[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay

by Violet Winspear

  Lucan Savidge was virtually a stranger to Kara when she married him. It was a step she never would have taken had she not been distraught with unhappiness over the end of her love affair with the sweetheart of her youth—but the step was taken, and now it was too late to turn back. It was her arrival at Dragon Bay that brought the truth so overwhelmingly to Kara—Dragon Bay, the strange, brooding house on a tiny Caribbean island, home of the Savidge family who were as wild and restless as their name. Clare, Lucan himself, and above all Lucan’s brother Pryde, his life wrapped in tragedy of Lucan’s causing. They were all hard, bitter, unable, it seemed, to love. Just what kind of marriage had Kara made?

  Dragon Bay

  by

  Violet Winspear

  CHAPTER ONE

  A TRIM yacht flying a Greek flag put into harbour at Fort Fernand, and some time later one of her passengers came ashore, followed by a sailor carrying a couple of suitcases.

  The alighting girl was about twenty-one, slim, almost boyish, clad in a blue reefer jacket over beige slacks, with a jaunty cap perched on her long dark hair. Her eyes beneath the peak of her cap were deep and dark as peaty pools, and tiny gold rings glinted in the lobes of her ears.

  ‘That looks like a hotel.’ She spoke in Greek to the sailor and gestured at a building with ornamental bal­conies, batwing shutters, and red-flowering palms in its courtyard. ‘I will put up there for a few days,’ she added, and gazed around at her tropical surroundings. The sails of sloops and schooners bobbed in the harbour, and from out of salt and sun-faded sheds came a strong smell of fish, and tobacco in storage.

  Poinsettias flowered gaudy and large against white walls, and the patches of welcome shadow were ebony dark as the Carib eyes of an old man who sat smoking a pipe on the cobbled wall of the waterfront. The girl met his gaze, and it came home forcibly to her that she was now in the French Caribbean and far from her own Greek shores.

  When she and the sailor reached the hotel, he carried in her suitcases and she bade him goodbye in Greek. ‘Adio,’ she said. ‘Tell my brother that I have chosen the Isle de Luc for my—holiday, and I hope to be home in time to celebrate my darling nephew’s third birthday.’

  The sailor flashed her a smile, for having been long employed by the Stephanos family, he knew the strength of the affection between Paul Stephanos and his slip of a sister. Even now Kara was a woman, she was still so young to look at, with her enormous Greek eyes holding that hint of sadness and gaiety that made her almost lovely when she smiled, or held young Dominic in her arms.

  ‘Adio, Miss Kara.’ The sailor gave her a smart salute. ‘I hope you have a happy holiday.’

  Happy holiday? She smiled briefly and bleakly as she approached the reception desk of the Hotel Victoire and pinged the bell on the counter. It echoed through the siesta quiet, broken only by the whirring of ceiling fans, and then a corpulent Creole came shambling out of a room at the back of the counter, his sleepy, disgruntled face creasing in smiles that matched the creases in the white jacket he was pulling on.

  Yes, they had accommodation for her. This was not yet the tourist season and the hotel was half empty. He swung the register towards her, and his eyes chased over her as she took up the pen to sign her name. She noticed the singularity of the name on the line above hers—Lucan Savidge, resident of Dragon Bay, Isle de Luc.

  She gave a slight laugh. What a savage name and address, both of which probably belonged to a man as meek as a mouse!

  The bell pinged again, and a coloured boy emerged from the shade of a potted palm and came to carry her suitcases to the iron-caged lift. Her room was situated on the second floor, midway along the corridor. It was quite spacious, with a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the patio of the hotel, and furniture, she was sure, from the Colonial days.

  The boy told her in lisping Creole that the bathroom was at the end of the corridor, and that there would be no hot water for a bath until later that evening. ‘It has a shower, mam’zelle.’ His smile was sugar-white. ‘Ver’ cool, we here at Hotel Victoire. Up to date for tourists — you tourist?’

  ‘I suppose you could say that.’ Her French had been learned at school and the boy looked puzzled, then pleased by the size of his tip.

  ‘You want a guide, I take you all over town, show you the sights,’ he offered.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she ushered him out of the room. ‘What do I call you, in case I want to see the sights?’

  He cocked his head, alert and impish. ‘Napoleon my name,’ he grinned. ‘Nap for short’

  ‘Very well, Nap for short.’ Kara grinned back at the boy, for she had the rare gift of being able to adjust to the ages of the young and the old. ‘If I want you, I’ll whistle.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said, and was gone like a dark shadow along the corridor, its windows shuttered against the hot after­noon sunshine. Kara closed the door of her room and tossed off her nautical cap and jacket. She ran her fingers through her long hair, slightly rough from the sea-water and sun she never avoided. Kara sighed. The girl Nikos had married in America was golden-haired, pale-skinned, beautiful and pampered.

  The locks of her suitcase clicked loud in the room as she opened it and began to unpack. She shook out the linen dress she would wear that evening and hung it over the hard back of a Colonial chair. She tossed wisps of nylon to the foot of the net-draped bed, and then her fingers. clenched on a leather frame and she stood for a long moment gazing at the photograph of her brother Paul, an arm firmly locked about the slender waist of his wife, Domini. Beside them on the parapet of a terrace sat a small, lively-eyed boy, and Paul’s other arm was holding him with equal firmness.

  Kara smiled even as a band of pain seemed to clasp her throat. Her own dear Apollo, who had fought the darkness that had almost taken his life and found so bright a love.

  Domini, to whom Kara had taken her aching heart after receiving the letter that had shattered her own dream of a love and a life like her sister-in-law’s. Like a broken song, the letter would not release her from its words, still they haunted her.

  Sweet Kara,

  You will forgive and understand, I know. We made a pledge and said we would marry each other, but we did not take into account the sudden love for a stranger, from a stranger, that can come along and change all our youthful plans.

  I am married, little Greek friend. Her name is Cicely and we met soon after I came here to Boston to run our shipping business in this part of the world. I am very much in love. I know it is the love that a man feels only once in a lifetime.

  You too, Kara, will find love as I have found it, and then you will be as happy as I am….

  Happy … without Nikki? The companion of most of her life, with whom she had tramped the Greek hills, swam and fished in the Ionian Sea, and stolen honey from the big brown bees in the heather of Andelos. Nikos, with whom she had shared most of her joys and sorrows … whose loss to another girl had sent her on a voyage halfway round the world.

  Domini had suggested that she take the trip, and Paul had been coaxed into putting at her disposal the trim little yacht that belonged to the chain of sea-going ves­sels run by the Stephanos Shipping Line.

  Kara arranged the photograph on the table between the twin beds. When the yacht arrived back at Andelos, and the Captain informed Paul that she had disem­barked at this island in the French Caribbean, there would be fireworks for Domini to deal with in her warm, calm, British way.

  ‘My dear masterful man,’ she would say to Paul, ‘you must realize that Kara is twenty-one, a woman now with a mind of her own to make up. She wishes to be alone for a while. She needs to adjust to a future that will no longer hold Nikos. She will come to no harm—that dash of British blood from her mother dilu
tes her Greek impetuosity.’

  Kara went to the dressing-table and studied her re­flection in the mirror. She was as Greek as Paul to look at, but there were hints of her British blood in the small cleft in her chin, and in the shyness that sometimes made a veil of her thick dark lashes. Her figure was rather boy­ish, she thought, wrinkling her nose. She was as slim as a whip, but supple.

  You swim like a seal, Nikos had often told her. You climb like a boy. In her innocence she had loved his com­pliments, but now she understood that if he had paid her compliments of a different kind, she might now be with him as his wife instead of being here … all alone.

  Her fingers clenched the little crystal unicorn on her wrist-chain, a gift from Domini. ‘A unicorn helped to bring me happiness,’ she had told Kara softly. ‘Happi­ness is very elusive, and sometimes we have to do battle with heartache before the unicorn works his magic for us.’

  But at the moment Kara could not believe in a magic strong enough to mend a shattered dream. The broken pieces were hurting her heart even as she stood here, the brooding siesta calm broken only by the whisper of the fans and the cicadas in the trees outside. She went out on to her balcony and made her way down the winding iron stairs to the patio, where she curled herself beneath the awning of a swing-seat and rocked herself into semi-forgetfulness.

  Guests at the Hotel Victoire were expected to take their meals in the rather bare dining-room, and as Kara sat down at a table and accepted a menu from the waiter, she ran her glance round the room. She saw a little sparse-haired man seated beside the other window, and a smile tugged at her lips. Was he the owner of the form­idable name she had noticed in the register—Lucan Savidge, of Dragon Bay?

  ‘Has madame decided ?’ The waiter hovered, his quick Creole eyes taking in her white linen suit with a pattern of tiny flowers on the collar.

  ‘What is Iambi?’ she asked, intrigued.

  ‘Ah, that is conch, madame, prepared the island way with spices and rice. You wish to order it?’

  ‘Please. And—let me see—a cocktail of avocado and fresh shrimp to start with. I hope the conch meat doesn’t taste too much like shrimp ?’

  ‘Ah, no.’ The waiter was emphatic. ‘Madame will find that our Caribbean conch is delicious.’

  It was mysteriously flavoured, she had to admit, and finishing her glass of vin blanc, she ordered coffee and sat gazing out of the window beside her table. Lights blinked along the waterfront, and upon the boats moored in the harbour, outlining their masts and casting goblin shapes on the water. The evening air that stole in through the open windows was spiced and tangy, scented by the tropical plants that seemed to breathe more freely now the sun had given place to a strolling moon.

  It floated above the harbour, and spun a magical background for the palm and mango trees, whose tresses stirred now and again in a soft breeze.

  The moonlight beckoned, and Kara was too restless to stay cooped up in the lounge of the hotel. She finished her coffee, collected a smile from the little Frenchman, and found Napoleon awaiting her behind his potted palm in the lobby. He jumped to his feet with alacrity when she appeared. ‘I want you to show me Fort Fernand by moonlight, Nap,’ she said.

  They went out into the street together and strolled along trying to understand each other’s French. A drawl with a yawn in it, that was the only way to describe the Creole accent, Kara thought, and pricked up her ears as she caught the word jête.

  ‘A fair?’ she said eagerly. ‘I would love to see it, Nap.’

  ‘So I was thinking,’ the boy flashed her his impishly adult smile. ‘Caribbean peoples make a lot of song and dance—is this not so where you come from, mam’zelle?’

  ‘Yes, we like to sing and dance, Nap, but I suppose our gaiety has to have a reason. The birthday of a saint, or a wedding, or a birth. When my brother’s little son was born, the people of our village danced all night, and there were firework displays, lantern-lit boats on the water, and lambs roasting whole with lemons in their jaws.’

  She sighed nostalgically, remembering the happiness of that occasion, the joy in Paul’s eyes.

  ‘Your brother is important seigneur?’ asked Nap.

  ‘Yes,’ she smiled. ‘Important because we all love him, and respect him, and admire his great courage.’

  ‘Like Seigneur Savidge,’ said Nap. ‘Here on the Isle de Luc he is ver’ big man. Lots of people work for him. He has sugar estate at Dragon Bay, and big cocoa forest, and stables, but he—’

  ‘Seigneur Savidge?’ she exclaimed. ‘Why, I saw his name in the hotel register.’

  ‘That Massa Lucan, the seigneur’s brother,’ said the boy, and Kara saw the whites of his big black eyes as he looked at her. ‘He a devil, mam’zelle. He ride all over the island on a big horse, and a big hound run alongside. He done things people whisper about.’

  Nap’s voice sank down into a whisper that made the remark curiously effective. Lucan Savidge … as savage as his name implied.

  Then Kara forgot about him as she and Napoleon arrived at the fair, which was encamped on a savane above the harbour, aglow with lights, gay with laughter and noise. They passed a small compound, ringed by people watching a mongoose fight a snake. Kara shud­dered and pulled Nap towards the blare of music where a roundabout swung and swayed. They went on when it stopped, and for some odd reason Kara chose a fiery dragon for her mount and laughed breathlessly as the great creature hurtled and undulated to the rhythm of the music.

  ‘You like?’ yelled Nap, clinging to the neck of a sea­horse.

  ‘I like.’ Her eyes were bright in the streaming lights, and her heart felt lighter than it had for some time. She had been right to choose this place! She had known from the moment the yacht put into Fort Fernand that there was something beckoning about this Caribbean isle.

  Faster and faster hurled the dragon, higher and more ecstatic rang the screams of honey and sable girls, and with a sudden stab of wonderment Kara recognized the music to which she and her dragon raced—Holiday of a Faun.

  Dry-throated after the thrill of the roundabout, she and Nap bought bottles of Coke and strolled along suck­ing it from straws. Couples were dancing in another compound, while lithe young men pounded the tom­toms gripped between their knees. Lantern light shone on bare brown torsos, the beat of the drums was pagan and compulsive. Flame flared on the limbo poles as youths and girls snaked beneath them and leapt with agility, white teeth flashing, into the rhythm of the Creole dancing.

  A little further on, where the savane rolled down to meet the water, the tent of the ‘sibyl’ was pitched and girls were sliding in and out of the tent flaps with in­fectious giggles.

  ‘You going to have your fortune told by Mamma Mae ?’ Nap gave Kara a saucy look.

  ‘It’s all nonsense.’ Kara laughed, but her eyes were sombre as she remembered the gipsy who had said that one day she would travel across water with a tall, dark man. Nikos had travelled alone across the water, and when he returned to the Greek isle of Andelos, he would bring his golden bride with him. A sigh stole from Kara’s lips, and she heard small waves beat at the harbour wall below like restless hands.

  ‘You scared?’ Nap taunted.

  ‘Of course not.’ Kara took a step away from the tent. ‘Come on, it’s time we returned to the hotel—’ Even as she spoke, the tent flap moved, but this time a woman appeared, wearing a turban tied in the Creole way with horns. She was gaunt, with a penetrating gaze in a mask of wrinkles.

  ‘Come inside, doudou.’ A flick of those dark eyes took in Kara’s smart linen suit. ‘Let Mamma Mae read your palm for you.’

  ‘No—I don’t believe in such nonsense,’ Kara said defiantly. ‘I have heard before about the tall stranger I am to meet.’

  Mamma Mae stared at Kara, then shot a glance at Nap, while the thudding of tom-toms beat in time to the girl’s heart. ‘You stay at Hotel Victoire, eh?’ The sibyl gave a laugh that shook the big rings in her ears. ‘You ‘bout ready to meet this man, honey—onless you l
eave Isle de Luc. He got fire in his hair—plenty fire.’

  With a swish the tent flaps closed together, and Kara tilted her chin in scorn. ‘Well, it’s a change from being dark and handsome,’ she said. ‘Come, Nap!’ The boy fell into step beside her as she hastened away from the fair. They didn’t speak on the way back to the hotel, and then in the lobby Nap gave Kara a curious look.

  ‘You leaving Isle de Luc, mam’zelle?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course not.’ She turned at the foot of the stairs to look at him in surprise, the key to her room in her hand. ‘Will there be bath water tonight, Nap ? Nice warm bath water?’

  He nodded. She smiled and told him to run off to bed.

  ‘Goodnight, mam’zelle.’ He gazed at her with his big dark eyes, the edges of his jeans halfway up his shanks, his check shirt slipping half off his thin young shoulders.

  ‘Kale nichta, Napoleon.’ She made her way upstairs to her room on the second floor, which had a gilt 16 nailed to the door. She felt tired but restless, and knew that only a warm bath would make it possible for her to sleep. She reached the second floor and took note of each number on the bedroom doors as she passed them. The corridor was very quiet and she had a feeling most of the rooms were unoccupied. The bathroom was situ­ated at the end of the corridor, and she heard plainly the sound of the shower as she unlocked her door and switched on the light of her room.

  She hoped the occupant of the shower would not be long, and was in her bathrobe when a door slammed along the corridor. It was a rather arrogant slam, as though the person involved did not trouble much about disturbing the dreams of other people. Kara stood hold­ing her sponge-bag and bath-towel, then she opened her own door and listened for the sound of the shower. All was still and quiet, and switching out her light she left the moon in occupancy of her room and went along to take a bath.

  The user of the shower had splashed energetically and, left large wet footprints all over the dark tiling of the floor. A man, Kara thought, shaking her head as she turned the tap of the old-fashioned tub and sprinkled pine-scented crystals into the steaming water. She breathed deeply of the pine, and was wafted in imagina­tion to the woods of Andelos, where pine trees grew in abundance, tall and aromatic.