[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay

by Violet Winspear

  She prepared for bed, and after slipping beneath the covers read again the letter she had found awaiting her on the hall table that afternoon.

  It was from her brother. Paul asked her to forgive him for his attitude towards her marriage. He was old-fashioned, and had not realized that Kara was a woman grown, with a mind and a heart of her own. He had hoped that she would find love with a young man of Greece, but he was happy if Lucan Savidge made her happy—

  Kara fought back her tears by pummelling the pillows that felt as hard tonight as the stones upon which Jacob had laid his head.

  The letter held loving messages from Domini, and from the small, curly-haired boy who wanted to know when Tante Kara was coming home. Oh, how delightful it would have been to see Rue and Dominic together!

  She bit her lip painfully hard, for Paul wrote that she must bring her husband to Andelos as soon as possible, and they would celebrate her marriage in true Greek style. There would be lamb stuffed with herbs and roasted over an open fire, curd and honey tarts as big as wheels—the wine and the music would flow.

  At the close of his letter, Paul asked again if she was truly happy. Was Lucan Savidge good to her? She had a large heart, Paul wrote simply, and only a big man would fill it.

  Her heart lifted on a sigh. One hint to Paul that she was unhappy and afraid, and he would catch a plane to the Isle de Luc and take her away from Dragon Bay to the safety and security of his home on the island of Andelos.

  She refolded his letter with a thoughtful expression, and was about to turn out the night-lamp when her gaze was caught by a movement of the door handle. It turned to the right, then to the left, then a voice spoke against the panels. ‘I know you are awake, Kara, I can see the light beneath the door. May I come in and talk to you?’

  Kara hesitated, feeling that she had borne all she could for one evening of the Savidge temperament. Then with a sigh she slid out of bed and shrugged into her robe. She turned the key in the lock and opened the door, and Clare stood looking at her with inquiring eyes. ‘I—I know it’s late,’ she said in some agitation, ‘but I had to talk to some­one or go out of my mind.’

  ‘Please come in.’ Kara noticed with concern that Clare, her make-up removed and clad in a long silk dressing-robe, was unusually pale with shadows haunting her eyes. She sank down in a basket chair and as Kara closed the door she saw a tremor shake Clare from head to foot.

  ‘I will switch on the electric fire.’ Kara was glad herself of the glow of the bar and the warmth. She sat on the foot of the divan and studied Clare, who huddled forward, her long-fingered hands stretched to the fire.

  ‘I was going crazy all alone in my room, listening to the sea. That damnable pounding, it gets into your head. "No peace for you. No peace for the wicked," it seems to keep drumming. Do you hear it, Kara? Does it worry you?’

  Kara stared at Clare and felt the pounding of her heart, and the distant pounding of the waves. ‘Why do you stay here, Clare ? Anyone can see you are not happy, and you said the other day that your work was not going well.’

  ‘Why do any of us stay?’ Clare asked moodily. ‘Why do you stay, Kara? You lock your bedroom door, against Lucan I presume ?’

  Kara caught her breath, lost for an excuse to offer his sister.

  ‘So soon?’ Clare said cynically. ‘Has the gilt worn off the wedding vows ? I have thought for days that you have looked unhappy, my dear, and I had such hopes that Lucan would settle down and be a good husband to you. You are like a deep-running brook, Kara, quiet on the surface but with undercurrents. Lucan needs those — he needs passion.’

  Kara put her hands up against her cheeks and remem­bered his urgent arms and his kisses. If only love was all that Lucan needed, wanted—but he wanted what it was beyond her to give.

  ‘One tries,’ she whispered. ‘I tried—hoped to make him care, but other things stand between us.’

  ‘Caprice being one of them?’ Clare said.

  Kara nodded, her feet curled beneath her, her eyes big and dark in her pointed face. ‘He told me of his trip to Paris, and his intention of proposing marriage to her. For some reason he left without asking her to be his wife— and then at Fort Fernand he met me and—’

  ‘You fell in love with him.’ Clare spoke the words over which Kara hesitated.

  ‘What is love?’ Kara asked in bewilderment. ‘I ran away from the Greek island where everyone knew I loved a young man named Nikos. I thought it love, and found it was something less. Nikos and I were dear companions, with no danger or excitement to learn from each other. I know that now, but at the time I was so blind to it. So very young.’

  ‘Yes, young,’ Clare echoed, the firelight gleaming on her tawny hair, gathered back from her temples, and her long neck. A lovely neck, showing through the opening of her silk robe the Venus crease which is said to denote a woman of strong passions. Yet Clare vowed she was cool, even heartless.

  Their glances met and held, and Kara saw not coolness but anguish in Clare’s grey eyes.

  ‘What is wrong?’ Kara asked. ‘Do you care about hurt­ing Nils ?’

  ‘Perhaps.’ Clare rose to her feet and the silk robe sculp­tured the long, lovely lines of her figure. Her gaze dwelt on the door that separated this room from the one in which Rue was sleeping. ‘Is she fast asleep?’ Clare asked.

  Kara nodded.

  ‘May I—take a little peep at her?’ Clare looked strange, and curiously eager. ‘I am not sentimental about sleeping children, Kara, but I—I have a sudden longing to look at Rue while she sleeps.’

  ‘Be very quiet,’ Kara said, carefully opening the door of the big bedroom. Clare stepped in ahead of her and walked with care to the bedside. She stood looking down at the child, and then suddenly her hand was against her mouth and Kara heard a strangled sob as Clare hastened past her, into the other room again, where she sank down on her knees and buried her face in the cushion of the basket chair. She was weeping as Kara closed the door of Rue’s room and leaned her shoulders against the panels.

  ‘She’s mine,’ Clare sobbed. ‘My child—my Rue.’

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  THE heart-stricken sounds of Clare’s weeping filled the room, and Kara hastened to her side and did what she could to ease this breaking down of the dam in Clare. This melting of the ice.

  ‘It’s true,’ Clare gasped, seated at last in the chair, beaten, exhausted after her storm of tears. Her hair had loosened from its nape knot and hung to her shoulders. ‘I couldn’t go on any longer without telling someone. For years I have hated the very thought of Rue being mine. I—I have never admitted being her mother even to Lucan, but he knows. He has given her the love I should have given. He has taken the blame for her birth.’

  Clare reached out and her hands clung to Kara’s. ‘I had to tell you because you must often have thought he was irresponsible, a heartless rake who made love to girls and did not care about the consequences.’

  ‘Rue is eight years old,’ Kara said in a shocked voice. ‘For all that time you have let people believe a lie about your brother.’

  ‘Yes.’ Clare looked crushed, and the shadows beneath her wet eyes looked like bruises. ‘Rue always looked so much like him, right from her birth. She had those green eyes, that russet hair, the smile that wrenched at you with its devilment. It was that devilment in Lucan, that streak of damn-you-all, think me Cain or the devil himself, that made the deception a sure one. I knew that Lucan would never betray me.’

  Clare’s eyes filled with tears that hung in her eyes. ‘As the years went by I don’t think he wanted people to think anything else but that Rue was his. lie loves her, and she adores him. Sometimes I think this makes Pryde a little envious, but children are like little animals; they don’t understand infirmity of the body.’

  ‘Has Pryde never suspected the real truth ?’ Kara asked.

  ‘Pryde believes what everyone else believes, that Lucan is Rue’s father. He knows, as everyone else knows, that right from a boy Lucan had something
about him that girls were irresistibly drawn to, like pins to a magnet. There were girls, of course, whose hearts he played around with, but I don’t think he ever broke one.’

  Kara tautened when Clare said that, for what of her heart, her feelings—her body which he had hurt in the cane, and possessed at the beach house with a totality that had left no room for a moment’s tenderness?

  ‘You look at me with such big and inquiring eyes,’ Clare said with a sad smile. ‘Your face is all expression, Kara. In the strangest way you are one of the loveliest people I have ever seen. Your eyes are so alive. They reflect a candour I truly envy. They are full of heart.’

  Their glances held and Kara knew that at last she was looking at the real Clare, a woman with a tempestuous heart which she had concealed for years behind a mask of self-sufficiency.

  ‘Yes,’ Clare murmured, as if reading her thoughts, ‘we all wear masks one way or another. When we have been hurt we need a mask to hide our scars, to conceal the secret passion we are ashamed of.’

  ‘There can be no shame if the heart is involved,’ Kara said. ‘Did you not love the man—Rue’s father?’

  An expression of sheer pain tore at Clare’s features. Her hands gripped Kara’s until her nails stabbed. ‘I shall never love another man as I loved Rue’s father. He was handsome, utterly fascinating,’ she said in a tortured voice. ‘He was an expressionist painter whom I met in Paris when I went there to study art and sculpture. We would go to a café, argue and eat paprika chicken. I knew he was a man to beware of, and yet I could not stay away from him. One evening he said that he had a friend who had a hunting lodge in a forest just outside Paris. He asked me to spend a week there with him.’

  Clare paused in her recital and drew a deep sigh. ‘I was eighteen and utterly at the mercy of his fascination. I was deeply in love and saw no wrong in giving in to that love. He was an artist, making his way as I was making mine, and I did not expect him to marry me.

  ‘We went to the hunting lodge, a hidden away place of secret luxury, where the deer and the chamois were our only companions. We explored the woods. We talked and loved away the hours—and then one day a woman came to the lodge on horseback. She was about forty, with a face that might have been lovely before cynicism and high living had got at it. I was alone for an hour at the lodge, for Leon had gone off to swim in a nearby stream. I never cared for the water, and so I was alone when this woman appeared.

  ‘ "I own this place," she said to me. "The chateau whose turrets you see above the treetops belongs to me. Everything in this forest belongs to me — including the man who has been your lover for the past week. Léon is my husband."

  ‘She swung the horse around and galloped away to­wards those distant turrets, and the day went grey for me. I stood there, Kara, shocked and horrified. I had never thought of Léon as a married man. I suppose in my foolish, romantic heart I hoped to make him love me so much that he would never let me go. When he returned from his swim I told him that I had met his wife. He smiled and shrugged his shoulders, took out a cigarette and lit it very casually. Yes, he was married. The lodge belonged to his wife, who was rich. He said he would never divorce her, and she would never divorce him. They understood each other. She wanted a young and handsome husband. He wanted a wealthy wife who permitted him the licence of his whims. To be an artist until the novelty wore off. To be the lover of young and pretty girls — until their attraction palled.

  ‘I was appalled, Kara. I ran sobbing wildly through the woods, my pride utterly humiliated, knowing that I had given myself to a man to whom adulation was meat and drink. A man who cared nothing about me as a per­son, to whom I had been but a whim, another conquest, a passing pleasure.

  ‘I returned to Paris, where I shared a flat with Caprice. She was an artist’s model who had become a fashion model, and whenever Lucan was in Paris on business he took Caprice out to dine and dance. I knew Nils even then, and I might have forgotten Léon in time — if that stolen week with him had not left me with a memento I could not run away from.

  ‘I pretended I was going to Haiti to study Haitian sculpture. Instead I went to Trinidad and I lived there very quietly until Rue was born. No one knew I was a Savidge, for I lodged with a young Creole woman who ran my errands and I went out only in the evenings. She was a nice creature, poor but clever with her needle, and I gave her enough money to open a dressmaking shop—in return she had to take passage on a banana boat to the Isle de Luc, and then travel by road to Dragon Bay. When she reached the Bay she was to leave the child on the doorstep of the Great House—’

  A shudder ran through Kara. How, she wondered, could Clare have done such a thing?

  ‘It wasn’t a total abandonment,’ Clare said defensively. ‘I knew Pryde would take her in. I knew he would take one look at Rue and know her for a Savidge—’

  ‘And blame Lucan for her birth,’ Kara broke in.

  ‘Yes,’ Clara admitted. ‘No one could blame Pryde, and everyone could see that she had Lucan’s green eyes and dark red hair. Everyone also knew that I was in Haiti. I flew there as soon as Marthe boarded that banana boat with Rue in her arms. Marthe could be trusted, and she has never broken my trust in her. She did all I asked of her, even to leaving a little note with the name Rue on it. When I returned at last to Dragon Bay, Rue was five years old. I was afraid to see her in case I saw Léon in her, but in all respects she is a Savidge—with, perhaps, the deer and the chamois in her from that week of heaven that ended in such disillusion that for years I have not been able to bear a man to touch me. It is only lately—’

  There she broke off and sat looking in a lost way at Kara. ‘How can I ever trust a man again?’

  ‘How long,’ Kara asked, ‘have you known Nils Ericsson?’

  ‘Why, since before Rue was born.’

  ‘Then if it is Nils you are talking about, Clare, I would hardly say that he wants you for one week only.’

  ‘I—I have put men out of my emotional life,’ Clare said rather desperately. ‘I devote myself to my work.’

  ‘To cold stone that can give you nothing but an ascetic satisfaction. Life for most people is unendurable without love, and you are not a born solitary, Clare. A person de­void of human needs.’

  ‘Love involves you so, makes you so dependent on another human being. You know I am right, Kara. A woman’s happiness is made or marred by the man she loves—if she is a real woman and not just a creature who can go from man to man and make a merry-go-round of life.’

  ‘An ancient Greek once said that the price of every joy is a certain quota of pain.’ Kara forced a smile to her lips. ‘It is never easy to be a woman, Clare, but unless we let ourselves be women, foolish sometimes and romantic, hurt by so many things that could never hurt a man, then we are not really living. We merely go through the motions of living.’

  ‘A woman alone is a deserted temple, full of the echoes of her dreams,’ Clare said quietly. ‘Nils is kind, but I feel none of the recklessness, the wild joy that I felt in Leon’s company.’

  ‘You were a young girl,’ Kara pointed out. ‘For a kind love, Clare, many women would give their souls.’

  ‘You, Kara?’ Clare stared at her. ‘Of course, I have been so wrapped up in my own misery that I have not spared a thought for you. My dear, Lucan’s love could never be gentle. You must have known that from the first moment you met him.’

  ‘Of course.’ Kara lowered her eyes. ‘I cannot expect Lucan to change—but, Clare, did it never occur to any of you that being thought a devil might have turned him into one?’

  ‘He is a Savidge,’ Clare said. ‘We are a wild and self-willed clan, but our misdeeds have never been calculated. Kara, you can’t expect him to be a saint. If you wanted that—’

  ‘No, not a saint, but a man I could trust,’ Kara said, and she seemed to hear again the thud of hooves through the cane, but now the face of the rider was known to her and she knew herself in deadly danger from that rider.

  A tremor ran throug
h her, and Clare said with sudden contrition. ‘You must be tired, and I have kept you talk­ing. Kara, I am so grateful for the way you have looked after Rue. I must seem to you the most unnatural mother on earth, and you are probably thinking that I should tell Rue that I am her mother. But I can’t, Kara! And what we have talked about tonight must remain a secret. You do understand?’

  Kara shook her head. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Rue thinks of Lucan as her father. She loves him as she could never love me — it would not be a kindness but a cruelty to take her away from him. You see,’ Clare rose to her feet and there was a sudden look of longing in her eyes, ‘I want to go away from Dragon Bay. I think I want to go with Nils—to Denmark, perhaps, where we could start a new life together.’

  ‘Rue is your child. How can you think of leaving her behind?’

  ‘I can’t take Leon’s child into my life with Nils.’ Clare walked quickly to the door. ‘Nor can I break her little heart by taking her away from Lucan. Rue trusts him even if you don’t!’

  The door closed behind Clare, and Kara was left alone in the lamp shadows. Trust is another name for love, she thought bleakly. All I am sure of is that tomorrow, or the day after, there will come a moment when I am alone — entirely alone with Lucan — and I shall wonder why I did not run a thousand miles from this house at Dragon Bay.

  There was to be a silver wedding party, and most of the workers on the Great House estate, including those who served in the house, had permission from Pryde to attend the festivities.

  According to the young maid who attended to the Emerald Suite, the party was to be the gayest affair that Dragon Bay folks had known for a long time. There was to be a steel band, tables spread with goodies, and lots of dancing.

  Rue danced with excitement and asked Kara to take her to see the ‘silver bride’.

  Clare was just entering the suite and she smiled as she caught Rue’s remark. ‘It would be fun,’ she said. ‘I know Lila and Bajo, the couple who are celebrating their twenty-five years together, and I am sure they wouldn’t mind if I took Rue along to see the dancing. Would you like to go with me, Rue?’