The Sin of Cynara (10 page)

  'Have you been riding, sir?' Teri asked him, staring at the hefty boots and the whip in the brown hand. 'I saw your big black horse and he made steam come out of his nostrils.'

  'Caliph is high-tempered and knows he's the lord of my stables. So you like horses, eh?'

  'And monkeys,' Teri replied. 'Have you any of those, sir?'

  'I am your tio, young man. No, we haven't any monkeys here apart from yourself.'

  Instinctively a smile caught at Carol's lips ... so a certain humour was lurking behind that dark, scarred and rather haughty mask? She relaxed just a little, for she had been dreading the thought that he might be stern towards Teri; a sort of ogre who would frighten the boy. But it seemed that he could be quite human, when it suited him.

  ‘I’m not a monkey,' Teri informed him, with great gravity. 'I'm a boy.'

  At once, Carol noticed, those deep lines beside the man's mouth seemed to soften slightly. 'You are much like your father when he was a boy,' he said. 'He always had a taste for sweet things, and I see that you take after him in that. Your son is not a finicky eater, madam.' He transferred his gaze so swiftly to Carol that he caught her staring at him ; at once she felt the heat rising from the neck of her shirt and flowing over her face in a blush that would have been worthy of a schoolgirl. His eyes derided her for the blush, she felt sure of that, but she strove not to look away from him.

  'Teri has had to learn, signore, that food has to be worked for and costs money. He's a good boy in that respect.'

  'Is he always a good boy?' A black brow rode up against his dark skin, and she could tell that he knew how painfully vivid were the acid burns in the full play of sunlight along the terrazza.

  'He's no angel, signore, but I've taught him a few values. He is a Falcone, after all.'

  'Indisputably.' Again the barone looked at Teri, who now had half his face in a mug of chocolate. 'You have done a good job, madam, for a young woman left on her own to cope. What made you suddenly come to us when you are obviously not the sort to like charity?'

  'I hope you don't regard it as charity, signore.' She felt suddenly stung by him, as if he had flicked at her skin with his whip. 'I wanted Teri to have a place in the sun. Is that so very wrong of - of a mother of a son?'

  'Commendable,' he drawled. 'Love should rise above pride, but one would like to know why it took five years. Did you learn suddenly that the Falcones were affluent?'

  He had asked her that yesterday and had seemed to accept her explanation, but she supposed that it would strike him as odd that she should suddenly turn up like this with a five-year-old son. She was a woman, and he had learned the painful way not to trust a member of her sex.

  She tried not to be resentful of his distrust, but it certainly took an effort. Perhaps in the clarity of daylight he saw himself as a man taken in, and resented it. Hadn't Gena said that he was still warm-blooded enough to respond to a new face at the palazzo? A man désenchanté but still very much a man in his riding boots laced with strips of leather, his breeches fitting firm against his flat stomach, and his shirt fine enough to show the shadow of a dark-haired chest. She caught the whisper of his whip as he moved it against the sunlit stone, and she saw the gleam of an onyx ring on his hand; a large gem that she had felt against her skin when he had touched her last night.

  Suddenly Flavia gave a giggle and pointed at Teri, who sat there with a chocolate moustache and looked comical. 'Buster, do wipe your mouth,' Carol said, 'no, not on the back of your hand but on your napkin. That's better. Did you enjoy your breakfast?'  'Smashing,' he said. 'Can I get down from the table, Cally?'

  'Yes, if you've quite finished.'

  He slid from his chair and approached the baróne, who towered above him in the sunlight. Suddenly the man bent and lifted the boy to the parapet and sat him there with a firm brown arm around him. In his hand Teri had the Roman soldier, and the baróne quirked his eyebrow as he caught sight of it.

  'They were my favourite playthings,' he said. 'Did you know that I was once a soldier?'

  'Were you really, tio?' Teri stared frankly at the scarred side of his uncle's face. 'You got that fighting, didn't you? Were you very brave? It must have hurt ever such a lot.'

  Carol held her breath, as she invariably did when Teri referred to that fearful distortion of a once handsome face; a face such as the boy's would be when he reached manhood. The Falcone face, with the ferocious splendour of a Roman nose, and 'an eye like Mars to threaten and command', and a mouth in which strength mingled with a certain sensuality.

  'Physical pain can be borne, bràvo. See down on the lake that boat with the scarlet sails? That belongs to me and one afternoon we will go sailing, eh? All the way round the island, which is a fairly large one.'

  Teri caught his breath in delight. 'Cally, I'm going sailing!' he called out, leaning far out over the lake in the crook of a steel-like arm. 'I'm so glad we came here, Cally, and I don't want to ever go away again.'

  'The call of the blood,' drawled Gena as she came along the terrazza, clad in a red shirt and a pair of ivory-coloured breeches. 'I'll have a cup of coffee, and then I'm off for a gallop. Can I take Domino, Rudi? I know she was out of temper with me the other day, but only because a snake crossed our path. She'll be fine today and won't attempt to break my precious neck.'

  'Be less reckless, Gena,' her brother said, with just the faintest edge of steel to his voice. 'It isn't always necks that snap, it's backbones, and you would find it intolerable to be helpless and dependent upon the patience of other people.'

  'Don't!' She gave a mock shudder and winked at Teri over the rim of her coffee cup. 'I see, caro, that you're keeping high and mighty company. My dear Rudi, I do believe the boy is more like you than Vince himself.'

  'Then you must have X-ray eyes, my dear sister.' The baróne spoke with sudden curtness and swung Teri to the ground. 'Run along with Flavia and get to know your new home, for you are now the young signorino and what is ours is yours.'

  Words that were music to Carol's ears, for she knew they were sincere and would not be repudiated by Rudolph Falcone, no matter what he found out about her. Her position was vulnerable and he was capable of hurting her very badly, but Teri was secure and that was the most important thing of all. Secure as a Falcone despite the illegitimacy of his birth, because the baróne said so and his word was law on the isola.

  'You will come with me, madam.' He reached down and drew Carol to her feet, clasping her elbow with firm fingers. She obeyed him because she had no option, and she heard Gena give a low laugh.

  'You, sister,' he said, 'will take care of your own neck and that of the mare's. Understood?'

  'Si, signore.' She swept him a slight bow. 'If I see Saul Stern, may I ask him to dine tonight, so he can meet our fair visitor? I say, look at her hair in the sun! Blonde as Lucrezia, isn't she?'

  Even as Gena said this, she bit her lip. It might at times slip her mind that a blonde had disfigured her brother, but it could never fade from his mind, and his fingers seemed to dig into Carol's arm as he led her along the terrazza and down a flight of stone steps, across a garden court surrounded by flowers and shrubs, and with a walled lily pool at its centre. There was a spiral of stairs at the end of the court, with a scrolled railing ' leading up to a medieval-looking tower whose narrow windows must have looked far out along the lake.

  'It's all right,' the baróne drawled, when Carol pulled back slightly from the stairs. 'I'm taking you to my drawing-room, not to my private torture chamber. I want to talk to you, and everyone has instructions not to disturb me in this part of the house. This is the oldest wing, the scala del falconiere where an ancestor of mine kept his hunting birds. Come, it has a fine view, and one can imagine him letting the falcons fly out after the pigeons.'

  'How cruel,' she said, but she preceded him up the stairs and was acutely aware of him following on behind, those falcon eyes of his on her legs. The stairs led straight to a thick arched door, and Carol stood aside for him to open it. She looked around with amazement, for the room was adorned, if that was the word, by strange creatures and gargoyles. A Murano glass lantern hung from the ceiling, its framework of black iron, and against one white wall there hung a large painting of a monk in medieval hood and habit. Carol stared, for the eyes that looked out of the dark stem face were the golden eyes of Rudolph Falcone.

  'My ancestor who liked falcons,' he said. 'He wasn't part of a holy sect, but he liked to dress in that manner.

  ‘He was more unholy than anything else, so it is said.'

  'The eyes,' she gasped, 'they seem alive !'

  'Don't they?' He closed the heavy door and stood there looking at her, and to avoid his eyes she added to her impressions of the room by studying the tall king-wood cabinets that held an assortment of books, topped by falcons in carved wood, a menacing look to the way they peered downward, their beaks and claws cruelly distinct.

  Over by a window there was a drawing-stand such as artists or architects might use, and Carol recalled what Gena had said about the baróne, that he designed the engines for motor-boats and racing-cars. Yes, she thought, he would want an occupation, for there was something alert and active in his every glance and movement. It wouldn't suit such a man to live the idle life of a wealthy aristocrat, and when he saw her looking at the drawing-board he said, sardonically:

  'Yes, I too like to work for my bed and board, madam. It doesn't entirely suit me to live on the looted treasures of this house, though I certainly admit to finding pleasure in their beauty.'

  As he spoke that final word his eyes dwelt on Carol's hair, the coloured upper panels of the gothic windows playing over its fairness and creating a sort of nimbus.

  She tensed and wondered what was going through his mind. Did the look of her make him remember with painful - no, agonizing vividness that terrible moment when the acid had struck his face, flung at him by a woman mad with love or hate?

  Love could be terrible ... terrible as hate if a woman could be driven to such an act.

  'Won't you take a seat, madam?' He gestured to a deep chair that seemed to be covered in a thick dull material like monk's cloth. As Carol sat down she wondered if this man had taken to a sort of monk's life since having his face and heart burned by acid.

  He didn't sit down himself but went to lean against one of the purplish-brown book cabinets, a carved falcon peering down at his black head, and so placed that he was out of range of the sunlight through the peaked windows 'Have you thought, madam, that while your son is a child he will have the protection of his family's love? Have you realized that when he goes away to school there will be those who will regard him as unentitled to his father's name?'

  Her hands clenched the arms of her chair, for his words seemed to shaft into her like so many painful arrows. 'Yes,' she said quietly, 'I've thought about it now I - now I know that Vincenzo had a wife before he - he met me. I know that some people can be -spiteful, and Teri is such a knowing child that he will be susceptible to the barbed remarks. One of the reasons I wanted to get him away from my aunts was their attitude that he—' Carol bit her lip. 'They are old-fashioned in their outlook on life, and they thought that Teri should not have been born.'

  'And why should they take such an attitude v/hen you believed yourself to be the legal wife of my brother?'

  Carol gazed across at him and saw from his frown that she was skating on thin and dangerous ice. 'He was dead, signore, and it's always hard for a child to be brought up by a single parent.'

  'Indeed, and that brings me to the point of this discussion. A growing boy should have a father, and most certainly a name. I have decided that you will become my wife, madam.'

  'What?' Carol stared at him as if he had suggested that she leap from the tower window. 'Y-you can't be serious !'

  'I am deadly serious, madam. The boy is a Falcone and I wish him to have the full protection of my name and my position.'

  'Marriage !' she gasped. 'It's out of the question !' 'It's very much part of the question,' he said, and his voice was as firm as steel. 'If you become my wife, then your son becomes my son, and no one will dare to breathe a word of scandal in connection with the boy, unless they wish to deal with me. I can be a harsh man when angered, madam.'

  'I don't doubt it,' she said, and could feel her hears beating so hard that she might have been running, and indeed she felt as if she were running madly away in her mind from this mad and impossible proposal of marriage from a man she hardly knew. He was Vin-cenzo's brother and she had learned to distrust any hint of Latin charm and persuasion ... not that there was anything that remotely resembled charm in the baróne's attitude at this precise moment. His eyes were a hard, demanding gold that intensified the dark scarred nobility of his face.

  'If you don't doubt it, then don't make me angry,' he said. 'As a Falcone I'm not proud of the fact that my brother led you up a garden path strewn with thorns. I can make reparation for that, and you will permit me to do so.'

  Carol sat there stunned, and up through the windows floated the sound of cicadas grating their back legs in the foliage of the gardens. She smelled the heady musk of flowers mingling with that of old stone and water. 'I - I could never agree to such a reparation,' she said at last. 'You have no need to go that far, signore, for two people you knew nothing about until we turned up on your doorstep.'

  'You are looking for excuses,' he said, with a sudden touch of harshness. 'You declare your love for the boy, but it isn't strong enough to make you close your eyes to the face of a ugly husband. Did you imagine, madam, that I was proposing a love match, and that I'd expect you to fall into my arms?'

  'Yes - no—' Carol didn't know what she expected, certainly not a proposal of any sort from a powerful italian landowner. 'Surely you didn't expect me to say yes to you?'