look almost wistful touched the lean Italian face that turned to her.
'Go, then.' He wasn't going to persuade her, or force her to enter the house with him. He mounted the front steps and took from his coat pocket a bunch of keys, but he didn't unlock the door right away. By the side of it, attached to the wall, was an old-fashioned horn, such as might have been seen in the porchways of old English castles, and taking it by the chain he blew on it and at the hollow, booming sound Dina expected all the hounds of hell to come running.
Unexpectedly she laughed and followed him up the steps. 'All right, I'm sold on a sightseeing tour, Mr Ventura. You've piqued my curiosity, but I can't stay long—will you have the name changed? The challenge part is fine for you, but not the Adam, somehow.'
"Not foreign enough, eh?' He glanced into her eyes with a look of amused irony. 'I daresay my house will soon be christened the Villa Mafioso by the local bucks.'
'I—I didn't mean anything like that,' she flushed slightly. 'I meant that Adam is rather tame for you—you'd never let anyone make a fool of you, least of all a woman.'
'Man was made to be tempted, Dina, otherwise that little drama wouldn't have taken place in Eden.' As he spoke he swung open the pair of tall doors opening into the hall, and there on the threshold Dina hesitated, feeling compelled, yet feeling as if fate were at her heels.
'Will you be living here alone, or have you a-?'
I'm unmarried.' He closed the doors as she fol-
lowed him inside and the gloom and dust of the place settled around them. 'But were you wondering if I had an inamorata?'
'I was betting on it,' she retorted. 'That I'd bring a mistress to Adam's Challenge and really set the matrons on fire with indignation?' He gave a short, hard laugh and strode across to a large oak sideboard which had been partly uncovered from a dusty sheet. Candles stood there in tarnished holders and he lit them with his lighter, moving it back and forth across the wicks until they smoked and burst into flame. One of them burned with almost a blue flame and Dina stared at it, and then glanced around the hall, which towered upwards past the galleries until there was nothing but shadow.
'Take one of these, for the shutters are still up in most of the rooms.' The play of the candle flames deepened the crevices in his face and his deep-throated voice fluttered the bright smoking tongues as he handed her one of the holders. She took it and followed him across the hall into a large, bow-fronted room.
T plan to use this as my dining-room, and the one that matches it as the living-room.' He held aloft his candlestick and played the fluttering light over walls hung with faded olive-green velvet; a large room with a gloom of its own, whose secrets were locked in its cupboards and lost in the folds of faded brocade at the windows. Each creak of a floorboard seemed to betray the presence of a ghost, and as Dina stepped on to the carpet, spotted with moth-holes and heavy with dust, she gave a sudden sneeze.
'Bless your mother,' he murmured. 'As they say
in Italy.'
Dina refused to look at him and gazed instead at the Chippendale table which had been uncovered from its dust sheet, nicked and scratched, and obviously vandalised by a writer who had also carved his own woodcuts.
'Oh, what a pity,' she said. 'It looks genuine, and Adam Penrose has treated it like a schoolboy's desk.'
'Most of the furniture is excellent, but it hasn't been cared for,' he agreed. 'That sideboard against the wall is also antique, but at some time or other a candle Has fallen over and burned the wood. Can't you imagine a cluster of silver chafing dishes on it?'
'Muffins, kippers, and farmhouse eggs,' she murmured.
'The other room is even more evocative. Come and see, Dina.'
She followed him through the double doors into the adjoining room, where the chairs and sofas were robed in grimy white sheets and turned into ghost furniture. Here there was a strangely haunting smell, like the scent of damp violets, and the long mirrors had been turned to the wall.
'Who would have done that?' Dina all but whispered.
'Someone who had reason to fear storms,' he replied. 'The Penrose couple were not American, you know. I was told they came originally from Cornwall, which I understand is the land's end of the British Isles. Something tragic happened to their daughter and it sent the woman quietly but harmlessly crazy. Come, I think I found the daughter when I came here the other day, in one of the upstairs rooms.'
Like a pair of conspirators they made their way
to the staircase which.curved away into the gloom of the galleries, with a fine blackwood balustrade that would gleam like ebony when it was finally cleaned and polished. Raf Ventura mounted that sweep of stairs with the grace and control of a jungle cat, but Dina could feel the faint quiver in her legs at knowing herself so alone with him in this big dark house, with a belt of trees all around to render it strangely quiet and isolated. Not a soul knew that she was here, and by now the hunt would be over and the hunters would be riding home to tea. Bay would search for her and not find her, and all the time she was with the man whom Bay and Bella had both decided was an outsider; someone she had been told to keep away from.
He flung open a door and their candle flames lit sections of the bedroom and left other parts of it in velvety shadow. He walked across to the fireplace and played his candle flame over the portrait that loomed above the mantelpiece, leaning out from the wall in its heavy carved frame. It showed a running girl, her dress swept sideways into a gale of transparent silk. The dress had a low neckline that left her shoulders exposed, and her hair, yellow as hazel pollen, was twisted away from her brow and secured by a ribbon ... there was a certain wildness to the painting and the girl, something elemental and strange.
'They say she was gazing into a mirror when lightning suddenly came into the room and struck the glass. A shard flew into the girl's throat, just where the main artery beat beneath her bare skin. The parents found her dead when they returned from a seance which the mother had desired to attend. It happened a long time ago, before they
came to America and came to live in this house.'
Dina couldn't take her eyes from the portrait, from the stare of the lifeless eyes, painted almost too bright a blue.
'Aren't you afraid of ghosts, signore?'
'I'm Latin, so I believe in them.'
'Then-?' She gave a half-gesture, as if to
question his wisdom in choosing a house which had been lived in by a couple who would always have been haunted by the sad and terrible memory of their daughter's strange death. It was as if there had been something elemental in the girl, and that some god of the elements had taken her for his own; a dark god desirous of the golden girl with eyes that might have been plucked from among the speedwells.
'I wonder what her name was?' Dina murmured. 'Amarantha, the flower that never fades.' 'How-?'
'I never take anything on chance, Dina. A shrewd gambler always finds out all he can about the game before he decides to lay out his money.'
'I see, so even when you had heard the story you still went ahead and bought the place.'
'I wanted a well-built house, one that neglect might make dusty but not decrepit.' He glanced around, playing candlelight over finely panelled walls that would gleam like dark bronze armour once polish and elbow grease had been applied to them. 'I wanted a bargain, naturally, and I wanted a house in this part of California—not to join your coterie, so don't mistake me, but because there's a certain quality here which hasn't been ruined as yet by the encroachment of the box builder. Had I not bought Adam's Challenge, then your god-
mother might have had another complaint—that a speculator had moved in and blighted the neighbourhood with his jerry-built bungalows.'
'That's true, Bella felt quite convinced that it would happen and she has already spoken to Bay's father about the possibility.'
'Senator Bigelow, eh? A man of influence for a father-in-law?'
'Yes.' A guarded look came into Dina's eyes and she turned to a table be
side the tall-posted bed with its sheeted mattress, and fingered a brocaded box that stood there. She lifted the lid and at once the ghostly bedroom was filled with a tinkling music. Dina didn't recognize the tune, which was in fact The Floral Dance. 'Oh, a musical box, and it still plays after all this time!'
T tinkered with it the other day,' he said drily. 'I imagine that pose of Amarantha was taken from the Floral Dance—she looked as if she danced a lot.'
Dina glanced at the portrait and then back to his face. 'You're charmed by her, aren't you, signore} Is that why you aren't afraid of her ghost?'
'It is the memory of her ghost that haunts this house,' he said, 'and I don't think I need fear that she will suddenly appear on the stairs, or facing me at my dining table when I eat alone. In any case she would be a charming visitation, eh?'
'Dancing in through your door to the tune from her musical box. It is an evocative house, but won't you notice how solitary it is when you take time off from your busy life to come and play host to your charming ghost? Or do you plan to bring friends here; business associates and their wives?'
'And become a kind of Gatsby?' he drawled
"Throwing wide my doors to the lively crowd, a man of mystery with a past ... falling in love, perhaps, with a girl of class who belongs to someone else?'
As he spoke he lounged against a tall oaken post of the bed and kept his gaze intently upon Dina's face. She glimpsed the danger in his eyes, like a flame that might suddenly blaze and engulf her.
T have to go.' She made so quickly for the door that the flame of her candle blew out, plunging her into a pool of shadow. He came to her, tall behind her, and led her along the gallery to the stairs. Dusk had fallen quickly, as it did in the fall of the year, and when they reached the courtyard the sky had turned a deep purple, the colour of nightshade berries.
Dina drew in a deep breath, half of relief, but mostly to take in the evening air, so richly alive with the fragrances of his wild and rambling garden.
'What excuse will you make for being the tardy huntress?' he drawled. 'You won't tell the truth, of course. You won't tell your godmother that you spent time with the man who has been warned never to show his face at Satanita, and when you get safely home you'll wonder how you dared to be alone with him.'
'Yes,' she admitted, almost surprised into the truth because he had led her outside with courdy attention, playing the perfect host to his guest. 'Has no one ever been so good to you that you wouldn't dream of hurting them?'
'Of course,' he said drily. I had parents and didn't just arrive in a puff of a crimson smoke.'
'Won't they be living here with you? It's a big house.'
'They live in Milan and are happy to be home in Italy.'
'I see. Have you no brothers or sisters?'
'You sound quite concerned for my loneliness,' he drawled. 'My sister Rosaria is married to a Cuban planter and she resides there. My other sister Aragona is a Sister of Mercy in a hospital in Central America. In their separate ways they are happy women with their own lives to lead—they are fully aware that their brother can take care of himself.'
'Are they younger than you, Mr Ventura?'
'By five and six years.' He gave a brief smile, a mere glimmer of white teeth in the gloom of the courtyard. 'Each member of my family has the wish dearest to his or her heart, and so let us leave it at that. Loneliness is a rare thing, or a raw thing. I've been often too busy to assess its possibilities or its pains, and I do assure you that I am not one of your gregarious Italians.'
She smiled a little. 'You've given your family the things they want, and so now you've bought yourself a toy.'
'You could say that—perhaps I should re-name the house Ventura's Toy, eh?'
'Just Ventura,' she said. 'That sounds right to me, with just the right note of—of possession.'
'You were going to say arrogance, were you not?'
'Perhaps.' Her skin flushed in the coolness of the evening air. 'You must be a disconcerting man to work for, the way you worm out one's thoughts with a twist of the pin.'
'My office is known as Dante's Inferno, or so I've
heard it whispered among the staff.'
Chutzpah, she thought. Cool, outrageous nerve, and the electric communication of danger. Anyone who worked for him would have to be on their toes all the time, but it would be exciting, for things would get done, ideas would achieve fruition and like his Sun Tower they would flourish and spread their wings.
'Did you sigh?' he murmured. 'No—perhaps. It's been a strange day, for I never expected it to end this way. I hope you'll be happy in your house, signore, with its memories of Amarantha whom the storm god came and took.'
'I'm glad that's how you see it, but you would take the romantic view, eh?' Then, before she could move away and swing into Major's saddle, Raf Ventura placed both hands on her waist and prevented her from moving. She felt a half-frightened thrill at his unexpected touch, something she wanted to prolong and yet pull away from.
'You hoped we wouldn't meet again, didn't you, Dina? No, there's no need to confirm or deny what I say, for we speak without speaking and you know it.'
'Please, Raf, let this be the last time. I've been forbidden to see or talk to you and I obey Bella because she has been truly good to me—my life could have been a disaster without her intervention. She gave me security, and kindness, and she shared Satanita with me. I owe her too much to risk it—in this way.'
Dina could feel the quick beating of her heart as she stood close to Raf's tall, dark figure and felt his strong hands holding her. She wouldn't pull away from him, for that might unleash temper, violence,
passion ... it was the passion she most feared, for she didn't know what her own response would be if he started to kiss her.
As she spoke there came the abrupt and painful grip of his hands, pulling her to him until his hard muscles pressed into her.
'Raf ... I'm sure you know women far prettier, far more willing than I am—what is it about me? Why do you do this? Oh, not because of the caviare you had to share with the fishes?' She tried to laugh, but it came out too shakily for that and died into a frightened gasp as he bent his tall head and she felt his breath on her skin.
'Has anyone ever told you, I wonder, that you have sensuous eyes?' Then, in a silence like something in a dream, he laid a kiss against each amber eye, closing them one by one. 'And now I send you home, and whether or not we meet again, madon-nina, is in the hands of chance.'
'No,' she shook her head at him and the lids of her eyes still felt the pressure of his lips, 'it isn't chance, but you—you have a devil that drives you and I'm afraid of what you'll let that devil do to me. Please, don't wreck my life! Don't make me— hate you!'
'Hating me, or loving me, is not at the command of your will, or mine.' He pressed his hands against her body, and then released her. He unhitched Major and held the stirrup firm while Dina mounted and took the reins.
You will be safe, riding home alone?' He gazed up at her and now the stars were out she could see the lean strength of his jawline, the thrust of his Roman nose, the black eyebrows above the glint of his eyes.
'Major won't unseat me in the dark woods,' she said. 'I was lost in my thoughts this afternoon, and I think you spooked him.'
'Have you nothing nice to say to me, Dina?' 'Only goodbye, signore.' 'Then goodbye, signorina. Addio!' Major's hooves rang on the flagstones and she didn't look back ... somehow she couldn't look back to see Raf Ventura standing alone on the steps of the house. His car was there, a gleam of chrome and Roman bronze bodywork, and he would lock up Amarantha's ghost and drive swiftly home to Las Palmas, to his penthouse in the Sun Tower. Their lives had no real meeting point, except for that awareness which had flashed between them, electric as the signalling of the night moths that flew among the dark trees. It held that heady quality attached to the forbidden, except that it wasn't in Dina to take the dolce jar niente attitude.
Doubtless he could take such an attitude, to e
njoy and not worry, but she owed a debt of gratitude and meant to repay it, taking into account the years of good schooling, the pleasurable trips with Bella, and most of all the security that no raffish entrepreneur was going to jeopardise ... his dark fascination had to be swept from her mind.
She and Major left the woods behind them and came out on the sweep of hills that led homeward. Galloping along like this in the magical stillness of the evening, under a skyful of stars, had a keen enjoyment to it that she dared not fathom. The wind was in her hair because she had laid down her hat somewhere in Raf Ventura's house and had forgotten to pick it up, and for a while she seemed to have the world to herself ... Dina the huntress, she
thought with a smile, who when she arrived home would have to be ready with a plausible excuse for having deserted the foxhunt, and her fiance.
Somehow she wasn't surprised when she swung from the saddle in the stable yard at Satanita to be hailed by Bay, emerging from a side door where the light of a wall lantern fell across his face and showed her the anxiety and traces of anger in his eyes.
'Where have you been?' he demanded. 'We've been almighty worried about you I'
T was unseated,' she handed Major to a young groom. 'My own fault for day-dreaming, and the mettlesome boy trotted off in search of some juicy grass. I had to hunt around for him and before I knew it dusk had fallen. Anyway, we're home safe and sound-'
'That isn't the point, Di.' Bay caught hold of her and hustled her into the house. Some of the others noticed you were missing and made a few comments—you don't do these vanishing acts on purpose, do you? You went missing the last time we were out, but only during the kill. This time you really had me worried—I had an image of you being thrown and lying out in the dark somewhere.'
'Oh, the devil takes care of his own,' she said airily. 'Are you staying to dinner? I'm ravenous!'
'Yes, Bella did invite me when I came over to check on whether you were safely back or not. You've lost your hat.' He pushed a strand of gilt hair from her brow and he looked into her eyes as if seeing there a look he had never seen before. Dina wanted to turn away and evade his eyes, but she didn't dare. She felt desperately guilty and
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