Вайолет Уинспир: Dragon Bay

‘It hit me, slashed at me like a whip. Close as I was to Pryde, I was brought to my knees that day by the painful realization that we did not share everything. We were home from our school for the holidays and running wild as usual, and I agreed when Pryde challenged me to a climb up the cliffs that rise sheer from the side of Dragon Bay to the crest on which the Great House stands. We always said that one day we would attempt the climb. It was a challenge, and I felt utterly reckless of the consequences — if one of us fell.’

Kara heard the harsh sigh that left the hard lips of this man she had met so strangely. She couldn’t take her eyes from him … her heart felt as though it were beating in her throat, and quite unaware her hand was holding her throat.

‘God’s heaven, if only a point in time could be erased, never to have been.’ Lucan Savidge leaned his arms on the balcony rail and his brooding profile was turned to Kara, hard-boned, with a small crescent of a scar standing out against the tanned skin. ‘Those with Irish blood in their veins have premonitions of trouble, and I had one as Pryde and I began to climb that cliff. Being twins we shared some of our emotions, and Pryde gave a laugh as he swung himself upwards. "You look chickeny," he said. "Want to cry off — little brother?" ‘

‘It was always "little brother" when Pryde was feeling cocky about that hour’s difference in our ages, and I was still choked up from what Da had thrown in my face. "I’ll be first in this if it kills one of us," I threw back at him. I climbed as though I had a whip across my shoulders, and we were three-quarters of the way up, and I had a short lead on Pryde, when — when Pryde had his fall!’

Lucan Savidge swung round to face Kara, and only once before in her life had she seen that expression of naked regret on a person’s face. ‘Pryde fell to the rocks and broke his back,’ he said harshly.

‘Oh no!’ Kara masked her eyes with her hand, for something was in them, a blaze of something she had to hide from this man who told her these things because — like passengers on a ship or a plane — they would not meet again when they parted.

You could never have seen a wild young stag crashing into a net in wildest pain.’ The Irish imagery made the scene unbearably vivid for Kara. ‘Your heart can ache for the strong with much more intensity than for the weak.’

‘Yes, I know.’ She spoke huskily, and remembered the pain of seeing her brother Paul lying helpless in a hospital bed, robbed of his strength, and having that strength put back by the love and the will that blazed in Domini.

‘Your brother did not die,’ she said.

‘No.’ Stamped on the lean brown face was an expression of irony and pain. ‘Fate is the great farceur. It can take a whole man and turn him into half a man within the same time that it takes you or me to take a bite out of an apple. Pryde has the use of his upper body; from the waist down he is helpless.’

‘Dante’s "dark wood midway in the journey of our life",’ Kara murmured. ‘Your story is a terrible one, Mr. Savidge.’

‘And I am a terrible person, eh?’

She looked at him gravely, but could not put into words what she thought. He was pacing the sun-shot balcony, vital and restless as a caged creature — more caged than the brother in his wheelchair, for his was the innocence, this man’s the guilt. It would always be the guilt because he had gone on with the climb; because he had said he would win if it killed one of them.

Jealous as Lucan! He was aptly named.

She jumped to her feet. ‘I–I must go, m’sieur.’ She addressed him that way because she had glimpsed the Gallic in him, wedded to the Gaelic. ‘To say it is a shame about your brother would be inadequate, but don’t — please don’t be too bitter.’

She was making for the stairs that led down to the patio, and then up again to her room, when in a stride he barred her way. ‘You can’t just go,’ he said. ‘We must meet again. Tonight. We’ll dine together — not here at the hotel but somewhere else.’

‘I don’t think it would be wise for us to meet again—’ her dark eyes lifted to his face with its sun-darkened features, a small etching of lines beside the crystal-green eyes, the scar on his cheekbone adding to his diablerie.

‘I think we must.’ His fingers shackled her wrist, and she knew it to be an inescapable grip though his touch was only a promise of steel against her wristbone. ‘Are you afraid of me, Kara — or of yourself?’

‘W-what nonsense!’ The jerk of her heart was in her voice. ‘Please let me go, Mr. Savidge. You have had your fun in keeping me here, and I have listened to you and been sympathetic—’

‘Sympathy?’ he laughed, a flash of scorn in his eyes. ‘Do you think I care two hoots about that? I told you about Pryde’s fall because I wanted you to know exactly the kind of man I am — because I want no secrets between us. We will meet again this evening.’

‘No—’ she tried to wrench away from him, and in an instant, with the strength of the uncaring, he caught her to him and she felt as though her bones would give way.

‘This evening,’ he repeated. ‘Don’t run away, Kara, because if you do, you will always wonder what I might have asked of you.’

‘Why should I wonder, or care?’ Her voice shook with angry fear, and close to him she was aware of a strength and resolution she had never felt in Nikos. ‘Do you think I owe you something because of last night?’

‘Perhaps we owe last night to forces we shouldn’t oppose.’ A smile pulled his mouth to one side. ‘Are you worried about the wagging tongues of Fort Fernand? Running away won’t set them at rest.’

‘It won’t set them at rest if I stay,’ she rejoined.

‘Do you care what other people say about you?’ He tilted back her head with his hand, and his gaze travelled from her eyes to her lips. ‘People have been saying things about me for years. Do you know how I got the scar on my cheek? My own mother lashed me when I ran to the Great House to give the alarm about Pryde. She was in the hall, still in her riding clothes, and she lashed me across the face and said that the Savidge Dragon always took care of his own.’

He laughed, deeply, carelessly, then he let go of Kara and made for the door that led into his room. ‘Go on, little girl, run away,’ he threw over his shoulder.

She ran down the patio steps and up the other side, and she didn’t look back. Safe in her room, with her clothes scattered about, and that reassuring family group on the bed-table, she breathed with shaky relief. She would leave the Isle de Luc today, before she got involved any further with Lucan Savidge.

She was throwing her belongings into the suitcase she had unpacked yesterday, when there was a tap on her door. ‘Entrez!’ she called out.

Nap came into the room, carrying a sealed envelope with her name scrawled across the front of it. ‘You want guide for the day, mam’zelle?’ He handed her the envelope and gazed hopefully at her.

‘No,’ her fingers clenched the envelope. ‘No, I don’t think so, Nap.’

‘Okay. I around if you change yo’ mind.’

Directly the door closed behind Nap, Kara tore open the envelope and withdrew the folded note inside. The writing on it was dark and decisive. ‘Let me at least give you a farewell dinner,’ Lucan Savidge had written. ‘To say good-bye, as the French say, is to die a little.’

There ran through Kara a swift urge to tear the note in shreds, to save herself from another meeting with the unsettling stranger whose face was etched with disturbing clarity in her mind’s eye. Her fingers crushed his note. Why should she care if a stranger went to the devil because of something that had happened when she was still a schoolgirl, running wild with Nikki on the island of Andelos? She had a hurt of her own to get over. …