The Honey Is Bitter

by Violet Winspear

"Strange, that here in Greece she should be thinking about him so much. She supposed she had a secret longing to be with him instead of Paul.

  Domini closed her eyes and tried to pretend that she was in Barry's arms—but these arms were harder, and had she laid her head against the crisp tuxedo her cheek would have been near Paul's heart instead of resting in the comfortable hollow of his shoulder.

  You dance well," he murmured above her head. "I had no idea you entertained to any great extent at Fairdane."

  We didn't," she replied. "There just wasn't money enough. I learned how to dance at boarding-school."

  You seem accustomed to being led by a man rather than another girl," curiosity tinged his voice. "I have noticed this before. You almost give yourself in dancing, Domini."

  Her heart gave one of those jolts that only he could cause, as though an electric current ran from his frame into hers. It was oddly disquieting. "You're forgetting— my cousin," she said. "When Doug was at home, we often danced to the old gramophone in the hall. The floors at Fairdane are like silk with age."

  “Ah, Douglas!" Still that curious note was in his voice. "Yes, I suppose you must have cared a lot for that young—man."

  The music ceased, someone put into her hand a glass sparkling Greek wine, and during the next couple of hours Domini danced with other men while Paul went off somewhere. "Several of the Greeks are playing cards down in the stateroom," a young American told her, "Greeks like to gamble, so I've been told."

  "Only they?" she murmured, her thoughts flying to her cousin. Did Paul really think she had married him because she cared for Doug beyond the bonds of kinship? How odd—and how frighteningly acute of him to guess that she had often danced with a man she cared for!

  Cared for? Did that mean that love for Barry had never really flickered out in her heart? What a hopeless love when she had no idea where he was, but knew that if they should meet again it would have to be as strangers because she was no longer Domini Dane.

  Some time later Domini grew weary of dancing and she found a narrow flight of steps and mounted them to a secluded corner of another deck of the yacht. Here she stood alone at the rail, a breeze fingering her hair and her cheek, coins of moonlight dappling the sea, the spars and rigging of other boats and caiques etched darkly against the sea sparkle. There was in the seductive murmuring of the water a gentle melancholy that found an echo in Domini. The sounds of music and laughter drifted up from the deck where people danced, and with her eyes lifted to the stars she wondered about her future with Paul.

  She gave a cold shiver as in a silver flurry in a star suddenly fell out of the sky, while in that moment a deep voice said: "You look as cool and distant as those stars, Domini."

  In his silent-footed way Paul had come up behind her. She didn't turn round and his breath stirred her hair as his hands curved warm and strong over her shoulders. She stood very still, only her heart had movement, and the nerve that twitched in her lower lip.

  “You enjoy a little solitude now and again, don't you?” he murmured.

  She nodded.

  “You will like the island, Domini." His voice, even his hands on her shoulders were quiet, but she felt it was a waiting quiet. "It is a place made for those who like the wild, the free, the unspoiled. Listen to the sea. It holds a siren's song."

  “Can you hear the sea from your house?" she asked.

  “From our house, Domini." He let her go and leaned against the deck rail with his back to the sea. His eyes, when she glanced at him, were leaping and lambent as a nocturnal cat's; his black hair was ruffled, he had been drinking wine and playing cards, and her throat tightened nervously at something she glimpsed in him—a smouldering air of recklessness.

  “You are fingering your pearls like worry beads," he mocked. "Why, little Greca, are you so afraid of me?"

  “Isn't it natural to fear what one doesn't understand?" She had brought down her hand from her pearls; and her fingers curled over the shiny deck rail.

  “It is true we Greeks are never easy of understanding.” His teeth showed in a narrow smile. “Much of what we feel is submerged—but all the same it is there, the fire of the volcano, or the ice below the sea. But surely the same can be said about the British? You as you stand there — do you think I don't find you a mystery? Domini, the girl with the rare and lovely name to match her person. Domini, who will only reap he vengeance when I prove to her I am a devil by taking what she will not give me."

  He put back his pagan head and laughed in the face of the moon. "Well, ‘oracle of brides,' here is to make you one to you wonder at..."

  “You're drunk!" Domini exclaimed, her face taut dislike. She was about to walk away from him when, lithe and quick as a tiger, he pinioned both her wrists with one steely hand and tipped back her face with the other. "My little tempest," his eyes were alight with raw-gold flame, "yes, this I will have—" and his mouth crushed hers, bittersweet from the wine of Greece, violent and drugging, taking, forcing, leaving her with seared lips as she fled away from him, down the steps and back among the civilised.

  In the cab that took them to the hotel, they sat coldly apart. Domini did not look at him in the lift, standing icily withdrawn in her Grecian gown and cloak, her eyes as frozen as the sapphire on her left hand. They bade each other goodnight in the sitting-room, then Domini walked into her room and closed the door with a curt little click. There was a key in the lock, and even as her fingers were moving towards it, she withdrew them. To lock her door would be an open admission of the deep fear in her heart. She wouldn't give Paul that satisfaction.

  Mental unrest has a way of disturbing one's sleep with unnerving dreams. Domini could not have said afterwards what her dream was about, but she awoke suddenly from it to find her face wet with tears. She sat up in bed, tasting the salt of her tears on her mouth, and she saw at once beyond her bedroom windows a queer, reddish flickering in the sky. As her heart quickened with alarm, she threw back her bed-covers and ran to see what was causing that orange glare.

  She pulled open the balcony doors and in her filmy nightdress she stood outside, staring down to where the torch of a fire lit up the harbour. A caique or a yacht was ablaze, and she heard firebells and saw sparks rise above the flames into the sky. She didn't hear her door open, but all at once Paul had joined her on the balcony.

  “Could it be the Silver Witch?" she gasped.

  “Something large is aflame down there," he crisped.

  "What a shame if it is the Witch! Such a lovely boat — and I do hope your friends got off safely."

  He went to the balcony parapet and peered down hard at the harbour, as if calculating the exact position in which his friends' yacht must lie. "No, it is not the Witch. She is moored farther along in the basin," he said at last. "What a blaze! It may be a cargo boat of some sort."

  He turned and the reflections of the flames bathed him in their leaping light, and as he came towards Domini he seemed in his dark silk pyjamas to tower over her in a devil-like way. He muttered something in Greek as she involuntarily stepped back into her room, and she gave a little wince as he followed and closed the balcony doors none too quietly. "I—I'm glad that awful fire is not on the Witch," she said, and hated the slight shake in her voice.

  He didn't answer and she forced herself to glance up at him. He stood framed by the fire glow, and he was assessing her pale slender shape in the blue filminess of her nightdress. It was a look that made Domini feel naked.

  You once accused me of buying you, Domini," he said. "You really believe it; don't you?"

  She swallowed dryly, feeling the frantic clamour of her frightened heart even as some devil prodded her recklessly: "What is it, Paul, do you think it time you collected interest on those torn-up cheques?"

  She heard him catch his breath, then he moved a step nearer and the room seemed darkly filled with his tall, wide-shouldered figure. He gave a low, savage laugh. "Yes, my dear, the time has come, I think, for you to stop playing the shrinking violet. I have
had enough of that, especially when I know that there is another side to your cool beauty and your pride—"

  "You want to humble my pride, is that it, Paul?" she threw at him, finding the pluck to defy him even as terror seemed to have locked a grip on her legs. She couldn't move, was utterly incapable of it as with one of his sudden lithe movements he reached for her and swung her up into his arms. Blindly, wildly, she began to struggle for freedom. "Paul, let me go!" Her fingers raked upwards into his scar and his tousled hair. "I—I shall hate you—"

  "Don't you hate me already, my little tempest?" And there was in his eyes—as the flames outside flared up anew and lit the sky—a look of utter possessiveness. Like Apollyon, the destroying angel, he carried her into his own room and kicked the door shut behind them. His wide shoulders seemed like wings spread above her as he laid her down on the bed, shutting out the world as his arms enclosed her.

  "I want you, Domini, whether you hate me or not."' His mouth was in her hair as he whispered the fierce words. "I want a wife, not a polite and lovely stranger”

  "We'll never be anything but strangers," she said with equal fierceness.

  "A Sabine with her Roman, eh?" He laughed against her throat, then took her mouth . ..

  Domini stirred awake just before dawn. A faint cool light was seeping into the room and she cautiously turned her head, her hair a wild-honey tangle, and gazed at Paul in sleeping defencelessness beside her. His black lashes shadowed his cheeks, scrolls of crisp hair were adrift on his forehead, and never before had she seen his mouth relaxed like that—almost gentle, she could have thought, if she hadn't known that gentleness was something alien to his nature.

  One arm was still about her, but it had relaxed and very carefully she slipped free of it, her heart coming into her mouth as he muttered something in his sleep and stirred a little, then as she frozenly watched him he settled down again, and Domini crept away as though from a sleeping tiger.

  In her own room, Domini slipped into a robe and sat down by a window. She watched as the pink fingers of dawn began to paint the Acropolis ... it was an utterly beautiful scene that she watched with a hook in her heart.

  CHAPTER SIX

  DOMINI never forgot her first glimpse of Andelos which they came to in Paul's cabin-cruiser with a young sailor from the island at the helm, and a cheeky mikro acting as galley-boy.

  The island rose suddenly out of the blue Ionian Sea. Etched so clearly by the clarity of Greek light that its lyre-shape was plain to the eye. Domini's hands curled over the rail where she stood — Andelos, occupied long ago by the Venetians and Romans, where signs of their occupation must still linger, setting its stamp on the people as she knew it was set on the man who was taking her to his own fastness on a crag above the narrowing end of the island. The wild and lonely part.

  'Draw near with heart unsullied to the house of Apollo, Ο Stranger,' came into her mind. 'And hence when the god is in the land the lyre, too, brightens into a summer strain concerning him.'

  She thought it very possible, for those two young Greeks couldn't leap fast and eagerly enough to carry out his orders, and no doubt all the other islanders res­pected, even loved the man who had provided them with a well-run hospital, a school for their children where there were showers and a gym, and a library. Paul had not told her of these things. Angelica and Myrrha had been her eager informants.

  Beside her Paul was leaning on the rail in a nonchalant attitude. His white shirt was deeply open at the throat, sunglasses concealed his eyes, and the sea air had roughened his black hair into tiny crisp curls at his nape and temples. They weren't touching, yet Domini could feel him with her nerves. Her body and heart were still sensitive to his ruthlessness of three nights ago, and during these days at sea it had taken all her courage to behave naturally with him.

  “We grow near to the island," he said. "Are you looking forward to seeing your new home?"

  He knew well enough what was really in her heart . . . a longing for freedom such as those sea birds had as they dived with the wind. "I imagine your house on the eagle's crag to be an interesting one," she replied. “Has it been in your family for many years?"

  My grandfather had it built." Paul lifted his cheroot and the tangy smoke drifted to Domini's nostrils. "It was he and his brother Loukas who started the Stephanos Shipping Line. During the rebellion the business suffered serious setbacks, as did everything and everyone in Greece, but in time we tacked out of the troughs and sailed into smoother waters."

  He fell quiet for a minute or so, and out of the corner of her eye Domini saw him staring almost sternly at the approaching island. Then he went on abruptly: “The house to which I am taking you has no deep roots in the past, as Fairdane has. It is, you might say, the concrete expression of man's victory in soaring above the arid soil. . . Greek soil is often arid, and life is very hard for many of my countrymen."

  “But the clan Stephanos made it," she said flippantly.

  She felt his glance and knew there was steel in it.

  “We made it by sheer hard work, and never did one of us stoop to stealing."

  “Not one, Paul?" There was a quiet note of meaning in her voice, and it gave her an inward sense of triumph to be able to barb her darts as well as he.

  She watched the endlessly running crests of the ocean, lapping and overlapping, like liquid pewter under the gold of the sun . . . like thrills of pain and pleasure they mounted, fell and were born anew.

  "The sea embodies everything," her husband mur­mured beside her. "Like the womb of life itself, holding tumult, energy and peace."

  "The sea is cruel," she rejoined. "It takes as much as it gives."

  "There is cruelty in everything, even in joy, and we have to accept this." He flicked his cheroot stub into the water, and then Domini felt his hand on her arm, sliding the bare length of it to her wrist, which he shackled with his hard fingers. "I know you find it hard, my romantic Sabine, to accept the fact that those hours in my arms were not entirely hateful the other night"

  "Don't let's talk about that!" She tried to pull free of his grip, but he held her a prisoner with arrogant ease.

  “Come, I insist on an answer." He gave her wrist a shake.

  "They were what you wanted — those hours." She tossed back her head and there were blue flames in her eyes. "Yes, I can give you that, Paul, for what it's worth. My heart is my own."

  "You think of our marriage in terms of tyranny, eh?" His eyes held hers, "Well, let me tell you, Domini, that if you lived with a man you loved you would find that there is a time for fighting, a time for being close, and a time for being distant. Hate and love are not such strangers to each other, and the obscure gallantries and repressions of romance are for reading about in books."

  "To expect romantic gallantry from you, Paul, would be adolescent," she rejoined. "I am receiving all that I expected when I vowed to obey you."

  "And remember that honour was among those vows," he said with a hint of menace.

  "It is a pity you didn't remember, Paul." Her hair blew in the sea wind like a wild-silk pennant; her eyes were filled with the blue of the Greek sky and ocean ... a nerve flickered into life beside Paul's mouth as he gazed down at her. His eyes moved over her Cretan embroidered blouse worn over sailcloth trews, the wind flattened the silk to her, caressed her, frolicked with her hair, brought a flush of carnation to her cheeks.

  'The people of Andelos will think me the luckiest man on earth," he said ironically. "

  "I wish I were plain!" she threw into the wind.

  "Do you, my little tempest?" He put back his black head and laughed deeply. "Plain—beautiful—you would still be Domini."

  She heard him, but her gaze was caught by the glimmering movement of a large sea creature moving quite close to the boat. "Are there sharks in Greek waters?" she asked, pointing towards that flash of a flipper in the water.

  "It is a dolphin." He leaned over to watch the gliding, circling, then lovely leaping shape, his arm slung about
Domini's waist. She was delighted with the

  dolphin, the first one she had ever seen, and she turned to smile brightly at Paul. "Apollo's desire of the sea," she quipped.

  “Apollo had many desires, and many battles to win," said dryly. "Dolphins come to sport in the lagoon of our private beach, so you are assured of some entertainment during your stay at the house on the eagle's crag."

  “Won't we always be there?" She laughed at the leaping antics of the dolphin in the water.

  "Not always," Paul said quietly.

  "Business, I suppose, makes it necessary for you to travel?"

  "Yes," he agreed. "I shall be making a certain journey in a few months' time."

  Her attention was mainly on the dolphin when he spoke, but something about his tone of voice made her glance at him. There was no reading his eyes behind those sunglasses, but she wondered if he had been hint­ing that she was but a caprice and in time he would let her go . . .

  The hook in her heart seemed to pierce deeper. . his to hold while it pleased him, as he was holding h right now, a hard tanned arm possessively about her, his hand pressing against her waist.

  Their boat by-passed the harbour of Andelos, for they were heading for the lagoon that was part of Paul’s property, but Domini saw enough of the harbour to be able to take in its Venetian-like aspect. Colourful fishing caiques were tied up there, houses mounted in tiers from the pebbled shore, their white walls soaked in Greek sunshine. There came across the water as they passed the singing of a young fisherman; strangely, hauntingly his song followed them until it was lost.

  "What does he sing about?" Domini asked, intrigued.

  "About the girl he hopes to marry when his sisters are settled," Paul told her, a hint of amusement in his voice. "Not quite as romantic as you expected, eh? But that is how it often is in Greece; if the son of a poor family is the main breadwinner, then he must provide until his sisters are married off."

  "How hard for the poor boy," Domini murmured. "No wonder he sounded so sad."