A Gift for a Lion (18 page)

'
Dio
, what an opinion you have of me,' he said too softly.

'It's true, isn't it?' she demanded. 'Admit it. Admit that you didn't want to get involved with me. That was one of the reasons you brought Nick here, wasn't it? To keep me away from you—to make sure that you wouldn't be—tempted to do something you might regret later.'

'If that was the plan,' he drawled, 'you will agree that it has been remarkably unsuccessful. Yes, what you say is partly true. Of course I wanted you. I would not have been human otherwise—and it is true that the timing was inconvenient, but—'

'And now it is convenient, I suppose. Perhaps I should be flattered—like the island girls who used to flock to your illustrious ancestor.' She almost spat the words at him. 'I wonder how he used to dispose of his discarded mistresses when their night of passion was over, and they became an embarrassment to him. He didn't have a helicopter service standing by to remove them. Perhaps they went over the cliff instead.'

'It is a solution that has much to recommend it,' he said tightly. He flung himself off the bed, reaching for a towelling bathrobe that lay across a nearby chair. He saw the startled look in her tear-bright eyes and laughed, sardonically without humour.

'Don't be afraid,
cara
. Your night of passion, as you phrase it, is at an end. I won't degrade you by my attentions any further. Anyway, it was a woman I wanted in my arms, not a hysterical child. Can you find your own way back to your room, or shall I ring for Josef to escort you?'

'No—oh, no.' She was shaking so much she could hardly fasten her peignoir. 'He might think…'

'Yes, he might, mightn't he?' he mocked her. 'And that would never do,
cara
, would it, for the English rose who intends to leave my island as innocent as she was when she came here. What is it,
bella mia
? Are you afraid that Nick wouldn't want my leavings? You are wrong. He would prize Sir Bernard Leighton's daughter, even at second hand.'

She was shocked into silence by the studied cruelty of the words he had hurled at her. With a little involuntary sob, she turned and headed for the door, running blindly into the corridor, seeking her room on a purely instinctive level like a small animal fleeing from a predator.

She hurled herself across her bed, weeping without restraint. Now, when she left Saracina, all she would take with her was the memory of his bitterness and hostility. The preservation of her ideals and self-respect seemed little recompense in comparison.

When at last she slept, it was the sleep of exhaustion, worn out by tears. She awoke to find it was late in the afternoon. The room was full of sunlight with no trace of the storm of the previous night except an extra freshness in the air. Joanna struggled up unwillingly on to her elbow, pushing her hair out of her eyes, blinking a little in the strong light.

There was a figure standing at the foot of the bed and for a moment, still fogged with sleep, she thought it was Josef. Then, almost incredulously, she heard a woman's soft voice say,
'Buon giorno, signorina. Posso aiutarla
?'

Joanna sat up, staring at the dark-clad woman who faced her smilingly.

'
Si, vorrei un caffe con panna, prego
,' she managed. Then, '
Scusi, parla l'inglese
? Do you speak English?'

'
Un poco, signorina
.' The woman smiled again, revealing very white teeth. 'A very little. I am Maria to wait on the
signorina.'

'I—I see,' Joanna stared at her, biting her lip. 'I'm sorry, Maria,' she added hastily, noticing that the woman was growing embarrassed. 'I'm just surprised to see you, that's all.'

Maria gave her a slightly puzzled smile and went away, presumably to fetch coffee and cream. Joanna found a pair of jeans and a sleeveless top and showered and dressed rapidly. When she returned to her room, the more familiar figure of Josef was waiting for her and the tray of coffee had been set on the table near the window.

'So it was a mirage,' Joanna commented, picking up the coffee pot and pouring herself a cup.

'Signorina?'

'Don't play games with me, Josef. Have the women servants come back to the
palazzo
?'

'
Si, signorina
. This morning, they have returned after their
festa
.'

Joanna gave him a long, hard look. His face was as impassive as ever, but she was conscious of a strange air of suppressed excitement about the little man.

'Your wife has returned too?' she asked.

'Me,
signorina
? I am not married,' Josef sounded almost shocked.

'Only to the Vorghese family,' Joanna muttered, and shook her head at his inquiring look. 'It's all right, Josef. It—it wasn't important. But why have the women returned, and so suddenly?'

Josef's face became more wooden than ever. 'It is not for me to say,
signorina
. It is for the
signore
to tell you.'

'I think that's hardly likely.'

'On the contrary,
signorina
, he is waiting for you in his study. But he gave orders that you should be allowed to sleep for as long as you wanted.'

She flushed a little, wondering if she deserved such apparent thoughtfulness.

'Thank you, Josef,' she said quietly. 'I'll go down as soon as I've had my coffee.'

Her heart was beating unpleasantly hard as she descended the stairs some time later. Somewhere in the distance a dog barked, loudly, harshly, then was silent, and Joanna shivered as she remembered the events of the previous night and what they might have led to in that storm-washed corridor upstairs. Her hand was still trembling in spite of herself as she knocked and heard Leo Vargas say '
Avanti'
on a note of impatience.

He was sitting at the desk as he had been the first time she saw him, but this time the sun came slanting through the windows sending the dust motes whirling in its rays.

Feeling rather helpless, Joanna advanced until she was standing on the other side of the desk. She moistened her lips.

'You wanted to speak to me?' She was glad her voice betrayed none of her nervousness. He glanced at her as he might have looked at a stranger.

'
Si
. These are yours, I believe.' Across the polished surface of the desk, he tossed her passport, bank card and the other papers she had searched for so vainly the previous night.

'I don't quite understand.' She picked them up, frowning a little.

'What is there to understand?' he asked coldly. 'They belong to you. I am returning them. I should have thought you would have been glad to have them back.'

'Then I am free to leave?' She gazed at him questioningly, unable to recognise in this taut, hard-eyed stranger either the man who had brought her almost to the point of surrender, or who had driven her away with his insults.

He hesitated. 'There is a slight problem with transport at the moment. When that is—resolved, you may leave whenever you wish.'

'I see,' Joanna said slowly. He had picked up a file from his desk and was making notes on a margin of one of the papers it contained. She had apparently been dismissed.

She moved closer to the desk and leaned forward slightly, resting her weight on her hands.

'Josef—I mean—I thought you might want to tell me what has happened.' She saw that he had stopped writing as she spoke and hurried on, 'I know the women are back—and now you tell me I can go whenever I wish. It's obvious everything has changed since yesterday, and I'm wondering why. I know I'm being curious again,' she added with a slight flush, 'but I don't think I can altogether be blamed under the circumstances.'

He leaned back in his chair, looking up at her, his tawny eyes as hooded and enigmatic as they had been at their first encounter.

'Yes, everything has changed since yesterday,' he said meditatively, and she was hotly aware that he meant more than the obvious alterations in the situation. 'There is no longer any real reason why you should not know —everything.'

He picked up a newspaper that lay on the desk beside him and tossed it towards her, folded to reveal a front page story with blazing headlines. Joanna looked at it and the accompanying photograph in some bewilderment. The face in the picture was oddly familiar, but she was unable to identify it until Leo Vargas began, almost idly, to whistle a tune. Then she remembered—it was the Easter Hymn and the picture was of the little man she had surprised whistling it below her room. The newspaper story itself was in Italian and hers was not good enough to be able to translate it, so she replaced it on the desk with a shake of her head and an inquiring look. As she did so, she noticed the date on the newspaper. It was an old one, dating from several days before she had arrived with Tony and the others aboard
Luana
in Calista.

'His name,' Leo Vargas said quietly, 'is Georgiou Damaryk. His place of birth need not concern us, but up to the date on that paper he was officially a citizen of the Soviet Union, working as a top level scientist. He was highly placed and correspondingly trusted, so much so that he was permitted to attend a recent conference with colleagues from all over Europe and America in Venice.'

'The—defector?' Hazily Joanna recalled the other story that had been featured In the paper Tony had brought her. The story she had completely forgotten when she had convinced herself that Leo Vargas was somehow involved in a major robbery.

'So you did know.' He looked at her grimly. 'Now do you see why you could not be permitted to leave here with that information?'

'But I didn't know he was here. How could I?' she cried. 'That wasn't why I came.'

'Oh, I absolve you of that,' he said coldly. 'You came here simply because it was forbidden. Damaryk came for refuge—a frightened man looking for political asylum who was terrified that he might be killed before he could hand over the information he had brought with him as a passport.'

'Killed?' Joanna stared at him, her lips parted.

'Why not? What better way of ensuring his silence? When it was arranged that he should come here, the authorities with whom we were in contact in Britain and America made it clear that political assassination was a definite possibility. That, or an attempt to kidnap him before he could pass on his information. Our best hope was secrecy, but there was always a chance that he might have been traced here—so, the security screen.'

'Which I breached.'

'As you say. And now you know why you could not be allowed to leave—for your own safety as well as Damaryk's. Even if you had known nothing, you might still have been a target for Damaryk's former masters if they had trailed him here.'

She looked at him uncertainly. 'Yet you evacuated all the other women…'

'Before Damaryk arrived. And it was not so unusual as you seem to think. Many of them have relatives on the mainland, and it is not the first time a large group has enjoyed a
festa
at my expense.'

'And now it's all over?'

'
Si
. His de-briefing has been long and involved, but it has ended at last. He left here at dawn with his interrogators and will fly on to his new life in the States later today.'

'But I still don't understand,' Joanna said. 'Why did he come here of all places?'

Leo Vargas looked past her to the door. 'Tell her, Josef,' he said.

Joanna turned in surprise and saw the little man waiting by the door.

'He was my uncle,
signorina
,' Josef said quietly. 'I was fortunate enough to escape all those years ago when our country was overrun, and the Prince Vorghese, the
signore's
father, found me in a refugee camp and looked after me. My uncle Georgiou was the most brilliant member of our family. Him they took, and he worked for them.' He paused, his voice thickened a little by emotion.

'I never thought I would see him again, and then a year ago I received a letter from him—such an ordinary letter, talking of the old days and asking if I would reply. We began a correspondence, knowing of course that every letter was being censored. Then—this letter arrived. For a moment I thought he had gone mad. He talked of people that never existed, recalled events that had never happened. Then I realised.' He smiled. 'When I was a small boy, he used to write to me then from the University and sometimes for a joke he would invent a code and use that. It was our secret, he would say.'

'The letter was in that code?' Joanna asked slowly.

'
Si, signorina
. When I deciphered it, I found it was simply a cry for help. He knew there was a chance he might attend the Venice conference and that this might be his opportunity at last to get to the West.'

This time he almost beamed. 'I knew the
signore
would help me. He agreed that my uncle should take refuge here for a while, and that while he was here on Saracina a state of martial law should exist. My uncle was very much afraid of what might happen to him if he was traced. He was—very valuable,
signorina
.'

'And now he's safe?'

Josef made the sign of the cross. 'I pray so,
signorina.'

'I hope so too, Josef,' Joanna said gently. She had been gripping her passport so tightly that the corner had cut into her hand, leaving a mark. She forced herself to relax, to speak with a lightness she was far from feeling.

'Well, all's well that ends well. I'm very glad for you, Josef. I realise now why you couldn't answer my questions. I must have been a great nuisance to you.'

'Ah no,
signorina
.' Josef smiled at her warmly. 'You have never been that.'

'I think you're being kinder than I deserve.' Joanna bit her lip. 'I hope your uncle will enjoy his new life. I'm sorry I startled him so the other evening.'

Josef's smile grew even wider. 'He told me,
signorina
, the shock had been worth it to catch a glimpse of such beauty.' He made her a slight bow and went out. Joanna felt her cheeks grow scarlet and she sent a fleeting, embarrassed look at Leo Vargas, who had turned away and appeared to be studying something on his desk with deep attention.