'I bet at Satanita you don't often eat Italian.' His smile was raffish. 'I have an excellent chef, so will you leave the ordering to me?'
'I'll be glad to.'
'Bene! And do sit down and try to relax—standing like that you look rather like a butterfly which longs to make its escape.' He turned away and went into the lounge, crossing to the lobby out of her range of vision. Dina stood very still a moment and the silence seemed loud with the beating of her heart under the weightless silk of her shirt. She only wanted to go because she couldn't stay for ever, and feeling like a guilty prisoner she sank down into one of the Neptune chairs on the terrazza, of ivory woven cane with tiny gold patterns of stars and fishes around the high fans of the chairbacks.
Dina leaned back her head and closed her eyes and tried not to think of later on, when she had to face her godmother and provide a likely explanation for arriving home later than she had promised. She felt a stab of compunction when she thought of the redoubtable Bella laid low by one of her nerve-racking headaches. Worrying about the wedding had brought it on; all that hectic attention to every tiny detail.
The wedding!
Dina clenched the armrests of the cane chair and
wished she could hide away and not have to be the 'star' attraction. How would she face all those people, and those flashlight bulbs that would light up her face and surely reveal the shadow that lurked in her eyes?
How could she cast out that tall, dark shadow?
The substance of that shadow came through the glass doors and stood looking down at her. 'I think this is the first time in days that you have sat down and not heard in your ears the infernal sound of women in a ferment of wedding hysteria. This is so, Dina?'
She moved her head in agreement, for there was no denying this sense she felt of being suspended in time and space, where no one could find her; where she could forget for a while that she wasn't free to be herself ... as Raf was free, would always be free, like an eagle.
'Like preparing Anne Boleyn for her walk to the block and the shining blade in the hand of the axeman, eh?'
'Oh, not quite so fearful,' she protested. 'What a Borgia-like imagination you have, Raf! You see things in stark black and white, don't you?'
'Not entirely.' His eyes moved over her face and hair, which caught the strange opaque light through the windows of his eyrie. 'I also see gleams of silver and gold ... I think you and I will have a drink before our food arrives, a vino nobile which I have been saving for a special—friend.'
'A friendship that has to end in an hour,' she said.
'When the Snow Princess will have no more time for her knave?'
'I'm not a princess, nor are you a knave.'
'What am I, then?' He looked directly into her eyes, and she thought of her very first meeting with him and how wickedly sinister she had believed him to be. Anything could have been true of him, except the real truth ... that to those he loved he could be supremely generous enough to let them leave him. His parents were in Italy. His sisters were scattered. He lived alone in his ivory tower.
'A lonely man,' she said. 'I bet your mother and father are always telling you to find a ravishing Italian girl to settle down with. I—I wish you would, Raf.'
'Do you really?'
'It's better than loneliness.'
'It's a loneliness we'll share.' He reached down, unclenched her hands from their hold on the arms of her chair and held them in his own hands. 'So I'm not to be a friend, not even that? A casual kind of uncle to your Bigelow babies?'
'Don't, Raf!'
'I shan't, but he will. You're on the block, Dina, and piece by piece you'll be hacked away until all that's left is your crying heart. You don't love the man who is going to own every living piece of you.'
She turned her head away, unable to meet his unsparing eyes. The silence swirled around them like the mist around the tower and she could feel his fingers tight around hers, and the pain of Bay's ring being pressed into her finger bone. She wanted to cry out in terror at the image he evoked, for she was one of those who had been born for only one man ... and that man wasn't Bay Bigelow.
'You don't love him, but that won't matter to all
those who make merry at the wedding and wish him joy of you.'
'It will make Bella happy—I owe her—so much.' - 'To hell with Bella!'
'No.' Dina shook her head at him. 'I'd have been put into an institution if it hadn't been for her— my father became a hopeless drunk. I'd have had none of the things she gave me, my education, my clothes, my friends. It's a small price to pay.'
'And you'll never cease to pay it, you realise that, I suppose?'
'It won't be such a bad life-'
'Will it be a happy one?' he demanded. 'Holy heaven, will it be exciting and rewarding, something you'll want to wake up to, a joy you'll long to find when the darkness falls?'
'Is passion everything?' she asked quietly.
'Yes, if one has glimpsed it in a pair of eyes.'
'You think I have done so?'
'I don't think, donna mia, I happen to know.' With that he went into his sitting-room and distantly she heard the clink of glasses and knew he was pouring the wine. Dina looked beyond the terrazza windows and gave a little shiver; the mist seemed to press closer to the glass and tiny globules of moisture hung there like diamonds. The mystery and melancholy held her entranced, as if here with Raf she was stranded upon a mountain peak. . Oh, how easy it might be to hold fast to the strange dream, but all dreams had to give way to reality.
'The haze seems more intense,' she said, when Raf returned. 'I—I really must go in a while—it could turn into a smog.'
'I shall drive you,' he said. 'Don't worry—you'll
see hell and chivalry in my eyes before the day is over.'
She looked upwards into his eyes, clairvoyant as the edge of the descending axe on her slim neck. He bent and put into her hand a Verzelini goblet with golden patterns woven into the glass and set on a shining stem. The wine was a deep red, like rubies, like flame, like distdled passion.
'To think that a vineyard has to be ravaged to produce such a wine,' he said, and his smile twisted on the edge of his mouth, 'Salute.'
'Salute.' The wine ran warm and potent down her throat, easing away that bruised feeling when she swrallowed. Raf lounged by the terrazza wall, his profile outlined against the misty glass. The vapour seemed to be thickening with each passing moment, visibility was diminishing, and sounds from below were becoming indistinct. Across the water a fog-horn wailed, weird and almost animal, and more than ever they seemed detached from the rest of the world.
'You are very private and solitary up here, aren't you?' The wine had warmed her and created a sense of relaxation and the smile she gave him was in her eyes. 'Does it give you a feeling of power, prince of your very own castle, master of your destiny, the sorcerer in his citadel, plotting his next move in the complex game of high finance? Do you look out over Las Palmas and feel that you own your very own soul?'
'Something like that.' His eyes held hers. 'What of your soul, Dina? Is it in bondage?' 'No-'
'You can't pretend with me and you know it. You've known it from the beginning that we share a
chemistry more potent, more magical, more stimulating than the headiest wine. Can you really turn your back on it to cleave to a mere boy, who will look upon you as just another useful and attractive possession, like his tennis rackets, his golf clubs, and his well-groomed polo ponies? You saw him matched against me on the tennis court and I made him look hot and harassed, eh? Believe me, donna mia, he has no idea how to handle a sensitive woman. He thinks it is just a matter of good manners and apologetic biology.'
'You've a clever tongue, Raf, but you won't sway me, conquer me, be my master—I won't let you!'
'What if you can't help yourself? Come, you knew me for your master from the first moment that our eyes met.'
'How arrogantly cocksure you are, Raf!' She tossed her head and played the gam
e, for it was a game and could be nothing else. 'A master of words and women as well as financial wizardry. I know what you're trying to do, but it won't work.'
'What am I trying to do?' His smile was brief, a blade-edge of white teeth, a glittering of his eyes.
'Inflame my doubts, increase my fears, whisper like the devil in my ear. Stop it right now, Raf.'
'What will happen if I don't? Will I fall from grace?'
'I think you might.'
'In which case you will behold Satan falling like a bolt from the heavens—except that I've never been there. I've had only a stolen glimpse beyond the gates, and then an angel flashed her golden eyes and ordered me away.'
He lounged there, so free of anyone's domination, so relentlessly his own master, and then his
voice dropped into a lower key. 'Why don't you stop being a martyr?' His tones were tigerish, as were his eyes. 'Start being a woman—a woman who wants a man, not a damned half-baked boy!'
'Want—take, ride life like a pirate!' Her eyes blazed back into his. 'I'm not you, Raf! You're pagan-hearted! You'd have me break promises, let people down, deny the duties I must fulfil in order to keep my pride. I've little else but that. It's a trifle saved over from my father's destruction of his life and himself.'
'All very noble, Dina, but you're going to be married against your deepest instincts, and nothing is harder on this earth for a woman than to give herself cold-hearted to a man.'
'I—I won't listen to you! I'll go, now-'
"You'll go nowhere, running away again from the raw truth. Dina, donna mia, you can't kick love aside, it's almighty tenacious and will grow like the olive tree among stones.'
'But it won't bear fruit,' she flung back at him. 'But it will bear memories, Dina, among its shaking silver leaves. Not you, not I, nor Bay Bigelow, can stop their growth, and you'd be amazed how vigorous memories can grow with the years, especially in the heart of a woman who has denied her true self, her own real destiny, and made of herself one of society's mechanical dolls, wound up in the morning on strong black coffee, reinforced mid-morning on a nip of best brandy, all smoothly oiled and blank-faced by the dinner hour or the bridge party, or the country club dance, having got herself hooked on Martinis or vodka.'
He spoke with a controlled violence, but it was
his eyes most of all that terrified Dina. They had gone molten silver in his dark face and the pupils held a pair of flames. Love! He had said the word at last and it had gone through her like a barb, fixing itself in her heart, causing a sharp and very personal pain. She didn't dare to love him ... only in the deep, secret recesses of her body and mind. Only there was it safe to rejoice that he did love her, a sweet and bitter joy that she could not reveal.
She didn't dare reveal it, neither trusting him nor herself should she find herself in his arms again. She had to hurt him ... there was no other way.
She had to find it in her to throw cold water on his ardency and watch the flames abruptly quenched in his fiery eyes. Those eyes that showed her that love could be a passionate wonder with no room for any of the tepid emotions that passed for love among certain of her friends. This she had to sacrifice in favour of a mere spark that lit no flame in her blood. This she had to quench when every particle of her longed to be melted in the fierce and glowing warmth of what Raf was offering her ... a rapture of the senses from which there would be no return to the sanity to which she must cling.
A flight with an eagle was not for her, and she braced herself for the conflict between love and duty.
CHAPTER SIX
'What I choose to do with my life has nothing whatsoever to do with you,' she said to him. 'I came here because I didn't like to refuse you, but if you're going to rant and rave then I prefer to go home.' She rose to her feet as she spoke and went to sweep past him. He reached out, caught at her wrist and jarred the lovely goblet out of her grasp. It fell with a musical crash to the tiled floor of the terrazza and splintered into jewelled fragments. Raf stared a moment at the debris, then deliberately tossed down his own goblet, smashing it in the glittering shards of its twin.
'That's the traditional way to end a passe d'armes,' he drawled.
'Oh, what a pity,' she murmured. 'What a waste!'
'Symbolic, my dear. Let us go and eat.' He swept an arm about her waist and propelled her across the main room of the penthouse into a dining-room where a table had been perfectly laid for two, with butterfly orchids as a centrepiece.
'Stay, now everything is prepared,' he said, and when Dina saw a waiter by the side-table she made no further objection and slid into the chair which Raf drew out for her. If the waiter felt that this was an odd time of the day for Raf Ventura and his guest to be dining, it didn't show on his face. He gave a slight bow as he placed the napkin across her knees and proceeded to serve up the first course of
large prawns baked in slices of lemon, served with fresh-baked rolls, a smooth mayonnaise, and a white wine.
'I can see to the rest, Salvatore,' Raf said to him. 'Thank the chef on my behalf, and take your siesta.'
'Si, signore. Grazie.'
The door closed, and Raf gazed across the orchids at Dina, lean fingers breaking a roll in half. 'Shades of the last supper, eh?'
She nodded and dipped a luscious prawn in the creamy sauce. 'You won't play Judas and betray me for trusting you?'
'I don't need the thirty pieces of silver, but I'd sell my soul to—no matter. You are fond of prawns?'
'Mmmm, these are excellent. Your staff are either terrified of you, or incredibly loyal, to produce a meal like this after a frantic morning serving the restaurant.'
'Which do you think it is, terror or loyalty?' His lips gave that characteristic quirk as he tossed a pink prawn between his teeth.
'A combination of both,' she decided. 'I think all your associations would be based on those two factors.'
'You make me sound feudal.'
'Aren't you?'
'Perhaps, in the sense that I take care of my own people and give the best service of which I'm capable. I have had to make the Ventura name respected and trustworthy, and I shall fight your godmother tooth and claw if she dares to dig up what I have successfully interred. As I once told you, the vendetta is in my blood and Bella Rhine-
hart will learn how to weep if she ever does anything to really infuriate me.'
'Don't, Raf!' Dina gave a little shiver at the look that came into his eyes. 'When you look like that you make my heart go cold. Wasn't it tempting providence to buy Adam's Challenge?'
'Your godmother doesn't own that select section of California where you live, Dina. In a sense none of us own anything, we are by the grace of the gods given the chance to make life satisfying for ourselves and at the end of it to take nothing with us but our souls and the possible love of another human being. I'm no saint, but by heaven there will be the devil to pay if that woman—ah, let's forget her for now!' He rose as he spoke, collected the empty plates and took them to the side-table. While he dished up their second course Dina let her eyes rove around his dining-room.
The chairs, tables and corner cabinets were in close-grained olive wood of a green-gold colour, and a pair of lovely old Venetian lamps hung from the ceiling. But what caught Dina's gaze and held it was a boldly painted wall panel of a classic scene which she suddenly realised was that of the god Perseus saving the rock-chained Andromeda from the dragon. There was a mingling of gold, flame, and satin-dark skin, and she was still looking at the panel when Raf placed a plate of food in front of her.
'It is eve-catching, is it not?' he drawled.
'Are you fond of the classic myths?' she asked.
'That particular one.' He sat down and readjusted his table napkin. 'Come, eat your pasta while it's really hot, before the cheese has a chance to set.'
Dina ate a forkful of the hot cheese and celery pasta, with a sauce of tomatoes, herbs and shrimp. It. was delicious and obviously created by a real Italian cook.
'You don't have
that served at Satanita, eh?' His smile was wicked. 'It is even better when enjoyed beside the Adriatic, with the sun on the water and the sound of Italian voices filling the air. The joy of living, and loving, is something very rich in my people.'
'Tell me about Italy,' she said, feeling it would be a safer subject than anything else ... all other channels of conversation seemed to lead into dangerous waters, and her eyes flicked from his lean features to those of the young god who fought to snatch Andromeda from the dragon. Nothing was insignificant where Raf was concerned. He made her aware of herself as no one had ever done... made each moment in his company a tiny drama in itself.
'Have you never been there, Dina?'
'I shall be going-' She broke off and dabbed
sauce from the corner of her mouth ... it had happened again, without warning they were back in the cross tides.
'On your honeymoon, eh?' He gave a short laugh. 'I expect the bridegroom will show you all the four-star places marked in the tourist guide book and you will come home to America believing you have seen Italy.'
'There's no need to be sarcastic, Raf.'
'It amuses me, the American conception of seeing a foreign country. It's like a mad dash round an obstacle course and so long as the obvious places are seen and quickly ticked off on the itinerary it
doesn't seem to worry the breathless tourist that the most intriguing mountain villages are never seen, where a lot of the old ways are still intact and have not lost their strange charm. Will you be visiting Venice—the perfect city for lovers?'
'That will be up to Bay,' she said, fixing her eyes upon her plate of pasta.
'I see, so you plan to be the perfectly obedient bride, following meekly in your husband's footsteps?'
'Isn't that your conception of what a wife should be?' He had put a spark to her temper, as he had probably meant to, and when Dina met his eyes she found them amused ... and yet also faintly shadowed, or was that just the effect of Italian eyes, sheltered as they were by those thick black lashes?
'The Latin takes a mate and he hopes that like the female jaguar she will be loyal to him alone, a clawing, spitting fury to any other male. The jaguar is no tame creature, Dina, crawling on its gold belly in the grass, purring all the time, running for cover if its mate should snarl and growl. They fight, and by the gods, how they love!'
The Sun Tower Page 14
