A Gift for a Lion (11 page)

'No.' Joanna's eyes flashed inimically and he stared at her.

'It is most odd that you hate him so,' he mused. 'It is not the reaction of most women.'

'I wouldn't have thought the reaction of any woman would have been of much importance to him, otherwise why won't he allow them into his marble tower?' Joanna strove to sound casual, but she was aware that her pulses were maddeningly playing strange tricks.

Nick laughed. 'Now it is you that misreads the situation, Joanna,' he teased her. 'Leo is no recluse. When he needs a woman, one comes to him, believe me.'

Joanna found to her mortification that she was blushing. She was behaving more like a schoolgirl than a grown woman, she told herself angrily. Leo Vargas had made her more than aware only a few hours earlier that he was not a celibate by nature or inclination, but a man who would have no hesitation in using a woman for his total enjoyment if the opportunity came his way. Pursuing the point with Nick achieved nothing except the confirmation of her own intuitive knowledge, rather like pressing an already aching tooth to make it jump, she thought, and frowned at her own analogy with all its implications of pain.

Because there was nothing that she could learn about Leo Vargas that could cause her pain, she told herself vehemently. Nothing!

The tour of the
palazzo
was both instructive and tiring. Joanna lost count of the rooms and corridors she saw, all of which seemed to twist and turn eventually back on to that central gallery. The place was an art thieves' paradise, she thought dazedly as names like Canaletto and Tintoretto came almost monotonously off Nick's tongue as he led her round. Perhaps Leo Vargas knew what he was doing with his armed guards and strict security after all.

Many of the rooms were locked and their furniture shrouded under dust sheets. Nick and Joanna gained access to them by means of a huge bunch of keys which Nick carried in his hand, complaining that they would ruin the line of his suit if he put them in his pocket. Joanna smothered a smile at this little piece of vanity. Nick, while undoubtedly attractive, was far less of an unknown quantity than his enigmatic cousin, she decided. He was obviously on his best behaviour, otherwise she guessed that the admiration that she read in his eyes would have been expressed rather more openly.

Joanna was relieved that he was remaining at a distance. She wanted no more emotional entanglements, even the light-hearted flirtation that a relationship with Nick would consist of, and which she would have quite enjoyed at one time. But she realised with a new maturity that every relationship carried its own risks and that she would do well to hold herself aloof until her bruised and disturbed emotions regained their equilibrium.

'Leo's private suite is along here,' Nick was saying. 'Do you want to see it?'

'No,' she said hastily. She had not caught so much as a glimpse of Leo Vargas all day, and she cringed at the thought of encountering him in his private rooms as part of a sightseeing tour. She could still remember his chilly, 'I am not a peepshow,
signorina
.'

'Well, perhaps you are right,' Nick said cheerfully. 'I think we have seen everything now, don't you? I could do with a drink.'

'These passages are like a maze,' Joanna said, frowning. 'But I'm almost sure we haven't been down that one. Look, that opening with the curtain over it. I don't remember that at all.'

'Oh, you can't want to see any more,' Nick protested. 'Let's get changed and go and sit by the pool. I'm tired.'

'Just down here,' Joanna said inexorably. 'Who knows —there might be a Botticelli, or some Michelangelo frescoes you've forgotten about.'

Nick groaned. 'No chance. Anything like that would have been destroyed centuries ago when the original
palazzo
was knocked to the ground during some invasion. This is the third or maybe even the fourth building, and it has survived longer than any. It even lived undamaged through the last war.'

'Were all these pictures and treasures here then?'

Nick shook his head. 'It was after the war that Leo's father decided to transfer the family's art collection to Saracina. Before then it had been scattered and hidden to avoid capture by the Germans. The
palazzo
had been neglected for many years before that, but Uncle Marco started restoration work. He put in the bathrooms and began the modernisation of the kitchen quarters. It was he who brought electricity to the island' too. My own father thought he was mad, but Uncle Marco said as he had bred another Lion of Saracina for the Vorghese family, it was up to him to restore his birthright.'

'Another Lion?' Joanna raised her eyebrows questioningly.

'Leo was the first in many generations to be born with the Lion's colouring,' Nick explained. 'Many thought that the tawny-haired strain in our family had died out altogether.'

Joanna resisted the impulse to utter some childish expression of regret that it hadn't, and changed the subject instead.

'Is there nothing left of the original building?' she asked.

Nick shrugged. 'I believe the same foundations were used each time—oh, and the dungeons. They still exist, although they are used as wine cellars these days, of course.'

'I'm surprised your cousin didn't lock me there,' she said coolly, and he laughed.

'Hardly,
cara
. Leo probably thought you would have too disturbing an influence on his wine.'

Their passage was suddenly blocked by a stout wooden door. Nick searched through his bunch of keys, muttering.

'That's strange,' he said after a while. 'The key for this door does not seem to be here. We will have to go back.'

'Oh.' Joanna was disappointed. 'Can't you see if one of the others will fit?'

Nick fitted one key after another into the ornate lock without success. 'You see, Joanna. It is useless. We will have to go back.'

'Yes, I see,' Joanna said slowly. 'Doesn't it strike you as strange, Nick? All the other keys were there, but this one is missing.'

She was almost sure that something came and went in Nick's eyes, but his smiling reply was as easy as ever.

'You must forgive us,
cara
. Even the best regulated households occasionally mislay things, you know. I will have to tell Leo the key is missing.'

'Oh, I shouldn't bother,' Joanna told him coldly. 'I think he knows already, don't you?'

She turned and stalked back up the corridor, her heart hammering. Whatever secret the
palazzo
contained, she was almost certain the answer lay behind that locked door.

It was also evident that Nick was aware of what was going on, so it would be useless to rely on him for any kind of help. She could have groaned aloud. It would be much easier, she thought, to forget all about flight and locked doors and secrets, and merely relax and enjoy the sunshine in Nick's company. But that, no doubt, was what she was intended to think. The whole tour of the
palazzo
might have been planned by Leo Vargas to prove to her that she could only learn as much as he chose in his house.

She bit her lip angrily. It was clear that she would get nowhere by open investigation, particularly with Nick in close attendance. Maybe the answer was to do as Leo Vargas hoped and appear to give up. Whether he would believe in her new docility was another matter, but it was worth trying at least.

She turned smiling as Nick caught up with her.

'What now,
cara
?' he inquired plaintively. 'More sightseeing?'

She slipped her arm through his. 'Now show me the swimming pool,' she invited.

The cool blue water felt glorious against her overheated body. She pushed herself away from the edge in a backward somersault that took her skimming down almost to the pool bottom before jack-knifing back to the surface again, to swim a length in her strong easy crawl. Nick, comfortably ensconced on a cushioned lounger at the poolside, applauded languidly.

'You swim well, Joanna,' he called. 'We must have a race some time.'

'I'd beat you,' Joanna laughed at him. 'Honestly, Nick, do you never take any exercise?'

'I play squash a little,' he admitted. 'I see little point,
cara
, in exercising and so developing muscles which I can only use to do more exercises.'

She pulled herself out of the water and sat on the edge, dangling her legs in the water and looking at the glitter of the sun on the rippled surface with half-closed eyes. The air was heavy with scent from the formal gardens nearby, and heavy clumps of blossom in purple, white and pink grew over the high stone walls which gave the pool area its privacy. It was the nearest thing she had been to absolute contentment since she had gone to sleep on that little beach over a week before.

These hours at the poolside had become very much part of the pattern of her day since Nick's arrival on the island. Her prison walls had now extended to include not only the
palazzo
, but also most of its grounds, but Nick made an excellent warder, she thought wryly, and her freedom was still strictly limited.

She knew no more now than she had done when she first arrived. Helicopters still came and went at odd hours of the day or night, but she had not been able to discover whom they carried or even where they landed. The
palazzo's
hidden life went on undisturbed, in spite of her presence, she thought, while she was in grave danger of abandoning herself to the life of a lotus-eater,,

Usually she breakfasted in her room, before joining Nick on the terrace. Then they swam together, or lay in the sun beside the pool and talked or walked in the enormous grounds. She had discovered an immaculately marked tennis court, but so far she had been unable to persuade Nick to give her a game.

Sometimes she dined downstairs with the cousins, but she avoided this situation whenever possible. There were times when Nick's amusing companionship made her forget that she was really under his close supervision, and she could imagine instead that she was simply a guest at the
palazzo
. But one ironic glance from Leo Vargas was all that it took to remind her of her real position in the household.

She had been very loth to meet him again after what had happened in her room, but the next encounter was accompanied by less embarrassment than she had feared, thanks largely to Nick's presence. It was almost impossible to feel awkward in the face of Nick's exuberant charm, and she had to admit that Leo Vargas himself had given no hint that anything but the merest courtesy a host would extend to any guest had passed between them.

He was civil but aloof, so much so that Joanna began to wonder if she had dreamed the moments she had spent in his arms. But at the same time, her body's involuntary reaction to his presence told her clearly that what had passed between them had been far from imaginary. It was oddly disconcerting to find that he could apparently shrug off her appeal to him as a woman with such ease. And she had appealed to him. She knew enough of men to know that his desire for her had been quite genuine. She wondered sometimes if their relationship had been continued to the final consummation that night whether he would have treated her afterwards in exactly the same way, showing her quite clearly that whatever his schemes were, she could have no in them.