A Gift for a Lion (4 page)

Her search for a boat had taken longer than she had realised, and it was well after midday when Saracina came into sight. She was watching it so eagerly that it was a few minutes before she realised that Pietro had stopped singing. Of course, it could just have been that he had exhausted his considerable repertoire of songs, but Joanna, glancing at him, noticed that his normally cheerful expression had been replaced by a faint, anxious scowl and that he kept scanning the horizon as if he was searching for something that he did not particularly want to find. She moistened suddenly dry lips. The sea around them seemed to empty. Apart from themselves, the only sign of life was that unwelcoming-looking lump of rock getting steadily nearer.

If something happened—she preferred not to be too definitive about what—they could simply disappear into the tranquil water without trace, she thought uneasily. Of course Tony would know where she had gone. She had left a brief note on
Luana
explaining. And with any luck by the time she got back Paul and Mary would have said all they had to say about her wilfulness, selfishness and general pigheadedness.

'Nuts to them,' she thought inelegantly. 'From tomorrow I'll be so good, they'll award me the Nobel Peace Prize!'

It was an odd feeling, standing on the silvery sand of the tiny bay, watching Pietro's boat with its tan sail disappearing round the rocky headland. So—they had come, and he had gone, and no one, gunslinger or islander, was any the wiser. In a way, it was all a bit of an anticlimax.

She swung round to the towering cliff behind her, shading her eyes as she stared at the top. Nothing moved —not even a goat. There was a path of sorts leading to the clifftop, but she resolutely ignored it. She had made up her mind to stay on the beach, and Pietro had chosen this bay particularly because, he had intimated, it was furthest from the inhabited part of the island.

She dropped her beach bag on to the sand and kicked off her pretty straw sandals. She was here, and the utter peace of this deserted cove was everything she had dreamed. And she had until five o'clock when Pietro was to return to her.

She stripped off the towelling shift, throwing it carelessly down beside the bag, and walked into the faintly creaming shallows. The water felt warm to her feet, and she threw back her head, letting the slight breeze take her hair. She lifted her arms, almost in obeisance to the sun, and stood motionless for a moment before running forward and plunging into the slight swell of the sea.

Tunelessly, thoughtlessly, she swam and floated and basked, feeling for the first time in her life that she was part of the elements, a creature of air, sea and sun. She plunged under the water, digging her fingers into the firm rippled sand on the seabed to find shells. She lay in the shallows, letting the tiny waves wash over her body. She had never known such tranquillity. She thought, 'I'm happy,' and wondered with a pang why the realisation should bring such a swift sense of desolation in its wake.

Hunger eventually drove her back to the, beach. She spread her coloured towel on a large flat rock near the water's edge and produced the lunch she had bought in Calista that morning. There were rolls filled with fresh chicken, some small sweet tomatoes and a huge bunch of black grapes. She had brought some cans of lager from
Luana
, but it was warm and she grimaced a little as she tasted it, resolving to find a convenient pool to cool the remainder in during the afternoon.

Seabirds came sweeping apparently from nowhere out of the dazzling air, screeching and squabbling over the scraps she threw them. When the food was gone, they went too—and that warm drowsy quiet descended again.

Motionless on her rock, Joanna felt as if she was poised on the edge of the world. She stretched languidly, enjoying the feel of the sun and salt on her skin, then ran a tentative hand through her damp hair. She reached into her bag for a comb and began to tug it through the worst of the tangles. It was oddly relaxing sitting on her rock, smoothing her hair.

'I feel like a mermaid,' she thought dreamily, and giggled. She stretched out her legs, putting her ankles together and pointing her toes, imagining they were the tapering of a long silver tail. Anyone watching would think she was quite mad, she decided idly, and with the thought came a swift feeling of unease. She turned to the cliff again, scanning the top with narrowed eyes, but again all seemed quiet.

She looked back at her legs, assessing them candidly, along with her general height and shape. A number of people had suggested to her in the past that she should take up a modelling career, but she had refused to consider it seriously, regarding it as overcrowded a profession as the stage and with as little chance of success. But now she was not so sure. About a month before she had met a leading fashion photographer, Gil Weaver, at a party and he had asked her outright if she would let him photograph her. At firs! she had thought he must be joking, but he had persuaded her that he was perfectly serious.

'You're not chocolate box, darling, but then I wouldn't want you if you were,' he said. 'But I like the way you look and move, and the way you wear your clothes instead of letting them wear you.'

She had been really excited when she told Tony and her father about the conversation, pointing out that Gil Weaver had launched several very successful faces on their careers in the past, but the response from them both had been negative, even faintly hostile. Tony had been jealous, she knew, over the idea of her becoming closely involved even in a professional way with another man, but her father's reaction was less easy to assess. She had decided eventually that it was because she would be moving into a new world, where he had no influence, and it would therefore be beyond his power to help her with her career. He had also made it clear that he regarded it as little more than another of her whims, and that he did not expect it to last.

But this time she would stick to it, she thought grimly, in spite of their opposition. She sighed a little, foreseeing battles ahead. She would have to convince both Tony and her father that this time she was not merely being wilful, but really wanted to carve out some sort of professional niche for herself.

'I'll use a different name too,' she thought. 'Then whether I succeed or fail, it will all be my own doing and no concern of the magic Leighton name.'

She reached for her suntan oil and began smoothing it on to her shoulders and arms, pushing aside the straps of her bikini to make sure all her skin was covered. Then she paused. After all, she was quite alone and it would be more than a couple of hours before Pietro returned. This was her chance to acquire a proper tan at last, without the danger of strap marks spoiling its perfection. And St Tropez was not so very far away, with its crowded beaches where people wore the absolute minimum without anyone raising an eyebrow, while here there was no one to see her at all—so… She pulled at the fastening of her bikini bra and dropped the tiny garment into her bag. There were many times on the
Luana
when she had longed to do the same, but she had been so rarely alone, and there had always been Mary to look shocked at her lack of modesty.

She oiled and toasted her slim body without reserve, revelling in the warm rays of the sun. She knew that her father and Aunt Laura would be shocked beyond words if they could see her. All their worst forebodings about the Mediterranean would have come true, she thought, smiling to herself.

When she had sunned herself sufficiently, she pulled her towel into the shelter of an overhanging rock, and lay down on her stomach in the shade. The air was shimmering and dancing in the full heat of the afternoon, and she closed her eyes against the glare from the surrounding rocks. The sea murmured drowsily in the distance and a soft drone of insects sounded in her ears. She thought 'I shall be asleep in a moment, but I mustn't… I mustn't…' even as she drifted away on a cloud of sweet oblivion.

She never knew what woke her. She only knew that when she eventually turned her head, feeling the sand gritty under her cheek, her eyes focused suddenly on a pair of highly polished boots only a foot or two away from her recumbent form. And behind them, another pair. And just to the left, yet another pair.

For a moment, she lay frozen, staring in disbelief, then with fingers made clumsy by shock and embarrassment, she snatched up her towelling shift and held it defensively in front of her as she sat up. -It was worse than any nightmare. There were at least half a dozen of them, all wearing some kind of dark green uniform with polished kneeboots. There were no guns actually being pointed at her, but each man wore a holster at his hip, she recognised, her stomach hollow with fear.

She wanted to speak, but to her humiliation words would not come. Her throat was too dry. The silence seemed to go on for ever. The man nearest to her seemed to be in authority. He was wearing a peaked cap, and carried a cane. When at last he addressed her, to her shock it was in heavily accented but correct English.

'Be good enough to dress yourself,
signorina
, and come with us.'

'Come where?' she managed huskily.

'That is not for me to say or you to know. I have my orders. Please be quick. We shall not observe you.'

He signalled to the other men, who obediently turned their backs, although Joanna caught two of the younger ones exchanging knowing and regretful grins. She was blushing to the roots of her hair by the time she had struggled back into her bikini top and dragged the shift on over it, but at least she was covered again, and a good measure of her assurance returned with the knowledge.

She picked up her towel and shook it free of sand before folding it and stuffing it back into her straw bag. She knew the man in charge was watching her, and hoped he could not see that she was shaking, although whether fear or anger was the paramount emotion possessing her she could not be sure. 'Come,
signorina
.' He put his hand on her arm.

'You won't get away with this,' she protested, hating herself for the involuntary tremor in her voice. 'My boatman will be returning for me soon and…' Her voice tailed away as she saw him slowly shake his head.

'It would be foolish to expect him,
signorina
,' he said.

'But I gave him instructions,' she began.

'So did we,' he said gently. 'When we stopped friend Pietro not long after he left you here.'

'You haven't killed him?' she cried.

'But no,' he sounded almost reassuring. 'We are not savages.'

'Then let me go.' she said, despising herself for the pleading note in her voice.

'But where would you go,
signorina
?' His tone was quite reasonable. 'You have no way of leaving the island, after all.'

Suddenly Joanna moved, thrusting at him with her bag so that he involuntarily staggered back as it hit him on the chest. She ran then, twisting madly to evade the clutching hands of the others as they stumbled in the soft sand, straight towards the sea a few yards away. She had no rational idea of what she was going to do, but she was quite a strong swimmer and that headland was not all that far away. If she could only reach those rocks just beyond it, there was always a chance that Tony and
Luana
would come in search of her and rescue her before her would-be captors could reach her by way of the rocky coves. She could see no sign of a boat and guessed they must have come down the cliff to reach her.

She was already waist-deep in water when the first man reached her. She fought him off furiously, striking him with her fists and nails, but he held her long enough for one of the others to reach them and then a third. She was carried, kicking and struggling, dripping wet out of the water, and dumped unceremoniously on the beach. This time they held her tightly by both arms and she knew with a sinking heart that her only chance of immediate escape had gone.

Joanna felt cold and sick. She was out of her depth and she knew it. Reality was here in these hands which were bruising the soft flesh of her arms and in the dark, jeering faces of the men surrounding her. She closed her eyes to shut them out and as she stood silently, she heard someone make a low-voiced remark in his own language that was greeted with a shout of laughter. There was an indefinable note in that laughter that somehow alarmed her even more than anything that had gone before, and she swung to the man who spoke English.

'What did he say?' she asked, still breathless.

'Calm yourself,
signorina
. It was nothing.' His voice was grave, but she could see amusement flickering in his slanting dark eyes.

'I insist on knowing.' This time it wasn't a frightened forlorn girl who spoke, but Sir Bernard Leighton's daughter with a lifetime of demanding her own way behind her.

For a moment he hesitated, then shrugged. 'And why should you not know,
signorina
? It was an idle joke, nothing more.'

'And it referred to me?'

'
Si
.' He paused again, his lips twitched slightly. 'He spoke the truth,
signorina
. He said that such a wildcat would make a fine gift for the lion.'

Again she felt that chill. The imprisoning hands and the crowding men were suddenly a threat almost too great to be borne. What did they mean—a gift for the lion?

Her mind ran wildly on childhood legends, forgotten long ago, she had thought, but now surfacing in her consciousness to torment her. Stories she had read of human sacrifice to wild animals hi arenas not so very far from this spot; of Theseus waiting in the dark of the Cretan labyrinth for the bull-man Minotaur.

In spite of herself, she shuddered. Whatever hidden secret Saracina held, she wanted no part of it. She could bear anything—Tony's anger, Paul and Mary's recriminations—if only she was safely out of this.

She told herself she was being ridiculous—letting her imagination run riot to feed her fear. And yet wasn't the fact that she was here, a prisoner in the hands of these men, equally ridiculous?

'Come,
signorina
.' She was being urged not altogether gently towards the cliff path, stumbling in the sodden ruin of her expensive sandals which she hadn't had time to kick off before her abortive escape bid. Her dress clung to her in clammy discomfort, and water dripped from her hair down her face and neck. How far were they expecting her to walk in this state? she wondered numbly. At the top of the cliff, she was answered. A small jeep stood waiting, the driver at the wheel.