The Sin of Cynara (11 page)

  'Am I such a monster?' he asked.

  'Oh no - your face has nothing to do with it ! We're strangers to each other, that's what I meant. You don't owe Teri that much, to tie yourself to — to your brother's woman.'

  'You requested that I didn't call you his woman, but others will do so. Though you live under my roof, there will he whispers about your son. Are you strong enough to take those, but not brave enough to marry me?'

  Strong enough? Her hands trembled, and she was so tired of being tough all the time, afraid to give in to weakness and tears. For five years she had stood alone and fought for Teri, but now - now a man offered to share that burden and it would have been terribly tempting to just give in and not fight any more.

  'Strangers don't marry, signore,' she said. 'I made that mistake once before, and I daren't make it again, least of all with Vincenzo's very own brother.'

  'Do you imagine I am like him? Women were a relaxation for me, not an obsession. It was another woman, I suppose, who took Vincenzo away from you?'

  'Yes.' She saw Cynara again, so defiant, with smeared lips, and a rip in her violet-coloured bridesmaid's dress.

  'You wouldn't be entirely the type of woman for my brother.' Those eyes that might never soften again for any woman made a relentless search of Carol's face. 'I never knew him to go in for the sensitive type with a mind of her own, but at eighteen you would have been as tender and untouched as a new rose, and I imagine he found that irresistible - for a while. Then he reverted to the more obvious sort, am I correct?'

  'Uncannily correct,' she said, and it gave her a curious jolt that this man should speak of her as an untouched rose ... how did he regard her now, as a fallen flower?

  'What I have proposed must be decided one way or the other,' he said. 'Come, you aren't a starry-eyed girl any more, looking from your virgin casement for a knight on horseback. You and I have in common our disillusion with the delights of love, and we can regard marriage as a mere business arrangement. I can give your son the name that he should have, so that it can never be disputed, and you can give me the heir that I wouldn't have in the normal course of events. You see, madam, I don't expect a woman to love my face. I look at it in a mirror each morning when I shave and I would be a fool to expect anything but pity and a certain horror from any young woman. That I would never deliberately seek, and you can rest assured that I would be but a husband in name alone.'

  Carol sat there as still as a statue, but she could actually feel the excitement running in her veins. Teri could be this man's heir, with a title and a palazzo, and people looking up to him. The sin of Cynara could be wiped out as if it had never been, and the child she loved could hold his own with anyone ... just about anyone.

  Abruptly the baróne leaned down to her and looked closely into her eyes. 'Yes, now the idea spreads wings and you feel yourself being carried away by what I suggest. Never again need you worry about your son's future ... or your own, come to that. You are tempted, are you not?'

  Yes,' she admitted. 'But all the same it's a coldblooded arrangement, and even if I don't have to be your real wife, how can I be sure that I won't be your hated wife?'

  'Why should I hate you?' There was the faintest hint of whimsicality in his yoice. 'I shall probably take you for granted, for I have my own life to live, my own concerns that keep me well occupied.'

  'I -I know how you became as you are,' she said, and she looked at him though it would have been infinitely easier to glance away, at the falcons that couldn't fly, a* that monk-like figure whose eyes couldn't play tricks with her nerves.

  'Do you really, madam?' His voice was velvet wrapped around a shaft of steel, and his glance flicked like the sharp point of the rapier. 'Is that why you're afraid of marrying me?'

  'Being hurt in that way can't make you exactly fond of - of women.'

  'Of blonde women?' he taunted her, and quite deliberately he touched a tendril of soft gold hair at the side of her neck. She felt the very tip of his finger and tiny nerves seemed to chase each other across the very pit of her stomach.

  'How can I tell that you don't want some kind of -revenge?' she said. 'It wouldn't be unnatural, and once I became your wife — well, you're the baróne, and no one questions your authority, do they?'

  'Meaning that if I beat you there would be no one to tell me that I shouldn't ?'

  'Something like that.'

  'What an odd creature you are !' He flung back his head and gave a hard sort of laugh. 'You'd be more likely to scream if I made love to you.'

  When he said that Carol very nearly did scream; married to him she would have little defence against anything that he wished to do. He was a hard, lean, powerful man, and forever branded by the cruelty of a woman. There would be no tenderness in the love-making of Rudolph Falcone, and she was not the experienced woman that she made out to be.

  'You know you can't fight me,' he said, 'so why bother to try? You know you would do almost anything for the boy—'

  And there he broke off as the door of the tower room was abruptly thrust open, framing the figure of Bedelia Falcone, clad in dark silk that glistened like her eyes and her drawn-back hair. In the lobes of her ears were black pearls gleaming against the magnolia pallor of her skin.

  'I thought I would find the pair of you together.' Her pale, long-fingered hands curled against the silk of her dress. 'I guessed that she wouldn't waste much time before she started her wiles on yet another Falcone, and this time the rich, important one. I said that was why she came here, and I am proved right. You bring no one here, Rudolph, so she followed you—'

  'Mrs. Adams did nothing of the sort,' he said, curtly. 'I brought her with me to the falconiere, and I had my reason for doing so.'

  'Your reason?' Bedelia flung back her head and gave him an arrogant look. 'Of course, you realize that she is no better than a woman of the streets and you feel she should repay you for being here.'

  'How dare you !' Carol went white with temper and sprang to her feet. 'I'm not taking your insults—'

  'You will be quiet, the pair of you,' the baróne rapped out. "There will be no cat fights under my roof, do you hear? Women ! Life would so much more composed if they had never been invented.'

  'Why is she here?' Bedelia demanded. 'Here in your private room from which others of the household are excluded.'

  'Mrs. Adams and I had something of a serious nature to discuss.'

  'Money?' his sister-in-law flung at him. 'Is she demanding a settlement of some sort, so she can dress her little mistake in better clothes than the ones he is wearing at present? Cheap people, cheaply dressed! How could Vincenzo get mixed up with her sort when he was used to the best?'

  'Hold your tongue.' The baróne looked so suddenly angry that his scars stood out like pale frozen seams. 'You are speaking of the woman who is going to be my wife!'

  Bedelia looked at him as if he had gone mad, then all at once her hands were claws and she was flying straight at Carol, her sharp fingernails aimed at her eyes. Carol gave a cry and then felt herself falling as the baróne thrust her to one side and caught hold of Bedelia with incredible speed and strength. He gave her a shake that must have rattled her teeth.

  'What is the matter with you?' he demanded. 'Are you deranged?'

  'You can't marry her, you can't,' Bedelia panted. 'You can have the child without having her - she is nothing, and you are the baróne. Give her money and she will go away, Rudolph. That is all she came for, to ' be paid for having the son that should have been mine.'

  'You don't know what you are saying,' he said grimly. 'Grow up, Bedelia, and find yourself another husband. Forget Vincenzo, once and for all. Accept that he is gone for good. Che sarà sarà.'

  'I was his wife -I loved him. What is she? Just one of his women who fell for his child and who now comes to Falconetti to get all she can out of you. You can't marry her! People will know that she isn't doing it because she wants you ! It's your possessions that she wants !'

  'I am fully aware that no woman could want me for myself,' he said, and Carol saw a nerve flickering against his temple, distinct among his fearful scars. 'But as a man of property I must have a legal heir, and young Terence will suit me. He has the Falcone look, and he's healthy and intelligent beyond his years.'

  Carol listened as if in a kind of dream from which she couldn't wake up. This was her future they were talking about, as if it were already settled that she was going to make the vows that would bind her to this man. She wanted to cry out that it wasn't settled, but her lips moved dumbly, as they do in dreams, and she knew in her heart that Rudolph Falcone would have his way.

  He looked at her, still gripping Bedelia by the arms, and there in his eyes lay not demand but the distant expression of a man who had chosen to protect his inmost feelings with a layer of ice that marriage to her would leave as frozen as it was right now.

  'We shall be married,' he said. 'Soon.'

  'Yes,' she heard herself reply, and there was a long moment of silence broken by the rustle of silk as Bedelia broke free of the baróne's hands.

  'You will regret what you are doing,' she flung at him, and the gems in her ears held a black fire, reflected by her eyes. 'Have you not already learned your lesson at the hands of a blonde woman !'

  With this taunt Bedelia glanced around the falconiere until her gaze fell upon the monk-like portrait, and she flung out a hand towards it. 'You would do better to live like that, brother-in-law,' she said. 'Take to the cowl and the habit, for this cheap and pretty piece who belonged to Vincenzo isn't going to kiss you with her eyes open.'

  Bedelia smiled at him, and then turned away with a catlike grace and walked from the room, and never in her life had Carol felt such a spasm of hatred for anyone.

  But at the same time she felt a deep stab of curiosity ... was it possible that Bedelia spoke like that out of sheer wilful envy? Had she transferred love of her dead husband to his living brother ... The baróne of Falconetti who had all the strength and authority which Vincenzo had lacked?

  When she looked at the baróne he was gazing from one of the peaked windows down upon the lake, and turned to her was the unflawed side of his face ... the face which Bedelia had known in all its Latin perfection.

  Carol's heart gave a thump, for she knew that even as she gained the baróne for a husband, she gained a deadly enemy in his sister-in-law.

  'Bedelia is highly strung,' he said, 'and she doesn't always take heed of what she says. She would have been more stable had there been a child of her union with Vincenzo - it is natural that she is jealous of your son.'

  'It might be natural,' said Carol, 'but she makes me rather afraid. I hope she wouldn't harm Teri—'

  'Harm him?' He swung round and looked hard at Carol. 'I hardly think so, for she knows she would have me to deal with. As I said, we shall be married as soon as possible, but there are certain formalities to arrange and papers to be drawn up. I realize that it is all very unromantic, but the advantages should outweigh the lack of - enchantment, shall I say?'

  'Don't bother to say it, signore.' She briefly, and a little bitterly, broke into a smile. 'I am quite disenchanted with romance, and it is true that I would do just about everything for Teri. He comes first with me, and I'm grateful that you wish to make him your official heir - but please believe that I didn't come here deliberately seeking that, as Bedelia implied. I'm not a gold-digger, and neither am I a cheap woman who would give myself to any man. You said, signore, that our marriage would be a mere formality, but if it were that alone then I would feel that I was cheating you. If I marry you, I will be your wife, if you want me to be so.'

  Carol hadn't weighed her words, or even thought that she would say them, but directly she did so she felt a sense of relief. She didn't want to take all that this man was prepared to give to Teri without some sort of repayment, and he was a lonely man ... a man who

  believed that he was no longer desirable; a kind of ogre to shut himself away in his falconiere so that other people might not have to hide the shock in their eyes when they looked at his face.

  'You are generous, madam.' He stood there very tall and straight, with an old-world hauteur about him, as of another time, when men clad themselves in doublet and hose and carried a rapier at the hip.

  And then he said, rather cruelly: 'But I'm not asking for your self-sacrifice, you know. It's your son that I want, to carry on my name and my line, and it is necessary that in order to acquire him in every sense of the word I marry his mother. You have no need to grit your teeth and come to bed with me, Mrs. Adams. I am not so desperate for the company of a woman that I would subject you to the embraces of a man you neither like nor want. You will be my wife in everything but the intimacy of the bedroom, for I don't require your pity, madam.'

  When he said that Carol felt as if the floor rocked beneath her feet. She hated him for the way he spoke, and the way he looked at her with eyes like steel with an edge of flame to them. He was armoured in pride, and when he smiled it was remote as a moon glimmer.

  He gave her a slight mocking bow. 'I salute your courage, madam. It must have taken plenty to offer yourself to a man whose looks must make you shrink inside yourself. You are young and attractive. My handsome brother was your lover. You have no need to consider yourself under any kind of obligation to me.' 'I - I didn't want you to think that I would take without being prepared to give,' she said, in a shaken voice. She could barely meet his gaze - he mortified her, her fidanzato.

  'It's because of my brother that you have the responsibility of a son to rear, so it's for me to do something about it. I shall be of use to you, and in return you assist me in making secure the future of this ìsola and its people. We are almost feudal on this island, madam. The people like it that they have a baróne to give them employment, and to whom they can bring their problems. Terence will be reared in this tradition, you realize that?'