Вайолет Уинспир - Dragon Bay

Becalmed, like Lucan, who had possessed her without mercy, without tenderness, as if anger drove him … anger that it was she and not Caprice in his arms. Remembering those hard, terrifying kisses, she hastened her progress up the Dragon’s Stairway. The sudden flutter of a bird caused her pulses to race.

Lucan did not love her, and today she would pack her things and leave the Great House. A house divided because its loyalties conflicted; her slim body wanted only as a bridge across the chasm, to provide a son by Lucan, with hair like flame.

The sun began to rise and the sky flushed and burned like a bride’s blush. She passed beneath the arching bough of the scarlet immortelle trees and there stood the house, gracious, wrapped in early morning stillness, the sun glinting on its many windows and mellowing its walls. A house built by love, and yet haunted by bitterness and pride.

She fingered her throat where Pryde’s necklace had rested … where Lucan’s lips had left a different touch. A scarlet petal dropped from her shoulder to the flagstones of the veranda, and she entered the spacious hall and looked about her with that sense of awe she had felt upon arriving here as a bride.

She ran her fingers over the smooth surfaces of antique mahogany, and as she walked towards the fireplace the great mastiff stirred and stood up. Usually he slept across the threshold of Lucan’s room, but his master had been absent from the house last night.

‘Hullo, Jet.’ She stroked him and he nuzzled her with his great head, as alarming as a black lion to look at, but curiously docile towards those on whom he scented his master. He gave a slight growl, as if questioning her as to Lucan’s whereabouts, and she patted him and smiled wryly.

‘You ask no questions of him, do you, old boy?’ she murmured. Your animal instincts tell you that you need never doubt his love, or fear it.’

She walked across the hall to the great staircase and Jet followed her, a big dark shadow behind her as she made her way to the Emerald Suite.

The rooms of the suite felt cold as she walked through them, and she glanced at the French clock on her mantelpiece and was glad to see that it would soon be time for one of the maids to bring her a cup of hot chocolate with cinnamon. She had caught the morning chocolate habit from Lucan. She liked to ride out in the mornings as he did, and she sighed as she threw open the doors of her wardrobe.

A suitcase was propped open on her bed and clothing was scattered about when she heard Lucan enter the adjoining room. Kara’s heart skipped a beat, and Jet bounded into the other room.

‘Hullo, old son,’ she heard Lucan say. Then the door was pushed wide open and Lucan stood tall just inside the door. Kara felt him with her nerves, and knew his gaze was fixed on her suitcase and the clothing she was folding and packing.

‘What is all this?’ He came in a stride to the bedside.

‘I am leaving you, Lucan.’ She could not brave his eyes. ‘Julius will take me in his boat to Fort Fernand — if you will allow him — and from there I can travel to Martinique and catch a plane for Europe.’

‘Not Andelos?’ he said harshly.

‘Not right away.’ She fought a trembling in her hands as she folded a dress into her suitcase. ‘I wish to be alone for a while—’

‘Do you really?’ Hands gripped her shoulders, and she was swung round to Lucan. His expression was grim, his eyes cold and grey. ‘Do you imagine I will let you walk out in this cool way — as though last night made us strangers instead of husband and wife?’

‘We will always be strangers,’ she threw at him. ‘And if I have a child, Lucan, he will be a stranger to you. He will be brought up in a house of love — my brother’s house — not here at Dragon Bay, where bitterness rules instead of love!’

There was a deathly silence, and Kara had no idea what would have happened if at that moment there had not been a sudden scream and a crash rising from the hall below.

Lucan stared down into Kara’s wide, frightened eyes, and then he let go of her and hastened from the suite. She followed, nerve-torn, and when they reached the bend in the gallery they saw that a chandelier had fallen and broken into a thousand pieces on the floor of the hall.

Shards of crystal were scattered across the polished surface of the floor, and lumps of plaster mingled with shattered woodwork — then as the fog of dust gradually cleared they saw a small red-slippered foot and a small white-clad figure lying amidst the debris.

It was Rue. Elfin Rue in her Sunday dress, the sash torn from her waist and curling on the floor in the dust … scarlet as blood.

‘Rue!’ Kara’s heart quickened with fear and her voice echoed it.

Lucan tore on down the stairs. Doors were opening, servants were running, and Kara saw Pryde sweep out of his study in his wheelchair. His face was stern. Lucan’s was anguished as he bent over that small, debris-smothered figure and began to tear away the lumps of plaster and daggers of glass.

‘What has happened?’ Clare appeared in her working smock, a smear of clay across her cheek.

‘A chandelier has fallen,’ Kara said in a voice that shook. ‘Rue … the little one must have been almost underneath it …’

‘Rue?’ Clare whispered, and she swayed and went as white as her smock. The next moment she was running across the hall to her brother’s side. He was lifting Rue, who lay very still in arms.

There was a hospital at Fort Fernand, but Dr. Fabre decided that it would not be wise to take a concussed child all that way. By road or river the journey was far from smooth.

As a plantation doctor he had a small X-ray unit which was often carried by van to the scene of an accident, and this was brought at once to the house and Rue underwent X-ray examination. There were external contusions, but, heaven be thanked, no sign of a skull fracture, and the doctor attended gently to the cuts and bruises the child had suffered.

‘Let her be nursed in my room,’ said Kara. ‘I think she would like that.’

Kara knew as she spoke that Lucan would think she wished to put as much distance as possible between them. He didn’t look at her when she added that she would use the child’s room, and she hurried upstairs as the doctor attended to his small patient, and bundled into her suitcases the things she had been packing. Then she carried them past the window in which the Golden Lady hovered and into the panelled room which Rue disliked.

Kara unpacked her clothes and put them away in Rue’s wardrobe. She couldn’t leave at this critical time. She was good with sick people, having nursed her Aunt Sophula right up until the end, and Clare had said with a strained and helpless expression, ‘I–I am hopeless with the sick and the hurt.’

Kara was sure that selfishness did not make her speak in that way. That small, bandaged, silent figure unnerved Clare, who was fonder of the child than she cared to admit.

On her way back to the Emerald Suite, Kara paused in the bend of the stairs and caught sight of Clare in the hall below, staring at the shattered chandelier, and then up at the ceiling where a great hole gaped, with torn wires curling out of it.

Workmen would be called into repair the damage and to find out why the chandelier had torn away from the ceiling. Kara gave a cold shiver, for it seemed to her overwrought nerves that a sinister jester was at work at Dragon Bay.

She was about to continue along the gallery when she saw Nils join Clare and wrap an arm about her shoulders. Clare glanced up at him, and Kara saw from here that her face was strained and frightened. Nils bent his head and spoke to her, and as they made their way into the salon, a movement by the study door caught Kara’s eye. A wheelchair glided out from the shadows. Pryde swung it around the pile of debris, and Kara wondered what his thoughts were as he sat looking at what had come terribly close to killing a member of his family.