She saw Julius carrying their suitcases along the beach. When he reached the bend he turned to flash them a smile; a descendant of a fierce tribe, his skin the colour of strong rum, his devotion to Lucan that of a friend rather than a servant. The Irish blood in Lucan could not tolerate servitude, his rebel spirit could not abide bondage … Kara, his bride, was the only creature in bondage to Lucan Savidge.
Side by side they climbed the Dragon’s Stairway, and the boom of the sea followed them, arching into glittering combers that built into silver palaces and then crashed and tumbled. Green lizards—like miniature dragons—basked and panted in the sun, and then flowers began to spill upon the terraces and Kara touched with beauty-greedy hands the petals of vivid cannas, the golden trumpets on sprawling vines, and the lips of snapdragons.
A pair of magnificent immortelles made an archway of orange and yellow blossoms, and Kara passed beneath them, followed by Lucan, her small cry of wonder like that of a bird when it takes its first flight into the unknown.
The Great House—fire-gold in the sun, set high by the pride and arrogance of the Savidge rebels who had first set their mark on this land that yielded the white gold of sugar, the dark lush cocoa, and the spices that travelled to all the tables of the world.
A flight of halfmoon steps led to the portico, where above the massive front door the Dragon crest was cut deep in the stone, with beneath it the Savidge motto.
The columns of the portico had dragons carved round their bases, and columned piazzas spread like wings along the sides of the house, ending in stone follies, templelike, hung with masses of bougainvillea. The blossoms were alive in the sun, like flame running riot, and above were the storeys that held innumerable rooms, galleried and door-windowed.
‘From the rear of the house we overlook the cocoa valley,’ Lucan was looking intent as he fired a cheroot. ‘The left wing overlooks the sea, the right wing the cane fields. We dominate our possessions, Kara, lords of all we survey … Pryde’s the heritage, mine the allegiance.’
‘It’s awesome,’ she said breathlessly.
‘You will get used to it. Come, we will go in this way.’ He piloted her to the right and up the flight of steps in the centre of the piazza. Door-windows faced them, which he opened with a hint of a flourish, and Kara stepped into the immense hall of the Great House.
She walked across the parquet floor as though treading on cat-ice, for it was so forbidding, so grand, not a home but a house made for giants. Lustrous island timbers had been used to panel the walls, heavy silver stood upon great sideboards, and crested mirrors reflected the rosewood and mahogany, the tall winged chairs, and silvery Waterford chandeliers, agleam with crystal drops that stirred and tinkled in the whirring of antique fans.
Kara saw the dragon of bronze on the mantel of the great fireplace, and the big golden goblet that was older than this house, the cup which the lusty Savidges had pledged to buy land and which they had redeemed as they began to make their fortune.
‘This is all so—palatial, Lucan.’ She gazed around her as though lost. ‘I—I had no idea you were such a rich family.’
He gave a laugh as he flicked ash into the fireplace. The days when the Savidges could afford Waterford crystal and paintings by the Masters are over, Kara. We derive a fair income from the plantations, but gone are the days when Sugar was a monarch and fortunes were amassed by men like my ancestor there.’
He gestured at a nearby portrait of a young man in a dark maroon cutaway coat, white ruffled shirt, embossed waistcoat and stock of pale blue silk. A dandy of another century, the deep-set mocking eyes capturing her gaze for a long moment. She turned again to Lucan — but for his modern clothes he might have stepped down out of that massive frame.
‘Another Savidge, another time,’ he said, the same mocking light in his eyes, ‘but the blood does not change.’
And then for the first time Kara asked a question that was often in her mind. ‘Are you and your brother identical twins, Lucan ?’
He frowned slightly and seemed to be listening for something. ‘In a few minutes you will see for yourself the likeness and the difference,’ he said enigmatically. He picked up the dragon crested goblet and held it so a ray of sunlight flashed on the gold and the scarlet.
‘It is a Savidge custom that a bride and groom pledge themselves to the good of the house by drinking from this cup,’ he said. ‘This evening we will be expected to make our pledge by sharing the wine that Pryde, as head of the house, will pour into the cup. Will you be willing Kara?’
‘I married you to share your life, Lucan,’ she said quietly. ‘I understand tradition and the tribal feeling—I am a Greek, remember. We also regard the family house as the heart of the family, and I am afraid my brother will take time to forgive me for marrying without his consent.’
‘I am sorry about that, Kara.’ Lucan reached out and squeezed her cold hand that was not yet used to the weight of his ring, and then she stiffened as a door opened behind her, at the end of the hall. She heard plainly the sound of wheels on the smooth parquet, and then her heart came into. her mouth as something huge and black bounded past her and flung up on its haunches to greet Lucan. A mastiff, its heraldic head heavily collared, its great paws on Lucan’s shoulders and its eyes glowing with adoration.
‘You great fool!’ Lucan hugged the beast, and Kara could hear behind her the gradual, deliberate glide of wheels over the floor, nearer, ever nearer, until at last she nerved herself to turn round.
She met eyes so deep-set that she felt lost in them for a frightening moment. She saw a face both handsome and forbidding, with deep lines of pain etched into it, and hair that once had been as fiery as Lucan’s but was now streaked with ash-grey. He sat in a wheelchair, yet he made it look like a throne. He made her feel the helpless one.
‘The news reached me last night, Lucan, that you had married in Fort Fernand.’ Pryde’s voice was deep and harshly attractive. ‘I hope the marriage bell rang merrily for you and Caprice ?’
There was a moment of utter silence in the great hall, and then Lucan flung an arm about Kara’s shoulders. She wanted to feel grateful, but instead she felt a deadly shrinking of heart and body. Pryde had thought that Lucan was bringing home a bride called Caprice!
‘This is Kara.’ Lucan said it a shade defiantly. ‘We met in Fort Fernand ten days ago, just after I returned from Paris. Kara is Grecian.’
‘I see.’ Pryde seemed to see into the secret regions of Kara’s mind, and the shock it had suffered. Caprice. Who was she? A girl in Paris whom Lucan had hoped to marry?
‘Welcome to Dragon Bay, Kara.’ A faint smile dispelled the severity of Pryde’s expression. ‘It is about time a young woman brought the promise of children to this old house. There is Rue, of course, but she needs playfellows. Has Lucan told you about the child?’
‘Yes, seigneur.’ Kara still felt cold, even within the enclosure of her husband’s arm. He might have told her about Caprice and not left her to learn in such a humiliating way that she had a rival. ‘I am looking forward to meeting Rue—and Clare.’
‘Rue is at her lessons.’ He used turn-of-the-century phrases like a man used to living in a world apart. ‘Clare is making for herself a man of stone who cannot answer her back, or wound her heart.’
‘Clare sounds most sensible.’ With a delicacy Kara drew away from Lucan. ‘It is not always wise to be a romantic’
‘You are a romantic, of course.’ Pryde gestured at the love-seat between the long windows overlooking the piazza, and Kara sat down in the seat. Lucan sprawled in a wing-back chair, the mastiff at his feet, its jowl resting on paws the size of a lion’s. Pryde’s eyes were brooding, the same diamond-grey as her husband’s, with no hint of green in them. The twin brothers looked alike, and yet ten years might have set them apart.
A food trolley was wheeled in by a coloured houseman in a white jacket, and they had coffee where they sat, prawn vol au vent, and slices of coffee cake th
at melted in the mouth.
‘I have given you a bridal suite, on the seaward side of the house, Lucan. The Emerald Suite.’ Pryde finished his coffee and replaced the cup on the trolley. ‘You are fond of the sea, Kara?’
‘I was born within sound of it,’ she told him. ‘I love the churning of the surf, especially at night.’
As she spoke of the night, she flushed slightly at Pryde’s quick scrutiny of her face and her person. What was he thinking? That she looked too slim and boyish for the task in hand, that of providing sons for the Great House?
‘So until ten days ago you were strangers to each other?’ Pryde glanced at his brother, a glitter to his eyes. ‘Quite a lightning romance!’
‘Quite,’ said Lucan, and their glances seemed to cross and clash like foils. ‘I think Kara would like to go upstairs now. We spent last night at Frenchman’s Bay and slept on the sands. I didn’t care to risk the currents of our bay in the dark.’ ‘
‘Caution, Lucan—you?’ Pryde arched an ironical eyebrow. ‘Well, as we must discuss the business that took you to Paris, I think it would be advisable for Kara to leave us—business always seems to bore the decorative sex.’
Kara tensed in the love-seat and wondered if Pryde was being a little cruel. He looked as though he could be, for to be made helpless when his vigour had matched Lucan’s would be enough to embitter a saint—and no Savidge, she was sure, was ever a saint!
She stood up as a maid came in answer to Pryde’s ring. ‘You know where to put Mrs. Savidge,’ he said. ‘I shall not detain your husband too long, Kara. Make yourself at home at Dragon Bay.’
Would such a thing ever be possible? Kara was inclined to doubt it as she went with the maid up the gracious, blackwood staircase. It curved up to gallery after gallery, forming at each curve a perfect horseshoe in which a person might stand to gaze down into the great hall.
On the second gallery, where the maid paused, there was a sudden dance of coloured light from the fable-window which they approached as they walked along the gallery. In the window hovered a girl in a golden dress, who seemed about to float out on to the staircase balcony.
‘How unusual,’ said Kara, and then she remembered what Lucan had told her, that the Great House had a ghost who stepped out of a picture window on one of the galleries and walked with a rustle of silk when the house was still and its occupants abed.
A few moments later Kara was alone in the suite she was to share with Lucan. The two bedrooms connected, and what might once have been a large closet for clothes was now a bathroom. There was also a small solarium with ceiling-to-floor windows framing a wonderful view of the waves and rocks of Dragon Bay.
Kara stood gazing down at the bay and she noticed that from here the cliffs were like a towering mass of seashells that gave off a shine as they caught the sun. Were they the cliffs that Lucan and Pryde had attempted to climb long ago? The cliffs from which Pryde had fallen ?
Something seemed to tell her they were, and she hastened out of the solarium into her bedroom, striving to wipe from her mind a grim picture of that hurtling figure, and Lucan clinging horrified to the cliff face. Why, she wondered, had Pryde chosen to put his brother and his bride in this particular suite? Because it overlooked the scene of his accident, and he wanted Lucan to remember it each time he glanced out of the window—or took his wife in his arms?
She gazed around her bedroom with pensive eyes. There was a queen-sized fourposter with a frilled canopy of sea-green voile, and carved dragons all the way up its posts almost to the ceiling. A tambour-fronted cabinet stood beside the bed and a French clock stood on it. There were low-backed chairs with silk seats, a satin-wood desk with a nest of drawers, and a vast wardrobe and dressing-table of matching mahogany.
Kara’s brush and comb set had been laid out on the dressing-table, and she bit her lip as she studied her reflection in the mirror. No wonder Pryde had stared at her! Her hair was tousled from sea-spray, her nose shiny, and her shirt and trews were hardly bridal.
She had better have a shower and a change of dress. She would put on the pleated white dress that made her look cool and outwardly poised.
She went across to the big wardrobe, where she guessed her dresses had been hung, and she gave a cry of fright as a figure leapt out of the wardrobe and cried, ‘Boo!’
‘You little wretch!’ Kara caught hold of the child. ‘That isn’t a very funny trick to play on a person. Who are you ?’
‘You did jump,’ the child said with glee. She gazed up at Kara with green eyes that danced in a faun’s face. Her mane of hair was tawny, streaked with the tints of a ruddy autumn. Her lips were like wild cherries—never had Kara seen a lovelier child!
‘Are you Rue?’ Kara asked, her flash of temper giving way to interest.
‘Yes.’ The child smiled—a smile to catch at the heart. ‘I am eight years old, and I am sorry I made you jump. Da said you would be spoiled and pretty, and that my nose would be put out of joint because Yunk would not take so much notice of me now he’s married. She said all his time would be taken up with keeping his wife happy.’
‘And who is Yunk?’ Kara asked, fascinated by the recital.
‘Lucan, of course.’ The child went and sat on the dressing-stool and began to play with Kara’s toiletries. ‘I call him Yunk because he is my young uncle, don’t you see ? I have to call him my uncle, but everyone knows that I am really—’ There the child broke off and gazed at Kara through the mirror. ‘I suppose you are the bride?’
‘Yes, I am Lucan’s wife.’ Kara sat down on the side of her bed and studied this precocious little baggage called Rue. She obviously knew she was adopted, but how very odd that she should have green eyes and hair with reddish tints in it. Any stranger would have taken her for a Savidge!
She lifted the lid off a powder-bowl and dabbed the puff all over her face. ‘You don’t look very old,’ she said, cocking her head to study the effect of the powder.
‘I am twenty-one years old,’ said Kara with a grin. The child’s quaint mode of speech was obviously picked up from Pryde, and the other adults who seemed at Dragon Bay to live in a world that belonged to yesterday. This room must have been like this a hundred years ago; the sound of the sea and the rich smell from the cocoa valley would have wafted in on other brides who came in trepidation to the House of the Dragon.
‘Do you think you will like living here with us ?’ asked Rue, turning on the stool to gaze at Kara with green eyes set in fringes of dark lashes. ‘Of course, even if you don’t like it here, you will have to stay. Auntie Clare says there is no escape from being a Savidge, and you are a Savidge now.’
Yes, Kara thought, I belong here now, and she tensed on her bed as the bedroom door opened and Lucan came in. His brows were drawn in a frown, but when he saw Rue he broke into a smile. ‘Hullo, monkey!’ He swung the child off the stool and kissed her. Their russet heads close together gave Kara a shock.
‘Did you bring me a present from Paris?’ Rue pressed her cheek against his. ‘Dear Yunk,’ she added.
‘Don’t I always bring you a present, baggage?’ He glanced across at Kara and flicked his eyes over the vast proportions of her bed. ‘You look like a frog on a lily-pad, my dear.’
‘Charming,’ she said, and watched him stride into his bedroom with Rue perched on his shoulder. A couple of minutes later the child came running out. ‘Look what I’ve got!’ She wore on her wrist a silver bracelet set with a tiny heart-shaped watch. ‘My name is engraved inside the bangle, with special love from Uncle Lucan. I must go and show Da.’
She dashed out of the room, then poked her head round the door. ‘I bet Da will be glad to hear that you are not a pampered doll, Kara.’
She scampered away, and Lucan lounged in his bedroom doorway looking amused. ‘She’s a little devil, eh ?’
‘Yes,’ Kara said thoughtfully. A little devil with her husband’s eyes and unruly russet hair. A child who was obviously of the same blood as Lucan!
CHAPTER SIX
WHEN the afternoon sun had cooled and the shadows were lengthening, Lucan took Kara on a tour of the plantations. She could ride, and he mounted her on a cream-coloured filly called Silky. His own mount was mettlesome and black as night. Jet the hound went with them, bounding at the hoofs of the stallion.
The sugar cane was planted in endless rows that would, as the weeks went by, grow silver-green and taller than the men who would harvest it by burning off the leaves and cutting down the sugar-loaded cane with sharp cutlasses.
‘The fields are already showing their green,’ Lucan said, sweeping out an arm and indicating the miles of cane. ‘With luck we shall have a good crop this year, and men will come from all parts of the island to harvest the cane and sing the old songs as they swing their cutlasses in the hot sun. It’s quite a sight, Kara.’
She could well believe him, and she smiled as she glanced at him. He wore a field hat tilted down over his eyes, such arresting eyes, alight with his pride in the plantations. His horse jibbed as a large-winged creative hopped off a stalk of cane and skimmed the proud head. Lucan soothed his mount with a caressing hand, so brown and work-hardened.
‘The cane fields are like a rippling ocean of green,’ Kara said, and she did not look beyond this moment to the time of the harvest. They cantered on towards the sugar refinery, with its smoke stacks looking black against the sky. The sun was setting across the fields and the whole scene was grand and unforgettable.
‘Would you like to go inside?’ Lucan asked.
They dismounted and Kara found that at the present time there was little activity in the big mill. ‘The racket is deafening when production is at full gallop,’ Lucan said, pointing out the choppers and giant rollers beneath which the cane would be cut small and then crushed, the liquid draining off into huge boilers to be clarified and crystallized.
[Stephanos 02] - Dragon Bay Page 9
