A Gift for a Lion (17 page)

She was thrust down into the softness of a fur rug, pushing herself up on to her hands and staring through the tangle of her hair in time to see Leo Vargas pushing the door shut with his shoulder. And only just in time. From the other side came a thud and a howl of pain, followed by a crescendo of hysterical barking.

He stayed where he was for a moment, his eyes closed. He was pale under his tan which threw into prominence the high cheekbones and the proud lines of his nose and mouth. Except for a pair of white silk pyjama trousers, he was naked, and Joanna could see a faint film of sweat glistening on the broad chest and shoulders.

She began to laugh suddenly, a wild harsh sound that bubbled up from deep inside her, hurting her throat.

'You're afraid,' she choked. 'But you can't be afraid. The Lion of Saracina can't be afraid of—a—mere dog.'

The heavy lids snapped open to reveal the blaze of anger in his eyes. He reached her in a stride, and she felt the sting of his palm across her cheek, stemming the floodtide of hysteria which threatened to overwhelm her. Her eyes stung and the room swung round her in a blur of light and colour.

He lifted her in his arms as if she were a child and carried her across the room and through a curtained doorway. Her cheek was pressed against the bare warmth of his flesh and she knew an insane urge to turn her head and put her lips against his body. But she mustn't do that, she knew, with the agony of tears in her throat. He had already decided not to risk an involvement with her and she must never let him know she even knew of his decision, let alone had been hurt by it.

She was placed without gentleness on the soft and yielding surface of a bed which was the room's main piece of furniture, four-posted and hung with rich tapestry curtains embroidered in muted shades.

'Stay there,' he said curtly, then disappeared back through the doorway into the outer room. Presently she heard voices, a strange man's talking loudly and nervously in a long stream of words, across which Leo Vargas' cold incisive interruption cut like a knife.

Joanna lay quietly. She was still shaken by the events of the past few minutes, and she thought the dog's eyes glittering at her as it prepared to leap at her throat would haunt her nightmares until the day she died. Almost unconsciously she huddled further into the pillow, seeking comfort from the fact that she now occupied the slight hollow in the bed that his body had made. Interspersed with the clean sharp smell of the linen was the tang of the cologne he wore, and she lifted a fold of the sheet, holding it against her face, inhaling the fragrance which seemed so entirely his.

The voices in the other room had sunk to a murmur and it was easier not to strain her ears to hear what they were saying, even if she could have understood. After the tension she had suffered, it was heaven to be able to relax like this. She sighed, curling her toes into the covers, as she heard the sound of the outer door closing.

Without even glancing at the doorway, she knew that Leo had re-entered the room and she moistened her lips nervously with the tip of her tongue as she waited for him to speak.

'I am waiting for your explanation.' He sounded as remote as the Alps and as icy.

'Explanation?' she echoed lamely. 'I don't know what you mean.'

'Then you are either a liar, Signorina Leighton, or incredibly naive. But perhaps I have not made myself sufficiently clear. Why were you trying to get into the locked room at the end of the corridor opposite? Oh, don't try to pretend.' He lifted a hand in warning as she began to protest. 'I know you were there, because anyone touching that door is picked up by an electronic device which sounds an alarm both in this room and in the security area downstairs.'

He watched the betraying colour come up in her face and laughed sardonically. 'You should be grateful for the device,
signorina
. It may well have saved your life. I was just opening the door when I heard you scream. I could well have been too late.' His voice deepened angrily. 'You little fool! What other dangers will your eternal curiosity lead you into before you are content? That dog could have killed you—you realise that?'

'Perhaps so,' she cried, almost hysterically. 'But what right have you to allow killer dogs to roam at will through the
palazzo
at night? I admit I was in the wrong by even being near these rooms, but I think you should have warned me when you left my door unlocked that there were dogs loose. You might have known I would try to find out what was in that room sooner or later.'

'The dogs are not merely set loose, you stupid child. They usually patrol the grounds with their handlers. But tonight this dog was indoors because thunder disturbs him, and he had slipped away from his handler. The man has just been giving me his explanation,' he added grimly.

Joanna moistened her lips. 'Did he—did he get into trouble? I mean, you haven't dismissed him or anything because of me…'

He sighed impatiently. 'What a mass of contradictions you are, screaming at me one moment because your life has been in danger and next minute pleading for the well-being of the man who was responsible for placing you at risk. No, he has not been dismissed, but that dog will never leave its chain again while it remains on the island.'

He looked down at her and his face darkened again. 'I am still waiting for an answer, Joanna. What precisely were you doing in that passage?'

She felt herself beginning to shake and her stomach suffered a sharp stab of nausea.

'Oh, please,' she whispered. 'I think I'm going to be sick.'

'Lie still.' He turned and went rapidly into the other room, returning with a glass containing a pale amber liquid. 'Drink this,' he commanded sharply. 'It's only brandy,' he added as she hesitated. 'I am descended from the Vorghese,
signorina
, not the Borgias.'

She sipped the spirit, gasping a little as it caught the back of her throat, feeling its reviving warmth spreading through her veins, taking away the chill and the sickness.

'I'm sorry,' she managed eventually.

'I don't doubt it. Being found out is always an unpleasant business, quite apart from the shock you have suffered. I regret I have to question you, but I must know what you hoped to find in that room?'

'The answer to a riddle,' she said rather drearily, swirling the remains of the brandy in the bottom of the glass.

'You risk your life for a riddle.
Perch
é
?'

'Because I thought the answer would help me put you in jail,' she flung at him, the brandy aiding her defiance.

The tawny eyes went over her, arrogant as those of a great cat.

'I did not realise you were so set upon revenging yourself,' he said coolly, after a pause.

'It's not a question of revenge,' she defended herself. 'I've never knowingly helped anyone break the law yet, and I just can't do it, no matter what…' She stopped abruptly, the colour flaring in her cheeks as she realised she had been about to say: 'No matter what I feel about you.'

'You were saying?' He was watching her, his eyebrows raised.

'No matter What the circumstances might be,' she said with an assumption of calmness.

'Do you never feel, Joanna, that humanity sometimes deserves new laws?' he asked quietly.

'Perhaps,' she looked down, unwilling to meet his gaze, her fingers nervously pleating the dark blue chiffon. 'But I'm not sufficiently arrogant to think that I might make them.'

'Maybe it is not arrogance that is needed, but simply a generous and a loving heart. Would you not claim that much at least for yourself?'

She kept her eyes lowered, frightened of what he might see in them. If he wanted evidence that she was capable of loving, then it was there.

The long silence that followed was interrupted eventually by his swift sigh, impatient and slightly bitter.

When he spoke his voice was cold again. 'There is a secret in the
palazzo's
keeping,
signorina
, as you have been aware, but it is not my secret and I am not at liberty to disclose it to you. But if you hope to convict me of some crime, you are doomed to disappointment. Neither myself nor any member of my family have broken any law for which we could be convicted.

'If you truly thought that we had then I am afraid you were merely indulging your own resentment. Can you honestly say that you gave a moment's credence to my having jeopardised my business enterprises, my dependants, apart from my name and the honour of my family, by committing some meaningless crime?'

He pushed his hand across his eyes as if he was weary.

'What did you suspect me of, I wonder? Embezzlement—forgery, or merely robbing widows and orphans? You are angry because I have kept you here against your will. What you do not yet understand is that I had no alternative. Once you were here, here you had to remain.

'I would give you my word this is so, but there is little point if you are still determined to regard me as a criminal.'

Joanna flinched a little at the bitterness in his words. She was aware of a blazing relief at his words, but to have betrayed it openly would be too blatant a confession of her feelings for him, she realised unhappily. , Instead she said in a low voice, 'You have every right to be angry. I—I didn't want to believe that you were covering up a crime, but it seemed the only feasible explanation for what was going on. I'm sorry for all the trouble I've caused. Coming to the island in the first place was an impertinence. I see that now. All I want now is to go right away and forget any of this ever happened.'

'It isn't as easy as that,' he answered shortly. 'I still can't permit you to leave. But you can console yourself that your imprisonment may only continue for a matter of a few hours longer.'

She wanted to tell him that it was no great consolation, but pride kept the words sealed in her throat. She could not help a little sigh as she pulled her peignoir more closely around her as she prepared to get up.

'The—the storm seems to have passed over, doesn't it? I think I had better go back to my room,' she said. 'Thank you for helping me—and I'm sorry I disturbed your night's rest.'

'It isn't for the first time,' he said drily, and she felt that betraying blush warm her cheeks again. 'And you must stop apologising, Joanna. I don't care for this new humility. It's out of character,
mia
.'

Stung, she gave him a sudden glare, searching vainly for a retort that would put him down once and for all, and was nonplussed to see that mockery had replaced the sombre look in his eyes.

'That's better,' he told her impossibly. He put out his hand to help her to her feet, as she swung her legs to the floor, and his fingers tightened on the soft flesh of her arm.

Dry-throated, she said, 'I must go.'

'Must you?' His hand slid up her arm, inside the full sleeve in the lightest of caresses to her shoulder. 'Perhaps it would be better for us both if you stayed.'

She made herself look up and meet his glance and felt that treacherous weakness sweeping through her body. She was acutely aware of how late it was and how completely alone they were, and was tremblingly conscious of her own vulnerability.

She watched his face as he leaned towards her and thought with a kind of dreamy wonder how short a time she had known him and yet how every plane and angle of his face was etched inexorably on her inner being and had been and would be for all eternity.

He did not seize her in punishing hands or pin her against the bed. He simply bent and let his lips brush hers in a slow teasing caress that promised and yet held at bay at the same time, until at last with a little protesting murmur, she fastened her hands compulsively at the back of his neck, pulling him down to her.

There was no gentleness then in the mouth that parted hers and she welcomed his fierceness, pressing her body against the length of his, glorying in her ability to rouse him.

He kissed her throat, finding the tumultous pulse that throbbed just below her delicate jawline, before his lips traced a totally sensuous path down to the point where her peignoir fastened at the neck in a soft chiffon bow. The soft fabric seemed to whisper through his hands as he pulled it undone and slid the fragile garment from her shoulders. Then he bent, lifting her into his arms as if she was a child, holding her against his heart. For a long moment he looked down at her, then almost hungrily his lips found the hollow between her breasts. His thick burnished hair was like silk under her trembling fingers. She was suddenly shy of him, of his probing gaze in this brightly lit room, of his lips which were sending little tongues of flame flickering along her nerve endings in a devastating siege of her will.

He placed her gently on the bed and lay beside her, his hand cupping her face.

'Stay with me,
mia
.' His voice was huskier than she had ever heard it. 'At least we need have no secrets from each other.'

No secrets, she thought despairingly, when she already guarded a secret she could never tell him—that she loved him, and without his love in return even the sharing of passion would be a hollow thing, without substance or meaning.

With a little moan, she turned away from him, dragging her arm across suddenly wet eyes. He bent over her.

'
Carissima
, what is it? Are you frightened? There is no need. I'll be gentle with you, I swear it. Or do you still not trust me?'

'It's not a question of trust,' she forced from her tightening throat. 'I—I just don't like being used.'

She felt the arm that held her grow suddenly rigid and knew without having to face him that he was frowning.

'And how precisely are you being used?'

'Well, what else do you call it?' she cried. 'You said yourself only a minute ago that I might only be here for a few hours longer. Is that why you're making love to me? Because it's safe now that I'll be leaving soon and won't be here to make a—nuisance of myself by making too many demands on you?' She almost choked on the final words.

Again his hand cupped her face, forcing her to look at him, but this time there was no tenderness in his touch, and she shrank from the anger that blazed at her from his eyes.