The Sin of Cynara (3 page)

  She set her chin, with its delicate shadow of a cleft, and made up her mind to stay if she could. In fact, she very much doubted if Teri would be parted from her, for his fingers clung to hers all the way up the winding path to the scrolled gates of the house. The two bigger suitcases they left at the foot of the steps, for the stepped path was a steep one and she had a suspicion she was going to need all her breath for this confrontation with Vincenzo's family.

  A strange family, who at the time of his death had sent some sort of official to collect his remains and had made no contact with her. Too hurt by too many events at the time, Carol had ignored them as they ignored her, but now she must pocket her pride.

  'Look at those flowers, Cally.' Teri stared wonderingly at a great mass of oleander blossoms against a wall, overhung by a persimmon tree whose gold and crimson flowers were dazzling against the pale stonework. And there at the centre of the courtyard was an ornamental pool of fish flanked by tall stone vases into which masks, garlands and shells had been carved. Teri tugged his fingers free of Carol's and he ran eagerly to the pool to gaze at the darting gold fish with tails like chiffon.

  Carol smiled and gazed around her. Beautiful, she thought again, as if time had stood still on this island in the sun. How could Vincenzo ever have left to go following the siren call of pleasure ... a hedonistic fling which had ended in tragedy.

  At that time Teri had been only a secret guilt on Cynara's mind, and with Vincenzo gone she had turned to Carol and begged for her help. Carol had given it... always a giver and never a taker.

  She walked slowly towards a lovely old fountain in the shape of a nymph ... Cyrene, perhaps, who had rebelled against Aidoneus for his tyranny and been turned to ornamental stone that would always weep, as the fountain wept its sparkling tears in the sunlight.

  Suddenly Carol became aware that someone was standing in the shadow of an archway leading from another section of the large courtyard and she slowly faced around until she was looking at the person who silently watched her.

  It was a young woman in a long scarlet skirt and a white silk blouse that shimmered as she came out into the brightness from the shadows. Her hair was raven, like two close wings against her shapely head, and she had a wild sort of beauty and temperament in her face.

  'And who might you be?' She spoke in perfect English, but with a husky accent. Then she stared at Teri, who was also staring at her. The girl gave a gasp and a hand flew to her mouth. 'Santo Dio!' And there came into her ebony eyes such a look of frightened wonder that she might have been looking at a ghost.

  'This is Terence.' Carol spoke in a quiet, steady voice, for she guessed at once that the Italian girl had recognized Vincenzo in the face of his son. 'And I am Carol Falcone - the widow of—'

  'No,' the girl broke in sharply, 'I am the widow of Vincenzo Falcone, and you are that English girl he had an affair with in England. How dare you come here? The baróne will kill you for daring to bring your brat to this house so we can have scandal all over again !'

  Carol stood there like that stone statue of Cyrene, and her face was completely white. She made no attempt to deny the girl's statement ... she accepted it with that same icy feeling with which she had accepted Vincenzo's affair with Cynara. He had been utterly amoral, and once again she was the victim of his amorous inclinations.

  'I don't want to be killed, Cally !' Teri ran to her and she drew him hard and close against her.

  'No one is going to hurt a hair on your head, my son,' she said, and she tilted her chin and met the blazing eyes of the Italian beauty who had been unable to hold Vincenzo ... no one woman could ever have tamed and subdued him.

  'Who is the baróne? Carol asked, for she couldn't be turned away by an hysterical girl. She had to speak to someone in authority here, who could help to untangle this web in which Vincenzo had snared his women like an unscrupulous spider.

  'I wouldn't advise you to speak with him,' the girl replied. 'Go back where you' came from and leave us alone—'

  'I'm not afraid of this man, whoever he is !' Carol said it with more assurance than she really felt. Who was he? The father of Vincenzo, and therefore the grandfather of Teri? 'He owes me a hearing for the sake of my little boy, who as you can see, signora, is the son of your - your dead husband. A confrontation can no longer be avoided with the baróne. I take it he is the head of the house?'

  'Of course he is !' The girl said it with a proud, angry toss of her head. 'Are you pretending that you know nothing of Rudolph? In all probability you have come here to have an affair with him, but he can't have his head turned as easily as his brother—'

  'His brother?' Carol took her up. 'Vincenzo and this man — Rudolph?'

  'How innocent you pretend to be !' was the scornful reply. 'If you are hoping to worm your way into the palazzo with your love child, then you are in for a shock. You weren't wanted when Vincenzo died, and you are not wanted now, and you'd be wise to turn tail and run before you ever face Rudolph with your demands. He isn't a lover of every woman like his brother was. His eyes and hands won't chase all over you, but he will chase you from off his property.

  'I'll take a chance on that,' Carol rejoined. 'Do I go into the house through that archway?'

  She pointed to the one from which the girl had appeared, and then holding Teri firmly by the hand she marched out of the sunlight into the shadow and stepped across a threshold into the great, mosaic-floored hall of the palazzo.

  Across the hall a manservant in a striped waistcoat was dusting the clusters of wall-lamps and Carol went straight across to him and asked him in a firm voice to show her the way to his master. His jaw dropped and he gaped at her.

  'Andiamo!' she said. 'If you will be so good.'

  'If you will come this way, signora.' He led her and Teri up a curving flight of marble stairs to the piano nobile and there he paused in front of an imposing door and knocked upon it. Then he quickly said, 'Scuzate !' and hurried away down the stairs, leaving Carol to obey the summons to enter the room that lay beyond the door.

  'Come, Teri,' she said. 'Let's face the Lord High Executioner !'

CHAPTER TWO

  IT was an immense room, looming ahead of Carol and the boy as they entered at that deep, peremptory command. Carol was aware of fine and imposing furnishings even though her attention was upon that figure seated behind a carved Renaissance desk under the high windows draped in a flame-coloured material.

  Teri's fingers gripped hers and she felt a quick stab of compassion for him. It was all so strange for a little boy who had spent his life in a quiet seaside town, and she wanted to grab him fast in her arms and storm at this baróne that neither she nor Teri had asked to find themselves at the mercy of circumstances; both of them were the innocent victims of other people's passions.

  The carpet underfoot made their progress towards the desk a silent one, and the baróne was seated half-turned towards the window so that Carol saw him in profile and noticed the bold Roman nose, the thick straight brow, the hollowed temple beneath the sweep of raven-black hair. Haughty, of course, and bound to be as good-looking as Vincenzo ... and then he slowly turned in his chair and it deeply shocked her that the other side of his face had been seared as if by fire.

  He stared directly into her eyes, gauging her reaction to his face and catching instantly the wave of shock that ran over her features. His lips moved, just slightly, and he rose to his feet and she was aware of a sombre elegance, and a lean, dark power of body and personality. He was a sardonic Mephisto, with a mesmeric quality to the falcon-gold eyes in that bedevilled face.

  Still watching her without words he flung back the lid of an antique humidor on his desk and took from it a cigar wrapped in gold foil. His hands were lean, with the masculine beauty that must have made him overwhelming before his face had been so cruelly ruined.

  The fingers of his right hand played with the cigar even as he moved his left hand to a bell on the desk. Carol could feel her nerves vibrating, but she was no cotton candy girl to be frightened by this scarred scion of Italian nobility.

  'You don't have to send for a servant to throw me out, signore,' she said, and was glad that she had her voice under control. 'Teri and I haven't come here to beg, nor do I intend to insist that you owe him recognition as a member of your family. I merely wanted you to see him so you can judge for yourself that he is Vincenzo's son even if - if I'm not your brother's legal wife. We went through a form of marriage and I have the papers to prove it—'

  'My dear madam,' the voice was like dark honey strewn with gravel, 'what are you talking about? You invade my privacy and talk in riddles. Who are you?'

  'I'm the woman your brother married in England.' Temper came into Carol's eyes, with their Harlequin slant and their hint of violet in the grey, the colour of the moonstone. 'You know about me, and you can certainly see for yourself that my son resembles your brother.'

  The falcon eyes dwelt on Teri, who looked back at the tall figure with that fearlessness which Carol had taught him. 'Children have been known to scream when they look at me.' The scarred lips moved in a twisted smile. 'Yes, I'll admit he's the living image of Vincenzo, and he seems to have his brand of effrontery. Don't I frighten you, little one?'

  'You're very tall,' Teri said, conversationally. 'Are you going to smoke that gold thing?'

  Carol was watching the baróne very closely, and she felt a strange stab of the heart as he quirked an eyebrow at the boy and seemed for a brief moment at a loss for words. Then he glanced at the cigar in his fingers and drew off the gold foil. 'Nothing is ever quite what it seems, young one,' he said, in that singular voice that held a brooding quality, its accent adding to the perfection of his English. 'One moment a sort of magic, and then the next a mere cigar.'

  He struck a match and as he lit the cigar the flame was close to his face and Carol felt a shiver run through her. Yes, it had been fire which had destroyed that magnificent face, and for some sardonic reason of his own this man had never submitted to the knife of the plastic surgeon. He preferred to carry his scars, and she wondered why.

  As smoke issued from the edge of his lips, the door of this emotion-charged room was opened and a young girl of about sixteen came in. She gave Carol and Teri a surprised look, and then came to the baróne with a sort of shy eagerness in her manner.

  'There you are, carina,' he said, and glanced at

  Carol. 'This is my daughter Flavia, who will amuse the boy while we discuss your visit to us - your most unexpected visit. Flavia, take the boy to the orchard and pick yourselves some peaches - ripe ones, carina. Eat them in the grotto where it is cool and he can see the fish in the pond there.'

  'Yes, Papa.' The girl smiled and held out her hand to Teri, but he hesitated and looked up at Carol. She was hesitant herself about letting him go, but the baróne's young daughter seemed nice enough, and she was certainly very pretty with her flyaway eyebrows, her cheekbones high and tapering to a triangular jaw. She had a wide expressive mouth, and eyes of a clear brown.

  'The child will be quite safe with Flavia.' Now he spoke with a touch of the whip in his voice. 'Is he one of those pretty boys who clings to his mother all the time?'

  'No, he isn't,' she said, stung by his tone of voice. 'Teri isn't a nervous child at all, but this is a strange house to him, and a strange country. Caro,' she bent down to him and straightened the collar of his shirt, 'go with the pretty girl and see the fish in the flower house. I - I have to talk with this gentleman and it will be much more fun for you to pick fruit with Flavia.'

  'All right, Cally,' he said, and leaning his cheek to hers he whispered: 'She's prettier than her papa, isn't she?'

  'Run along with you, Buster.' Carol bit her lip and hoped to heaven the baróne had not caught Teri's whispered comment, but children were unconsciously cruel and he was probably used to it. 'And don't eat too many peaches or you'll have the tummyache.'

  'Our peaches are sweet, signora, at least,' drawled a deep voice above her head, and she dared not look into those sardonic eyes until the door had closed behind his daughter and her son... of her heart if not her body.

  'Please be seated.' A lean hand gestured at a high-backed chair near his desk and Carol was rather glad to accept his invitation, for now a kind of reaction to the man was setting in and her legs felt curiously shaky. In the first place she hadn't known that Vincenzo had a brother, least of all one whose air of command was impressive and alarming. He was like a dark-browed portrait by Diaz, but one which had gone through flames and emerged as a sort of ruined masterpiece.

  He resumed his own high-backed chair and sat there studying her from behind a screen of cigar smoke. Because his scrutiny was so disturbing in that face that still bore traces of Vincenzo, Carol let her gaze fall to the bronze faun which stood on his desk ; its workmanship was faultless and its surface seemed to gleam like a real skin. A man of impeccable taste, she told herself. A man who surrounded himself in his private sanctum with objects that had no flaw ... a compensation, perhaps, for the fact that he was himself so marked that many people would instinctively turn away their eyes from his face.

  But it wasn't his scars that made her so reluctant to look at him, it was his eyes, steady as a falcon's fixed upon a victim, making her as tense as any hare about to be swooped upon, her skin as tight and cold as if about to be clawed.

  As the silence grew she longed for it to be broken, and her fingers clenched each other when he moved his hand to tip ash into a bronze tray. 'You are not, brutally speaking, the type of woman my brother usually went for,' he said. 'He had a liking for the sensual, not the sensitive ... you are an old-fashioned girl, are you not?'