Island of Darkness (15 page)

Already Leonora’s heart was beating much faster, even just thinking about going over to visit the villa again, and she wished there was something she could do about it. See
us
again, Scottie had said, but she wondered if Jason even realised he was seeing her, let alone asking her to visit them again.

“Did - does Jason know you’re doing this?” she asked, and Scottie shook his head.

“No, he doesn’t,” he admitted. “He’d probably murder me if he did - he’d certainly curse me, but you know what a proud, arrogant devil he is.”

“He’d probably curse me too,” she suggested with a rueful smile, but Scottie was shaking his head, anxious to convince her.

“He
wants
you to come, Leonora,” he said. “I know!”

“I wish I felt as sure as you do,” Leonora told him. She withdrew her hand from his hold and half turned away from him. “I have the feeling that Jason wouldn’t welcome me at all, and - well, he might get quite the wrong idea if I came again after vowing I never would.”

Scottie was shaking his head, more adamant than ever. “I know he’d welcome you,” he insisted. “Although he’d never admit it.”

“Like he’d never admit to needing you there,” she said softly, and his mouth tightened stubbornly.

“He’ll learn to cope without me,” he said with a hint of harshness that she had never seen as part of his makeup until now. “But he soon hankers after the company of beautiful girls!”

She looked at him curiously for a moment, not caring for the implication she thought she detected. “Is that why you want me to come over again?” she asked, steadying her voice with difficulty. “Just because - because Jason needs a pretty girl around to amuse him?”

“Och no, of course not!” He looked appalled at the idea, and she was immediately contrite.

“I’m sorry, Scottie, I should have known you wouldn’t—” She left the rest of the sentence unsaid.

It was difficult not to remember the brief and apparently emotion charged visit of Veronique Tomaso. If Jason did need an attractive woman around, Veronique Tomaso must surely have been the ideal choice. She was sleek and sophisticated and quite definitely the type of woman he was used to, but he had, to use his own words, sent her packing.

She looked at Scottie for a moment, then smiled and shook her head. “There can’t be any shortage of girls willing to console Jason Connor,” she said quietly. “Why don’t you persuade him to have some company, Scottie?”

He shrugged, but it was obvious from his expression that he had already attempted to do just that. “I’ve tried,” he told her. “But he just digs in his heels and curses me for trying to organise him.”

“Did - did you know anything about Veronique Tomaso coming to see him?” she asked softly, and saw his broad, dark face flush with resentment.

“Indeed I did
not
,” he declared firmly. “I can’t stand the woman - she’s the last person I’d ask!”

His vehemence startled her and she looked at 'him curiously. “I didn’t realise,” she said. “I’m sorry, I just thought you might have—” She shrugged lightly to dismiss the idea. “But of course you came dashing back when you knew she was on her way, didn’t you?”

For a moment he smiled, albeit somewhat wryly, and there was a glimmer of ironic amusement in his brown eyes. “Aye, and I needn’t have troubled myself,” he told her. “He’d done a pretty thorough job of getting rid of her himself by the time I got there.”

“Doesn’t - doesn’t Jason like her?” she asked, and wondered just what there was about the elegant and obviously wealthy Signora Tomaso that Jason did not find to his liking, apart from a

possible husband somewhere, judging by her title.

“Oh, he liked her well enough in the old days,” he said. “No more nor less than the rest, but I never liked her.” He frowned for a moment, then sought to explain his dislike. “She - used to try and bribe me to keep other women away from him,” he said, and noted her obvious surprise with a smile.

“I’d no idea,” she said, and her heart was doing strange and disturbing things when she thought of how close she had been to him when they last met.

Scottie looked at her for a moment steadily, then he shook his head, a small tight smile on his mouth. “Most of them will stop at nothing,” he told her. “That’s where you’re different, Leonora. The difficulty is trying to persuade you to come at all!”

“I - I can’t think why Jason wants me to come.” She raised her eyes and looked at him earnestly. “If he does.”

“He does,” Scottie said quietly, and sought for words for a moment or two. “I think in some way it intrigues him, trying to guess what you look like.”

“I see.”

“Do you?” he looked at her anxiously. “We’re both used to having beautiful

girls around, but this is the first time I’ve had the advantage over him. I’d never need anyone else but you, not now, but Jason—” He shrugged. “I guess he’ll always want the company of beautiful women, whether he gets his sight back or not.”

“And if he doesn’t?” Leonora asked gently, much as Clive had once said to her.

“If he doesn’t,” Scottie said quietly, “he won’t want me or anyone else around who reminds him of the old days.” He gave her no chance to comment on that piece of speculation, but looked at her anxiously, pressing her fingers as if their pressure could persuade her. “At least say you’ll come over and see me, Leonora,” he begged softly. “For my sake, will you come?”

It was a difficult plea to resist and Leonora knew she was bound to give in, even though in her heart she knew it was not for Scottie’s sake that she agreed. She smiled ruefully. “How can I refuse?” she asked, and Scottie squeezed her fingers in gratitude, his brown eyes warm and grateful

“It’ll be wonderful to see you again,” he whispered, and Leonora laughed rather uncertainly, trying to still the flutter of

anticipation that curled in her stomach.

“If Jason forcibly throws me out of his fortress, I shall hold you personally responsible!” she warned.

“He won’t,” Scottie assured her, and she wanted so much to believe him that she closed her eyes briefly as she nodded her head.

“Then I’ll come,” she said.

It was no more than a couple of hours later, when she walked into the shop after lunch, that she found Scottie in the doorway, and something on his face made her draw a sharp, involuntary breath as she hurried across to him. There was something about him, about his expression, that made her heart turn right over and she looked at him anxiously.

“Scottie! What’s wrong - has something happened?”

He shook his head, as if he was unsure how to answer, then glanced up at Clive as he came through from the studio, apparently attracted by their voices. “I’m not really sure that anything’s wrong,” he admitted, but Leonora noticed how dry and harsh his voice sounded, and the way he licked his lips as if he was nervous about something. “It’s Jason,” he said at last when no one spoke, and Leonora’s heart turned completely over. “He - he

seems to have gone!”

“Gone?” She felt her pulses hammering at her forehead and knew her hands were clamped tightly together. There was a strange dryness in her throat too as she stared at Scottie unbelievingly. “Scottie, he can’t be gone! How can he? Unless -” She bit her lip and closed her eyes when she thought of chose steep stone steps leading down to the sea.

“He isn’t anywhere in the villa,” Scottie insisted, “and Lucia’s half out of her mind. She didn’t see him go which means wherever he’s got to he must have gone out on the landward side. Down the steps to the garage and out that way.”

“But it’s - it’s so steep and open,” Leonora said, her eyes dark with the fear that filled her like a great cold weight. “All those steps, Scottie - he couldn’t!” But even before she finished saying it she knew she was wrong. She could see Jason’s strong, determined features and that firm obstinate chin as clearly as if he stood in front of her, and she shivered when she realised how wrong she was. “He could,” she whispered, “and he would too!”

Clive, in ignorance of the villa’s layout, looked puzzled, and Scottie spared time to explain it to him. “There’s an outside staircase of stone steps leading to the garage under the house,” he said, “and it goes off the hall. He could have gone through there without Lucia knowing he was gone.”

“But would he be so foolhardy? Take so many chances?”

Leonora and Scottie exchanged meaningful looks and Scottie nodded his head with confidence. “Oh yes,” he said quietly, “he’d take the chances!”

“Should we get the police to look for him?” Clive suggested, but that too met with a shaking head, even before he finished speaking.

“I immediately thought of that,” he told him. “But then I realised - Jason’s a grown man and he’s allowed out of the house on his own if that’s the way he wants it. He’d be furious if I raised a hue and cry just because he’s not at home. He’s blind, I know, but blind people do go out by themselves and his senses - his reflexes, are keener than anyone I know.” “That’s true,” Leonora agreed, clinging to that strand of hope like a drowning man. “But Jason isn’t used to being out alone and he doesn’t know his way around like he does in the house.”

“That’s what I thought of,” Scottie sighed, and rubbed a hand over the back of his head as he searched for a solution to his dilemma. “I guess I shouldn’t have bothered you with it,” he confessed, “But quite honestly I didn’t know what to do for the best.”

“Oh, don’t apologise,” Clive told him cheerfully. “We’ll willingly help you scout around for him. He’s quite probably all right, but it’ll be as well to make sure in the circumstances.”

“What the hell got into him?” Scottie demanded, suddenly angry, and Leonora guessed that the same thing was on his mind as was on hers, only he was reluctant to admit it.

He had broken his own disturbing news to Jason at a time when he had about as much as he could face at one time, and it would have been a blow, no matter how self-sufficient he was, as Scottie must realise only too well. She had said nothing to Scottie about her suspicions in that direction, but he probably guessed what she was feeling.

“He’s been restless lately, Scottie,” she said, a hand on his arm to reassure him. “You know how edgy he is about the operation and everything.”

“And I didn’t help matters by telling him I was leaving him,” Scottie declared harshly. “I know that, Leonora! ”

Seeing her about to protest that she was not blaming him, Clive interposed hastily. “This is no time for seeking causes,” he said quietly as he closed the shop door behind them. “Let’s start looking, shall we? And try not to appear like a search party or we’ll start tongues wagging.” “And that’ll make Jason hopping mad,” Scottie declared ruefully. “I’m probably taking you both on a wild goose chase, and if I am, I’m sorry.”

“We’ll soon know,” Clive said calmly. By mutual agreement they went three different ways with Leonora heading for the strip that joined Isola de Marta to the mainland. It ran some distance out from the mainland and was steeply sloping as all the coast was around there. A narrow road had been constructed on top of the strip, a rough but serviceable access to the garage underground below the villa and fronted by a solid square of rock as a forecourt.

On either side it sloped away over a ragged collection of rocks to a narrow track of sand lapped by the ocean, easy enough for a sighted person to negotiate, but Leonora shuddered when she thought of Jason walking along down there.

The steps running down the outer wall of the villa were guarded by a wall about waist-high, as the terraced gardens were, but nevertheless she shivered at the idea of him making his way down there when one false step could have sent him hurtling down on to the solid rock below.

Her guess about his whereabouts could be wrong, of course, she recognised that. He might have gone inland, seeking fresh fields, but she thought not. He would not want to meet anyone else and no one ever visited this narrow, rocky strip. He would certainly not have let those steep stone steps deter him once he had made up his mind.

The sea was dazzlingly bright and lapped quietly at the sandy strip along the sides of the access road and its guardian rocks, and her feet slipped only occasionally on the wet surface as she went down towards the narrow beach. It was quiet too, with only the soft whisper of the sea on the sand, and the promise of more turbulent waters further along where it was deeper and there was no sand, only the high, towering rock on which the villa stood.

It was the thought of his having gone too far that alarmed her most, for he would have no warning when the narrow strip of sand ended suddenly and he was plunged into the deep water that hammered endlessly at the rock. Even a sighted person would stand little chance -Jason would have none at all.

Her own progress, even over the initial part of the walk, made her despair of his chances and she could imagine him stumbling repeatedly on the rocks that jutted into the sand-like traps for the unwary, and all the time she listened for him.

It was quite beautiful really, despite its harshness, and at any other time she would probably have found it enchanting. The sea was so unbelievably blue and shiny, like a great glittering sapphire under a matching sky, and the sand was soft and warm on her sandalled feet as it slipped between her toes. Jason, of course, would have none of these temptations to draw him, only the need to salve his restless spirit and the desire to prove his independence.