Strange Adventure

by Craven, Sara

  'I don't suppose you did,' Lacey said with a faint sigh: 'But he had other ideas.'

  `That rat fink,' Helen observed sombrely. 'I thought he was on the level till he sent me that note saying there'd been a change of plan. I ran all the way to the village to stop him, but he'd hired Demetrios's boat and left already. I was really scared. I knew the whole thing had got away from me somehow.' She sighed. 'And it all seemed such a cinch when we set it up. In the beginning we meant Evan to get pictures of you and Troy—together, but then when you arrived alone Evan said pictures of you by yourself would be even better.' Her voice quivered. 'Is—is Troy very angry, Lacey?'

  'Yes,' Lacey said quietly, trying not to remember the hurt and bitterness she had seen in his face as well. 'But—but not with you, Helen. You see, he doesn't know you're involved—not yet.'

  'Gee!' Helen digested this for a moment. Her voice brightened. 'Then I'm in the clear.'

  'You could say that—though you may find it awkward explaining why you ran away.'

  No problem. I'll say I wanted to go night-fishing with Yanni.' Helen sounded almost buoyant again, then a note of doubt entered her voice. 'You said he didn't know—yet. Does that mean you're going to tell him?'

  'No. I was hoping you might feel like telling him yourself.'

  'Oh, sure,' Helen said with heavy sarcasm. 'And other dumb things like cutting my own throat too.'

  Lacey moistened her lips with her tongue. 'Is that your final word on the subject?' she asked carefully.

  'I guess so. You don't know Troy when he gets mad,' Helen said, and there was a long silence. 'Lacey—Lacey, are you still there.'

  `Yes, I'm here.' Lacey's voice broke. There were muffled scraping and thudding noises as Helen got up and came towards her, and presently two small cold hands reached up and touched her face.

  'Lacey,' Helen said shakily, 'you're crying. Don't cry. It wasn't your fault Evan took those pictures. Troy won't blame you.'

  Lacey spoke with an effort. 'I'm afraid he does, Helen. You see, for reasons which I won't go into, your brother and I—haven't been getting on too well, and he thinks I've done this—to hurt him. Helen! Where did you learn a word like that?'

  'Sorry.' But Helen didn't sound particularly repentant. `Well, if that's the way it is, you win. Home we go, and I'll face the music.' She brightened slightly. 'Perhaps Troy will be so sick of me, he'll be glad to let me go back to Aunt Dora.'

  'I wouldn't bank on it,' Lacey said gently. 'Anyway, I have another idea. How would you like to go to school in France?'

  'You mean that convent place you went to?' Helen demanded. 'You've got to be kidding. Can you see me in a setup like that?'

  Lacey's lips twitched in spite of herself. 'Not entirely,' she admitted honestly. 'But perhaps Troy would be less angry if you agreed to try it at least. If it doesn't work out, we can think of something else. But I think you'll have to forget California.'

  Helen sighed. 'I guess you're right,' she said without enthusiasm. 'Now let's get going before I change my mind.' She scrambled out of the cave and stood looking round

  as Lacey followed. 'Gee, it's hotter than ever, and so still. There isn't even a breath of wind.'

  'No,' Lacey agreed, repressing a slight shiver. A strange brooding .feeling seemed to hang in the air. The cave seemed suddenly to represent security instead of alien darkness when compared with the sullen, brazen light that now surrounded them.

  'I don't like the look of the weather,' she began. 'Do you suppose there's going to be a storm ...'

  At first, she thought the faint rumble she heard was thunder. Then she felt the ground beneath her feet stir and stretch as if waking from a deep sleep and she knew what was happening even before Helen's scream of warning. A shower of pebbles descended and looking up, Lacey, panic-stricken, saw that part of the massive overhang of rock above the cave had detached itself from the cliff and was beginning to slide towards them in an almost leisurely fashion.

  'Back!' Frantically she seized Helen's shoulders and pushed her towards the cave opening. She heard Helen cry out in pain and felt the rock tear at her clothes and skin as they forced themselves back into the darkness and fell together panting on the stony floor. Almost in the same second the slab of rock came down behind them with a grinding roar that shook the cave like another earth tremor, cutting off the light and sealing them into the darkness.

  Silence slowly returned, and she could hear her own tortured breathing as she fought for calmness. Helen said shakily, 'Are we still alive?'

  'I think so.' Lacey eased herself off the floor, wincing. The fall seemed to have jarred every bone in her body. She remembered that Helen had cried out. 'Are you hurt anywhere?'

  'My wrist,' Helen said in a small voice. 'I hit it on a rock. I—I think it's busted.'

  Lacey smothered a groan. 'Oh, Helen, are you sure?' 'Pretty 'sure. I'm frightened to move it. It hurts like hell.' Lacey looked round helplessly. She had thought the cave

  was dark before, but it was nothing to this stultifying black-

  ness which had suddenly descended. She had no idea how to deal with an injury of this kind, or even to check if Helen was right.

  `Well, keep it as still as you can,' she said, trying to sound reassuring. 'Someone will come soon and get us out of here.'

  'Oh yeah?' Helen's tone was despondent. 'Who knows we're here? If Troy's that mad, he might just think we've both run away, and not bother to look for us.'

  Lacey sat down rather limply and leaned her back against the side of the cave. This aspect had simply not occurred to her, but she was soon able to dismiss it. The far more disturbing probability was that by the time any rescue party found the cave it might be too late.

  Already it seemed that the air in the cave was staler than it had been, or was it just this awful claustrophobic feeling of being shut in that made her think so?

  She cleared her throat. 'Where's that food you took, Helen?'

  Helen gave a little gasp. It's with my clothes. I left them on a ledge under the landing stage at the boathouse. Why? Do you think we're going to need it? Lacey, I didn't mean that just now. Someone will come for us, won't they?'

  There was a hysterical note in her voice and Lacey guessed that pain and shock were taking their toll of her mentally as well as physically. She reached out in the darkness until she encountered Helen's ankle and let her fingers close comfortingly round it. 'Of course they will. They'll soon know we aren't at the village and then they'll start searching along the shore. We'll have to listen really hard and if we hear anything, shout our heads off.'

  'O.K.,' Helen said dubiously. 'Lacey, am I imagining things, or is it getting awful stuffy in here?'

  'It is a bit,' Lacey had to admit. 'But I think there is still some fresh air getting in.'

  `Aunt Dora was stuck in a elevator once,' Helen said. 'Between the eleventh and twelfth floors. They were three hours getting them out. Aunt Dora said a woman in the elevator had a fit—foamed at the mouth and everything. Do you ever have fits, Lacey?'

  `No,' Lacey said wearily. 'But if I did, this would probably be the day.'

  `Me too.' Helen sighed. 'I think this is probably the worst day of my whole life. Before, it was the day Aunt Dora told me Troy had been appointed my legal guardian. He came to see me and told me where I was going to live and everything, and I really hated him. Then a while later he told me he was getting married and that you weren't a lot older than I was, and I hated you too. I figured anyone Troy was stuck on would have to be a pain.'

  Lacey felt a pang. 'What made you think Troy was "stuck on" me?' she asked, trying to sound casual.

  `Well, he was going to marry you, wasn't he?' Helen said reasonably. 'Besides, he used to talk about you all the time, and play records of piano music. He made me sick.' She sighed. 'Lacey, are you thirsty?'

  `A bit,' Lacey admitted.

  `Well, I am—very. And I'm hungry too. There was a bottle of fruit juice I took along with that food,' Helen said wistfully.

/>   Lacey groaned. 'Try not to think about it.'

  `What else is there to think about?'

  Lacey bit her lip. 'Perhaps if you put your head on my lap, you could try to sleep for a while.'

  `But if someone comes while we're asleep they'll think there's no one here and go again.' Helen sounded perilously near to hysteria again as she made her way slowly and painfully to Lacey's side, and Lacey gave her a comforting hug.

  `I won't sleep. I'll sit here and listen for both of us.'

  'O.K.' Helen settled herself. Her voice sounded muffled. `Then I'll stay awake for you.'

  Long after the younger girl's breathing had steadied to the quiet rhythm of slumber, Lacey sat stiff and cramped against the rock wall. Helen murmured restlessly and stirred at times, and Lacey guessed that this was caused by the pain from her wrist. She had lost count of time. In the darkness, seconds could seem like hours and her wristwatch with its luminous dial was in her bedroom at the villa.

  She was finding it increasingly difficult to breathe. In

  spite of her confident words to Helen, it did seem as if they were using up the available oxygen faster than-it was able to penetrate the blocked entrance. Her mouth was agonisingly dry too, and she had to close her mind to thoughts of tall jugs of cool liquid, clinking with ice cubes.

  She leaned her head back against the unyielding rock and closed her eyes. It couldn't do any harm—just for a while. She was feeling so drowsy, and the most disturbing pictures kept forcing themselves through the darkness, like a kaleidoscope of flickering images inside her weary eyelids.

  She dreamed that she was dead and lying in the darkness while lumps of earth thudded down on the coffin. She tried to scream to them to stop, that she was still alive, but her throat was too parched and no words came out.

  There was a baby in her arms, a boy with Troy's dark eyes who cried and cried and would not stop no matter how much she rocked him in her arms and tried to soothe him, and then it seemed that she herself was the baby, and it was her turn to be carried in someone's arms, high against their heart. It was safe in these arms. Some time—long ago—she had longed to be safe. Longed for high walls around her. Now all she wanted was to break down these walls that surrounded her, smothering her. She tried to cry out, to lash out and destroy them with her fists, but she did not have the strength and her limbs would not obey her, and somewhere the great golden ball of the sun was swinging in a wide, giddying arc that hurt her eyes and sent the helpless tears pouring down her face and over her dry, grateful lips.

  It was not the sun that was shining in her eyes, she realised as she opened them wincingly. It was the pendant lamp in her bedroom at the villa. Wonderingly, she stared around, realising that she was lying on her own bed covered by a sheet. Her head throbbed and, glancing down, she could see there was an efficient-looking gauze dressing on her arm. Her eye caught a movement just outside the line of vision, and she moved her head rather gingerly on the pillow, bringing it into focus.

  Troy was sitting in a chair at the side of the bed, his eyes fixed on her reflectively.

  `Hello,' he said unsmilingly.

  `Hello,' she returned, and somehow the beating of her heart was more painful than all her cuts and bruises put together. Memory began to return. The tremor, the flight into the cave, and then the stifling darkness. She tried to sit up. 'Where's Helen?'

  `The doctor is fixing her broken wrist. She's just lucky it wasn't her neck,' he added savagely.

  `Oh.' Lacey subsided back against the pillows. `She—she told you, then?'

  `Yes, she told me. If she'd told me days ago, none of this need have happened.'

  She made a pathetic attempt at a smile. `The earthquake would still have happened.'

  'I didn't mean that,' he returned abruptly, and silence descended between them.

  `How did you find us?' she said at last.

  `You'd left your sandals on the beach. Then I remembered the cave. I used to play there when I was a boy. We saw there'd been a rock fall and we couldn't shift it ourselves. We sent to the village and men came with ropes and dragged it away enough for us to get in. It took—a long time.' He shut his eyes for a moment as if he was trying to block out a disturbing memory. `We didn't know what had happened—if you were there, even. But it seemed the only answer. I just didn't know whether we were going to be in time—whether you'd been able to breathe.' He paused. `Helen was asleep—a bit delirious but asleep, but you were unconscious.'

  He looked at her, and there was agony in his eyes. 'Pethi mou, I thought you were dead.'

  `I thought so too for a while,' she told him candidly. `Then I dreamed I was a child again, and someone was carrying me.'

  `I was carrying' you,' he said quietly, and there was another long silence. Then he said abruptly, 'Are you seriously suggesting that Helen should go away to this school of yours?'

  `Yes,' she looked at him, tenderly noting the weariness in his face, the lines of strain around his eyes and mouth. 'The nuns are good women. They'll know how to handle her.'

  `They'll need to be saints to do that,' he said, and smiled faintly for the first time. `Do they have special classes for adolescent blackmailers. You know the details of the scheme she had hatched up with Kent?'

  `Yes—but I do believe she tried to protect me from him at the end. He told me she'd grown to like me.' Her eyes sought his. 'Troy, what will happen about those pictures?'

  `Ah,' he said meditatively. 'I'm afraid our photographer friend had a little ill fortune. He had chartered one of the fishing boats to take him to Corfu and he had an accident while he was transferring his equipment from the harbour wall to the deck.'

  Lacey's lips quivered involuntarily. `Did—did he lose anything of value?'

  `I'm afraid he must have done. According to Stephanos, who saw the whole thing, it took two of the men to hold him from jumping in as well.'

  Lacey sighed. `So they're all at the bottom of the harbour?'

  'Judging by his reaction, they are—all except for the set he gave me, and they are locked in my safe.'

  She flushed a little. 'I thought you would have torn them up—burned them, even.'

  `Why destroy a work of art? Besides, they will serve as a reminder.'

  `Of what?' She looked at him shyly.

  'Of the fact that I am as apt to jump to the wrong conclusions as other mortals,' he returned. `Did you think I kept them to remind me how beautiful you are, Lacey mou? I need no photographs for that. I carry your image in my heart.'

  There was another silence while she sought unavailingly for an adequate rejoinder, but there did not seem to be one and she said instead, 'What will happen to Evan now?'

  `I haven't the least idea. Once the other prints and negatives were at the bottom of the harbour, he ceased to hold

  much interest for me. I imagine he has done what he intended and sailed for Corfu.' He paused and a note of irony entered his voice. 'Perhaps he and your stepmother will drown their sorrows together. They should have a great deal in common.'

  Lacey stole a glance at her husband, but his expression was unreadable.

  He said quietly, 'When Eleni goes away to school, Lacey, shall you go with her?'

  'Is that what you want?' she asked. Her throat felt suddenly constricted.

  `What I want is no longer important. It is only your happiness that matters, and you have not been very happy up to now, I think. There have been—so many misunderstandings, so much bitterness. Our marriage has not had a good start.'

  `But it's survived an earthquake,' she said, almost dreamily.

  'Perhaps that's an omen,' he answered drily. `So what are your plans?'

  She hesitated for a moment. 'As I tried to say to you earlier, I think the trouble was that we were strangers when we got married.'

  `You were never a stranger to me, my sweet one,' he said. 'I wanted you from the moment you stood in my room glaring at me over the top of those absurd flowers. I've wanted a lot of beautiful girls in my time, but I neve
r wanted to take one of them in my arms and protect her for the rest of my life as I did you. That was when I knew I loved you—and I also knew I had to get you out of that house and away from that corrupt woman for ever. She was sick, Lacey mou, and your father was a dying man, as he and I both knew. You needed my protection.'

  `Why didn't you tell me you loved me, Troy?' Lacey reached her hand to him and he caught it in his own and raised it to his lips, caressing her palm.

  `Because I didn't think you would have believed me then,' he said wryly. 'But I was arrogant enough to think that I could make you fall in love with me, once I became your husband and your lover.'

  'I think I did,' she said slowly. 'But I was fighting my feelings for you all the time. I thought it was—wrong somehow to want someone I hardly knew as desperately as I did you. That we ought to have time to get to know each other.'

  `And now?' His dark eyes were fixed on her face with an expression in them that sent a sweet sensuous languor sweeping through her body.

  `Now we have the rest of our lives,' she told him shyly.

  `Hmm.' He got out of his chair and stood looking down at her, his hands on his hips. `Do you feel well enough to travel?'

  `Travel where?' She stared up at him.

  `To Corfu in the helicopter tonight, away from any further tremors, and later on to Nassau to pick up the Artemis. I think we deserve our real honeymoon.'

  `Yes.' Lacey lay back against the pillows and watched him under the veil of her lashes. 'But couldn't we start tomorrow instead?'

  `Why?-' he raised his brows interrogatively.

  `Because I want to spend the night here with you, and I don't want to have to waste any of it in travelling,' she told him simply.

  `The beginning of the rest of our lives?' The smile in his eyes reflected her own. He began to unbutton his shirt. `So be it, my darling.'