The Lion Rock

by Sally Wenteorth

  Sally Wentworth - The Lion Rock

  She was more than willing to surrender to love

  Never before had Cordelia experienced such desire as she felt for Marcus Stone. And one sultry night in the exotic gardens of his Sri Lankan home, he revealed his own fierce passion for her.

  Then suddenly he became remote, and strangely reluctant to accept what she wanted to give. "Aren't you willing to take a risk if you want something badly enough?" Cordelia had asked him.

  Marcus had shown he was a risk taker in other ways. But now he was very clearly showing Cordelia that he didn't want her…

  CHAPTER ONE

  The view from the hotel balcony was breathtaking. It looked out over a deep green Valley rich with strange and exotic trees, many of them tall coconut palms that whispered in the light breeze. Small white houses, roofed with woven palm leaves, dotted the hillsides and grew thicker on the lower ground where they clustered round the ornate, pink-walled temple just visible through the trees. The temple stood alongside the still green waters of a lake built by an ancient king for his queen, but where, on an island in the centre and connected to the palace by an underground passage, the king maintained his harem of beautiful concubines. Across the lake the land rose again, the greenery giving way to the misty greyness of rock as the hills peaked against the clear azure sky.

  Cordelia Allingham breathed a long sigh of pleasure, her soft blue eyes drinking in every detail of the scene. The scent of flowers stole towards her mid for a fleeting moment she thought she found something familiar in the fragrance, but then it was gone, no matter how hard she tried to retrieve the memory. The sun was hot on her bare arms, even though it was quite late in the afternoon, and she stepped back into the shadow of a gabled roof overhung with dark red pantiles and sat down in a rattan chair. She was tired from the long journey but was much too enthralled by the scenery before her to go and rest. And excited too, excited at the thought of coming home, although even now she could hardly believe that she was really here in Sri Lanka, this beautiful island that hung like a jewelled earring from the mainland of India.

  Or rather, back here, because she had been born in Sri Lanka just over twenty years ago. Only it had been called Ceylon then, and had been part of the British Commonwealth, not a republic as it was today. Not that she remembered a great deal of the country from her childhood, as she'd been sent back to boarding school in England when she was only seven and had spent all her holidays with an aunt, her mother's sister, who lived near Bath, because she was too young to travel so far alone. But then when Cordelia was about eleven her mother had joined her in England, leaving her father behind, and had never gone back.

  Cordelia's memories of those years were vague, she had pushed them to the back of her mind as one tends to do with memories that hurt or are unpleasant; she only remembered vividly one incident, when her father had come home on leave from his job and there had been a terrible row because her mother refused to leave England and go back with him. He had always been a man of violent temper, and he had stormed out of the house. Neither of them saw him again until Cordelia's mother died when she was fifteen and he had turned up at the funeral. By then he was again living in England, working in a London office and hating every minute of it, his job as the manager of a huge tea estate in Sri Lanka lost when all the tea plantations were nationalised by the government of the new republic. So many years had passed without any contact that by then they were strangers, neither of them able to bridge the gap of age or apprehension. Her father had tried, clumsily, but Cordelia had been feeling too deeply the loss of her mother's love and support to do anything but coldly and instantly reject an offer of the same from anyone else. So they had gone their separate ways again with only the dutiful exchange of cards at Christmas to acknowledge any kind of relationship.

  A noise from the next room along penetrated her thoughts and made her look at her watch. She'd been sitting dreaming on the balcony so long that it was time to change for dinner. Hastily she went back into her room and took off the jeans and shirt she'd worn to travel in from London. It had been a long journey: a fourteen-hour flight with refuelling stops in Zurich and Dubai, and then a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Colombo airport inland up into the hills to this hotel near the town of Kandy which they were to make their base. She had been worried about her father and had tried to persuade him to stay in Colombo overnight, but he had insisted on pushing on, saying that he wanted to get the worst of the travelling over and done with. Just as he had insisted that they have dinner as soon as the dining-room opened so that they could get a good night's sleep and make an early start in the morning.

  Tucking her long fair hair into a shower cap, Cordelia turned on the taps of the rather ancient-looking shower and was pleasantly surprised when warm water came through. She stepped under it, wondering if her father was all right. Her father! She shook her head in puzzlement, amazed that she was really here with him. It had all happened so quickly. He had just suddenly turned up on the doorstep of the flat she shared with three other girls one day, and more or less demanded that she go with him on this trip. At first she hadn't recognised him; he seemed to have grown old since the last time she had seen him, his brown hair had turned grey and there were new lines on his face, his skin that had once had the tan of years spent in the hot sun, looked yellow and unhealthy. He had always been a big, hefty man, but now his flesh seemed to cling to bones that were too heavy for him so that his shoulders bent under the weight.

  He said that he had been ill, that he wanted to go back to Sri Lanka to convalesce, but his doctor wouldn't let him go unless he had someone with him to take care of him.

  Cordelia's first emotion had been one of pity when she saw how he had changed, but his brusque manner had almost immediately hardened her feelings. She had suggested he hire a trained nurse to take care of him, but this he had bluntly refused to do, saying that he was well enough, he only wanted someone to organise things for him, that he didn't really want or need a companion at all and it was only a sop to his doctor. Cordelia could well believe it and she had argued against going with him, pointing out that she had a job and couldn't take indefinite leave and that she was taking a course of evening classes. But he had bludgeoned down all her arguments with a wave of his clenched fist, a gesture she remembered from long ago. She could give up her job and he would pay all her expenses and her share of the rent of the flat while she was away. She could take her books with her and study while she was in Sri Lanka, and join the class again when she got back.

  But even then she wouldn't have gone with him, not just for his sake, and they had grown too far apart for her to feel any old-fashioned sense of duty towards him. No, she had agreed in the end only because she couldn't resist the opportunity to go back to the land of her birth, to see again in reality those dim memories of a land of sun and long white beaches, of brilliant flowers and endless seas.

  Slipping on a short-sleeved cotton dress, Cordelia applied fresh make-up and tidied her hair.

  Seven-fifteen; she still had a quarter of an hour in hand. She knocked at her father's door but there was no reply; he must already have gone down. All the rooms on this storey of the hotel opened on to a stone-floored gallery with a white-painted balustrade. Going to the edge, Cordelia looked down and saw a pool with flamboyantly coloured fish darting among the pieces of lacy coral and the stems of lotus flowers, then she looked up and smiled delightedly; the well of the gallery had no roof, it was open to the evening sky.

  She went on down the wide staircase and found her father sitting in the bar, a drink on the low table in front of him, a cigarette between his fingers. Cordelia crossed to sit in a chair opposite him.

  'Would you like a drink?'

  'Yes, please. A B
acardi and Coke.'

  James Allingham raised a hand and beckoned imperiously to the bar waiter. He came over immediately; he was wearing a white jacket over a blue and black patterned sarong and he had plastic flip-flops on his feet. 'Yes, sir?' he asked with a smile on his brown face.

  'A Bacardi and Coke and another gin and tonic,' her father said shortly.

  'Does your doctor allow you to drink—and smoke?' Cordelia asked tentatively as the waiter hurried away.

  'I'll do as I damn well like,' he answered curtly, his jaw thrusting forward obstinately.

  Cordelia looked at him for a moment, then settled back in her seat. Well, if he wanted to make himself ill again what right had she got to interfere? And as she didn't particularly enjoy having her head bitten off every time she tried to show concern, then he could go ahead and do what he liked for all she cared.

  The waiter came up with the drinks and Cordelia smiled and thanked him, getting a big smile in return. Her father didn't even bother to look up as his drink was put in front of him and the empty glass taken away. His attitude continued during dinner; Cordelia noticed that he was extremely short with the waiters, who were mostly young and very willing, although not speaking , very fluent English. He never said please or thank you to them and got very impatient if they didn't understand what he wanted straightaway.

  'The main language here is Sinhalese, isn't it?' Cordelia asked to fill the silence while they waited for their soup. He nodded and she went on, 'Didn't you learn to speak it while you were living here?'

  'Yes, of course I did,'

  'Why don't you use it, then?'

  James Allingham gave a short, bitter laugh. 'These peasants are supposed to be running what they laughingly describe as a tourist hotel. If they want tourists to come here they must learn to speak their language. I certainly don't intend to pander to their laziness by helping them out.'

  The soup came and Cordelia ate hers, wondering if her father had always been this bitter and bad-tempered or whether his illness had changed him. She could remember him being hot-tempered, but that was a far cry from this continuous sourness. If he had been like this all the time, then it was no wonder that her mother had left him; Cordelia could only marvel that she had stopped with him as long as she had. He must be getting on for sixty now, Cordelia reckoned; he hadn't married until his late thirties and his wife had been almost fifteen years younger.

  There weren't many other people in the dining- room; it was August and the off-season for this part of the island, so they were served quickly and soon finished their meal. Cordelia would have liked to go for a walk to stretch her legs, but it was already dark outside and she didn't fancy going alone in case she got lost; the hotel had seemed to be situated among a maze of narrow, unmade-up roads when they had arrived, and there weren't any street lights. One glance at the lines of tiredness around her father's eyes decided her against asking him to go with her, and anyway, a few moments later he stood up and announced that he was going to turn in.

  'I've already arranged for a car for tomorrow,' he informed her. 'You'll need to be down for breakfast at seven-thirty and we'll leave at eight.'

  Anger at his high-handedness almost made her retort that she would get up when she damn well liked, but then she shrugged mentally; after all, he was paying for this trip, so she supposed he had a right to say when they would travel, but he could certainly be a bit more polite about it! She nodded briefly and rose to follow him upstairs. At his door they merely exchanged a brief goodnight and Cordelia went on to her own room. But she didn't immediately get ready for bed, instead she went to sit out on the balcony again and listened to the sounds of the night: to the dogs who had lain supine in the sun all day and only now came alive to fill the air with their howling, to the constant chirp of tree frogs, and the distant rattle of a train. And now that tantalising scent came back to her more strongly, a faint spicy muskiness, and at last the memory returned: it was the smell of Sri Lanka, the land of her birth, and the only thing that had stayed with her over the years she had been away. Suddenly her heart surged with emotion and she was filled with a sense of peace and satisfaction, the knowledge that she had come home.

  The car her father had ordered was waiting for them outside the entrance of the hotel punctually next morning. It was a large black car which looked as if it had seen better days. Beside it stood a smartly dressed Sri Lankan driver.

  'Good morning, sir, Good morning, madam.' He rushed to open the rear door for them.

  'We don't need you,' James Allingham told him. 'I only ordered a car, not a driver.'

  'Oh, but sir,' the man started to protest, 'to a stranger these roads can be very dangerous. It is better if I drive you.'

  'I'm no stranger,' her father informed him tersely. He turned impatiently to Cordelia, who was looking at the two men uncertainly. 'Come on, get in the passenger seat.'

  She tried to compromise. 'Why don't I drive?'

  He laughed shortly. 'Not on these roads. You'd have an accident within the first mile.' When she still hesitated, he added brusquely, 'I drove myself around this island for over twenty years and I'm quite capable of doing it now!'

  Cordelia realised that there was no point in arguing, and got into the front seat hoping that he was fit enough to drive. It would help if she knew what his illness had been but when she had asked he had just shrugged off the question.

  'There isn't much point in my being here if you won't let me do anything,' she pointed out rather tartly.

  James Allingham looked at her coldly for a moment, then started the car. Cordelia felt completely snubbed.

  Their hotel gripped the steep hillside overlooking the town of Kandy, and they were soon caught up in the early morning traffic making its way into the centre of the town. Everyone drove on the left, the same as in England, but this seemed to be the only piece of organisation among the general chaos. The road was thronged not only with cars, but also with ancient Mercedes buses, painted red and grey, all of them with scrapes and torn metal along their sides, and all of them so crammed full of people that they bulged out of the doorway, hanging on by one hand or on to someone else who had a better hold. There were slow bullock carts loaded with fruit or vegetables for the market, literally hundreds of people on bicycles as well as a few motorbikes and the smart mini-coaches used for tourist excursions. Everyone drove on their horns, so that the air was filled with the shrill cacophony, but the crowds of pedestrians who overflowed the pavements on to the road seemed to take no notice at all, only moving out of the way at the very last moment.

  Cordelia decided that they must have built in radar or something, and she sighed in relief as an old man moved out of the way when she'd been sure that they were going to run him down. Her father had been quite right, she realised; she would never have been confident to drive through this lot, but he seemed quite unperturbed, even had a slight grin of enjoyment on his face.

  Beyond the town the traffic thinned out a little, although the roads grew progressively worse and she was bounced around in her seat as they drove over ridges and potholes. Her father still sounded the horn peremptorily whenever another vehicle or some people on foot got in the way, but Cordelia had time to take in the passing scenery: the paddy fields where women cut the rice by hand, the working elephants moving huge sawn tree-trunks, the tiny open-fronted shops in the villages that sold strange fruit and vegetables and yellow king-coconuts for thirsty travellers to drink.

  She had brought her camera with her and would have liked to stop a dozen times to take photographs, but her father took little notice of the scenery and seemed intent to push on. After a couple of hours' driving the road began to rise, running in big hairpin bends among steep hills that were planted with thousands of low, evenly cut green bushes clinging to hillsides that looked too steep for anything but a mountain goat to walk on.

  'There are the first of the tea plantations,' James Allingham told her.

  'Is this where we used to live?'

 
'No, the old Braemar plantation is some miles farther on in the best soil area.'

  Sri Lanka seemed to be full of people, even out here there were men walking barefoot along the side of the road, and women washing themselves or their clothes under one of the small waterfalls, that cascaded over the grey rocks, and there were small children with bunches of exotic wild flowers in their hands who tried to attract their attention so that they would stop and buy the flowers from them.

  The road rose higher and the hairpins became sharper until, at the top of one very steep hill, her father pulled off the main road and stopped outside a huge grey building that dominated the landscape.

  'Here we are,' he said. 'This is the Braemar tea factory.'

  He didn't get out of the car straight away, but sat looking round, and Cordelia tactfully stayed silent. Obviously the place was bringing back memories for him, but she was disappointed to find that she could remember nothing of the place. After a few minutes he gave a sort of grunt of dissatisfaction and got slowly out of the car, Cordelia following. The day was really starting to get hot, even so high up where a breeze came off the hills. She was wearing only a sundress but already she was beginning to feel the heat. There was a sort of courtyard outside the factory with, on the far side, a low, newish-looking building with 'Tourist Reception' written on the door. James Allingham grunted disgustedly when he saw this and walked straight towards the entrance to the factory, completely ignoring it.

  As they approached the door, however, a girl in a green sari came out of the tourist office and ran after them. 'Please, you wish to see the factory? I will take you.'

  Her father turned and eyed the girl with thinly- veiled contempt, 'I don't need some girl to take me round. I know the Workings of this place better than you ever will.'

  The girl's smile stayed on her face. 'Oh, but sir, it is not allowed that you go alone. I must take you.'

  He snorted angrily. 'Come, if you must, but I'll do my own tour.'