed tomorrow or left.
‘You are a man who sets one thinking,’ she rejoined. ‘I have the feeling that you treat everyone as a game—what game, Mr. Savidge, are you playing with me?’
‘The game of guide and tourist, Miss Stephanos,’ he replied. ‘Don’t you fancy to stay, after all? Are you afraid of me—of getting involved with a man instead of a boy?’
‘Oh—’ Colour came into her cheeks. ‘You really are a devil!’
‘I am merely honest. Far more so than young men who make promises and then break them. If you stay on the Isle de Luc, I can’t promise to make you glad you stayed. It is up to you, Kara. Take a chance, but be warned that you can’t turn the tide, or change the leopard’s markings.’
A silence fell between them, and then he let his hand touch her shoulder and drift to her wrist, where he fingered the little unicorn on her wrist-chain. He examined the unicorn.
‘Creature of myth,’ he murmured. ‘Like yourself, Kara, with your face that one might see peering through leaves in a woodland.’
She felt his touch, and the acute sensitivity of her own skin. She drew her wrist away from his fingers, and it was an effort, as though she fought a magnetism in them.
‘The hotel is quiet—everyone must be asleep,’ she said. ‘I bid you kale nichta, Mr. Savidge.’
‘Good night, Miss Stephanos.’ As he drew away, the wall light struck across the whip scar on his cheekbone, and then he gave her a faintly mocking bow that revealed the Gallic blood in him … from the mother who had marked him as Cain.
CHAPTER THREE
KARA had been on the Isle de Luc almost a week, and on Friday morning she slipped out of the hotel alone and made her way to the waterfront market, where she hoped the bustle would divert her thoughts for a while.
She wandered about, a seemingly carefree young figure in a sea-island shirt and trews, amused by the market mammies in big straw hats perched raffishly on bright bandanas, presiding over piles of island fruits and vegetables. There was a tang of spices and coffee beans, sea-wet quay stones, and salt fish.
Men of the sea, with high-boned faces and voices rich as dark honey, were unloading boat loads of conch in the shell, crawling lobsters, and red snapper. Huge primitive masks were on sale beside leaning towers of straw hats, and fetishes. Kara stroked the shiny carapace of a turtle, and listened to the excited talk aroused by the carnival that was taking place the following day, when out would come the masks, the drums, and the satyrs who collected money for various charities.
There would be turtle feasts around driftwood fires down on the beach. The people of Fort Fernand would go on the spree for a day and a night, and couples would fall in and out of love.
‘You like funny-face nut?’ A big brown hand thrust a coconut at Kara, who asked laughingly that it be cut open. The young Negro swung a cutlass that lopped off the top of the nut and with a dazzling grin he handed Kara the cup of milk. She tipped the cup and drank. The milk was icy, with a tang of the sea in it.
‘Merci.’ She smiled at so sweet a bribe, and obligingly took a look at the carnival favours the young man was selling. She bought a string of beads made from coloured seeds, and couldn’t resist a frilled mask of polka-dot silk.
‘This one ver’ fierce. You like?’
‘No,’ Kara said, and then took another look. It was of dark crimson and would fit a man to the mouth. Kara took hold of it and pictured the mask half covering the face of Lucan Savidge, his lips beneath it curling into the smile that was so devilish at times.
‘You buy?’
‘Yes.’ She smiled, and then caught her bottom lip between her teeth. How would Lucan react to the mask, would he wear it for the carnival, or scorn it ? There was no telling. After almost a week she was still unsure with him, like a small girl who bears constantly in mind the warning that it is dangerous to try and touch the leopard through the bars of his cage.
She wandered on, the beads around her neck and the masks in her shoulder-strap bag. People bellowed and bargained and laughed richly, and over all hung the smells of firestick coffee, brown sugar, ginger cookies, and tropical fruits bursting with a lush ripeness.
The turbulence of the old days still lingered in Fort Fernand. The overhanging galeries of the side-street houses seemed haunted by the Creole beauties of long ago, clad in flame skirts and frilled blouses, big hooped earrings glittering beneath horned turbans. The town was time-weathered, its scars concealed by masses of bougainvillea. And there was the old slave-square, where jungle warriors were handled long ago like cattle, and lithe brown girls were sold to the merchants and the plantocrats.
Kara tried to imagine what it must have been like to be a slave, the possession of a man who cared nothing about your feelings. If you rebelled, you were whipped. If you ran away, you were hunted by big black dogs let loose in the cane fields and the forests. Awful, unimaginable, and Kara hurried from her thoughts down a sloping, cobbled street that led to the shore, where shrimping boats lay on their sides, draped with fishing nets.
The scene was almost Greek, and Kara thought of the long letter she had written yesterday to Paul and Domini, describing all she had so far seen of the Isle de Luc — but she had not mentioned Lucan Savidge.
She had a feeling that Paul—with his business contacts in most parts of the world—would make inquiries about the Savidges of Dragon Bay, and that what he learned would not be to his liking.
Kara sat down on the side of
one of the shrimping boats, and her fingers played nervously with her string of coloured beads. She adored her brother Paul, and never before had she kept anything from him—but her friendship with Lucan Savidge was something she didn’t want to write about, or think about. In a few days she and Lucan would say good-bye. He would return to Dragon Bay, and she would continue with her tour of the Caribbean. This strange interlude on the Isle de Luc would be over, and Lucan would be but a memory. …
‘Oh—!’ The exclamation broke from Kara as her necklace suddenly broke and the beads scattered and rolled to the sands. She knelt and began to pick up the beads, as distressed as if she had broken a string of pearls. The beads were a memento of her visit to the Isle de Luc, their value lay in their future ability to bring back vividly to her senses all the colour and vitality of the waterfront market this morning, and the Creole houses.
She was absorbed in her rescue work when someone leapt the sea-wall and came loping down the sands to where she was on her knees. A large pair of sandalled feet planted themselves in front of her, and she glanced up startled at the tall figure in a matelot shirt and slacks, his hair sun-fired above amused green eyes.
‘ ‘Tis a big girl ye are for shell hunting,’ he said in a mock Irish brogue.
‘I—I broke a string of beads.’ Her earlobes tingled and gave warning of a blush, and she jumped quickly to her feet and thrust the handful of beads into her jacket pocket. ‘How did you know where I was?’ she asked diffidently.
‘A market mammy saw you crossing the old slave-square, and I guessed you would make for the shore. Why did you slip out alone ?’
‘Because I wanted to be alone.’ The words slipped out before she could stop them, and she and Lucan stared at one another, the sea behind them awash with gold from the sun. The palms bowed gently, and small bright birds fluttered in the green crests.
‘There are two kinds of women so honest, Kara, the artless, and the heartless. I know which you are—here, catch!’ he tossed something and she caught it with the dexterity of a girl who had been a tomboy. It was a mammy apple, whose fruit had the mixed tartness and sweetness of an apricot.
‘Do you know what the islanders say about this fruit ?’ His teeth were white against his tanned skin as he took a bite of his own mammy apple. ‘They say it is the forbidden fruit that Eve gave to Adam to tempt him.’
‘Are you reversing the procedure and trying to tempt me?’ Kara’s voice was lighter than her spirit, which felt curiously weighed down. Come carnival time, come Sunday, and Lucan would take a raft out of her life. That was why she had come out alone this morning, to ‘ see how it felt to be alone after almost a week of swimming with Lucan, of touring Fort Fernand by his side, and dining at colourful places in the evening and being held in his arms when they danced.
The attraction she felt could not be love. She told herself with panic in her heart that she loved Nikos. She had loved him all her life, and it was hurt pride that made another man seem so terribly attractive….
‘Would you like me to tempt you ?’
‘Yes, to breakfast.’ She darted away from him, up the sloping shore to the sea-wall. She scrambled over and with the wall between them laughed at him, the sun catching the tiny rings in her earlobes. ‘Let us go and eat at that little place like a kafenion.’
‘Are you homesick for Greece?’ With a lithe bound Lucan was beside her and they began to walk up the cobbled street to the town.
‘I miss my second love, my Dominic’ She felt the flick of green eyes. ‘He will be three in June.’
‘And this is May,’ drawled Lucan. ‘The cane is young and green at Dragon Bay, and the cocoa valley is rich with spicy scents and cool with shadows.’
‘You sound homesick yourself,’ said Kara, and when she glanced at him she saw the look he had, a flare to his nostrils as though he took a deep, imaginary breath of the scents in the cocoa valley.
‘I suppose I am,’ he admitted. ‘The need to get away is never as strong as the urge to get home again. I’ve been to France—to visit a friend.’
His voice seemed to linger on that final word, and Kara wondered if he meant a woman. She thought it more than likely, for this was a man who was alive from his fiery crest of hair to the soles of his feet, with the look of ancient Ireland when chariots thundered over the ruts of the wild roads, and harps played in the smoky halls of Tara, where the warrior princes and chieftains gathered.
‘Here we are.’ She felt his hand rest lightly on her waist as they paused outside the little harbour restaurant that looked so much like a Greek coffee-shop, with its sun-faded tables and chairs set out under an arbour of vines.
They chose a table near a mass of pink pandoras, and ordered langouste caught in the surf that morning, brown bread, lashings of butter, and big cups of island coffee.
‘I am hungry.’ Kara clasped her hands on the table top and blinked her dark lashes as a shaft of sunlight cut between her and Lucan like a blade. He leant to one side, plucked a pandora blossom and handed it to her with a sideways smile that mocked the gesture even as he made it.
‘Pandora,’ she murmured, stroking the petals, ‘why did you give your husband your wedding casket, so he could let out all the tears and troubles it contained, and then shut the lid on hope?’
‘You are an odd child.’ Lucan was gazing across at her, a half amused glint in his eyes—green this morning as the Greek sky at evening time.
‘I daresay I am different from the chic sophisticates you must be used to,’ she said lightly. ‘I hope I don’t bore you?’
‘If you did that, you wouldn’t be sitting here with me,’ he said flatly. ‘I don’t roam around with you, telling you all the old Creole stories of this island because I’m kind, Kara. Because you’re a stranger nursing a bit of heartache. What do I care about your heartache—not that!’ He snapped his fingers. ‘You happen to intrigue me. You’re a little Greek riddle I can’t quite fathom—there, does that satisfy your curiosity about why I bother with you?’
‘I never thought you kind,’ she said quietly, ‘so why I bother with you is a mystery to me.’
‘Touché,’ he laughed. ‘It’s that bit of spirit, and those eyes like peaty pools on an Irish moor that I like, Kara. The blush, too, and the fingernails curling and wanting to dagger my cheek.’
She whipped her hand off the table and the pandora blossom fell to the ground. She let it lie there. She didn’t want his flower, nor his careless Irish compliments. She wished the week-end was over. Wished she had the courage to walk away now and deny herself these last few days of his tormenting company.
‘Our langouste,’ he drawled, and as the waiter unloaded his tray on to their table, Kara saw Lucan finger the whip-scar on his cheek and smile cynically. Her heart beat like the hidden wings of the cicadas. To her dismay she wanted to pull his hand away from the mark and shield it with a kiss!
The carnival spirit was infectious, and Kara asked Nap to take her to a shop where she could hire a fancy dress. She wanted to surprise Lucan — to stun him, if possible—and was delighted to be able to hire a real Creole costume complete with a madras, a winged turban of bright silk, and hoops for her ears.
She wanted the costume for the bal masque that was being held in the gardens of the most imposing old house in Fort Fernand. Lucan Savidge knew the people who were giving the party, and he had casually invited Kara to go with him. ‘It’s a costume ball and you can hire something to wear—if you fancy to go.’
‘Why not?’ she said, feeling a pulse leap of excitement. ‘It will be something to remember, a bal masque at carnival time on the Isle de Luc. Will you wear a fancy costume, Lucan ?’
‘What shall I wear, the guise of a corsair?’ Through the smoke of his Gauloise his eyes had gleamed with diablerie.
‘Let us surprise one another,’ she said eagerly.
By ten o’clock the following morning, Fort Fernand was in the first throes of carnival. The narrow streets were thronged with peop
le, some already in costume, others dressed in starched white suits and dazzling cotton dresses. The sun shone down on ebony and coffee faces. The pigtails of the little girls stood out from their eager faces, while small boys dashed hither and thither with balloons blown up into flying geese, clowns and animal shapes.
The rich clamour of voices rose to the front balconies of the Hotel Victoire, crammed with a sudden influx of guests from the interior of the island. Wealthy planters and their families, who chattered in Creole as they awaited the decorated floats, the carnival queen’s chariot, and the motley of islanders clad in costumes depicting their colourful history.
Kara was only half aware of the inquisitive glances cast in her direction by the nearby girls who were going to the bal masque that evening. They giggled and talked together in voices too low to be clearly heard, and then Lucan pushed his way to Kara’s side and the girlish chatter died away into a sudden hush.
The gay spectacle below held Kara’s attention, and then she felt Lucan’s hand crushing hers on the balcony rail. ‘My poor hand,’ she glanced up at him with a laughing gasp. ‘You are mangling it!’
‘Forgive me.’ His face was curiously hard, though his fingers lost their tension. ‘Do you understand Creole?’ he asked quietly.
‘Only if I listen carefully. Why?’ She noticed that his eyes were diamond-grey, which meant that he was angry about something. ‘Look at the crowds, Lucan. I had no idea there were so many people on this small island.’
‘Enough, and sometimes too many.’ He cast an ironical glance around the crowded balcony. ‘Shall we go down to the street to watch the Grand Parade ?’
‘If you would like to.’ She spoke eagerly, and was aware as she followed Lucan of a rather chilly silence. She realized with a pang that these people had been whispering about her and Lucan!
He was smiling ruefully when they reached the street. ‘I’ve made a scarlet woman of you, Kara,’ he said. ‘Do you mind?’
[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 4