Вайолет Уинспир - Dragon Bay

‘Close them,’ Lucan said impatiently, and she did so, pulling over the jalousies the tropical birds and blooms worked in gay colours on the curtains. The room at once looked cosier, and she sat down facing Lucan at the circular bamboo table.

The soup was spicy and warming, and though his abrupt changes of mood were unnerving, she was glad to be in here out of the storm. Moths fluttered around the lamps and beat their wings against the storm glass, and the smell of soup, rum and paraffin mingled to make a primitive scent.

‘Do you think the family has guessed that we are safe in the beach house?’ she asked, biting into a buttered biscuit piled with crab meat.

‘I used to spend nights down here — in the old days. Care for another shot of buccaneer’s cocktail?’

She shook her head and watched the rum glint in the lamplight as he poured a shot for himself. His eyes now were flashes of peridot, and his hair had dried into a sea-rough crest above his beaky features. He looked at home with a buccaneer’s cocktail in his hand, his shirt open at the throat that was firm as teak.

Kara gave a jump as a tree crashed, only yards it sounded from the veranda of the beach house. The sea and the wind were howling together as if trying to outdo one another in fury. ‘The poor old palm trees are taking a beating,’ she said. ‘Do these storms last long, or do they blow themselves out in an hour or so?’

He didn’t answer directly, and she glanced up from her plate and caught the mockery in his gaze. ‘It might be hours before this one blows itself out. It might last a night — who knows?’

A night of storm. A night alone with Lucan. Her heart beat furiously, for here there was no door to close between them!

‘Have some persimmons?’

He had opened a tin of the plum-like fruits, but her appetite was satisfied and she rose from the table and walked across to the book shelf. If they were going to be here for hours, a book might help to pass the time more easily. She studied the titles, then took one and sat down in a wicker chair. She opened it and tried to shut from her mind the fact that she and Lucan had not been alone like this since their wedding night in the forest.

‘It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.’

She gazed blindly at the words as there drifted to her across the room the smoke of a cheroot. Lucan had stretched his long frame in a planter chair, and an hour ticked by as the storm raged on.

‘You seem to have found an interesting book,’ Lucan said lazily.

‘A book of plays by Oscar Wilde,’ she said without looking up.

‘The wise and witty Irishman. The Irish, Kara, often mask their tragic souls with the blarney. Did you know that?’

‘Are you trying to tell me that you have a tragic soul?’ she asked.

He merely gave a soft and cynical laugh. ‘I can ride a horse and row a boat, and go into the fields and cut cane with the men. I can walk the Dragon’s Stairway, and hold a woman in my arms — but Pryde can do none of these things. He is the one with the tragic soul, eh?’

She thought of Pryde, surrounded by inanimate things of beauty, the lamplight on the ash-grey of his hair. She glanced across at Lucan and saw the foxfire in his hair.

‘You do everything for Pryde,’ she said. ‘You give up things for your brother, but I sometimes think that you wish yourself a thousand miles from Dragon Bay, and that you only stay—’

‘To salve my conscience?’

‘Please don’t make me answer that question, Lucan.’

‘Why not? We are alone, surrounded by the elements. Never was there a moment more ripe for confession and the truth.’ He swung his legs to the floor and leaned forward, the smoke from his cheroot narrowing his eyes. ‘You regret our marriage, don’t you? You find yourself tied to a man you can’t love.’

You talk to me of love!’ She gave a scornful laugh. ‘Must I love a man who loves another woman? I think not! I am a Greek and too proud for that.’

‘Pride!’’ He surged to his feet and seemed to tower over Kara. ‘I’ve had about all I can stand of pride. My mother had it — she was so certain that to be a Savidge was the next best thing to being a king that she let my brother and me behave like little tin gods. We rode wildly on half-broken horses; we played around with the heart of every girl that crossed our paths — Kara, do you think I was the only Savidge who ever did a wrong thing? Do you imagine that Pryde was always a martyred saint?’

Kara stared at her husband and saw a small raw flame flickering in the depths of his eyes. There was a look of barely controlled emotion about him, a leashed quality, and in the silence between them she heard the hiss of rain on the roof and the clamorous clash of the waves against the shore.

Was it the sound of the storm that drove her to her feet, or was it the raking look that Lucan gave her as she clutched the amber necklace Pryde had given her?

He walked to the door and for a wild moment she thought he was going out into the storm, then he turned and stood with his back to the door. ‘That necklace belonged to Luella Savidge,’ he said quietly. ‘It was around her neck when they put out the fire at the old mill and found her smothered by smoke in the bell-turret. Did Pryde tell you?’

She shook her head, and suddenly she hated Lucan for telling her. She put up her hands and struggled with the clasp. ‘Y-you hate him giving me anything,’ she gasped. ‘You are jealous of him — you always have been—’

There she broke off as Lucan moved. The room seemed darkly filled with him as with a terrifying violence he reached out and broke the necklace. The golden flowers scattered to the floor, and her nape was bruised by the broken clasp. She watched in horror as Lucan put his heel on the amber flowers and tried to crush them, and then like a wild thing she made for the door and wrenched it open. The wind and the rain blew in and she was about to escape when Lucan caught hold of her, and kicked the door shut again.

He spun her around like a doll, and never had she seen him look so devilish. A quiver shook her from her neck-bone to her knees — she would have fallen but for the sudden grip of his arms. You are keen to please Pryde, eh?’ he taunted. ‘Very well, we will give him the one thing that he wants so badly — we will give him this.’ The fire of Lucan’s mouth was against her throat. ‘And this.’

He lifted her and carried her across the room, and his eyes were purely sea-coloured and she was drowning in them as he put out the lamps.

The storm had spent itself in the night, and a deep stillness hung over the morning, not yet bird broken.

Kara stirred, and it was as though she had slept deeply in the hot sun and could not recall her name, or what bound her to the bed. Then she realized that it was a bare brown arm, and her fingers slipped free of the dark fire of Lucan’s hair, as if burned. She gazed at his face as she lifted his arm from across her body. So still, so withdrawn, so that once again he was the stranger, the man unknown.

She slipped from his side and dressed in the dawn light — the curtains were open and blowing a little, and she remembered that when the thunder had died away Lucan had risen and opened the curtains and the jalousies. Then he had returned to her side and she had fallen asleep. …

She zipped her trews, and made her way out of the beach house, standing a moment on the steps to get a grip of herself. She swallowed the pain of the tears she ached to give way to, and walked away from the beach house, the heels of her sandals leaving a trail in the damp sand.

Moisture clung to the bushes of wild coconut, and over everything hung a veil of freshness after the downpour. The sea purred like a cat that had wrought mischief and was now lying still and innocent.