`Oh, lord,' said Diana wearily now, drooping on the side of her bath.
They had ridden the thunderbolt, all right. Together. When the explosion came she had been clinging to him,
sobbing, holding him with fierce love. Oh, Miles had had every right to say it was mutual.
It was total defeat. There was nothing she wouldn't have done, nothing she wouldn't have agreed to, with his head dropped against her breast. She had felt utterly peaceful.
Utterly—she said it to herself now deliberately—in love.
She put her fingers to her tender mouth. It was her own fault, of course. All those brave statements of independence, all that insistence that he couldn't hurt her any more—it was all a disguise to cover the fact that she had never, not for a moment, stopped loving him Not when he was angry, not when he was cold, not on the evenings he went to Susie without a word of excuse or explanation, not even when he looked at her with that indifference that hurt worse than anything else.
She looked at him and she was hungry for his love. It was hopeless.
Wearily she got into the bath and closed off the taps. She lay back, trying to unknot her tense muscles. There must be something she could do. She had got over him before, she told herself desperately. Her brain went round and round. If she didn't see him again; if there was nothing left connecting them, not even the allowance; if she never saw his friends or went to places where he had been ... But there was no avoiding the truth. She was in love with the man and would be till the day she died.
`I've just got to take damned good care he doesn't find out,' she told herself out loud. 'If he doesn't know already, that is. Which, knowing Miles, he probably does.'
It was not a comforting thought. It drove her to dress carefully in one of her prettiest silvery green dresses and
make up her face with care. It wasn't much of a suit of armour but it was something. And it had its effect.
A little silence fell when she joined the others on the lamp-lit battlements. Chris and Dimitri rose, staring at her. Miles was already on his feet in the shadows, his expression indecipherable.
Susie was an empress in scarlet and gold at the far end of the table. She greeted Diana warily, but her words were cheerful enough.
`Well, you don't look like a girl Miles dragged over sand and ocean half the day.'
Miles made a small movement, quickly stilled. He began to pour Diana a drink.
`You look very lovely,' he said slowly.
Susie said with an odd harshness, 'Did he make you swim till you dropped?'
Diana said carefully, 'I'm not a strong swimmer. But he got me there and back.'
Miles was giving her a glass of ouzo. The smell brought back older, sensuous memories. She gave a quick shiver, hurriedly repressed.
`Didn't I just?' he murmured, for her ear alone. Diana pretended she didn't hear.
Christos said, `Miles swims like a dolphin. He always has. But he's not very good at remembering that other people can be scared. I hope he didn't take you out of your depth, Diana?'
Miles stepped back, a small smile playing round his mouth. 'Did I?' he asked.
Diana glared at him. 'No.'
He gave a small nod. 'I thought not.' He sounded smug.
Susie said stiffly, 'Tomorrow you can take me climbing through rock pools and leave poor Diana to bask.' Miles laughed softly. 'Tomorrow she's leaving.'
There was an outcry. Diana sat down and let it fly over her head. The others resumed their seats, arguing. `Darling, must you?' wailed Susie.
`If you stay another three days, Dimitri can fly you back to London himself,' Chris said. 'If you're pressed for time that would save you a day's travelling at least. You've got room for a passenger, Dimitri?'
`With the greatest of pleasure.'
Miles frowned heavily. It was that really which decided her. She wanted to get away from him, true. But she also wanted to demonstrate how little she cared for him or his disapproval. She wanted quite desperately to do that. And if he didn't want her to fly with Dimitrias he plainly didn't—here was the ideal opportunity.
`If you're sure...' she said hesitatingly.
Dimitri took her hand and kissed it.
`Positive,' he said caressingly.
Miles made a noise suspiciously like a snort. Diana felt a small glow of satisfaction.
`Then that's settled,' Chris said affably. 'Tomorrow Susie goes rockpooling with Miles and Diana basks.' He met Miles's look with amusement. 'And now we eat.'
In fact the next morning Diana was still so exhausted after one of the worst nights of her life that she did exactly what Chris foretold. She took her basket-weave chair under an olive tree out of sight of the windows and tried to concentrate on a popular novel. In the end she dozed off.
She woke to find Dimitri sitting at her feet, wearing a quizzical expression.
`Miles clearly wore you out yesterday,' he said drily. Diana, well aware that he was fishing, managed not to blush.
`Swimming isn't my forte,' she told him calmly.
He laughed. `So you said. So there wouldn't be much point in my asking you if you wanted to come out in the boat with me?'
`Not if I have to swim back,' she agreed. She stirred. The air was getting uncomfortably hot. There would be a breeze out on the bay. 'On the other hand, if all I had to do was to sit under a sunhat and watch you swim ..
Dimitri grinned. 'Deal. Come on, then, before Susie decides she and the rest of the world want to come too.'
There was an edge to his voice, Diana noticed. She went with him thoughtfully.
When he had had his swim and was back on board the gently rocking boat, she said carefully, 'Have you had a fight with Susie, Dimitri?'
He was stretched on the cover of the cockpit, exposing an already impressive tan. He kept his eyes closed but he made a face.
`You noticed?' he asked.
Diana said, 'Not really. I just wondered.'
He sighed, sitting up. 'She's being an absolute fool,' he said explosively. 'I have told her—but when did Susie ever listen to anyone else?'
`Except Miles,' Diana said quietly.
Dimitri gave a harsh laugh. 'Oh, she doesn't listen to Miles either normally. At the moment she's all sweet agreement because she thinks if she hangs on his every word he'll—' He stopped abruptly.
`He'll what?' Diana prompted, keeping her voice light. `Fall in love with her? Marry her?'
Dimitri looked embarrassed. 'Lord knows.'
Well, it was more or less what she had worked out for herself. 'And will he?' she asked.
Dimitri was startled. 'You're better placed to answer that than I am, surely?'
She said evenly, 'I haven't seen Miles for two years until this week. I don't think I know him very well any more. If I ever did.' He gave her a look of considerable sympathy. More to herself than him she said, 'But I've never realised until ... I suppose I always hoped, in the back of my mind somewhere, that we could try again. Have another chance. Stupid, of course, but fantasies usually are, aren't they?'
Dimitri looked at her soberly. 'Hope can be cruel,' he agreed.
She shook her head. 'Do you know—until yesterday I didn't even know I was still hoping?'
Dimitri came down from the cockpit roof and eased himself on to the deck beside her.
`Are you sure there really is no hope? I don't know Miles very well but, well, he clearly—er—cares for you.'
`He fancies me,' Diana corrected him brutally. It was like pressing on a bruise. She said it again with fury.
Dimitri was not shocked. He even looked a little amused. 'Who would not?' he said politely. 'But for Miles it is more than that, I think. And he is not happy.'
`If he isn't happy it's more likely to be his work—or even Susie—than anything to do with me. It always was.'
Dimitri nodded slowly. 'I see. But people change.'
`Not Miles,' Diana said with absolute conviction. She gave a little shiver, remembering his driven hunger on the beach.
'He wants me to do what he wants. He gets fighting mad when I don't. But he doesn't care whether or not I'm happy or bother about the things that interest me. He doesn't love me.'
`I see,' Dimitri said again. 'And this is why you were leaving so soon?'
`Yes. It must seem childish,' she admitted, 'but I was desperate to keep out of his way.'
Dimitri sighed. `If it is childish then we both need to grow up. I too share this feeling.' He looked at her with a sudden flare of mischief lighting his sombre expression. 'Shall we run away together?'
Diana smiled. 'Where? Kathmandu? The ends of the universe?'
He shrugged. 'It would take that far to forget, I agree. But for today we could go just a little way.'
She stared. 'Are you serious?'
His smile faded. 'I'm serious about not wanting to sit down to lunch with Susie while she curls herself round Miles,' he said with suppressed violence.
Diana swallowed. `Me too.' She touched his hand sympathetically.
`Right.' He stood up. 'That settles it. The Caves of Hippolytus. We'll go there for the afternoon. And we won't go home till dark.'
He started the outboard motor and turned the launch in a curving arc out of the bay.
Diana came to her feet unsteadily and went to stand beside him at the wheel. The salt spray in her face was not unpleasant.
`What are the Caves of Hippolytus?' she shouted above the noise of the engine.
Dimitri grinned. 'The stuff of adventure. Wait and see.
It was quite a long journey. Out on the open sea, in the relatively sheltered gulf, the wind whipped the waves to a surprising height. The sun was still fierce but in the distance ominous purple clouds were massing on the horizon. She saw Dimitri glance at them a couple of times.
At last he cut the engine and guided the little boat carefully in between some rocks that stuck out of the
water like icebergs. He moored them in the shelter of a sea cavern three times the height of a man.
`The Caves of Hippolytus,' he said, his voice echoing queerly.
Diana looked round. The waves slapping against the side of the boat also echoed in the rock dome.
`What are they?' she said in a whisper.
`Local legend says that Hippolytus was washed up here after his father had called up a wave to overturn his chariot and drown him,' Dimitri said. He was playing with the radio in the control panel. There was a quick sputter of Greek and he cut the connection. 'There. Now the coastguard know where we are. I've asked them to let the castle know. Just in case.'
Just in case Susie had missed him and was worried, Diana saw with compassion. Poor Dimitri. As long as Susie was with Miles, she wouldn't have any thoughts for anyone else.
He helped her out of the boat and around the shingly floor of the cavern. 'There's a whole network of caves,' he explained.
Diana looked round curiously. 'Inhabited?'
He shook his head. 'No. The tide comes up too high. Good for fishing, though. The caves are a sort of honeycomb of rock and water. There are quite big pools in there where you can't get a boat but you can get quite substantial fish.' He smiled. 'A couple of developers thought they could exploit the caves as a tourist trap. But they're too dangerous.'
`Dangerous?' Diana was surprised. She looked round at the calm cavern and the gently lulling sea beyond.
`Only at high tide, in bad weather, when you don't know what you're doing,' Dimitri told her fluently. `You're safe with me.'
`Of course,' Diana said politely.
They scrambled through a tunnel into a bigger cave. It was weird, looking up through the spiral of rock to the sky. The clouds were moving quite fast now. When they got back to the main cavern, the water was slapping more agitatedly against the boat.
Dimitri looked at his watch. She knew he was going to say they ought to go. She suppressed the little lurch of the heart that told her she wasn't ready to go back and confront Miles.
Some piece of machinery on the boat began to beep. Diana jumped. Dimitri said, 'It's only the radio. I'll go and answer it. We should move soon anyway.'
`Let me have one last look round,' Diana pleaded.
He hesitated. But he clearly saw something in her face that swayed him. 'All right. Ten minutes,' he agreed.
And he waded out to the boat.
Diana turned and went down a tunnel they had not traversed before. She was glad of the moments alone. She liked Dimitri, but all afternoon she had been looking at him as if he were a ghost and Miles, the unseen, absent presence, was the real companion with her. It was not a pleasant feeling.
She wandered along the edge of another rock-locked pool and through a darker, damper tunnel. The floor sloped sharply and so did the ceiling. At times she was bent almost double. She had no torch so she couldn't see anything. But in the distance she heard water against rock and knew she would come out into another enclosed pool.
When she emerged it was as if it were a different day. The sky was gun-metal-grey and even in its shelter the water was violently agitated. The waves on the open sea were going to be quite something, Diana thought.
She squinted up. The rocks looked like granite: wet, sheer and deadly. High above her head there was a pin-
nacle like an angry finger stabbing at the sky. Well, if she got trapped there was no way out up the cliff-side, she thought wryly. Time to go back.
It was only as she tried to make her way back through the longest tunnel that she realised she wasn't going to be able to do it. The water was too high.
She felt a flutter of panic, but suppressed it. Dimitri knew where she was. She didn't think the caves were so extensive that he wouldn't be able to find her.
Eventually, said an inner voice. When the water goes down. And how high is it going to come first?
She went back to the pool. The water was definitely higher now. And it had begun to rain in great drops. Diana found the highest dry place she could locate and sat on the ledge, looking at the rising water. She was shaking, although it was hardly cold.
There was a brilliant flash and then she heard thunder in the distance. Rain fell harder. She brought her knees up to her chin and watched the pool below. She thought quite suddenly, I'm not going to get out of this.
She thought of Miles. Running away from him looked as if it was going to get her killed. He had been right, she thought with desperate irony. Running away never paid. If she ever had the chance, she would tell him
Stop it, she said to herself. This is melodrama. You're not going to suffocate in the open air. You're not going to drown either. Bodies float and there's lots of stuff to hang on to, like the handrail in a swimming-pool. You're going to get wet and cold and miserable and it serves you right. But you're not going to die.
You can't afford to die. You've got to tell Miles you love him.
Diana jumped so hard that she nearly fell off her ledge. Tell Miles ... ? What was she thinking of? But suddenly it seemed the most important thing in the world.
She dropped her head in her hands. If only she could see him once more; touch him
She did not know how much time passed. The storm got nearer, bringing with it the strange illusion of human voices. Then, in a sudden lull, she realised there were voices. They were above her head. She looked up, astonished.
There were figures on the cliff. She couldn't make out who, through the driving rain. Except she had the crazy feeling they were fighting. She stood up, craning to wave. No one seemed to take any notice of her.
One of the figures detached itself and began to swarm up the pinnacle. Then he was standing on it, straight as an arrow, arms extended to a point above his head. He was going to dive into the enclosed pool.
A hand went to her throat. It must be incredibly foolhardy. Even without the wind that was now whipping up the water, a dive from such a height into that heaving water would have been the height of recklessness.
In her head she heard Chris say, Our family have a taste for danger.
The man on
the pinnacle seemed to fall in one graceful, uninterrupted arc. He cut into the black water as cleanly as a knife. As he plummeted, she saw the flash of copper hair. She backed against the wall of granite behind her and screamed aloud.
CHAPTER SEVEN
DIANA strained forward, agonised. Diving from that height, Miles must have gone right to the bottom. Was it deep enough? There must be a real risk that he would injure his head badly.
All thought of her own danger disappeared as she scanned the heavy sea below her. There was no sign of him. Diana began to rock backwards and forwards, her lips forming a silent prayer.
Please let him be all right. Please, I'll do anything. Please.
Then there was a splash. Diana stopped rocking, her eyes wide and tearless, fixed on the water. Another splash. Then a regular series of them. A smooth head appeared among the rhythmic spray. Miles powered towards her with fast strokes that sent the foam flying.
Diana went to the edge of her ledge. He trod water beneath her, shaking the water out of his eyes. His head and shoulders streamed. The copper hair was nearly black with water. He rubbed a powerful hand across his face to clear his vision, and Diana saw that his eyes were dark and sharp as daggers.
`What the hell,' he said, not attempting to disguise his temper, 'do you think you're doing?' He was breathing hard.
Diana didn't answer. She was too busy reaching a hand down to him. He barely touched it, hauling himself up the side of the chimney easily enough. Safe on the ledge, he turned to her.
`You have no sense sometimes,' he said furiously. He pulled her against him roughly. She was shaking with cold and the aftermath of fear. He cursed when he felt the tremors that shook her.
`Didn't you know it was dangerous? Wandering off like a four-year-old at a picnic.'
`I know,' said Diana, huddled against him, her lips against the cold, soaked skin of his shoulder. 'I know. I didn't think.'
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