Вайолет Уинспир - Dragon Bay

Clare gave a visible shiver and pointed a brocade slipper at the fire. Always a fire was lit in the salon of an evening. Pryde felt the cold, and it grew strangely cold in this house at the edge of the sea when night fell.

‘It occurs to me that each one of us in this room has an affinity with the sea.’ Clare gazed around the hushed circle. ‘We Savidges are here because the sea took a ship and tossed our ancestors on to these shores. Kara was born on an island in the Ionian, and Nils has the blood of Viking sea rovers in his veins. Perhaps that is why we listen to the voice of the sea and it seems to speak to us.’

‘You have the imagination of the Irish and the artistic,’ Nils said with a smile. ‘The sea, like love, can be as kind as it can be cruel.’

‘Love?’ she cried. ‘Why bring love into this?’

‘Try keeping love out of anything,’ he rejoined.

Clare frowned at him, and then took into her hands an ornament that always stood on the mantelpiece. A dappled fawn arrowed through the heart, whose outlines she traced with her sculptor’s hands. ‘I sometimes think that I would like to go and live in a thatched house in an Irish glen,’ she said. ‘But Dragon Bay holds too tightly to those born here.’

‘Won’t you go away when you marry?’ asked Nils.

It seemed to Kara that he was provoking Clare to a quarrel; trying to shake her out of her coolness into a passion of some sort. For a moment the fawn trembled in her hand, then she replaced it very carefully and walked towards the double doors. There she stood for a moment, tall, graceful, tawny-haired, made to be loved yet denying herself to a man who, Kara was sure, could have made her happy.

‘Nils, don’t look at me like that,’ she said with a laugh, ‘as if you were trying to shatter me.’

‘You cannot be melted, Clare,’ he said, his eyes glacier blue. You are like the ice princess, and I wonder what it will take to shatter you. You know, Clare, there are volcanoes under ice in the far north. When they erupt the flame turns the ice to water — it runs away like a flood of tears.’

‘I never weep, Nils. I leave that to the women who are foolish enough to love a man.’ She swept him a mocking bow. ‘Goodnight, Sweet Prince.’

The doors closed behind her, and after a restless hesitation Nils said goodnight himself and went out through the veranda doors. His footfalls rang on the steps and faded away into the moonlight, among the trees.

Lucan tossed the end of his cigarette into the fire. ‘The Savidges have a gift for hurting people,’ he said, and the whip scar on his cheekbone seemed to stand out and catch Kara’s eye. ‘And we do it with style. "Goodnight, Sweet Prince." Horatio’s last words to Hamlet, Prince of Denmark.’

‘Poor Kara,’ Pryde was looking at her. You must find us a bewildering clan, half devilish, half fascinating, eh? Like most of the Irish.’

‘I–I try to understand you,’ she said helplessly. ‘I am Greek and we react with the heart, we don’t fight with it.’

She stood up, slender, lost, caught like Nils in the crosscurrents of tension that flowed among the Savidges. She glanced around her, as though seeking a rock to which she could cling, and her glance fell on the chessmen on a nearby table.

‘I will leave you men to your game of chess,’ she said. ‘Who has the black knight in check?’

Lucan stood tall in the lamplight, his brows drawn down like a visor over his eyes, which held a flicker of steel.

‘Lucan does appear to be checking my knight’s progress to the queen.’ Pryde lifted his cigar and he smiled faintly through the smoke. ‘Are you going to try and vanquish me altogether, Lucan?’

Kara gave a shiver, for it seemed to her that there was a strange note of meaning in Pryde’s remark. These twin brothers — once so close — were now combatants in an arena, and the arena was Dragon Bay.

‘Cain, Cain …

From earth to heaven vengeance cries,

For thou hast brought thy brother down.’

Kara ran from the words to the double doors. Lucan with his long stride was ahead of her and opening them with sardonic courtesy. ‘Goodnight, seigneur,’ she threw a rather desperate glance at Pryde. ‘Goodnight. …’ She looked at her husband, but could not say his name. It seemed to catch in her throat, and gathering up her silken skirt she hastened across the hall to the great staircase, and the long mirrors gave back her golden reflection, here, there, a ghost who fled out of them and up the stairs of dark galleon timbers.

Upon reaching the Emerald Suite she looked in on Rue. The child was fast asleep, the night-lamp burning softly beside the bed, and that red-plaited doll tucked beneath the covers beside her, its painted eyes staring in the half-light. Kara’s hands clenched at her sides as she fought an impulse to snatch up the doll and throw it out of the window.

It made her think of black magic … of a cracked ceiling, of a wild scream, of a menace that stalked this house above the dragon-green bay.

She bent over Rue and kissed her russet hair. It smelled like wheat that had been in the sun all day, for Kara and the child had spent hours down on the sands. They both seemed happier away from the house, and Rue had said: ‘I wish we could sleep in the beach house.’

Kara’s face was pensive as she went into the adjoining room and closed the door quietly behind her. She opened the curtains, and the bright moonlight reminded her of the horse and rider she had seen the other night. They had not been ghosts but realities, and tonight in the salon Pryde had asked Lucan if he meant to vanquish him altogether.

Her fingers clenched on her silver worry beads. The desire for power did strange things to people … it unbalanced them, made them incapable of judging right from wrong.

Her gaze lifted to the moon, etched against the dark sky like a golden shield with a corner chipped out of it. The moon waxed full, and someone at Dragon Bay was quite mad!

She tugged the curtains together and hurried over to switch on the bedside lamp, then obeying a sudden impulse she turned the key in the lock of the door that gave on to the gallery. No one could enter the suite with this door locked!

She prepared for bed, and after slipping beneath the covers read again the letter she had found awaiting her on the hall table that afternoon.

It was from her brother. Paul asked her to forgive him for his attitude towards her marriage. He was old-fashioned, and had not realized that Kara was a woman grown, with a mind and a heart of her own. He had hoped that she would find love with a young man of Greece, but he was happy if Lucan Savidge made her happy—

Kara fought back her tears by pummelling the pillows that felt as hard tonight as the stones upon which Jacob had laid his head.

The letter held loving messages from Domini, and from the small, curly-haired boy who wanted to know when Tante Kara was coming home. Oh, how delightful it would have been to see Rue and Dominic together!

She bit her lip painfully hard, for Paul wrote that she must bring her husband to Andelos as soon as possible, and they would celebrate her marriage in true Greek style. There would be lamb stuffed with herbs and roasted over an open fire, curd and honey tarts as big as wheels — the wine and the music would flow.

At the close of his letter, Paul asked again if she was truly happy. Was Lucan Savidge good to her? She had a large heart, Paul wrote simply, and only a big man would fill it.

Her heart lifted on a sigh. One hint to Paul that she was unhappy and afraid, and he would catch a plane to the Isle de Luc and take her away from Dragon Bay to the safety and security of his home on the island of Andelos.