The Honey Is Bitter

by Violet Winspear

  Alexis! Calling on Barry with her friends the Vanhusens!

  For a moment a feeling of blind panic swept through Domini. She stood rigid and saw reflected in the mirror the sudden pallor of her face.

  Then in blind haste she snatched up her bag and jerked open the bedroom door. Perhaps she could get downstairs before Barry let Alexis and her friends into the cottage. It wouldn't look so bad if she were down­stairs with him . . .

  Domini hadn't bargained on the fact that Barry had fallen into the country habit of leaving his front door on the latch . . . Alexis had entered the cottage with the freedom of someone who came often and she was half­way along the passage, the Vanhusens following, as Domini came running down the stairs.

  Alexis stood stock still, with Domini poised above her on the third step with her hand clenching the stair rail.

  "Well," Alexis drawled, "what are you doing here?"

  Domini was too dry-mouthed to speak, and with a certain relief she heard Barry say: "Mrs. Stephanos has been having a look round my painting lair." His eyes met Domini's over Alexis’ smooth dark head, and her relief was shortlived as she saw how hard and reckless he looked—as though about to add that they were in love and Paul Stephanos could do what he darn well liked about it.

  No! Her eyes shot an agonised message into his. Please, Barry, not like this!

  "If there's nothing you like very much up in the studio, then I'd better let you have the painting that first took your eye;" he drawled, a twist to his mouth.

  She didn't quite take in his meaning, and it wasn't until they were all in the sitting room and he handed her his painting of the beach-after-storm that she came out of the daze into which panic had plunged her.

  "You—didn't really want to sell this one," she managed.

  "You're darn tooting he didn't," laughed Mr. Vanhusen. "I've been trying to persuade him to sell it for the past fortnight, and now you come along with your pretty face and he sells without a murmur of pain."

  Alexis touched a ruby fingernail to the painting. "Eve could always persuade Adam to do anything, Milo," she said in her throaty voice. "You have a bargain there, Domini. What do you intend to do with it?"

  "Mrs. Stephanos wants it as a present for her hus­band," Barry put in. "Now what are you all going to have to drink?"

  Domini got away after about twenty minutes. It had stopped raining and she assured Milo Vanhusen that she would pick up a carriage-cab down by the market­place and that he had no need to drag himself away from the party in order to run her home.

  The horse-drawn cab swayed and bumped up the gradient that led to the house of Paul's aunt. Barry had wrapped brown paper round the painting, covering it up as he had reluctantly covered up her presence at his cottage by saying she had gone there in search of a gift for Paul. But had Alexis been fooled by that excuse? Domini doubted it. She knew with a sinking heart that had looked as guilty on those stairs leading down from Barry's room as only the innocent can look in a compromising situation.

  Alexis had a weapon with which to make a lot of mischief, and the only way to stop her, Domini knew, was to fight as subtly as she would.

  Domini gave a cold little shiver. She and Barry had been so right together, so happy and unspoiled. Now it was no longer right for them to be alone together.

  Domini had never used calculation or guile in her dealing with Paul, and that evening she was driven to it to protect Barry rather than herself.

  The gown she was wearing for the party was of Veronese velvet in orchid-blue. There was a long con­cealed zipper at the back of the dress, and she called Paul from the bathroom to assist her. He came through the open door carrying her corsage of wild white roses which he had stood in water to keep fresh. As he had dried the stems a thorn had pierced his hand and Domini saw that several of the petals were rubied as he laid the spray on the dressing-table. He came behind her to zip the dress, and she felt his lean hand against her waist as he closed the zip. The glowing material enclosed her as in a sheath, leaving her shoulders white and bare.

  "Just wear the roses," Paul's warm lips brushed her shoulder. "Their whiteness matches your skin, my Sabine."

  "Will you pin them on for me?" She stood very still as he did so, tall in front of her, dark and striking in his evening clothes.

  "I've marked them with my blood." There was a strange smile on his mouth. "Shall I pull off the petals?"

  "No, leave them." Her eyes met his, then she took hold of his hand and examined it in case the thorn had penetrated. "Rose thorns can poison," she said, speaking low, aware of his eyes upon her hair.

  "Well," his tone of voice was droll, "will I die?"

  "Not this time." She let go of his hand and turned to the mirror to take in her reflection. She wore no jewel­lery with the blue velvet dress, only the roses, close-furled in feathers of fern. Paul was reflected behind her bare shoulders in the mirror, and as she took in his dark, forbiddingly good-looking face and thought of him as he could look in anger, she reached forward quickly and opened the drawer in which lay Barry's painting.

  "I bought you a present this morning, Paul." She turned to him and held it out. "I hope you like it. Milo Vanhusen was interested in buying it off Barry Sothern, but I got in ahead of him."

  Paul stripped the brown paper from the canvas and studied the painting. His face was impassive for several long moments, and Domini could feel her heart beating very fast under his roses.

  "My dear," he said at last, "you should not spend your money on me."

  "Don't you like the painting?" She felt bitter with herself for the deception; down in the market that morning it had not occurred to her for one moment to buy Paul a present.

  "I find the painting interesting." His eyes held hers. "I have seen it hanging on the wall at Sothern's cottage, and he once told me that he would never sell it because it was personal to him."

  Paul paused there and Domini's heart felt clutched by sudden apprehension.

  He flicked a finger at the painting. "Do you know what Sothern told me? That this was a representation of the conflict between what he wanted to give to his art, and what he felt for a certain woman. Domini," Paul's voice had gone low, almost menacing, "you are no stranger to the man who painted this, are you? You knew each other in England!"

  Domini stood mesmerised by her husband's eyes . . . tiger eyes glittering in his proud, pagan face. She knew fear of him, and cold wonderment that Barry could let her give Paul the painting when he knew it would reveal their secret.

  "Are you going to deny an association with Sothern in England?" Paul's voice was cold and clipped, the tips of his fingers bone white from gripping the frame of the painting.

  "We were a boy and a girl on a beach," she said quietly. "If we were in love, it was an innocent love."

  "Is it still an innocent love?" Paul looked cold, stern.

  "Yes." She tossed back her head in scorn at his question. "The Domini Dane whom Barry knew was left behind in England when I married you. She was someone you never knew, Paul. Someone you would not have wanted, for her hair was sea-tangled more often than not, and she thought it the height of romance to sit under the stars on the keel of an old boat, listening to a young man spilling out his ambitious heart. She didn't know, then, that ambition is the greater part of men, and love to them but a hunger of the body."

  She heard Paul draw in his breath, but whatever he was about to say was held back as someone tapped on their door and opened it. Kara's gamin head came poking round it. "I have come to cadge some of that glamorous perfume you were wearing last night, Domini." She smiled from her sister-in-law to Paul and came into the room. Her hair was seal-glossy from an energetic brushing and she wore a simple dress of linden-green. Covering her earlobes were the little silver lyres which Domini had bought her that morning.

  "You look as pretty as a nymph tonight, Kara." Domini's hand shook a little as she sprayed scent over the girl, who cocked her head at Paul and studied his stern face.

  "Wha
t is the matter with you?" she asked. "You look as though about to bring down the mountains on some­one. Not darling Domini, surely?"

  "Don't be such a child," he said curtly, and setting aside the painting he strode from the room, leaving Kara looking at Domini with distressed eyes.

  "Is he angry with you because of this morning?" she asked.

  "Men get angry, Kara." Domini touched the girl's cheek and managed a smile. "Shall we go downstairs? The party guests must be arriving."

  "The party is for you and Paul," Kara said, "and he goes to it with a face like a thundercloud. What has happened, kyria?"

  "Merely a quarrel between a wife and her husband," Domini forced a laugh, "so there's no need to make a Greek tragedy out of it."

  But the party that night couldn't help but hold, for Domini, the elements of tragedy.

  Tomorrow she and Paul would go home to their house on the eagle's crag, and her future with him loomed as cloudbound as the crag was said at times to be. Kara would be joining them at the house in a fortnight's time.

  Paul's aunt had not been opposed to the idea of Kara staying with them, but she had been firmly of the opinion that her nephew and his bride should have time alone in their house before sharing it with his sister.

  Domini gazed at the costumed Greek dancers who were entertaining at the party, and unaware her fingers crushed the white roses Paul had pinned above her heart. He stood alone across the lamplit patio, the leaves of a laurel tree casting shadows across his face that was taut as a Greek mask, immobile but for the tiger gleam of his eyes between his lashes.

  In the shadow-play of the leaves his face was as Domini remembered it the night of the fire in Athens, and under her crushing fingers the petals of his roses fell one by one.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  PAUL did not work at all that first week. Their days were spent down on the secluded beach below the black cliffs, and in the blue Ionian waters. They swam, and sailed a small painted caique, the sun on his naked, brown shoulders as they moved rhythmically to the pull of the tiller.

  It seemed to Domini, during these days and nights alone with Paul, that he meant to crush out every memory she had ever shared with Barry, or anyone else.

  From the side of the caique she dived into the spray, while the sun ran in long fingers across the sea, as though playing a great harp. She rolled over lazily, watching Paul in the boat, wide shoulders outlined against the sun, a dark scrolling of curls at the bronzed nape of his neck. Something shot through her body and she began to swim towards the beach. She blinked the water out of her eyes, her hands raised to squeeze it from her hair as she ran up the sands towards the shade of the grotto where their picnic basket was tucked out of the sun.

  She was slicing ice-cold peponi as Paul vaulted the side of the beached boat and came up the sands towards her. Under her lashes she watched him in his sailcloth trousers, bared from his waist to his throat like a Delphi bronze.

  "I am ready for that." He threw himself down beside her and took a slice of the melon from her hand. His white teeth sank into the golden fruit, while Domini nibbled hers, bare toes in the warm supple sand.

  An eagle swooped above the cliffs, wings stretched, gaunt neck thrust forward. Paul put back his arrogant head in order to watch the flight of the big dark bird.

  His smile flashed as he took in the seven-foot span of the eagle wings. "Wonderful," he murmured, "just as in the proverb. Do you know it, Domini?"

  She shook her head, thinking him as untamed and ruthless as any eagle in search of prey.

  "The proverb quotes several wonders," he smiled. "Among them that of an eagle in the air, a ship in the midst of the sea . . . and a man with a maid."

  "How interesting," she said. "Will you have a meat patty?" She leant away from him over the food basket, and his hand bit into her waist before slipping away.

  "Yes, feed the brute," he crisped, "then he will sleep for an hour and you can enjoy yourself in the rockpools looking at the coloured fishes and searching for coralline."

  She flushed at the sarcasm in his voice and handed him a patty rich with meat, along with a carton of spicy yoghourt and several large tomatoes. He sank back on his elbow and ate his lunch with his shielded eyes brooding on the sea. Domini poured coffee from the flask and added the wild honey which Paul liked. He took the cup and raised it to her. "Stin iyia sou," he said in Greek.

  "To your health, Paul," she responded, and looked away from him as she drank her coffee and ate her lunch. Her health was important to him for only one reason—she believed he wanted her to have a child.

  Their lunch finished and the basket tidied up, she left his side to sport in one of the rockpools where the tiny fish were rainbow-tinted, angel-winged, swimming in and out between her fingers like little puffs of breath. Paul had stretched out on the sand some yards from where she amused herself, the sun on his back and his face resting on his crossed arms. She wasn't sure whether he snoozed or lay there with the deceptive laziness of a replete and sun-warmed tiger.

  Domini fingered some pebbles pale and smooth as a child's milk teeth, and she still smouldered at the high-­handed way Paul had sent back Barry's painting.

  "I don't care for it in my house," he had said. "You must think of something else to give me, my dear."

  And last night, furious with him, she had given her­self the satisfaction of locking her door on him. She had lain tense, listening to his movements in the ad­joining room, but he didn't try her door and she finally fell asleep and awoke to the sound of Lita opening the curtains.

  Lita wasn't a woman who smiled a great deal, but a smile touched her mouth as she gazed down at Domini with her hair warmly rich as honey of the wild hills, glowing against the pillows, and her skin pale-honeyed in contrast to the blue chiffon of her nightdress.

  "How the sun comes bursting through the windows," said Domini, as she sat up and watched Lita pour out her morning tea.

  "These are the rich-weather days for the island, madame," Lita said. "The grapes grow ripe and dark on the vine, and the hills are full of kids and lambs."

  "Were you born on the island, Lita?" Domini asked, sipping her hot, sweet tea.

  Lita stood holding the rococo teapot, with nymphs, elves and birds flying all over it. She inclined her head and her coiled hair was sloe-dark as the sun touched it. "I am from the hills, madame, a place of bandits in the old days, and wild legends. You know, of course, that I have Romany blood in my veins?"

  Domini nodded, always intrigued by Lita's air of being in touch with the hidden things of life.

  "The island was invaded during the war, madame, when I was a girl," she said. "The olive groves were strafed, the little farms burned, the girls taken as though they were Sabines."

  Domini gave a shiver as she gazed at her maid, and Lita added quickly: "I was fortunate. My grandfather hid all our family in a cave in the hills, and my father and my brothers fought as partisans. But it did not end there for Greece. Came the rebellion and again the blunt thud of bullets in Greek earth and flesh and vine."

  "It must have been a sad and terrible time for all of you," Domini said gently.

  "But now it is ended." Lita smiled in her grave way. "Now here on the island the people have work and peace and enough food to eat. Madame, will you have a beignet?"

  She held out the plate and Domini took a crumbly, delicious cake drenched in fine white sugar.

  "Kalo ya to stomacha," Lita smiled.

  "They do indeed taste good. Do you know, Lita, I'm beginning to love Greek food." Domini gave a little laugh, as though surprised at herself. "Your island air must be good for the appetite."

  Lita cast a shrewd look at her young mistress, then she picked up Domini's empty teacup and peered into it.

  "Do you see a happy day ahead for me, Lita?" Domini's lashes quivered as she took a quick look at the door she had locked against Paul last night.

  Lita frowned as she studied the tea-leaves. "There is to be an upheaval," she muttered. "I see it
plainly."

  "A storm?" Domini spoke wryly.

  "Something not good is going to happen, madame." Lita's voice had sharpened. "It will happen today—"

  There she broke off as a hand rattled the knob of that locked door. She turned to look, and again the knob was impatiently turned and rattled. Domini had the grace to blush as she met Lita's shocked eyes. "Unlock the door, Lita," she said, and the sharp click of the key in the lock seemed to add emphasis to the sudden tension in that large, sun-filled room.

  Lita wished the master good morning, and then hur­riedly departed. Domini sat slender and rather white-faced against her pillows, gazing across the room at him.. He wore a dark silk shirt over grey slacks, and his eye­brows were joined in a forbidding ridge as he gestured curtly at the door Lita had just unlocked.

  "Do that again, my girl," he crisped, "and I shall not wait like a lackey for your maid to let me into your august presence. I shall kick the door down."

  He looked angry enough to do it, and Domini's ner­vousness had the perverse effect of making her want to giggle. She put up a hand and bit at her knuckles as he came to the side of her bed, walking with all the grace and menace of a big cat. He stood looking down at Domini and as she saw his glance travel from her shoulders to the blue chiffon covering her bosom, she caught at the silk bedspread and drew it against her. He lifted an eyebrow at the action, and then he gave an unkind laugh that showed his white teeth.

  "Locked doors and displays of maidenly virtue are likely to increase my ardour, not quench it," he drawled, and the next instant he was sitting on the side of the bed and gazing at her with cynical eyes. His lips twitched, whether with annoyance or amusement she couldn't really tell. His face was too baffling, too unreadable, while his strong dark proximity made her toes curl nervously together beneath the sheets.

  Then with his tawny eyes upon the gold band on her left hand—the symbol of his ownership—he said curtly: "I am well aware, Domini, that you don't want me, but I am afraid you will have to tolerate my romantic lapses. However, you can console yourself with the thought that the day will surely come when I shall not need you any more."