Вайолет Уинспир: Dragon Bay

‘How fascinating.’ Kara’s gaze fell away from his and she sipped at her jasmine tea, aware of the quickening of her pulses, of the magnetism this man could exert when he was in the mood. ‘You must love your home very much,’ she murmured.

‘Can a man without a heart love anything?’

She glanced up, into eyes that were as cool and still as sea-water that holds unimaginable depths and danger. ‘It’s a mistake to think that we know anyone,’ she said, ‘and a presumption to pass judgment on an acquaintance of only a few hours. You must forgive my Greek impetuosity, Mr. Savidge.’

‘Are you often impetuous?’ He signalled their waiter as he spoke, and she assumed that he was about to settle the bill and announce that their farewell dinner was over.

‘I sometimes do things that I don’t stop to think about,’ she admitted. ‘It is in the Stephanos blood — my father married my mother after knowing her only ten days. She was English, but I am mostly Greek.’

Lucan Savidge ran his green eyes over Kara’s long dark hair, pale gold skin, and tiny rings in the lobes of her ears. ‘When the waiter brings our liqueur,’ he said, ‘he will also bring the fortune cards. The Chinese are great believers in omens and portents — are the Greeks?’

‘But of course.’ She gave a slightly nervous laugh, for at the fair last night a dark sibyl had forecast a strange meeting that had come about. A meeting with a man whose hair in the lantern light held glints of fire; whose rebel ancestors had clawed what they had out of the very earth and set their nest high, like eagles.

Their Chinese waiter brought the fortune cards to the table, and there was a rattle of a bead curtain as Mr. Yen reappeared, solemn as a Mandarin. He poured their liqueur from a lovely old stone bottle and handed one cup to Kara and the other to her companion. They drank in unison, and then they each took a card from the pack and placed it on the table for Mr. Yen to interpret.

It was an intriguing game and nothing more, Kara told herself, but all the same her heart beat fast and her eyes dwelt wonderingly on the oriental figure in the wide-sleeved gown. ‘I see a feast of lanterns in the house of the dragon,’ he murmured. ‘Tell me, young lady, do you expect soon to attend a wedding?’

‘A — wedding?’ Her fingers clenched around her wine cup. ‘It has already taken place, Mr. Yen. I could not attend because it took place a long way from where I live.’

Mr. Yen tapped her fortune card with a long index nail, and then he nodded. ‘Yes, some of the lanterns are dark, so someone has wept.’ With a swift movement he turned Kara’s card face down and gave his attention to that of Lucan Savidge, who sat regarding the procedure with a sardonic expression in his eyes.

‘Am I to be wedded, or wept over?’ he murmured, with his sideways pull of a smile. ‘Both would be unique procedures.’

‘I fear that you have chosen the gambler’s card, Mr. Savidge. You must choose another—’

‘No.’ Lucan Savidge shook his head and gave a laugh that held a note of savagery. ‘Fate’s a tiger, Mr. Yen, and something tells me tonight not to look it in the teeth.’

‘As you wish.’ Mr. Yen bowed and swept the cards all together. ‘I hope the humble service and food of the Painted Lantern did not disappoint either of you?’

‘The meal was out of this world, Mr. Yen, and the service beyond reproach.’

‘It was delicious,’ said Kara with a shy smile. ‘I shall take away a fascinating memory when I leave the Isle de Luc’

A few minutes later she and Lucan Savidge left behind them the soft lights of the Painted Lantern, and the scent of frangipani, a flower out of pagan temples.

They walked along the waterfront, where the rigging of a sloop was ablaze with fairy lights and noisy with song and laughter. A party was in progress and Kara could see couples dancing together on the deck, some cheek to cheek, others apart in the modern manner, swinging their hips to the Caribbean rhythm.

‘Well,’ said Lucan Savidge, ‘what do you think of the Caribbean?’

‘It is colourful, interesting — and unexpected.’ The music died away behind them, and he gave her a hand down some shadowy steps to the beach. The sands crunched beneath their shoes, and the moonlight hung in the crests of the palm trees, slender and always slightly bowed before the wind gods.

‘But all the same you intend to leave.’ He bent and picked up a conch-shell and she heard his fingers scraping at the sand on it. ‘Will our unexpected encounter be among the memories you spoke of taking away with you?’

‘Yes,’ she said honestly. ‘How could I forget this morning, or this evening at the Painted Lantern? Or a man with unhappy memories?’

‘The deeper the scar, the harder grows the skin,’ he mocked. He handed her the empty conch-shell and told her to hold it to her ear. ‘What do you hear?’ he asked.

‘The sea in huge breakers, pounding,’ she said after a moment.

‘Like the sea beyond Dragon Bay,’ he murmured.

‘Why do you stay at the Hotel Victoire when your home is at Dragon Bay?’ she asked curiously.

‘I have been on a trip, and I go home next week by Carib raft.’ He slanted her a smile, his face lean and rakish in the moonlight, his eyes a haunting green. ‘Sounds primitive to you, perhaps, but the journey to our bay is always made in the old way. It is part of the Savidge tradition; a need in the blood to cling to the colourful and to repudiate the machine age.’

‘I can understand,’ she said. ‘Back home in Greece I love all the old ways. The goat-boy piping in the hills. The olive harvest and the engagements that always seem to follow. Swimming at night in the purple-dark water and grabbing handfuls of reflected stars.’

‘The Caribbean at night is like champagne to swim in.’ He stood tall beside Kara, gazing out across the water, and her glance was free to roam the moon-etched line of his profile. Boldly defined, with a rebel’s mouth that never smiled without irony. His hair a helmet of bronze, his strong throat merging into a deep chest against which long ago he would have carried a bull-hide shield. …

Odd thoughts, which caused her to be suddenly aware of their isolation on this beach. They had wandered a long way from the lights of the town, and there are few things more intimate than a honey moon above water, and a girl alone with a man who slightly unnerves her.

‘We should start walking back,’ she suggested. ‘It’s late, and I intend to leave early tomorrow—’

‘Don’t leave.’ He swung to face her, and he wasn’t smiling or coaxing, or looking anything but rather harsh. ‘Don’t run away from the Isle de Luc because of other people and what they may think.’

‘It isn’t that,’ she protested.

‘Is it me?’ He came a step closer, and Kara had to fight not to retreat from his tall, arrogant figure. ‘Or is it that you’ve cocooned yourself from more hurt, and I look the sort who hurts?’

‘Nikos did not mean to hurt me,’ she defended him quickly. ‘It was just that his heart wanted someone else — hearts are like that, they open a little way to some, and all the way to others.’

‘And with your heart left empty, you are now roaming through the Caribbean enjoying a little martyrdom?’ he said sarcastically. ‘Empty rooms invite cobwebs and echoes, Kara, and you strike me as too vibrant and alive to want an unfulfilled emptiness inside you.’

She shivered, and saw the loneliness of the sea, still and sobbing a little under the distant caress of the moon. Nikki, cried her heart, why did you take me half-way into your heart and then reject me?

‘Wherever you go,’ said Lucan Savidge, ‘the memories will follow. I know.’