Вайолет Уинспир - Dragon Bay

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 There was a withdrawn air about him, as though he had received a recent blow that was hurting him.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 candlelight 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?’