The other men shifted their feet.
'I'll talk to you later,' Chris informed them, Smiling.
They were smiling, too, as they filed past Lissa, greeting her one by one, while Chris leaned back in his chair, watching.
His father had been the owner of the Palace before it became a casino. Lissa's father had run the hotel for years and Chris had been as near to a big brother as Lissa had. Her mother had died when Lissa was six. Bitten by a snake in the garden, she had fainted before she could struggle to the house and by the time, a quarter of an hour later, she was found it had been too late to do anything to save her. Lissa's father had never recovered from the shock and he had never remarried. He drank far too much for years and it was a complaint of the liver that finally killed him while Lissa was still at school. Chris's father had generously taken over her education. When she left school it was only natural that she should come back to the Palace. It was her only home and, by then, Chris and his father were her only family. The many chains that bound her to Chris had been formed over a lifetime. She was fond of him as well as being in love with him. When his father, too, died of a heart attack, Chris had leaned heavily on her for comfort and support. He had been very attached to his father. Lissa knew that she was both sister and lover to him.
He laughed at her anxiety over his gambling, but he tried to reassure her, too, and although he was too deeply entangled with it he nevertheless tried to keep it under control for her sake.
Chris was a man with a lazy, casual nature. He loved the sun and the sea. He had bright, laughing blue eyes and a skin as bronzed as her own. His thick untidy fair hair was bleached as fiercely as Lissa's. They made a striking pair when they were together. Chris had boyish good looks which lacked the sharp edge of the man she had met on the beach that morning. Lissa loved the easy-going charm of his smile.
'Fortune almost drowned this morning,' she told him.
'What stopped him?' Chris asked, grinning. 'If he chews any more of my furniture I'll drown him myself!'
The telephone rang. He answered it and Lissa wandered to the window to stare out across the manicured green lawns. Sprinklers were fountaining across them, a rainbow flash of light in the cascade of water. In the flower beds which Gaspard kept so magnificently were hibiscus, bougainvillea, amaryllis and honeysuckle, the vivid gaudy colours of the fleshy petals too startling in the sunlight. Guests were beginning to stroll down to the beach. Some of the women carried the bright patterned paper parasols which the hotel sold—made by local women, they were very popular.
Chris had a whole fleet of women working for his shops. He sold a wide range of goods made very cheaply by local workers. Beach wear, from straw sandals to straw hats; gay metal or earthenware ornaments, jewellery, local paintings, hand-painted pottery.
'Pierre wants you to come down and rehearse,' he told her putting down the phone. 'That new song—he's done a new arrangement for the band.'
'Oh, good,' she said, smiling and blowing him a kiss before she left.
Although they had been officially engaged for almost a year, they had not yet become lovers. Chris had occasionally advanced a step or two, but Lissa's convent education and their shared childhood had made a sort of barrier between them which she had not yet allowed him to cross. Chris wasn't the man to force that barrier; he was too lazy. He waited, smiling a little wryly, and Lissa liked him for his patience. The decisions had all been hers. Chris would have married at once, but Lissa felt at nineteen that she was not yet old enough for marriage. On her twentieth birthday Chris had brought the subject up again and she had hesitated before asking him to wait a while longer. 'Give me time, darling,' she had pleaded, and he had grimaced and said broodily: 'That damned convent!' Lissa laughed, but she knew that he wasn't far wrong.
Girls who had been at school with her had tended to take one of two directions. Either they kicked over the traces violently on getting away from the convent atmosphere or they were shy and nervous with the men they met.
Lissa was not shy or nervous of Chris, but she was aware that her own attitude was bred by the careful disciplines of the sisters who had brought her up.
When Chris kissed her, she kissed him back lovingly but she felt no urge to hasten her marriage. She was half alarmed at the idea of it. It was such a vast step and she did not feel ready to take it yet.
That Chris was beginning to feel slightly impatient hadn't escaped her. When they kissed she could, feel his excitement and was wary of it, knowing she felt none of the physical pressure she could sense in him. He never pushed things too far; he had never actually frightened her. Chris still felt protective of her, thought of her in the old brotherly terms from time to time. It was this warm relationship which made Lissa unsure of her own feelings and, necessarily, of his—she was not certain how adult their feelings for each other were.
She went down to the nightclub which took up a large part of the basement of the hotel. The lights were low and Pierre was picking out a tune on the piano as she walked in to meet him. Thin, curly-headed, he was a native of St Lerie himself. Gaspard, the gardener, was one of his uncles. Pierre had eight, scattered throughout the island. The family sprawled from one side to the other, involved in most of the local activities. Pierre was musically untrained, like Lissa, and quite brilliant. He had taught himself all he knew and could play most of the instruments in the band better than the current musicians playing them.
'Come on, girl,' he said in his soft island drawl. 'Listen here.'
She listened and nodded, liking it. The band were all local people, too, and had played together for months.
'Now, let's get real tight,' Pierre told her. 'Ready?'
They went over it again and again until she and the band were, in Pierre's favourite phrase, 'real tight', playing and singing the arrangement as close to perfection as Pierre would accept.
Lissa knew she owed her own musical education at the club to Pierre. He was tireless and merciless in his search for the best sound and he took no half-hearted work.
'You'll never be a world-stopper, but that shouldn't stop you working at it,' he told her.
He was faintly scathing about her little-girl voice. Pierre had a girlfriend with a magnificent, black-silk body and a voice that could break windows, but although on nights when Lissa was off, Chris allowed Jo-Jo to sing with the band, he thought their clients would prefer the innocent simplicities of Lissa's voice to Jo-Jo's shattering chords. Pierre did not agree—not just because he was living with Jo-Jo but because for his sort of music, Jo-Jo was superb.
He did not hide his opinion and Lissa secretly agreed with him. 'Gamblers don't want to listen to loud music,' Chris told him. 'They don't want to listen to anything. They want music that makes a low wallpaper while they think about the tables.'
Chris dropped in to listen to their final run through and smile approval. The song Pierre had arranged for the band was one of his uncle's favourites. It had a deceptive innocence. Under the limpidly sung words ran a visible strain of sensuality, an ambiguous edge to the words. Lissa had translated the song into English herself, but Pierre hadn't liked her translation; she suspected he thought it was too sweet. Pierre had worked on the words himself and Lissa found the secret echoes in them faintly disturbing. She was slightly flushed as she caught Chris's surprised and amused eye.
'Clever stuff,' he told Pierre. 'That's not how Lissa had it.'
Pierre shrugged his thin shoulders. His forehead gleamed with sweat. He had been working in the stuffy club for hours now.
'She hadn't caught the flavour,' he said, and Chris grinned.
'I bet I'
Lissa's skin glowed with heat and both young men looked at her with sly amusement.
'What're you going to wear; honey?' Pierre asked.
Blankly she said: 'I hadn't thought. Why?'
'Jo-Jo an' me seen a dress that would look fine with this song. Jo-jo's aunty in Provence Square got it. Why don't you go down and try it on?
'
'If Jo's Aunty Therese is selling it, it won't suit me,' Lissa said firmly. She knew the type of dresses Therese sold.
'Go on, darling,' Chris urged, 'try it on. It's time you started wearing smarter clothes.'
'Chris!' she protested, but was overruled. She found herself being driven down to Provence Square through the dusty crowded streets of the little town. Ville-Royale had been built originally around a shore fortress of which little remained now but the crumbling walls and some rusted cannon stuck fast in the stones which had supported them for several hundred years.
During race riots in the early nineteenth century the huddled wooden houses had burned to the ground and cannon fire had raked the crowded streets. Today there were garages, luxury shops and gay restaurants fronting the badly made road. Tourists in bright clothing strolled along in their straw sandals and hats, it had taken St Lerie longer to catch up with the twentieth century than other Caribbean islands, but they were just beginning to appear on the tourist map.
An unspoilt paradise set in jewelled seas, the brochures promised, and so far what tourists found matched that assurance, but as tourism made its usual inroads on the lazy life of the islanders no doubt things would change. Already prices in the tourist areas had risen steeply beyond that demanded in the unchanged villages in the island. There were more jobs but conversely more discontent. The dress shop in Provence Square was housed in an old frame building which had been garishly painted. Therese was a large, slow-moving lady with a deep molasses voice and a wide smile. Lissa looked at the dress which Pierre had told Therese to set aside for her and her eyes rounded.
'I couldn't wear that!'
Chris eyed it interestedly. 'Whew!' he whistled through his teeth 'Try it on, darling.'
'No,' said Lissa.
Aunt Therese beamed at her and moved her bodily into the fitting rooms like a slow bulldozer shifting some light object out of its path. Lissa was still protesting with flushed cheeks and horrified eyes as Chris stared at her incredulously five minutes later.
'Wow!' he said simply.
'You like?' Therese asked with a broad smile,
'I definitely like,' Chris nodded. 'We'll take it.'
'It's expensive,' Therese warned without any real worry. Chris was looking at Lissa in a way that made it obvious such concerns as cost wouldn't even cross his mind.
'I couldn't wear it on stage!' Lissa protested.
'Wrap it up,' Chris told Aunt Therese.
'Chris!' Lissa burst out.
He grinned and his eyes glittered with excitement. 'Baby, I love it, and you're wearing it tonight.'
'I feel half naked in it!' The way Chris was staring at her made her feel disturbed. He had never looked at her like that before and she did not like it.
It was the sort of dress which she would have guessed Jo-Jo would choose—a lustrous black satin cut on the simplest, most revealing lines. Sleeveless, backless and close to frontless as well, it clung smoothly to the small, high breasts and fitted her slender hips like a second skin. Her tanned flesh glowed golden in the harsh electric light, the warmth of her body emphasised by the daring dress.
'Where did you get that figure from?' Chris asked, enjoying the unobscured view of it he was getting, 'Even in a bikini you've never looked like this.'
'It's this dress!' she wailed.
'I'll say,' Chris agreed, and Aunt Therese gurgled with enjoyment.
She saw them off the premises, beaming. Everyone on the island knew Chris and treated him with deferential respect. As they walked through the town everyone they met greeted Chris with a quick smile and a very eager word.
That evening Chris stood with her back stage, eyeing her curved body in the black dress. 'Baby, when are we getting married? My patience is wearing thin.' He kissed her, his hands lightly sliding from her waist to her slim, smooth hips.
'Liss,' he whispered huskily. 'Liss, marry me soon. Just looking at you tonight is driving me insane.'
She drew back, alarmed, from the heated look in his eyes. Chris met her nervous glance and grimaced.
'God, that damned content! Liss, grow up, baby. I love you and you love me. What are we waiting for?'
Lissa did not know. She looked at him apprehensively, anxiously, 'We'll talk about it, shall we?'
'What else do we ever do?' he asked, his mouth wry. 'I'm sick to death of talking, Liss. I want to do something.' He did not need to expand on that, the urgent gleam of his eyes spoke for him, and her colour deepened.
She was relieved when she heard the band move into the final number before her own. I must go, Chris,' she said quickly, and he sighed, shrugging.
'Okay, but we'll talk later,' he threatened, half smiling, half grimacing.
She hurried away, so disturbed by the little exchange that she forgot the revealing nature of her new dress, her anxiety and shy embarrassment. When the crash of chords announced her she walked out with the blue spotlight shimmering round her, still dwelling on what Chris had said, and was quite taken aback by the whistles and clapping which broke out. Her green eyes opened wide. She looked at Pierre, who grinned, white teeth flashing, and made a circle in the air with finger and thumb, a triumphant teasing little gesture which eased the moment for her slightly.
She leaned on the piano, looking at him as he went into the number. Turning her head, the long blonde hair flicking over her shoulder, she began to sing, as they had rehearsed all day. The room was unusually quiet, Lissa was used to a constant low murmur as people talked and drank, but tonight they were oddly intent. She felt them quicken into amusement as the song went on with the teasing ambiguity which Pierre had given it. Laughter was soft, appreciative, as though they did not want to miss any following words.
Applause burst out as she stopped singing. She smiled and bowed, surprised and pleased, and as her eyes moved round the tables she saw a familiar face at one of them.
He was leaning his head on his cupped hands, his elbows on the table, his black head half in shadow. The light fell harshly on his lower face, throwing into relief the stark angles of cheekbone and jaw, the hard sensual mouth. The blue eyes were veiled by lowered lids through which she felt him watching her, but she could not glimpse anything of the expression in those eyes. Even so she was strangely jarred by something in the way he stared.
She sang one of her own translations next. It was a light, cheerful song which had originated on the plantations in the nineteenth century, a song the slaves had sung as they cut the cane. The grumbling impudence was tinged with the humour which she loved in the islanders. They had laughed, as they laughed now, at cruelty, tyranny, their oppressed condition, finding the joke even in slavery. It was a tune which made people's fingers click and their feet start to tap. By the third chorus some of the audience were joining in mutedly and she encouraged them with a quick smile and nod.
She went off to applause and the limbo dancers ran on to the stage. Several of them were related to Pierre and winked at her as they passed.
'Fantastic,' said Chris, putting an arm round her waist. 'Hey, did you see what was at the side table at the front?'
Lissa stiffened and looked at him in startled enquiry. 'Who?' She felt a strange anxiety as she asked that. Who was the man whose blue eyes made her feel like running away whenever they touched her?
'Lucifer,' said Chris, and laughed. 'In person.'
Dazedly Lissa frowned. 'What?'
'You must have heard of him,' Chris urged. 'He arrived yesterday. He's got a damned great yacht parked in the roads.' He looked wry. 'I hope he isn't going to milk us dry, baby. Why do you think they call him Lucifer? He's got the devil's own luck, and I don't fancy being bankrupted overnight.'
'Who is he?' Lissa asked slowly.
'Luc Ferrier,' said Chris. 'Come on, darling—Ferrier. Surely the name rings a bell?'
She shook her head, her eyes blank.
'He's always in the papers. He's the sort of gambler who never refuses the odds. A real wild o
ne.'
'A gambler,' said Lissa, her voice filled with distaste.
'One of the biggest,' Chris said.
'A professional?' Lissa hated professional gamblers. They turned up all the time, people who lived by gambling, who drifted from casino to casino. Hard, obsessed and faintly inhuman, they seemed unaware of anything but the win and loss of the tables.
Chris shrugged. 'God knows. He may have a private source of money or he may live on what he wins, but he certainly turns up at most places sooner or later. And he rarely loses, and never for long. He has a lucky streak a mile wide.' He grinned at her, 'As I said, hence the nickname. I gather someone looked at his scrawl on a cheque and said; "So that's who you are ... Lucifer." His name looks like that, written fast, I suppose.'
'Don't play with him,' said Lissa on a peculiar strained note. She could not have said the idea of Chris playing against that man should bother her so much, but all her instincts cried out against the idea.
Chris was grinning absently, as if he hadn't even heard her. She saw his fingers stretching and clicking and her blood ran cold. She knew that unconscious little gesture of his—-it meant that Chris was itching to play against someone. People who run a gambling house should never gamble themselves—it is too dangerous. Chris had an obsessive streak, a competitive urge to prove himself against other gamblers, as though it were a duel between them, a duel he needed to win.
'Chris,' she said anxiously, clutching his arm.
He looked down at her, bright-eyed and excited. 'Darling?'
'Are you listening?'
'Of course I am,' he said in abstracted tones, then looked at her with brighter interest. 'And I'm looking, darling, Liss, in that dress you do something drastic to my blood pressure. If you don't hurry up and marry me I'm not even going to wait for the banns to be put up. You've kept me waiting long enough.'
Lissa gripped his arm, taking a deep breath. 'Promise not to gamble against Luc Ferrier and I'll marry you next month.'
She saw the abrupt flicker in his face, the taken-aback frown. 'What?' He was evading the issue, hedging, his blue eyes shifting from her.
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