[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 5

‘Do I look as though I mind?’ She gave him a quick smile, a gamine figure with her dark hair flowing and her cheeks flushed. ‘Lucan, I hear the drums! The carnival has begun!’

  Excitement ran through the crowds as the thud and boom of the drums drew closer and the carnival dragons came into view, swaying above a float on which a miniature sugar mill puffed smoke, followed by an­other on which colourfully clad ‘slaves’ danced around a great cauldron in which a girl sat on a mound of sugar.

  Appreciative laughter swept the crowd, and they cheered as a flower float rumbled by, filled with pretty girls and masses of tropical flowers. Came the tall black satyrs with their money-nets, hooking people with their tridents and demanding a forfeit in cash for charity. Kara got hooked, and Lucan threw a handful of silver into the satyr’s net. ‘You bought that gal, suh,’ someone laughed, and as Lucan jestingly tossed her to his shoul­der, there ran through Kara a sensation that melted her bones and shook her heart.

  ‘Put me down, Lucan!’ In the strangest panic she pummelled his broad shoulders. ‘Please—everyone is looking!’

  With a flash of his teeth and a laugh, he slid her down the long length of his body to the ground. ‘Behave your­self, slave,’ he was looking down deep into her con­fused eyes, ‘or I won’t buy you a pineapple.’

  A vendor was selling them from a basket, green-plumed, golden with plump fruit and juice. Lucan had a large one quartered, and never had fruit tasted so de­licious to Kara, enjoyed in the midst of the carnival crowds on a Caribbean island. There was a strange new magic to being alive and among these vital people; noisy, sunlit hours Kara relished to the full.

  Boom, clash, boom. Cymbals caught the sun on their blades, and tom-toms throbbed as a parade of costumed islanders followed the chariot of the carnival queen. Voodoo dancers, slave maidens, Aztec warriors, and temple devils.

  As the carnival moved on, the crowd followed it through the narrow streets, where the balconies were bright with flowers and holidaymakers. Streamers tangled people together, and great clown heads wagged and wobbled high overhead. Confetti showered down from burst balloons, and it was all over Kara’s hair and Lucan’s fiery mane as they were swept along with the laughing, sweating, flirting tide of people.

  It was some time later when Lucan pulled Kara into a doorway to catch their breath. The noise and the music gradually died away, and Kara leaned back against the sun-scaled door, a tousled, dusty figure with streamers wrapped around her and confetti in her hair. ‘Mad, all quite mad,’ she laughed breathlessly, ‘but I would not have missed a moment of it.’

  ‘Let me unbind you.’ Lucan’s face was creased with amusement, his eyes as green as Irish moss as he un­wound the streamers and released her from their gay bondage.

  ‘Thank you.’ Kara gazed at him and remembered how the queen of the carnival had thrown him a flower from her bouquet. He had caught it deftly, and a smile had run all over the girl’s piquant face beneath her crown. A creamy heart of a face with an underlying hint of coffee, eyes like pools of honey, and a mouth like a wine-coloured flower.

  Was the girl known to him, Kara wondered, or had she noticed how he stood out in the crowd ?

  ‘Where is the flower the carnival queen deigned to toss you?’ she asked with a smile.

  ‘I stuck it behind the pigtail of a piccaninny,’ he said half mockingly. ‘Jealous?’

  ‘No.’ Kara combed the confetti out of her hair with her fingers. ‘Monkey was always my nickname when I was a child, and if I was ever jealous of anyone it was of Domini, my brother’s wife. But not for long did my jealousy last. Domini has a heart to match her lovely face.’

  ‘Domini is a rare and lovely name.’ Lucan thumbed his lighter and fired a cheroot. Smoke drifted lazily from his nostrils.

  ‘Domini is a rare and lovely person,’ Kara said softly. ‘When you love a brother with all your heart, you can­not imagine a woman good enough for him, or spirited enough. Paul fought for Greece when he was a boy, and he was desperately hurt. He almost died of that injury five years ago … Domini held him back with her love. She defied the gods who take young those they love, and my dear Apollo did not die, nor was he blinded as he desperately feared he would be. He has the use of one of his eyes—and with it he misses very little,’ Kara ended, half laughing, a rather choked sound.

  ‘Paul, dearest brother,’ she thought, ‘I ran away from Andelos because my pride was hurt, and I have run into a man you would perhaps not like — not at first. What I felt for Nikos was never like this feeling I have for Lucan Savidge. I don’t know if it is love, but I do know that parting from him, tomorrow or the day after, will be hard to bear.’

  ‘Let us go and swim,’ Lucan suggested. ‘We can buy bathing wear from that shop down by the harbour, and food for a beach picnic. It will save a return trip to the hotel.’

  ‘Ne, kyrie.’ She spoke in her own tongue because she had been thinking in Greek.

  ‘Are you saying no to me, young lady?’ Lucan quirked an eyebrow.

  ‘A Greek yes always sounds a little like a no,’ she ex­plained.

  ‘I must remember that,’ he smiled, wickedly.

  Everyone was at the carnival and they had the beach to themselves. The sea was like a mass of melted emeralds in motion, and they made for the shade of some large rocks to which sea-grape clung, and laid out the rug and the picnic basket which Lucan had hired. Kara, eager to get into the water, ran behind the rocks to change into her swim-suit, a one-piece suit whose straps were very white against her skin that the Greek sun had turned golden long ago. She ran out from the sheltering rocks and down towards the sea.

  ‘Slow boat!’ she tossed over her shoulder, and in an instant Lucan was racing after her. She cried out as she felt the warm snatch of his arms, lifting her as easily as if she were sea-drift.

  ‘Y-you brigand—!’ She twisted and wriggled in his arms, but could not escape, and laughing and merciless he tossed her into the buoyant water of the Caribbean; water as clear as a green jewel, warm on the surface, with cooler depths.

  Green … green as Lucan’s eyes, drowning her for an instant of time, then letting her surface, breathless. Lucan swam around her in a circle, sleek as a sea-tiger, showing his white teeth in a mocking smile.

  ‘You wretch!’ she half laughed, and with easy strokes she swam away from him, silk-sheathed by the water and tensely aware of the man who dived beneath her, whose companionship in and out of the sea had a tingling edge of danger to it.

  Kara was the first out of the water, shaking her hair like a puppy and letting the hot sun dry the sea-water to a salty bloom on her limbs. What an ocean! Fish as bright as butterflies swam in and out of coral honey­combs, ferns of jade, crimson and bronze waved under­water, and sea-anemones spread their petals at the touch of a toe and revealed their hearts.

  Kara sighed and stretched her arms to the sun. She was Greek and she worshipped nature in all its wild loveliness. Her toes curled into the warm sand as Lucan came out of the sea, his brown lance of a body dripping off the water in which he was at home as a pearl pirate.

  ‘That was good.’ He put back his head and seemed to swallow the sun in greedy gulps. ‘Kara, you swim like a boy.’

  ‘So I have been told before.’ Too often, she thought, as she made for the picnic basket. She knelt and opened the basket and took a look at the food inside. A whole roast chicken, tomatoes and slices of pumpkin. A coco­nut and lemon pie. A bottle of wine — but no glasses or cups!

  Lucan threw himself down beside her and for a ting­ling moment she felt his fingers ruffling her hair—as though she were a puppy. ‘Bad management,’ she said pertly. ‘We have wine, Lucan, but no glasses.’

  ‘Then we shall have to drink from the bottle—like pirates.’ His fingers touched the furrow of innocence at the nape of her neck, and she stiffened. ‘Afraid of any man’s touch—or just mine?’ he murmured.

  ‘Having been thrown into the sea, and as unmercifully chased as if by a tiger shark, I am wary of your in
ten­tions, Mr. Savidge.’ She pulled paper plates and toma­toes out of the food basket, and hoped she didn’t look as defenceless as she felt with Lucan so close, teasing her with his green-devil eyes, and being curious about her in relation to other men. There had been only Nikos, and he had never kissed her with passion. Inno­cent, unawakened, she had not known until now that unless there was passion, there was only affection.

  ‘Let me calm your nerves with a little music’ He began to fiddle with the mini-radio, which he had bought as casually as the swimsuit she was wearing, and her beach hat of conical straw. He adjusted the aerial and to the beat of a calypso they tore the cold roast chicken apart and ate hungrily. The wine tasted heady straight from the mouth of the bottle … from Lucan’s lips.

  The trade winds blew softly and rustled the hand-shaped leaves of the palm trees, and the surf lapped the pebbles at the edge of the sands. ‘Mmm, delicious pump­kin.’ Kara ate a slice, her eyes wine-drowsy as she took in the idyllic scene, and the warm vibrancy of Lucan’s hair in the sun.

  The radio music changed, and now there was a jungle beat in it.

  ‘Do you swim often at Dragon Bay?’ Kara asked.

  ‘Sometimes early in the morning, or at night under the stars.’ He stretched out, replete, the tropical sun and sea absorbed through all the hard bone and sinew of him. ‘There are barracuda in our waters, and the break­ers run high. The rocks are like dragon’s teeth, and there is an undertow like the grip of a monster tail.’

  ‘The place hardly sounds like a holiday resort.’ Kara cradled her updrawn knees with her arms, her straw hat tipped over her nose, shielding her eyes and her interest in Lucan’s home which was a day’s trip by river to the other side of the Isle de Luc where there were stretches of wild coastline.

  ‘It takes strong people to live at Dragon Bay,’ he said. ‘The strong — and the ruthless.’

  ‘How did it come by the name of Dragon Bay?’ She tried to speak casually, afraid that he would guess that her interest was not casual.

  ‘Our crest is a scarlet dragon crouched on a bronze shield. Our family motto declares that the Savidge Dragon Guards His Own.’ Kara could feel Lucan look­ing at her with narrowed eyes beneath a crest of hair as bronze as an Irish war-shield. ‘On the mantel in the hall of the Great House stands a golden drinking-cup inlaid with a scarlet dragon which the rebel Savidges—two brothers—brought with them from Ireland. Like all Irish­men they had hearts full of pride and a devil or two, and they were not accepting the bondage of the English. They caused quite a bit of havoc, arid then with the soldiers after them they boarded a ship that was sailing for the Caribbean.

  ‘That ship ran on to the rocks off the north side of this island. The brothers managed to swim ashore, and with them a girl called Maeve, and a dozen Caribs whom the Captain had picked up on the way—to be sold as slaves. Conal and Diarmuid saw how good the soil was above the bay, and they pledged the golden drinking-cup for a piece of land and with the Caribs working for them they planted their first sugar crop. Conal married the girl Maeve, and when the time came for building a house, the brothers set it high above the waters in which they had nearly drowned, and they named the bay after the Savidge dragon.’

  ‘What of Diarmuid, did he not marry?’ Kara asked.

  ‘He was married to the plantations, and he left Conal to found the Caribbean branch of the Savidge family. Maeve died, carrying her fourth child, from a fall down the cliff steps to the bay. Later on another Savidge bride died in the sugar mill when it caught fire. The Savidge dragon seems to bear a grudge against the Savidge brides.’

  Kara gave a shiver in the sun, for Lucan had evoked with Irish imagery the atmosphere at Dragon Bay — strange and brooding; the breakers crashing over the rocks, loud enough to drown the screams of Maeve when she had fallen down the cliff steps long, long ago.

  Pryde had fallen, too.

  ‘Oh, Lucan, look!’ Kara pointed at a crab that was waddling along in a shell that was obviously a cast-off. They laughed together at the comical sight, and then their laughter died away, and Kara’s eyes were made captive by Lucan’s. The sea whispered and the hands of the palm trees beckoned, and then his hands found her and she was pulled down across his sun-hot chest. She fought with him, but his lean body was full of a strength that made struggling with him a breathless futility.

  ‘Don’t do this,’ she begged.

  ‘What am I going to do ?’ he drawled.

  ‘Spoil our friendship.’

  ‘Little fool, is that what it is?’ His arms tightened, then the world spun over and the sand was beneath her and Lucan’s mouth was crushing hers.

  He kissed her as if he wanted to drown out thought, and then he drew away from her and she lay with closed eyes, her mouth wounded by the kiss that had held no tenderness. She trembled as he brushed his lips savagely across her throat.

  ‘For the love of Lucifer!’ His thumb flicked off the tear that rolled down her cheek. ‘Did it hurt that much—did that boy-friend of yours never kiss you ?’

  ‘Not like that,’ she choked. ‘Nikos is not a rough person.’

  ‘Then your Nikos is not yet a man. Faith, do you have to cry?’

  ‘Y-you don’t like to see a woman cry because you are cruel.’

  ‘What a paradox!’ he mocked.

  ‘It’s true. A few tears might touch you, and you are not going to allow that to happen.’

  ‘I am so formidable?’

  Her wet eyes opened and she lay beneath the spread of his shoulders as though thrown to the sand by a corsair. His foxfire hair was rough from the sea and tousled. His eyes leapt green and dangerous. His hard body was with­out a bone of tenderness, brown from the sun and wind and wild waters of Dragon Bay.

  ‘You are the most complicated person I have ever known, Lucan,’ she said. ‘I—don’t think I like you very much.’

  ‘Did I ask you to like me, Kara? Did I give the im­pression that I needed a—friend?’ He was laughing as he pulled her to her feet and brushed the sand grains from her shoulders. His fingertips were slightly rasping, so that when something less rasping touched her shoul­der she knew it to be his lips. So briefly, a flame that came and went.

  ‘What are you thinking?’ He stood in front of her and blocked out the green churning of the sea.

  ‘What do you want of me?’ she asked.

  He tipped her chin with his forefinger and studied her face with eyes gone from green to grey. ‘Does tradi­tion mean anything to you, Kara?’

  ‘Tradition?’ She gazed up at him, perplexed.

  ‘The Savidge tradition has come to mean less to me than it used to, but my brother sets great store by it—and I set great store by my brother.’

  ‘I can understand the love for a brother,’ she said simply.

  ‘But you don’t understand me? I confound you, eh?’

  ‘Too much—’ She pulled away from him and knelt to pack up their picnic. She shook out the rug and folded it, and the music died away as he switched off the little radio. Kara went behind the rocks to dress, and when she came out Lucan had pulled on his slacks and was sliding his T-shirt down over his brown chest. His head emerged, and she saw that he was looking taut-featured and withdrawn.

  A glow was spreading over the sea, as though fire was licking out of the horizon, and when Kara and Lucan reached the end of the harbour they turned in unison to gaze back at the pagan wonder of the sunset, the sea aflame, crimson and gold, and the crests of the palms etched against the glow.

  By the time they reached the hotel, thousands of lanterns had blazed alight in the streets. Laughing groups of people clustered around the food stalls, and tangled balls of streamers and confetti lay underfoot. There was a low throbbing of tom-toms stealing out of the dark … excitement held its breath until the moment when the masked dancing would begin.

  Then the Harlequins would leap, the drums would pound, and Fort Fernand would be as it was in the past—barbaric and gay, everyone living for the moment, lov­ing
tonight and paying the cost tomorrow.

  Kara stood in front of the mirror in her hotel bed-’ room and gazed at the reflection of a stranger. A petite stranger in a full panniered skirt of flowered silk over a froth of petticoats. Her waist looked tiny enough to be spanned by a pair of hands, and the creamy fichu of her blouse was fastened with a little golden lyre. Her winged headdress and Creole earrings intensified the Byzantine shape of her eyes, and excitement flushed her lips and trembled at the edges of them.

  ‘Kara Stephanos, you look almost pretty.’ She curt­sied at her reflection and laughed. ‘Domini and Paul would be proud if they could see you—’

  She caught her breath. What sort of an impression would she make on Lucan, who had kissed her on the beach that afternoon and spoken so strangely about his home and the Savidge tradition ?

  The memory of his kiss, of being at his mercy in his hard brown arms, was so vivid that she could almost feel his lips again and her heart’s invasion by his heartbeats.

  With a rustle of silk and lace she turned away from her mirrored eyes, and her hands trembled as she toyed with the mask she had bought yesterday. To a man like Lucan a kiss did not signify anything beyond mere grati­fication of the moment—or a desire to see how she re­acted. She must remember that at the bal masque to­night. The music, the masks, and the moonlight could go to all heads but hers-.

  She was adjusting her mask when there was a knock on her door. She knew at once that it was Lucan, and for a wild moment she thought of saying she had a head­ache and felt unable to go to the ball. But when she reached the door and opened it, she was lost for words. She could only gaze at him through the openings of her mask.

  He leaned against the wall in a nonchalant attitude, and he wore the motley of Harlequin.

  Silently she handed him the mask she had promised him but before putting it on he appraised her from her winged ‘madras’ to the tips of her dancing slippers, peeping from the hem of her frilly skirt.

  ‘You look charming, petite.’ His smile flashed wickedly. ‘La dame Creole in all her glory.’