[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 16

  ‘And did the princess fall in love with him?’ Kara asked.

  ‘I s’pose so.’ Rue bent and tickled a darting fish. ‘Fairy tales always end happily, but I bet it’s different in real life. I mean, can you imagine a girl falling in love with a dragon?’

  ‘A frog,’ Kara corrected.

  ‘Well, a frog is a little dragon,’ Rue pointed out. ‘Didn’t you know that?’

  ‘I do now.’ Kara smiled and lay back in her lounger and hummed a few bars of a Greek song she was fond of.

  ‘I like that,’ Rue said eagerly.

  ‘If I had a guitar I could play it to you.’

  ‘Sing it, Kara.’

  ‘Oh, I have not sung a Greek song in such a long time—’

  ‘Please!’ Rue ran to her and knelt on the foot of the lounger. She caught at Kara’s left hand and swung it so the pearl of Lucan’s ring gleamed with a myriad colours. ‘Sing me the song, Kara. After all, I have been sick and you have to pamper me.’

  ‘The Irish,’ Kara murmured, ‘have the charm of angels and devils—very well, you will have to clap, like this, because it is a song that echoes the rhythm of the olives as they drop into the big baskets of the olive pickers.’

  They were lost in the fun of their concert when a shadow fell suddenly across the doorway of the Folly. It lingered for several minutes, while the young voices floated out into the sunlight, then the shadow withdrew and there was no sound of footsteps as it moved silently away.

  ‘Kara, you must teach me to speak Greek,’ Rue said excitedly.

  ‘That would take a long time, poppet.’ Kara kissed the small hand she held and touched her forehead to it. ‘That is the Greek way of saying "bless you".’

  ‘Kara,’ Rue gazed at her with eyes that were suddenly alarmed, ‘you will be here a long time—won’t you?’

  ‘Of course.’ Kara could not bear that look in the child’s eyes. ‘Look, when Sam brings our ice cream we will have some fun with him and you will thank him in Greek. This is how you say it—’

  She held the slight figure in the circle of her arm, bird-boned and warm as a kitten, and tried to recapture her mood of gaiety. But it was as though a shadow had passed over the sun, and she heard a wind whisper through the fields of cane, and the chain of bells and coral hanging in the doorway of the Folly gave a tinkle as though some­thing passed by.

  She glanced up and watched the bells tinkling and swaying.

  When Sam arrived, carrying goblets of avocado ice cream on a tray, Kara asked him if the seas were high.

  ‘Them waves got a wind on their backs a-driving them, ma’am,’ he said. ‘That ole dragon is growling—’

  There he broke off and watched with a grin as Rue tucked into her ice cream. He ambled away, but his words stayed with Kara.

  That old dragon is growling.

  CHAPTER TEN

  A FEW nights later Kara awoke suddenly and heard the neighing of a horse quite close to the house. Its hooves clattered on the cobbles below, and she sat up, listening. She knew that Lucan sometimes went out moon riding, but this was the middle of the night.

  She slipped out of bed and the moonlight framed her as she stood at the window trying to catch a glimpse of the horse and rider. But from the window of Lucan’s dressing room, which she was now using while he slept elsewhere, it was difficult to see anyone down in the courtyard. She hesitated, then slipped into her robe and slippers and made her way out to the gallery, where the moonlight streamed through the windows at either end.

  Silently as a ghost, she hurried to the window that overlooked the courtyard. She heard again the rattle of harness and the stamp of hooves, and then her breath caught in her throat as she saw the big horse standing riderless, tossing its black mane and glistening in the moonlight as though painted with gold.

  A beautiful, satanic-looking beast, glancing wickedly sideways as a figure clambered into the saddle and urged him through the gateway on to the road.

  Kara’s heart was pounding, for the rider was big, broad-shouldered, and tilted well down over his face was a field hat with a wide brim — a hat such as the one Lucan often wore!

  The sound of the galloping hooves died away into the night, and Kara stood shivering on the gallery. Had she just seen Lucan on a golden horse with a black mane, or was she walking in her sleep and having a nightmare?

  If she had seen Lucan, then it was he who had ridden her down in the cane—he who played some terrible underhand game at Dragon Bay. Lucan, her husband, who ten years ago had been alone with Pryde when he had fallen from the cliffside and broken his back.

  She wanted to hasten to the room where Lucan had been sleeping for the past week, and yet she hesitated. What if she opened the door and came face to face with its emptiness? Could she bear knowing that he had been her mysterious assailant ? Could she stay, even for Rue’s sake, knowing that Lucan plotted to harm her be­cause he found her a tiresome mistake ?

  She stood forlorn and ghostly on the moonlit gallery, then she fled back to her room and closed the door hur­riedly behind her. She crept into bed and lay cold and trembling. She closed her eyes and wanted to fall into the abyss of sleep, but there in her mind’s eye she saw again that tall figure on horseback. There was little doubt in her mind that she had seen Lucan!

  Kara wondered in the next few days if he guessed that she was avoiding being alone with him. When he came in from the fields she always managed to be downstairs with Rue. He would go up for a shower and when he came down again, it would be time for Kara to take Rue up­stairs to bed. She would hang out the time until dinner, reading to Rue from the book of la Fontaine fables; the book with another woman’s handwriting in it.

  Ma chère Lucan.

  At dinner she would feel fairly secure with Pryde at the head of the table, and Clare and Nils facing her. To­night Clare looked thin and striking in a black velvet dress with a silver-webbed topaz on the left shoulder. She talked brilliantly about art, travel, and her favourite cities. Nils, Kara noticed, was very quiet. There was a withdrawn air about him, as though he had received a recent blow that was hurting him.

  Was it a blow caused by Clare? Nils was in love with her, but for Clare love was too possessive, too demand­ing. She wanted to be free. Nils was a man who cared for children and he would not want a wife who preferred images to warm, laughing, mischievous realities.

  Poor Nils! Kara smiled across at him to let him see that she understood and in a way was in the same un­happy boat.

  The Savidges were not easy to understand or love — strong and wilful people were never as easy to love as the gentle and placable.

  ‘I like your beads, Kara.’ Clare was leaning forward to look at them in the light of the dining candles. Several loops of silver beads with a Greek letter stamped on each bead. Worry beads that spelled a prayer.

  ‘They were given to me by my aunt, a fierce little Greek lady,’ Kara smiled.

  ‘They’re worry beads,’ Clare said quietly. ‘Are you wearing them as an adornment or to help soothe away a worry of some sort?’

  ‘Oh, to be adorned.’ Kara felt Lucan looking at her and she strove to speak lightly. ‘Your brooch fascinates me, Clare. Is it a spider in a web?’

  ‘Wickedly cute, isn’t it?’ Clare laughed.

  ‘Some people would say symbolic’ Lucan was look­ing across at his sister as he carried his wine glass to his lips.

  ‘Am I the only one caught in a web ?’ she asked. ‘Aren’t we all?’

  ‘All of us at Dragon Bay?’ He quirked the eyebrow that made him look devilish.

  Yes, that was what I meant.’ She glanced at Pryde, who was cracking nuts with deliberate movements of his strong and beautiful hands. Hands, Kara noticed, that were more powerful than one would expect on invalid’s to be.

  ‘Pryde,’ there was a sudden note of torment in Clare’s voice, ‘don’t you ever rebel at the web which fate has spun for you?’

  ‘Fate, my dear,’ he lifted his gaze from the nutcrackers and the ca
ndlelight reflected like points of flame in the full, black pupils of his eyes, ‘does not weave the traps into which we fall. I think we weave them for ourselves by-putting too much trust in the affection we feel for others.’

  Kara felt as though a draught passed across the nape of her neck, stirring the small hairs. Pryde and his twin had been like one person, until Lucan had realized that Dragon Bay and all it stood for were Pryde’s to inherit, his to merely serve. A challenge had been made, and Pryde had taken a fall from which he would never rise to walk again.

  She gazed at Pryde, whose breadth of shoulder was heavier than Lucan’s, without the lean, athletic slope to the hips. Had that slight heaviness, that squareness to the waist always been present? If so, then Lucan would always have been the fleetest of the two; the more adept at swimming, riding—and climbing.

  Later in the salon Lucan asked her to play for them. She went to the piano without looking at him and raised the lid. ‘What would you like me to play, Pryde?’ She turned on the stool and smiled across at her brother-in-law.

  He was brooding and handsome in the lamplight, and as he gazed back at her she noticed a faint slackening of the lines of his mouth giving him a sensual look that was somehow intensified by the black velvet dinner-jacket he wore. Pryde, unlike Lucan, was a bit of a dandy. Her smile deepened, and in her beryl-coloured dress she was slim and decorative against the glossy frame of the piano. ‘I have a favourite,’ he said. ‘It is Beethoven’s Appassionata, but I think it would be too strong for your—small hands.’

  ‘My hands have played most musical instruments, from a Greek lyre to a Spanish guitar.’ She thought of her old passion for music and the many musical instruments that had cluttered her room when she had lived in the old family mansion at Andelos. ‘My mother was English, so I was taught the piano as a child.’

  She faced the keyboard and her fingers were mobile on the keys. Gently, with increasing feeling, the lovely music filled the room. She did not look up as Lucan came to sit in the shadows nearby, but she was aware all the time of his eyes upon her. What was he thinking? Her hands crashed out the chords of passion. What was he plotting? Alive and tempestuous, the music flowed from beneath her supple. Greek hands, then the passion died away and sadness crept in. Twice she had loved, and each man in his own way had betrayed her trust in him. Her foolish, girlish, innocent trust.

  Her hands crashed down on the keyboard and the Appassionata was ended.

  ‘My dear,’ Clare was all admiration, ‘I had no idea you could play the piano so well.’

  ‘I have always loved music’ Kara could feel herself trembling slightly from the reaction of her playing and her thoughts. ‘I play with emotion, but any good music master would condemn my technique. I am sure Pryde will tell you that I took liberties with the score.’

  ‘You may take any liberties you wish, Kara,’ he said gallantly.

  You are kind, Pryde.’ She rose from the piano stool and went and sat in a chair near his. She did it with bravado, leaving Lucan alone in the shadows. Pryde opened the cigar box at his elbow, but Nils preferred a Black Prince and offered one to Lucan. Kara leaned back against a red cushion and watched Pryde’s long, strong fingers on his cigar, squeezing gently so that the silky brown cylinder gave a crackle. He lighted it, and the dragon seal of his ring caught the lamplight and the tiny rubies blinked like eyes.

  After the intensity of the music there was a sudden lull in the conversation, and the sound of the sea could be heard battering the cliffs below the terrace.

  ‘When do you expect your land erosion expert?’ Clare asked Lucan. ‘Do you really think the old house is begin­ning to crack up?’

  ‘I think it advisable to have the foundations checked, and the man I’ve written to should be here in a few days.’ Lucan drew on his cigarette and his eyes narrowed through the smoke. ‘The sea has a hungry sound these days. Have you noticed?’

  Clare gave a visible shiver and pointed a brocade slip­per at the fire. Always a fire was lit in the salon of an even­ing. Pryde felt the cold, and it grew strangely cold in this house at the edge of the sea when night fell.

  ‘It occurs to me that each one of us in this room has an affinity with the sea.’ Clare gazed around the hushed circle. ‘We Savidges are here because the sea took a ship and tossed our ancestors on to these shores. Kara was born on an island in the Ionian, and Nils has the blood of Viking sea rovers in his veins. Perhaps that is why we listen to the voice of the sea and it seems to speak to us.’

  ‘You have the imagination of the Irish and the artistic,’ Nils said with a smile. ‘The sea, like love, can be as kind as it can be cruel.’

  ‘Love?’ she cried. ‘Why bring love into this?’

  ‘Try keeping love out of anything,’ he rejoined.

  Clare frowned at him, and then took into her hands an ornament that always stood on the mantelpiece. A dap­pled fawn arrowed through the heart, whose outlines she traced with her sculptor’s hands. ‘I sometimes think that I would like to go and live in a thatched house in an Irish glen,’ she said. ‘But Dragon Bay holds too tightly to those born here.’

  ‘Won’t you go away when you marry?’ asked Nils.

  It seemed to Kara that he was provoking Clare to a quarrel; trying to shake her out of her coolness into a pas­sion of some sort. For a moment the fawn trembled in her hand, then she replaced it very carefully and walked to­wards the double doors. There she stood for a moment, tall, graceful, tawny-haired, made to be loved yet denying herself to a man who, Kara was sure, could have made her happy.

  ‘Nils, don’t look at me like that,’ she said with a laugh, ‘as if you were trying to shatter me.’

  ‘You cannot be melted, Clare,’ he said, his eyes glacier blue. You are like the ice princess, and I wonder what it will take to shatter you. You know, Clare, there are vol­canoes under ice in the far north. When they erupt the flame turns the ice to water—it runs away like a flood of tears.’

  ‘I never weep, Nils. I leave that to the women who are foolish enough to love a man.’ She swept him a mocking bow. ‘Goodnight, Sweet Prince.’

  The doors closed behind her, and after a restless hesi­tation Nils said goodnight himself and went out through the veranda doors. His footfalls rang on the steps and faded away into the moonlight, among the trees.

  Lucan tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. ‘The Savidges have a gift for hurting people,’ he said, and the whip scar on his cheekbone seemed to stand out and catch Kara’s eye. ‘And we do it with style. "Goodnight, Sweet Prince." Horatio’s last words to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.’

  ‘Poor Kara,’ Pryde was looking at her. You must find us a bewildering clan, half devilish, half fascinating, eh? Like most of the Irish.’

  ‘I—I try to understand you,’ she said helplessly. ‘I am Greek and we react with the heart, we don’t fight with it.’

  She stood up, slender, lost, caught like Nils in the cross­currents of tension that flowed among the Savidges. She glanced around her, as though seeking a rock to which she could cling, and her glance fell on the chessmen on a near­by table.

  ‘I will leave you men to your game of chess,’ she said. ‘Who has the black knight in check?’

  Lucan stood tall in the lamplight, his brows drawn down like a visor over his eyes, which held a flicker of steel.

  ‘Lucan does appear to be checking my knight’s pro­gress to the queen.’ Pryde lifted his cigar and he smiled faintly through the smoke. ‘Are you going to try and van­quish me altogether, Lucan?’

  Kara gave a shiver, for it seemed to her that there was a strange note of meaning in Pryde’s remark. These twin brothers—once so close—were now combatants in an arena, and the arena was Dragon Bay.

  ‘Cain, Cain …

  From earth to heaven vengeance cries,

  For thou hast brought thy brother down.’

  Kara ran from the words to the double doors. Lucan with his long stride was ahead of her and opening them with sardonic court
esy. ‘Goodnight, seigneur,’ she threw a rather desperate glance at Pryde. ‘Goodnight. …’ She looked at her husband, but could not say his name. It seemed to catch in her throat, and gathering up her silken skirt she hastened across the hall to the great staircase, and the long mirrors gave back her golden reflection, here, there, a ghost who fled out of them and up the stairs of dark galleon timbers.

  Upon reaching the Emerald Suite she looked in on Rue. The child was fast asleep, the night-lamp burning softly beside the bed, and that red-plaited doll tucked beneath the covers beside her, its painted eyes staring in the half-light. Kara’s hands clenched at her sides as she fought an impulse to snatch up the doll and throw it out of the window.

  It made her think of black magic … of a cracked ceil­ing, of a wild scream, of a menace that stalked this house above the dragon-green bay.

  She bent over Rue and kissed her russet hair. It smelled like wheat that had been in the sun all day, for Kara and the child had spent hours down on the sands. They both seemed happier away from the house, and Rue had said: ‘I wish we could sleep in the beach house.’

  Kara’s face was pensive as she went into the adjoining room and closed the door quietly behind her. She opened the curtains, and the bright moonlight reminded her of the horse and rider she had seen the other night. They had not been ghosts but realities, and tonight in the salon Pryde had asked Lucan if he meant to vanquish him altogether.

  Her fingers clenched on her silver worry beads. The de­sire for power did strange things to people … it un­balanced them, made them incapable of judging right from wrong.

  Her gaze lifted to the moon, etched against the dark sky like a golden shield with a corner chipped out of it. The moon waxed full, and someone at Dragon Bay was quite mad!

  She tugged the curtains together and hurried over to switch on the bedside lamp, then obeying a sudden im­pulse she turned the key in the lock of the door that gave on to the gallery. No one could enter the suite with this door locked!