The Honey Is Bitter

by Violet Winspear

Domini's fingers gripped the stem of her wine glass, for it seemed to her that Alexis, with cat-like perception, had guessed it was fancy, not affection, that had led Paul into marriage. Paul, the rich and attractive brother-in-law Alexis might well have fancied herself!

  "I love all those old tales of fancy and fable," Κara said dreamily. "Paul's house always seems to me to have a mythical-castle look, perched on its crag high above the sea."

  "And do you visualise Domini as the captive princess?" Nikos mocked affectionately.

  Kara rested her elbow on the table and cupped her pointed chin in her hand. "Domini," she smiled, is more like the swan-maid who discarded her disguise to bathe as a girl, and who was compelled to marry the man who stole her swansdown dress."

  "What are you talking about, child?" Aunt Sophula shot an irritated glance at her niece. "You see, Paul! She lives in a world of make-believe."

  "Kara is but sixteen—a child." He tossed back his ouzo, and Domini caught the glint of his eyes and knew he was angry. His young stepsister was probably the only person who had his complete affection, and Domini wondered if he would like her to live with them. It was fairly obvious that Kara was not all that happy in the keeping of her aunt, for behind his teasing manner Nikos could be showing her more attention than his mother liked. Also there was Alexis, whose sense of fun was neither as pleasant nor as innocent as the boy's.

  Domini decided, then and there, to suggest to Paul that Kara be invited to spend some time with them. Her stay could be extended into a permanent arrangement if it turned out a happy one, and Domini felt certain that it would be. Kara was lively, musical, and Paul's house needed the scamper of young feet up and down its stairs, and laughter to wake it up. It had not been lived in enough in the past few years.

  It was at this point that Domini came out of her reverie to find Alexis staring hard at her, taking in the little smile that half-parted her lips . . . lips shaped to receive kisses. Then Alexis glanced at Paul, and Domini saw the tightening of her full red mouth as her eyes measured the breadth of his shoulders, lifting to cling darkly to the lips that were stamped with decision, temper, and passion.

  When everyone rose from the table to take coffee on the loungers under the trees, Domini was aware that Alexis was watching as Paul adjusted a lacy stole about her shoulders, and brushed from her honey hair a tiny moth. Though so light a touch, it was one of ownership for all the world to see . . . from her fair head to her small feet in silver kid shoes the cool and slender English girl was the possession of her imperious Greek husband.

  And Alexis tensed as he led Domini to one of the more secluded loungers.

  CHAPTER NINE

  DOMINI had heard bouzouki music played in tavernas of Athens, but it had been curiously unmusical in comparison to the fey magic which Kara enticed of the instrument.

  The courtyard flowers were asleep and dewed, exuding scents that Domini drew deep within her, along with the aromatic flavour of her Turkish coffee. The fretted lanterns lent mystery, romance, illusion . . . a spellbound night, made more so because the intoxication of seeing Barry again was haunting Domini s veins.

  Kara was singing softly, partly in Greek, then in English. The words were strangely beautiful, those of a sonnet set to music, and a tremor ran through Domini as the song came to a sad ending.

  Ί cannot die if thou be not near,

  Ο spirit-face, Ο angel, with thy breath

  Kiss me to death!'

  "Are you cold?" Paul's arm came close and hard around her.

  "No, it's the music, that sad little song," she whispered, feeling as though the finger of destiny had stolen out of the night to quicken her heart under Paul's hand. The fountain sobbed into its stone basin, and the spell of the song was abruptly shattered by Alexis.

  She rose to her feet and swept the circle of listeners with strangely brilliant eyes. "Let us all drive down to the Venetian Mask for some dancing," she suggested, "It will be fun—much livelier than sitting here listening to Kara's melancholy music. The Vanhusens are bound to be there. Barry Sothern might have dropped in. He likes to dance."

  “Alexis, you are so energetic," Nikos said lazily, long legs stretched across the flags of the courtyard. "I like Kara's music."

  "Oh, come on," Alexis said impatiently, looking as though she might stamp a high-heeled slipper if thwarted. "There is time enough to sit and listen to music when one is old. Right now I prefer to dance to it and the Venetian Mask orchestra is a really good one."

  "I should rather like to go." Domini's heart had given an excited little bound when Alexis had said that Barry might have dropped in at the club.

  "Very well, we will go, if you are not too tired," Paul said obligingly.

  “Does one ever grow tired in Greece?" With a sudden surge of gaiety Domini escaped out of his encircling arms, and went indoors with the other two girls to tidy her hair and get a warmer wrap.

  Aunt Sophula declined to join the party, declaring that she was long past the age when it was more fun to dance than to sit at home with her memories. "You will see us at the break of dawn, little mother," Nikos laughed, and bent to kiss her cheek. She held his shoulders a moment and looked hungrily at him, then she let him go and he hustled his gamin-eyed cousin into a low-slung car. Alexis was about to slip into Paul's but Nikos caught her around the waist and said teasingly: "You will drive down with us, Alexis. Paul and Domini are still at the stage when they want to be alone.”

  “We shall be crushed in this buggy," Alexis said freezingly.

  “Get in, woman," Nikos gave her a slight push, then turned to shoot a smile at Paul. "We will drive ahead you, cousin. The stars are low enough tonight to kissed."

  "They're gorgeous," Domini said, as Paul headed the cream car down the incline that dropped dizzyingly towards the harbour. "I didn't know stars could look so enormous—I could almost pluck one for myself."

  "Do you think you are going to like living on island?" Paul asked.

  Domini breathed the scented maquis growing over the hills, and she could not deny her response to the fable-like beauty of Andelos. "Yes, the island is bewitching, Paul," she smiled, "Very much a place of 'eagles and dragons, wines of two kinds and spices.' "

  He took a quick look into her eyes . . . blue as the Greek sea, and alight with an eagerness that brought a quizzical look to his face. Her heart turned over, for he must never guess that Barry's presence on the island made its sunshine that much brighter for her. The memory of how merciless he could be drove the pink flush out of her cheeks, and she went weak at the touch of his strong, taut body as the car rounded a steep bend.

  "Paul," she said, her fingers clenching over her em­broidered bag, "I've been thinking that it would be nice if Kara came to stay with us for a while. I-I'm sure she would enjoy it. She's so very attached to you, and I find her a delightful person."

  He didn't answer for several moments, then he said: "I know you like Kara, but I think you are more afraid to be alone with me."

  "You weren't thinking of making a total captive of me, up there on your crag, were you, Paul?" she asked, and felt him glance sharply at her. She sat up very straight beside him, her wrap draping her shoulders, and his ruby and pearl hearts gleaming against h earlobes.

  "Darling, do you have to talk so dramatically?" he drawled, bringing to the endearment a caressing, foreign inflection that roused her to a sudden flash of anger.

  "Pretend in front of other people that you're the fond husband, Paul," she flashed, "but don't do it when we're alone. Let's at least have the honesty of knowing that my face and body are what you like. The person inside was never important to you. I doubt whether you know the smallest thing about that person . . . whether or not she cared for someone else when you married her. You never once thought to ask, did you, Paul? It just didn't matter so long as you got what you wanted."

  “The car swept round another bend, and the glittering lights of the harbour were suddenly much closer to them. A yacht rode at anchor about half a mi
le out and snatches of music and laughter floated across the water.

  “Did you care for somebody else?" Paul asked quietly.

  Domini studied his profile, moulded with all the perfection of Grecian art, and cold and hard as the marble the Greeks had worked in. How she longed to say outright that she did care for another man. That she had never stopped caring; that he had all the tenderness she would never give to any other man.

  But even in her frustration and anger, fear of Paul had the upper hand and she turned aside to say with forced coolness: "What would it have mattered to you? You would not have shown any compassion for my feelings ... you're made of stone where I'm concerned."

  "Not quite," he drawled. "A man of stone would not be moved by a face or a body. Nor hurt a little by their coldness."

  She shivered as though at his touch, and drew her wrap closer about her. What had Paul expected? Not affection, surely, from a woman who had given herself to him to save her family from the scandal sheets and the pointing finger of scorn?

  No, he could never have expected affection, but there had been a night in Athens when she had recognised that in some ways Paul was curiously isolated from people, and lonely. He was thirty-six, but he sometimes seemed a man who had stepped into the twilight of much older man.

  Recollection of that night returned clearly to Domini. All day they had been at the races, where he had gradually developed a severe headache. Moved by his obvious pain, she had urged him to return to the hotel where they had dined upstairs on the cool of their bal­cony, not talking much, but with something between them that came close to companionship. When he had gone to his room, and she had lain alone in hers, she had heard him pacing up and down for more than hour.

  Up and down, like a caged tiger, while she turned restlessly in her bed and wondered if conscience could be troubling him. The smoke of a chain of cheroots had

  drifted under the adjoining door, and once or twice she had lifted herself on one elbow, close to a compulsion to go in to him. Her hand had been on the bedcovers, about to throw them back, when his pacing had stopped and she heard him get into bed.

  She had known from the deep-etched lines in his face the following morning that he had hardly closed his eyes. With harshness, almost, he had pulled her into his arms in her silk robe and crushed to nothing the polite enquiry on her lips. "So you heard me pacing about?" He had laughed without humour. "It was that, or this, Domini." And again his mouth had taken forcibly what she would not give willingly . . .

  Now, as the car swung into the drive of the Venetian Mask and ground to a halt on the gravel, Paul turned to face her, an elbow resting on the wheel. His eyes dwelt on her lips, as though he had in mind those kisses she forced him to take.

  "You may have Kara to stay with us if you would like that," he said. "But it will distress the child if she learns it is bitter honey that we share."

  "Have I not played my part reasonably well up to now?" Domini's pulses gave a jolt at the way he had put it. "I should like Kara to stay with us not entirely for my own sake, but because I feel she isn't all that happy at the house of your aunt. You must have sensed this yourself, Paul?"

  He inclined his head. "Since her widowhood, my aunt has grown very possessive of Nikos, and it might be better for Kara to come to us. Always before I have been away from the island a great deal and my house would have been too lonely for her. Now things are different. Now I have a wife—yes, by all means invite Kara to stay.”

  "She loves you, Paul," Domini said quietly. "I shall do nothing to destroy that. I'm not—vindictive."

  "Ah, no," he touched her hair and his mouth was almost gentle for a moment. "No, you are sensitive in the extreme, and you find me hard to understand. Perhaps in time you will understand."

  The flashing and dimming lights of the Venetian Mask played over her face as they sat there in the car . . . Domini's heart pounded, half with apprehension, half with secret longing that Barry would be here tonight and they would dance together.

  She stepped from the car, heard behind her the decis­ive slam of the door and the crunch of gravel as Paul caught up with her and took her elbow in a light grip as they mounted the steps of the club. An attendant at the door greeted Paul as a member, and inside the entrance a girl handed him a black mask, and Domini a gold one. She gave an excited little laugh as she put hers on. "I feel like a sixteenth-century coquette in this," she smiled.

  She saw the tiger gleam of Paul's eyes through slits of his mask and thought he looked Satanic with the black line of his brows above it, and his teeth showing in a quick smile. "Come along, Domini," he said, and he led her into the large, romantically lit Venetian room where couples were whirling to a waltz, or sitting in alcoves on lunette couches talking together and looking mysterious in their masks.

  The walls were painted with murals of dusky gold palaces and green canals; the soaring Bridge of Sighs and gondolas gliding like dark swans beneath it.

  Domini gazed around her, her lips half parted, the breath catching in her throat as she saw someone tall shouldering his way through the dancers. His mask was crimson, and she would have known him anywhere, in any throng, because of his leonine head.

  He greeted them, and then said to Paul: "May I dance with your wife, Mr. Stephanos?"

  "By all means," Paul said coolly, and he stood back in the shadows of a columned alcove as Barry swept Domini in among the waltzing couples.

  She told herself it was the smoke that made her eyes misty as the years between fell away and she moved to music in Barry's arms once again.

  For minutes on end they danced without speaking, circling the floor as though they were up in the clouds. "Domini," he spoke her name huskily, "my heart nearly stopped when you appeared on that terrace this afternoon. Kara told me that her brother had married a girl named Domini, but I couldn't believe, didn't want to believe that it was you. Not my Domini."

  Tears blurred her eyes when he said that, and she stumbled and was caught close against him. That frightened her, for Paul was now in conversation with Alexis and there was a long mirror at the back of the bar that reflected the dance floor and the circling couples. She pulled hastily away from contact with Barry. "We must be careful," she whispered, and joy at being with him had sharpened to fear.

  "But I've got to talk to you—alone." His fingers bit into her waist. His eyes blazed down into hers through his mask, and his mouth looked dangerous. She wanted to put her hand against his lips, to press into silence the words that wouldn't be silenced.

  "Ί love you, Domini," he said, speaking deep in his throat. "I've never stopped."

  “I'm married, Barry," she replied. "And this—this talk of love has got to stop."

  “I want to shout it from the roof," he said dangerously. "And I shall if you don't come out into the garden with me—and tell me why you married a man you don't love."

  “H-How can you know that?" she gasped, beginning to feel dizzy from dancing, and from being still too close for comfort to a man other than Paul. Her eyes sought her husband over Barry's shoulder. He and Alexis were now seated on stools, and he seemed for the moment content to be entertained by her. Her masked eyes, Domini noticed, were fixed on his face.

  “Let's slip away, now, and talk," Barry urged. "While you husband is engrossed in the seductive Alexis."

  “I-I shouldn't—" she was afraid, and yet she needed so much to talk alone with him. But it was hardly possible, here at the Venetian Mask ...

  The dance music ceased and as the cabaret was announced couples moved back off the floor to tables and alcoves. The fights dimmed once more, the music began softly, beckoning out from between curtains a slim dancer in filmy trousers and a glittering halter. She came with deliberation into the centre of the floor, where she hovered in a ruby spotlight like a dragonfly in a flame.

  Domini stood in the shadows beside Barry, her heart beating fast at his closeness as the dancer lifted dark-skinned hands above her head and clicked her finger castanets. The music
quickened, she began to dance, possessed of all the sinuous grace and hypnotic attrac­tion of a snake-goddess. The click-click of her castanets sounded like seashells knocking together in a pagan grotto; the curtains of time parted as she whirled and leapt and arched backwards until her long black hair swept the floor. There might well have been Venetian galleys in the harbour and armoured captains in the audience. Telethusa danced again in that picturesque room, and with every eye following her every move­ment it was almost too easy for two people in the shadows to move backwards out of glass doors open to the garden, the man urging the woman with hands that would not be denied.

  "Come over here among the trees." Barry pulled Domini into their shade and fragrance. "The gods see everywhere'," he quoted laughingly.

  "Don't!" She gave a shiver, both from his words and his touch as he held her against a tangle of honeysuckle. "I-I must go in when the music stops," she said uneasily.

  "Afraid of your husband?" His voice grew angry, and jealous.

  "No—it isn't that."

  "What is it, then, his satanic brand of charm? Was it that you couldn't resist?" He took her by the shoulders and held them bruisingly. "I've got to know why you married Paul Stephanos. Why, Domini, when it was understood between us—without words—that one day we would marry?"

  “One day, Barry?" Her smile was wrenched. "You went away and you never wrote. I thought you had forgotten me."

  "That isn't true." The arrogance of knowledge rang in his voice. "We pledged ourselves to each other the evening before I went away, and you knew I meant it when I said I would come back to you. You were so young, Domini, so carefree in your freedom, and there was so much I wanted to do with my freedom before we married. I wanted to put on canvas what men like Rodin have created out of stone, and I needed the utter absorption of being alone while I worked at what I wanted to do."

  "And have you succeeded, Barry?" She gazed up at his face in a shaft of starlight, and her fingers crushed the honeysuckle against which he held her . . . within kissing distance.