Kara held her breath, and then Rue dashed across to Clare and hugged her around the waist.
Clare bit her lip, and then looked at Kara. A silent, eloquent look.
Kara could have gone to. the party as well, but she wanted Rue to be alone with Clare and Nils. She hoped fervently that Clare would have the heart and the courage to tell the child that they were mother and daughter.
The date of the silver wedding dawned—a hot, still Friday that grew strangely silent when after lunch the servants trooped off in their bright dresses and smart suits, and Clare’s small car turned out of the driveway, with Rue wriggling round in her seat to wave at Kara.
When the car was out of sight, Kara went back into the house. Through the silence that hung over the hall she heard the rustling of the miles of cane, grown tall and vividly green. Lucan was out there somewhere. He had been gone since early that morning, and he would return about four o’clock.
Her gaze dwelt on the door of Pryde’s study. She took a step or two in that direction, and then she stood hesitant and her gaze was drawn upward to the ceiling, to the blank space where a chandelier had once glittered. Her heart gave a curious lurch, for the new white plaster was cracked right across, a dark wavering line that extended to the centre of the ceiling.
Her nerves tightened as the clock chimed three times, and then a cloud rolled across the sun and the hall darkened. Kara looked around her and saw her slim, nervous figure reflected in the panelled mirrors, one of which gave back her reflection in an oddly distorted way. She approached the mirror and saw that like the ceiling it was cracked all the way across.
Kara went cold. A cracked mirror was a bad omen, and even as she stared at her distorted reflection she heard a horse gallop into the stableyard at the rear of the house. Something prompted her to run to the door of Pryde’s study. She pulled the door open. ‘Pryde?’ There was no answer, the room was empty of all but its rare ornaments, the lovely paintings and glossy crystal.
She gazed around her, and then crossed hastily to the window and glanced out. There was the stableyard, and a man dismounting from the back of a golden stallion with a lack of resilience that made her hand clench on the curtain. He walked in a halting way across the flagstones and entered the house through a side door. For seconds Kara couldn’t move—she knew herself alone in the house with a man who was determined and dangerous, and quite without mercy.
She was halfway to the door when it was blocked by a figure in knee-boots and breeches, a white shirt and tilted field hat. And in that moment there was not a stirring of a leaf or a stalk of cane. That cloud over the sun had not moved, yet the heat was tangible, weighing down all sound, pressing on the heart and the nerves.
The man and the girl stared at each other, then he swept off his hat and gave her a mocking bow.
‘Pryde,’ she whispered, and her pallor intensified the darkness of her eyes.
‘Yes, my dear.’ He took a heavy step into the room. ‘Pryde the fallen, who walks again, and rides. Perhaps not with the grace of my devastatingly attractive brother, but then I never had his grace of body, his ability to charm, or his way with the workers.’
Kara could feel herself shaking—she clutched at the edge of the desk and it was as though the very earth shook beneath her. ‘How long have you been able to walk—to ride?’ Her voice shook as well.
‘About a year ago I had a small accident,’ he tossed the field hat to his desk. ‘My wheelchair overturned and instead of finding myself a helpless object on the floor, I discovered to my joy that I could move my legs. Nils, such a very good masseur, has unknowingly been helping to restore the strength and flexibility to the lower half of my body. I am no longer helpless. I am again the complete master of Dragon Bay.’
‘Why did you never say?’ Kara’s fear was giving way to fury. ‘Why did you go on tormenting Lucan, playing the martyr, demanding his very soul for your loss of activity—no longer a loss but a recovery he would have rejoiced in?’
‘For years Lucan has had the use of his body while I have been helpless in a wheelchair.’ The grey eyes gleamed coldly, the handsome but sombre face was suddenly the face of a devil. ‘I wanted him to suffer in all ways for that. I even hoped that at my prompting he would marry that pretty fool in Paris. She would have demanded his attention when he was needed about the plantations; she would have refused to spoil her model’s figure by giving him the child that I demanded.’
Pryde gave a laugh, and poured himself a brandy from the decanter on his desk. ‘Lucan looks so self-sufficient, eh?’ He took a sip of the brandy and his eyes were fixed upon Kara. ‘As though love—and I don’t refer in this instance to physical love — were not a necessity he craves with all his secret, sentimental heart. He was always sentimental, and ashamed of showing it. Our mother preferred me because I had her ways, Lucan our father’s. There was none of that Irish romanticism in her. She revelled in being mistress of Dragon Bay, loved the power it gives to have a Great House and plantations filled with busy workers. Lucan looks upon it as a social obligation to provide as much work and as much comfort as possible for the people we employ.’ Pryde laughed again, scornfully.
‘Like the Irish brothers who founded Dragon Bay he would never make a slave of anyone—but I made a slave of him.’
Kara shuddered, and the ground beneath her feet seemed to shudder with her. ‘It was you I saw the other night on that horse out there,’ she said. ‘It was you who rode me down in the cane.’
‘What a pity you have discovered my secret,’ he mocked. ‘I meant you to think Lucan the culprit. I thought to change your heart, my dear. You are an unusual person, with a capacity for appreciating beauty, a woman of compassionate passion. I saw no reason why Lucan should have you.’ He put down the wine glass and took a step towards Kara. ‘I have a fancy for you myself.’
Her eyes grew wide with horror—if she tried to dart past him he would grab at her with those arms, made powerful by years of propelling a wheelchair. She glanced round wildly for a way to elude him, and then remembered that Lucan would be returning to the house at four o’clock. She must keep Pryde talking! She must keep on asking questions that he could not resist answering.
‘You challenged Lucan to that climb up the cliffside,’ she said. ‘Did you hope that he would fall ?’
‘My dear, the Savidge dragon guards his own, don’t you know that?’ A gleam of admiration came into Pryde’s eyes as he studied her. ‘You are terribly afraid of me, yet you won’t scream or attempt to run. You stand there defying me as the Sabine women must have defied their invaders.’
She looked at him, at the high nose and the cruel grey eyes, and she knew that at all costs she must not get anywhere near his arms.
‘Da told your mother that Lucan was to blame for your fall—does she know that you can walk again ?’
‘Of course.’ A smile flickered on his lips. ‘Da has always been devoted to me. She does whatever I tell her, and when I knew I could ride again, her son bought me another Satan. The original Satan was sold off the island for stud purposes—and because everyone thought I would never ride again. Or love a woman again.’
Again he took a step nearer to Kara, and she almost screamed aloud as beyond the windows something growled — thunder in the oppressive air — a flicker of lightning.
‘I have seen more beautiful women than you, Kara, but none that had your strange, dark-eyed attraction. Your eyes are Byzantine — like that priceless vase over there.’
Kara followed the direction of his gesture to the Persian blue vase, glowing and lovely and irreplaceable. It stood on a stand to the left of Kara, and quick as lightning she darted to it, seized hold of the vase and dashed it to pieces in the fireplace. Pryde stared unbelievingly, then with an enraged cry he lumbered to the fireplace where the pieces of precious china were scattered. Kara then took her chance and fled past him, out of the door, into the hall, fear lending wings to her heels as she raced across to the front door.
‘Da,’ he bellowed behind her. ‘Where are you you old witch? Don’t let her get away!’
Kara fumbled with the front door and dragged it open, half aware that a dark figure was hastening down the great staircase. But Da was elderly, Kara was young and desperate. She ran down the wide steps of the veranda and across to the gateway that led into the cane fields. Lucan would come this way. Lucan. Lucan. Her heart pounded his name, and her lips made a silent prayer of it.
‘Lucan!’ She cried out his name and ran through the cane to the horseman who was galloping towards her. The cane stood tall, petrified by the heat. The cicadas shrilled, and then as if in a dream Kara was being lifted bodily on to the horse and strong arms were holding her shaking body close to a hard, warm chest.
Her hands clenched his shoulders, her whole being trembled with reaction, and the sudden overwhelming joy of being close to him, safe with him. And then she heard him say : ‘My God, that’s Pryde by the gateway!’
She turned her face from his shoulder to look, and then as Lucan cantered his horse towards the gateway, Pryde started back towards the house. There was a flicker of lightning and Lucan’s horse gave an uneasy nicker and stood his ground just inside the gateway. The thunder growled, and they saw a tall figure outlined clearly against the veranda pillars, silent and unmoving, looking over towards them.
‘Pryde!’ Lucan cried, and the rest was drowned as the house trembled—like a reflection in a pool shattered by a stone—and the walls caved in, the tall chimneys fell, and the entire cliffside gave way and carried the Great House with it.
With a roar like a great wounded beast the house was gone—the sea had taken it—nothing was left but a gaping maw into which the rain suddenly pelted.
‘Dragon that loved this world and held us to it,
‘You are broken, you are broken.’
Lucan turned his horse from the sight and they galloped until they came in sight of the overseer’s house. Lucan dismounted and then reached for Kara and carried her in his arms into the porch. They stood there, arms tight around each other, clinging like shocked children to the warmth and aliveness of each other.
‘I have to go back there,’ Lucan said at last. ‘Stay here, Kara—you’ll be safe here.’
‘Lucan—’ She wanted to hold him, but knew she had to let him go and do what had to be done. He rode away again, to muster help and to search the wreckage on the beach for signs of life.
Hours later Lucan returned to her, tired, soaking wet, with that in his eyes that told her Pryde was gone, out of their lives for ever. Pryde had called her compassionate, and that was what she felt as she sat watching Lucan at the overseer’s table, showered and wearing some of Josh’s clothes, making an effort to eat the meal Josh had prepared for him.
Over the years the unrelenting bitterness in Pryde had turned to hatred for Lucan, and in the end to madness.
She lowered her gaze from Lucan’s tired face as tears swam in her eyes. The strength of her doubt of him had been as strong as her love for him—she had stayed in the house that afternoon believing it was Lucan who sought to hurt her, and she would have died at his hands rather than live without him. She had known for days that she could not live without him. Separation, wide seas, days and nights without him would not have killed the love she felt for him.
Later they sat out on the porch in the starlit stillness. The rain had ceased, the sky had cleared, and somewhere among the trees a bird dropped its notes like pieces of silver.
Clare and the child, along with Nils, were staying at Lila’s house. ‘The sea took most of the Great House,’ Lucan added. ‘I hope Pryde didn’t suffer.’
Kara sought her husband’s hand and held it tightly, and after a while he asked her to tell him about that nightmare hour in Pryde’s study. She hesitated, and he said that he had to know everything. She told him everything, and ended with her face buried deep against his chest.
‘Did you really doubt my love, Kara?’ His hand stroked her hair and there was a note of sadness in his voice.
‘How could I know you loved me,’ she whispered, ‘when everything you said, everything you did seemed to be for Pryde’s sake?’
‘Could you not tell that I loved you that night at the beach house?’ His lips were hard and warm against her temple. ‘It was too deep for words what I felt. You were always so elusive, and I had waited too long to make you mine.’
‘I thought even that was for Pryde’s sake.’ A tremor shook her voice. ‘He was so unrelenting, Lucan, all those years. And he plotted to make me hate you—’
‘I couldn’t bear you to do that, Kara.’
‘Lucan,’ her fingers traced the strong bones of his face, felt the lines of secret pain beside his lips, ‘why did you never say that you loved me?’
You don’t speak out loud about love at Dragon Bay,’ he said.
You can now, Lucan.’ She pressed her lips very gently against the whip scar on his cheek. ‘Try it, my dearest. Tell me that you care.’
‘I’ll do better than that.’ There was a note of tender ferocity in his voice. He swept her close to his heart and the pain they had shared was eased by his kiss, and by the promise of happiness that could come now to Dragon Bay.
She clung to him, her lips warm with love. ‘We will stay here and build again, Lucan,’ she said in answer to his unspoken question. ‘Too many people need you—and I need you most of all.’
[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 18