Вайолет Уинспир: Dragon Bay

With a swish the tent flaps closed together, and Kara tilted her chin in scorn. ‘Well, it’s a change from being dark and handsome,’ she said. ‘Come, Nap!’ The boy fell into step beside her as she hastened away from the fair. They didn’t speak on the way back to the hotel, and then in the lobby Nap gave Kara a curious look.

‘You leaving Isle de Luc, mam’zelle?’ he asked.

‘Of course not.’ She turned at the foot of the stairs to look at him in surprise, the key to her room in her hand. ‘Will there be bath water tonight, Nap? Nice warm bath water?’

He nodded. She smiled and told him to run off to bed.

‘Goodnight, mam’zelle.’ He gazed at her with his big dark eyes, the edges of his jeans halfway up his shanks, his check shirt slipping half off his thin young shoulders.

‘Kale nichta, Napoleon.’ She made her way upstairs to her room on the second floor, which had a gilt 16 nailed to the door. She felt tired but restless, and knew that only a warm bath would make it possible for her to sleep. She reached the second floor and took note of each number on the bedroom doors as she passed them. The corridor was very quiet and she had a feeling most of the rooms were unoccupied. The bathroom was situated at the end of the corridor, and she heard plainly the sound of the shower as she unlocked her door and switched on the light of her room.

She hoped the occupant of the shower would not be long, and was in her bathrobe when a door slammed along the corridor. It was a rather arrogant slam, as though the person involved did not trouble much about disturbing the dreams of other people. Kara stood holding her sponge-bag and bath-towel, then she opened her own door and listened for the sound of the shower. All was still and quiet, and switching out her light she left the moon in occupancy of her room and went along to take a bath.

The user of the shower had splashed energetically and, left large wet footprints all over the dark tiling of the floor. A man, Kara thought, shaking her head as she turned the tap of the old-fashioned tub and sprinkled pine-scented crystals into the steaming water. She breathed deeply of the pine, and was wafted in imagination to the woods of Andelos, where pine trees grew in abundance, tall and aromatic.

Tears filled her eyes and she blinked them away impatiently. Even if she had wanted to leave the Isle de Luc, her brother’s yacht had left and she was committed to the impulse which had brought her ashore. She must stay tonight, at any rate, and a pine-scented soak would induce the good night’s rest she needed.

Almost an hour later, pink and sleepy, she yawned her way out of the bathroom and made for Number 16. Ah, there it was. She had not locked her door and upon slipping inside she tossed off her bathrobe without bothering to switch on the light. The moon cast enough of a glow for her to feel her way into the nearest of the single beds. Tiredness clung to her senses like cobwebs, and with a little sigh of relief she settled down to sleep, slim and lost beneath the pavilion of tropical netting.

A travelling clock ticked on the table between the two beds, and there wafted in from the balcony of the room the smoke of a cheroot, but Kara did not smell it. And when in a while a tall figure loomed against the moonlight, she wasn’t aware. She slept on — a small figure lost beneath cloudy netting — unseen by the man who tossed off his pyjama jacket and slid beneath the netting of the other twin bed.

K ARA awoke suddenly. Fingers had rapped the door and now it opened arid a voice said: ‘Your morning coffee, m’sieur.’

The figure of a waiter appeared outside her netting, then he was between the beds and Kara drew aside the netting to let him see that she was not a m’sieur. She was about to reach for the cup of coffee, when to her utter consternation the netting of the other bed parted and a muscular male arm reached out for the cup and saucer. A tousled head and a broad pair of shoulders appeared at the same time, and Kara felt a shock to her marrowbone as she met the eyes of the man in the bed.

His eyes were a diamond-hard grey with green fires at their depths. They held her motionless as they flicked. her hair, her mouth, the open collar of her pyjamas, and came back again to make captives of her immense Greek eyes. ‘Another cup of coffee for the young lady,’ he said calmly to the waiter.

‘Of course, m’sieur.’ A knowing smile flitted across the waiter’s face. The door closed behind him, and Kara was alone with the lordly stranger whose dark red hair curled close to his scalp, and who looked as though he had never been embarrassed in his life.

‘How unexpected.’ He spoke in French, though she had the feeling he was not a Frenchman. ‘A guest for breakfast.’

Kara sat gaping at him as though he were speaking Hottentot, and then her voice came back with a rush. ‘This is my room,’ she gasped. ‘What do you think you are doing in it?’

‘I am sorry to contradict a lady,’ he looked sorry about nothing, and his smile was dangerous, ‘but this happens to be my room. Take a look around you.’

She did so and alarm flooded her. There was a man’s white shirt thrown carelessly over the back of a chair, brushes and belongings on the dressing table that were undoubtedly masculine, and no happy family photograph on the bed-table. A blush of intense confusion ran from Kara’s throat to her temples.

‘I’m so sorry—’ She started to scramble out of the bed she had no right in, and in a voice like the flick of a whip he ordered her to stay where she was. His grey-green eyes were on her feet, poised like startled birds just above the floor.

‘What absurdly small feet,’ he said, and then his eyes were raking her lingering blush. ‘You are not an amoureuse, I take it?’

‘Are you disappointed?’ she flashed. ‘This is a genuine mistake, m’sieur. I–I must have mistaken the number of your door for mine.’

‘My number is nineteen. What is yours?’

‘Sixteen.’ Her eyes were like those of a trapped forest creature as she watched him swing out of bed and stride in bare feet and torso to the door. He swung it open and took a look. Then he laughed. It was deep-throated, devilish, as though he enjoyed a situation that put other people at his mercy.

‘The number o, must have been loose,’ he drawled. ‘It has dropped down and it looks like a G — all the same, young lady, you are not leaving my room just yet.’

‘W-what do you mean?’ She scrambled instinctively behind the bedclothes as the door snapped shut and he stood with his back to it, tall, with wide ranging shoulders and a deep chest. His waist and hips were lean in comparison … there was a rampant maleness about him, a sun- and wind-browned look of a man who spent most of his life in the open air.

‘If you were a gentleman,’ Kara could feel her toes curling beneath the bedcovers, ‘you would let me return to my room this instant—’

‘Don’t you think I look a gentleman?’ His left eyebrow quirked wickedly above mocking green eyes, and as Kara looked at him a pulse beat quickly under the clear honey skin of her throat.

‘You look as though you could be a devil,’ she gasped, ‘but a waiter is on his way with another cup of coffee — and I have a good pair of lungs for screaming.’

‘How Victorian and amusing, coming from a girl who has just spent the night in a stranger’s bedroom,’ he mocked. ‘I don’t think the waiter would be very impressed by your screams — being a Frenchman he would assume that it was a little late for you to be rescued. Que c’est risque, little one, to get involved with Lucan Savidge. The people of the Isle de Luc will tell you that he asks mercy of no one, and gives none in return.’