Island of Darkness (13 page)

“Because I don’t love him,” she said simply, and Clive shook his head in despair.

“Leo, honey, that’s a very romantic view to take of marriage!”

“Maybe it is,” she allowed with a wry little smile for the admission. “But
I am a
romantic!” She looked across at him meaningly, bent on making her point. “While we’re on the subject of marriage, Clive,” she said, “why did you never marry?”

He looked momentarily startled, as if the question had never occurred to him before, then he shrugged. “I suppose I just never met anyone I felt I could spend the rest of my life with,” he admitted, and Leonora smiled as she nodded her head slowly.

“Exactly!” she told him. “Now you’ve answered your own question as to why I didn’t accept Scottie’s proposal! I like him, in fact I’m fond of him, but I just don’t see myself spending the rest of my life with him

— that’s all!”

Clive, however, was not willing to relinquish the point so easily. “But it’s different for a man,” he insisted. “Who’s going to look out for you if I pop off tomorrow?”

“Apart from the fact that it’s most unlikely at your age,” Leonora told him with a smile, “I’m pretty capable of taking care of myself, and I don’t exactly consider myself on the shelf at twenty-three, you know, Clive. I’ve plenty of time to find someone I
can
face spending the rest of my life with!”

Clive pursed his lower lip again doubtfully and he carefully pulled the skin from a peach and discarded it. “Just as long as it isn’t Jason Connor,” he murmured as he bit into the fruit, but Leonora pretended not to hear him.

More uncertain than she had ever been before about visiting Isola de Marta, Leonora thought long and hard about it before she went again and several times as she guided her boat across the bay, she considered turning back. But the tall, sun-mellowed tower of rock exerted its inevitable spell over her and she was once more climbing the long flight of steep stone steps to the terraces above.

There appeared to be no one about when she reached the top and took her customary moment to recover her breath, so she sat on the surrounding wall in the shade of a low-growing branch of mimosa and breathed in the heady scents of roses and carnations. There was something special about the gardens on this rock-based paradise that never failed to stir a response in her, and she acknowledged without hesitation that she would miss the place itself almost as much as the inhabitants if she was ever denied access to it.

After a few minutes she made her way to the kitchens as she usually did and was greeted by Lucia. The housekeeper looked slightly less cheerful than was normal for her, and Leonora looked at her curiously as she returned her greeting. “Is something wrong, Lucia?” she asked, and the woman shrugged her ample shoulders, as if expressing her despair of ever understanding the ways

of the foreigner, especially the ones who employed her.

“I am ’appy that you have come,
signorina
,” Lucia told her. “Signor Scottie he is - absent, and Signor Connoro -
dio mio
!” She raised her hands and rolled her dark eyes to heaven in appeal.

Leonora’s heart was hammering wildly at her ribs as she considered all the possibilities that Lucia’s exclamation conjured up, and she looked at her with anxious eyes, uncaring if she betrayed too much anxiety or not. “What’s the matter with Signor Connor?” she asked, and put her hands on Lucia’s plump shoulders. “What is it, Lucia?”

“He drinks!” Lucia told her, spreading her hands in a gesture of helplessness. “And I know that to drink so much when the body is so sick like the
signore
has been is a bad thing. But,
dio mio,
how he drinks,
signorina!
Already I have take to him another bottle of
orzo
!”

Leonora frowned, uncertain what to do for the best, not even sure if she had the right to do anything at all. Without Scottie to support her, it would be a bit like bearding the lion in his den, she thought, to try and reason with Jason, but at the same time she felt that something ought to be done if he really was drinking more than was good for him.

She bit her lip anxiously and her heart was tap-tapping with a nervous kind of excitement as she contemplated going through to Jason, looking beyond Lucia to the arched doorway that led into the main part of the house. Lucia, following her gaze, shook her head.

“I can do nothing to stop him, signorina,”
she
said. “I have tried and he —” Again she spread her expressive hands and shrugged. “The words I do not understand,
signorina,
but I know that they are bad!”

Leonora could well imagine that they were bad if poor Lucia had tried to interfere in anything Jason had set his mind on doing, and she wondered how much better she would fare herself if she tried to persuade him. She looked again at the arched doorway into the house and licked her lips.

“Where is he?” she asked, and Lucia shrugged, obviously thankful that someone else was going to shoulder the responsibility.

“In -
il salotto, signorina
,”

She watched anxiously as Leonora hesitated, then nodded encouragement when she walked through the archway into the cool, shady interior of the villa with her pulses rapping nervously at her temple and a strange weakness in her legs.

The sitting-room was quite the most beautiful room Leonora had ever seen and she thought so each time she saw it, but she spared little time to appreciate it today.

It had a high ceiling that was arched and decorated with exquisitely carved cornices which gave it the opulent look of a Renaissance palace. The beautiful mosaic-tiled floor was scattered with thick rugs and she often puzzled over why it was that Jason seldom seemed to trip over them.

The furniture was perhaps a little out of period for its setting, but it only added to the overall impression of luxury, with deep leather armchairs and dainty, spindlelegged tables set handily for use. Big gilt-framed mirrors hung on three of the four walls and added to the brightness and the impression of light conjured by the white walls and ceiling.

Jason sat in one of the armchairs holding a glass in one hand, and she noticed a bottle of whisky standing at his elbow on one of the small tables. Inevitably she experienced that same curl of sensation in her stomach she always did when she saw him, and unconsciously put a hand to try and still its disturbing flutter.

He looked up as she came in and for a moment his brows drew together in a frown, then he half-smiled, as if he suddenly recognised her. “Leonora?” he asked, and she nodded without thinking as she walked across to him.

“Yes, Jason.”

He was not drunk, at least he did not look as if he was, and she began to wonder if Lucia had been exaggerating. His blond head lay back on the dark leather chair back and he did not move even when she spoke, except to roll his head round so that the blank, dark lenses appeared to be looking at her, and he smiled more widely.

“You’re out of luck if you’re looking for Scottie,” he told her, and she stood for a moment looking down at him.

“I’m not,” she said. “Lucia says he’s out.”

“That’s right,” he said lightly, taking another drink from the glass of whisky. “He’s chasing up some post I’ve been expecting.”

His long body, stretched out in the depth of the armchair, looked deceptively at ease until she noticed the tautness of the long muscular legs and the tense way his strong fingers curled round the glass he held. White trousers and a white shirt emphasised his golden tan, more so in the shadowy coolness of the room, and Leonora felt her heart skip a beat as she looked down at him, her fingers curling into her palms as she fought with a surge of emotions she could not even begin to recognise, nor wanted to at this stage.

“You seem quite happy on your own,” she ventured, her eye on the amount of whisky missing from what Lucia had claimed was a new bottle, and he smiled wryly, taking another drink.

“Am I?”

“Are you trying to get drunk?” she asked, and realised her mistake when he got to his feet in one swift, easy movement, and stood towering over her.

He disposed of the rest of the whisky in his glass and put the glass down very carefully on the table, while she marvelled yet again at his accuracy. He seemed to know where everything in the room was, for she had seen him move around more than once without hesitation, and admired his confidence. Even in blindness his mind and the lean, alert body were perfectly co-ordinated.

“No, I’m
not
getting drunk!” he said in a harsh cool voice, and she blamed herself for having been so tactless.

She looked up at him feeling, as she always did, that he could see her just because those dark lenses were fixed on her so unerringly. “I’m - I’m sorry, Jason,” she

said. “I thought—”

“Lucia told you I was knocking it back, did she?” he asked with what she felt was deliberate coarseness, and laughed shortly. “Well, don’t worry, little good Samaritan, it takes a lot to make me drunk!”

“Jason, I know you—”

“Anyway,” he interrupted harshly, “I don’t see what it has to do with you if I choose to get as tight as an owl!”

“It hasn’t anything to do with me,” Leonora agreed quietly. “It just seems rather silly, that’s all, when you know you’re supposed not to drink too much until you’re a lot better than you are yet!”

His brows lowered in a frown again. “You’re quite the little lecturer this morning, aren’t you?” he jeered softly. “Did Scottie ask you to come and keep an eye on me while he was gone?”

“No, of course not!” She made the denial swiftly and flushed to think that he imagined her and Scottie in cahoots to watch over him. “Why on earth would he do that?” she asked, and he laughed again, one hand reaching out and finding her face - without too much trouble, although she did not consciously move into its range.

The long, cool fingers traced the curve of her cheek gently for a moment, then he smiled, that wry, twisted smile she did not like to see. “He knows me too well, the old sinner,” he said at last. “He knows how - twisted up I feel, like before a big race - maybe more so. There’s a hell of a lot more at stake!”

“The operation on - on your eyes?” She searched the brown rugged features for some clue that would tell her what Sir Basil Thorpe’s verdict had been, but without the eyes as a guide it was difficult to judge a reaction. “What happened about it, Jason?”

For a moment he said nothing, then his mouth twitched again into that bitter smile. “I’d have thought if you really wanted to know what happened,” he told her harshly, “you’d have come over before now. It was two days ago!”

“I would have,” she said, swiftly defensive, “only I -well, I wasn’t too sure what sort of a reception I’d get.”

“Oh? Why not?” One fair brow rose in query and he stared blankly down at her, waiting to hear her reasons

for staying away.

“I - I don’t really know,” she confessed at last. “Except that I thought—”

He laughed shortly and reached out again to touch her face, his fingers coolly caressing on her warm cheek. “Scottie’s crackers about you, isn’t he?” he asked, with such startling suddenness that she stared at him for a moment in silence. Then the fingers increased their pressure and lifted her chin as he bent his head, just as if he could see for himself what her reaction was. “Leonora?”

She gently disengaged the hand from her chin and held it in both her own for a moment before she walked away from him, then turned again and looked at him steadily. “I asked you what Sir Basil’s verdict was,” she reminded him quietly, and he thrust both hands into his trousers’ pockets before he answered, hunching his broad shoulders defensively.

“A fifty-fifty chance,” he told her in a cool, hard voice, and laughed shortly. “Not such good odds as I used to get on the racing circuits, but not bad in the circumstances, I suppose!”

“It
is
a chance, Jason,” she said softly, and felt a dry prickle at the backs of her eyes. She wanted to go to him and put her arms round him, offer comfort and consolation, but he would have hated that.

“Oh, sure it’s a chance!” he echoed harshly. “And better than I deserve, some people would say!”

“I’m quite sure they wouldn’t,” she argued quietly, and looked at him for a moment, the anxiety in her eyes that she would never have dared let him see. “Are you going to take the chance, Jason?” she asked, and he shrugged, as if it was of little importance one way or the other.

“Oh, sure I am,” he said. “I’m a gambler, Leonora, didn’t you realise that? I have always been, and this is no time to stop!”

She said nothing, but still wrestled with the desire to go to him and offer what comfort and encouragement she could. Then he shook his head slowly and there was a tight, grim edge to his smile. “Trouble is they’re such long odds,” he said. “And I feel as jittery as I do on the eve of a Grand Prix - only then there’s wine, women and song to give me something else to think about! What do I do this time?”

It was no good standing there any longer feeling as she was, Leonora thought, and she went across to him, her hands gentle as she put them over his and tiptoed to reach his mouth, pressing her lips softly on to his. “You’ll win this one too, Jason,” she said softly. “I know you will.”