The Sin of Cynara (19 page)

  'What did you say to Bedelia, that you thought I might be as expert as my brother in the fine art of lovemaking? Shall we find out, donna mia? Shall I make you forget that there was ever another man in your arms?

  'Please—' Taunted to the verge of panic, Carol began to struggle with him, desperate in case he learn the one thing that would reveal her as a liar and a fraud - that she had never known Vincenzo as a lover, or carried his child in her body.

  'You'll regret this,' she half-sobbed, trying to turn aside her head as he forced his lips upon hers and her words of appeal were stifled by his mouth. As he felt her open lips against his, his arms tightened about her slim body and she felt the rush of his warm breath across her skin, the pressure of his lips against her throat.

  'Rudi - don't !' In a sort of despair she slumped into a sudden stillness that might fool him into thinking she had fainted, but he only laughed softly, tauntingly against her ear, and there was a ripping sound of silk as he stripped her in the way of the Romans when they brought the Sabine women to their war tents. The shock of it went through her like a knife ... she thought she screamed, but it was a distant sound and her lips were too locked by his to have given that shrill and fear-filled scream. It had to be in her mind, and then she knew that it wasn't, for he suddenly wrenched away from her and sprang to his feet. She lay there staring up at him, and he was as tensed as a tiger, his black hair in disarray, the pupils of his eyes blazing dark and almost blotting out the golden irises.

  Abruptly it came again, and even as Carol struggled into a sitting position, dragging her hair around her, the door of the bedroom burst open and Gena carne running into the room. Her face was ashen and she was in her nightdress.

  'Rudi - Rudi,' she came to him and clutched at him, 'there's a fire ! The east wing is burning and the children are there ! The children - Teri and Flavia !'

  It was a nightmare — it had to be. Carol stared in horror as her husband gripped his sister by the shoulders and gave her a shake.

  'What are you saying, Gena?' Carol knew from the shaken sound of his voice that he was still half dazed by the stormy scene he had shared with her. She could still feel his touch on her skin, and her lips still ached from the kiss from which he had wrenched himself away. At any other time she would have been cruelly embarrassed to have been found like this, even if the man were her husband. But Gena was in the grip of a fear far greater than anything Carol could have felt with regard to Rudolph. A primitive, blood-chilling terror.

  'Come !' he gripped his sister's hand and they made for the open door, where he paused but a second to fling a command at Carol. 'Get something on and go down to the hall. Hurry !'

  They were gone, and Carol lost not a moment in obeying him. She scrambled off the bed, kicked her torn dress out of the way and grabbed at the black silk robe. She put it on and tied it tightly with the cord, hastening all the time from the suite, hearing again those terrified words of Gena's.

  Fire in the east wing where the children slept ! Fire, that most dreadful of all hazards that could face human beings ! Scorching, devouring, and utterly pitiless in the face of flesh and blood !

  Carol ran down the stairs at such a pace that she hardly felt her feet on the ground. And all the way down she was trying not to lose control of herself — Teri — her Teri was where the fire had broken out, and she would have been there with him if Rudolph hadn't insisted on their separation. Teri - Flavia - she wanted to be with them, for they'd be so frightened.

  The servants were clustered at the foot of the stairs that led to the east wing, and the major-domo was handing soaking wet towels to her husband, who was swiftly wrapping them around his shoulders, his throat and his head.

  No ! The word screamed through her mind. He was going up there, to the gallery that was already dense with smoke. He was going where the flames were, and she moved numbly to Gena's side and looked at her with a great question in her eye's. Gena had managed to get downstairs, but how was it that the boy and girl were trapped up there?

  'Their door was locked and the key was missing,' Gena said, and she stood there trembling, with her bare arms wrapped around herself. T tried the door and called out to them, but it wouldn't budge, and the fire had been started in the playroom right next door. I - I could see the flames and I screamed and came for Rudi. He - he's going up to get them - if he can.'

  How had it happened? Had a radiator got too hot and caught something alight?

  Saul came quickly to Gena and he was carrying a coat, which he wrapped around her. 'I got it from one of the footmen,' he said. 'There, it will keep you warm.'

  Warm! Carol was staring with agonized eyes as Rudolph went up those smoking stairs, a tall figure, half swathed in wet towels in an effort to keep the flames from overpowering him. 'He'll die,' she thought dully, 'and I shall never be able to tell him that I love him.'

  A hand caught at hers - it was Gena, looking at her with eyes that suffered for her. 'He insisted on going alone — let him go, Carol, let him get the children out if he can. He isn't afraid of being burned - he's been there, right there where it hurts like hell, and if anyone can get the kids, he can !'

  A convulsive shudder went all through Carol that once again her husband - her Rudi - had to face the torment of being seared as only flame and acid could sear the flesh. Still so vividly could she feel herself in his arms, struggling not against him but afraid of what he would discover when he took total possession of her — that she was a virgin bride.

  Now she was bitterly sorry that such a crucial point in their lives had not been reached, and she wanted to rush up those stairs and join him, and as if Gena sensed this her fingers tightened on Carol's arm.

  'Don't !' she said tersely. 'He mustn't be distracted -it will be bad enough for him if the children are lost, but you must stay here with us !'

  'Not here !' Saul took hold of both of them. 'Come along, everyone!' He raised his voice. 'Outside! It will be safer out in the open !'

  Even as they went out into the courtyard the smoke was writhing across the hall and the smell of burning timber was strong.

  'Can the fire be fought?' Carol asked, through trembling lips. 'Has the island some sort of fire service?'

  'Of course,' said Gena, 'and they're on their way.'

  'Look !' Someone pointed up at the windows of the burning wing, and they saw in horror the living flame curling up the window frames, and suddenly beyond the flames a figure could be seen, a sort of nightmare thing that had to be made of wax and cardboard, for it was alight, flaring like an effigy, and moving, moving towards those windows from which the glass suddenly flew, lethal and glittering in the firelight, falling like darts through the air as that human torch sank out of sight.

  There was a terrible, stunned silence, and then Gena gave a groan and buried her face against Saul.

  'It was a woman,' he said, in a shocked voice. 'I saw her long hair burning !'

  'It was Bedelia,' Gena whispered. 'I knew she was going mad - I just knew it ! Rudi should have sent her away before she had the chance to do something like this. The wedding today finally unbalanced her—'

  Carol swayed where she stood, feeling sickened, hung in a web of cold shock. She was chilled to the bone even as they heard the fierce crackling of the flames, eating away at the walls and the furnishings, ruthlessly destroying part of the palazzo. She more than anyone should have guessed that Bedelia would have her own back on Rudolph for marrying the girl who was the supposed mother of Vincenzo's child. That for Bedelia had been the final blow to her pride, and this fire was the horrifying result. She had locked Teri in with Flavia, and then gone into the playroom to set light to the toys. In so doing she had trapped herself, for fire was an even more unpredictable enemy than a woman driven mad by love she had lost more than five years ago. A love stolen by Carol, so she died believing.

  'Oh, Cynara,' Carol thought, the wetness of tears on her cheeks, 'this time because of you I may lose a real man.'

  She could taste the ashes on her lips, and as she stood there in her husband's black robe her unbound hair attracted the glint of the fire and was like a cape of gold silk about her shoulders. She couldn't take her eyes from the upper part of the east wing, where the flames had spread until each window was a frame for them. She heard the clamour of the firemen as they arrived, but not a scrap of hope revived in her heart. She felt certain she would never see Rudi again, and that if she did if it would be as the blackened ember of a man, the golden eyes burned away ... oh no, she choked and swayed as a figure suddenly emerged from the house into the courtyard. It was a figure black with soot, tattered and torn, seared and grinning so that the bone-white teeth were agleam against the blackened skin. He lurched out into the open, one child clinging around his neck, and the other safely locked in his arms.

  'Sweet, sweet air !' It was the most jubilant cry Carol had ever heard in her life, and then she was alive again and running to him, stumbling over the water hoses, treading in the puddles, crying out his name from the very depths of her heart. Saul took the children from him, and Rudi stood there dragging deep gulps of air into his lungs. Carol stared up dreamlike into that dirty face, the gold eyes dazzling her through the smoky mask.

  'Y-you look as if you've come down the chimney,' she said, and she stroked his arm, his shoulder where his shirt had burned away, making sure he was still in one piece. His jacket was gone, wrapped around Teri, who was coughing and calling her name. She caught him to her, and she still couldn't take her eyes from her husband's face. 'I'm eating him,' she thought, shamelessly, 'eating him in front of everyone, and I don't care a damn. I love him ! Oh God, how I love him !'

  'Thank you,' she whispered.

  'You are welcome, madam.' He looked right into her eyes, and it was as if they were the only two people in all the chaotic world, in that dazzling moment as bricks and timbers fell flying through the air and the night was lit by a thousand sparks. Those sparks were in her blood itself, and because he was alive, she too was alive as never before.

  'Santa, my dear,' he smiled his twisted smile, 'bringing you a pair of presents - the children we love even if they're not our own.'

  He said it with an infinite softness, for her ears alone, and his smile crept, growing more and more wicked.

  She felt Ten's clinging arms, and she saw in Rudi's eyes his teasing knowledge of a lot of things. Then he moved away from her to speak to the fire chief, and because not yet had the moment come for him to explain, Carol turned to the others, to Flavia in the circle of Gena's arm, the terror slowly seeping from her young face.

  'Dear, dear Rudi,' the tears glittered in Gena's eyes. 'Don't you have to love him - don't you see what he is, the sort who walks through hell for those he cares about.'

  Carol had no speech left in her, her throat locked as she held Teri and felt him little and live against her. She saw Saul glance at Gena and there was a faintly cynical smile in his green eyes. He wanted Rudi's sister, Carol could see that, but he also knew that he was going to have a devil of a 'job convincing her that he had his good points even if he couldn't compete with the powerful charisma of her tall, scarred brother -once upon a time the handsomest man in Italy.

  The dawn came, spilling over the shell of the east wing. Carol stirred sleepily in Rudi's arms and pressed her lips to his scars, counting each one as if it were a gem.

  'Shameless hussy,' he murmured, 'daring to tell me all those lies. Aren't you ashamed of yourself?'

  'Not any more.' She curled close into his arms and she felt that nothing, no moment could ever be more heavenly than this, to wake a bride in the arms of a most beloved man, and find him so alive and warm and human.

  'It was wicked of you to lead me on,' she smiled against his chest, feeling the crisp hair against her face. 'I might have guessed that a shrewd Italian wouldn't make a business deal without finding out all the angles. So you had me checked on, did you?'

  'Up to the hilt.' As he spoke his hand moved under her swathe of hair, moving up her spine until she wiggled and gasped with laughter. 'Don't, Rudi, I'm ticklish !'

  'Yes, aren't you?' His mouth came down against the side of her neck and he kissed her with a slow, knowing humour. 'Delicious little liar, I ought to beat your rump for not telling me the truth. Do you think I'd have thrown you out on your ear? I took one look at you and wished to heaven I didn't look a ghoul—'

  'Don't !' This time she made a different sound, and she flung her hand quickly across his lips. 'You're the most marvellous man in the world and I love you so much I don't know what to do with it—'

  'Shall I tell you?' he breathed. 'Oh, shall I tell you, my little witch, who watched me go up those stairs to the fire as if at any moment you would dash after me. I prayed you wouldn't. I could face the flames for myself, but not for you — beautiful girl, sweet virgin, giving to me those first sweet cries. Mìa adorata, I thank you for loving this face of mine.'

  'All of you,' she gasped. 'Every sinew of you, Rudi - but what if my sister Cynara ever wants her boy—?'

  'To hell with Cynara, I'll kill her first !' And his lips took Carol's and he took her once again to that heaven reserved for true lovers. No more doubts, no more lies ... he knew ; she could feel how much he knew that he was the only man she had ever loved like this.

  And one day, when her love for him had taken away all his pain, he would tell her about that other woman ... the one who had thrown the vitriol as if to say, 'If I can't have you, then I shall make sure that no other woman ever wants you !'

  Only it hadn't worked out like that, for love moves in mysterious ways, and with the eyes of the heart had Carol learned to love the master of Falconetti.