The Sin of Cynara (8 page)

  Glass of wine in hand, her long hair falling around her slim body like a pale silk cloak, Carol wandered about the room getting acquainted with its atmosphere.

  The massive furniture of dark mahogany had some strange and fascinating carvings worked into it, and the light of the lamps glimmered on the wood and made it gleam. She made out tiny figures grouped as if to dance the tarantella, a shepherd carrying a lamb, and fat little angeli. Carol stroked her fingers across the patina of the old wood and wondered which projection of carved flower or tiny head opened the inevitable secret passage in this Italian suite.

  From all accounts the Latin nobles had loved to build into their houses these concealed openings that made it possible for intrigues to be carried on, and it wouldn't have surprised Carol if such an opening lay behind the panelling of this room.

  She stroked the long hand-woven curtains and listened to the ticking of a lovely Venetian clock. The borders of the curtains were richly embroidered, and beyond lay deep window embrasures, quite sheer above the lake.

  The Lake of Lina, with its wavelets and overhanging trees ; its air of night-time sadness. And out there in the darkness the cicadas made their ceaseless fiddling while the stars burned and the big moths floated by like ghosts.

  A perfect setting, Carol thought, for a Byronic master who had been tortured by a former love ; a man who sought solitude, his passions and angers kept firmly in hand, cruel or kind as the mood took him.

  Carol cradled her wine glass in her fingers and felt the chiselled facets against her skin. She would have been beautiful, that woman who had loved and hated him, and each time he looked into a mirror at his own face he would be unable to forget her. It would have been a love quite terrible to have led to a quarrel so intense, and with a shiver at such consequences Carol turned away from the windows and let the curtains fall back into place, hiding the dark things of the night.

  She placed her wine glass on a table and went into the bathroom to take a warm shower, which might help to relax her. She had hung her robe in there in readiness, and after bundling her hair into a shower cap, she stepped under the water and closed her mind to everything but the warm pelt of it. Back home there had never been this kind of luxury and she enjoyed it to the full and it was a good half hour before she was towelled dry and casually enclosed in the folds of her robe. She released her hair and wandered back into her bedroom, only to pause sharply in the archway, a hand flying to her throat.

  Silhouetted against the lamplight was the figure of a woman and she was bending over the bed, staring silently at the sleeping figure of Teri.

  There was something about her intentness that petrified Carol. She sensed danger to the boy and wanted to leap forward and push that dark-haired, silent figure away from him. But that would be melodramatic, and after her first thrust of surprise she recognized the woman as Bedelia — the young wife from whom Vincenzo had run away, turning up in England to bring emotional havoc into the lives of Carol and her sister Cynara.

  'Good evening.' Carol forced herself to speak in a matter-of-fact voice as she stepped into the room and tightened the sash of her robe. 'You will be careful not to wake him, won't you? He's had a long day and is tired out.'

  At the sound of Carol's voice the young woman swung round from the bedside and smouldering in her eyes was her resentment that Carol and the boy had been allowed to remain at the palazzo. They stared at each other, two women who had believed in Vincenzo and been bitterly disillusioned.

  'You had no right to bring him here.' Bedelia gestured at the bed. 'I was Vincenzo's real wife, and that child is a—'

  'Don't you dare say it !' Carol spoke in a low, fierce voice. 'Teri is only a child and I won't have him insulted by you, or frightened in any way. If you dare to do so, then I'll go straight to the baróne and have you stopped. Believe me, I didn't come here with the idea of - of hurting you, signora, for I didn't even know about you. I believed Vincenzo Falcone to be a single man, otherwise I'd never have married him.'

  'Why should I believe you?' Bedelia thrust with a ringed hand at her blue-black hair, and stared hatefully at the blonde hair falling so abundantly over the shoulders of Carol's mauve wrapper. 'You are a woman on the make, that is all too evident to me, but you have taken in the baróne with your innocent airs, and your son. I suppose you are hoping that he will make the child his heir, as he is never likely to marry himself.'

  'Why isn't he likely to marry?' Carol asked. 'He's still a fairly young man, and he has a large estate to pass on.'

  'The woman would have to be blind.' Bedelia flung up her head with an arrogant gesture. 'Or very ambitious, especially if she has a nameless child to provide for. Some women would go to quite some lengths to secure a large estate for a penniless—'

  'I am warning you not to use that word, signora' Carol stepped with sudden decision towards Bedelia and took her by the arm. 'If we must discuss my son, then we'll do it where he won't be awoken by our voices. There is a small salottino just at the top of that small flight of stairs and we can talk there.'

  With determination Carol drew Bedelia towards the flight of iron-railed spiral stairs that led upwards to a small room with charming antique furniture painted with cupids and garlands. Chairs of petit-point, a Venetian lantern at the centre of the ceiling, a writing-table with carvings of fauns dancing, and in a niche of the mimosa-coloured walls a Madonna softly lighted by a little sanctuary lamp. Carol had glanced up the stairs earlier on, but this was the first time she had actually seen the little sitting-room, and she found it so delightful that some of her disquiet was lessened as she faced Vincenzo's wife.

  'I know you must have cared deeply for Vincenzo,' she said, in a gentler voice, 'and I do understand your resentment of me. But can't you try and accept Teri? He's a nice little boy, even if I do say it, and he won't understand if you resent him.'

  'You are just interlopers here,' Bedelia insisted. 'You are going to cash in on the child's resemblance to Vincenzo, that is obvious.'

  'I wouldn't quite put it that way,' Carol argued, 'but I see nothing wrong in assuring for Teri a secure future, one that would have been beyond my own meagre resources. He is a Falcone, and the baróne isn't a poor man. I want nothing myself, signora, and I shall be working for my bed and board at the palazzo.'

  'Working?' Bedelia looked astounded. 'At what, may I ask?'

  'I am going to take care of the baróne's library. I felt sure a house of this size and background would have a proportionate library and I used to work among books when I -I met Vincenzo.'

  'Met him and chased after him, no doubt.' There was flame in the Latin eyes. 'So you were a working girl and obviously inferior to him from the very start. I have never had to work for my living. I brought a dowry to the house of Falcone, a very substantial one, and I am entitled to live here. But you—'

  'I am Teri's mother,' Carol said deliberately, but keeping her eyes from that limpid gaze of the Madonna in her niche. 'I bring him instead of money, a living child who didn't ask to be born but who certainly deserves to be loved. As I warned you, signora, I won't tolerate any unkindness towards him - it isn't his fault that he's my son instead of yours.'

  Bedelia caught her breath sharply, and though Carol didn't usually resort to being hurtful, she was fighting for Teri and she didn't want for him at Falconetti the same attitude of the Aunts at Chalkleigh, that he shouldn't have been born and didn't belong here or there.

  'Do you imagine I'm jealous of you?' The Latin nostrils were taut with dislike and temper. 'You're just a cheap little gold-digger who lived in sin with my husband!'

  'Thanks,' said Carol. 'That is putting it succinctly, I must say. You are welcome to make digs at me, if it gives you any satisfaction, but I promise to claw your eyes out if you harm a hair of that boy's head. He's all I care about in the world and I'll protect him like a tigress if I have to.'

  Bedelia stared at the sudden blaze of Carol's eyes, matching the very colour of her wrapper. The almond-shaped Italian eyes narrowed and the pale ringed hands curled into claws against the long silken skirt of her dress. 'Yes,' she almost hissed, 'it would amuse the baróne to throw together in one house the two women who loved his brother. There is a side to him that is cruel and twisted as his face, English Miss. Did you know that, or did you really imagine that he was being kind to you?'

  'Not for one moment,' Carol replied, and it struck her that there could be an element of truth in Bedelia's statement. He would realize at once that Vincenzo's childless and deserted wife would hate her, and it might indeed amuse him to watch two women at each other's throats. He must hate women in his heart and enjoy in subtle ways their unhappiness or humiliation.

  Bedelia stood there glaring at Carol, pain and passion marring the face that at first sight had struck

  Carol as being rather beautiful.

  'It is as well for you to know that Rudolph isn't a kind man.'

  'He's like a Roman of old,' Carol said quietly. 'I gathered that much for myself, signora, for knowing one Falcone has taught me that a streak of wilful passion runs in all of them.'

  'And that will include your son, won't it !'

  'When he grows into a man, perhaps, but right now he's a small boy and I do my best to teach him unselfishness.'

  'Rudolph Falcone might teach him other things -dare you risk that?' The question was asked in a derisive and contemptuous voice. 'Perhaps that is why he wants your son to reside here, so he can take him in hand and make of him the sort of son to break a mother's heart. What a revenge for a man who has every cause to hate the very sight of a woman, especially one with blonde hair.'

  'W - What do you mean by that, signora!' Carol felt the thump that her heart gave, one of fear and misgiving.

  'Oh, didn't you know? Haven't you been told of his love affair with the singer whom he met while on a visit to his sister in America? The singer came to Rome to appear in a season of Wagner operas ... the perfect Brunnhilde with her golden hair !'

  At this revelation Carol could only stare at Bedelia with the shock registering in her eyes. She had somehow taken it for granted that the baróne had been hurt by a fiery Latin woman, and now she was told that a golden-haired singer had caused those fearful scars. And because of that it seemed a more deliberate act of cruelty ... a singer from New York would surely be a more sophisticated woman than a lovely, passionate, quick-tempered Latin, driven by some primitive impulse to hurt her lover.

  'I would be careful of him if I were you.' Bedelia's red lips curled around the words, enjoying their menace. 'His feelings towards a woman of your colouring must be vicious, and I know if I were in your shoes I would pack my belongings and get out of his way. Of course, you could leave the child here if you are so concerned that he should have the same upbringing that Vincenzo had.'

  Leave Teri to the uncertain mercies of the Falcone clan! Carol thought not, and neither would she be frightened into running away. She looked around the salottino and saw its charming comfort and its niched Madonna painted blue and gold.

  'You can't frighten me away,' she told Bedelia. 'I know it's what you'd like to do, but I'm on my guard against your resentment.'

  'Be sure you are on guard against the baróne's hatred of your sort. He was always a ruthless man, and now he has cause to be a cruel one — especially when he looks at you with your pale golden hair.'

  'You're making him out a devil just to suit your own purposes,' Carol said, but there went through her body a shiver of apprehension when she thought of him touching her hair and running his eyes over it as the acid-sweet memories were evoked for him.

  'Make no mistake, English Miss, he can be a devil, and you are a fool if you choose to think otherwise. The Falcones trace their ancestry way back into the past, to decadent Rome, to the Borgias, to the Sabine ravishments. He was born here in this palazzo, was educated among the learned monks of a Benedictine Abbey, and as a young man he served as an officer in the army of an Emir - just for the fun of it. He's clever and quite fearless, but he's hard. And what that woman did to him has made him even harder, in body and heart. Beware of him - he'll take your son and break you !'

  'I - I won't listen to your nonsense,' Carol gasped, backing away from the hatred she saw in Bedelia's eyes. 'You're out to frighten me just for the hell of it.'

  'It's interesting that you speak of hell.' Bedelia slowly smiled, but without a hint of humour in her eyes. 'We all pass through it, one way or another, don't we?'

  She turned away with these words and as she went down the spiral stairs her laughter floated back to Carol, infinitely mocking, and all the more nerve-racking because it was unstable. Vincenzo's desertion had cut deeply into Bedelia's heart because she had probably loved him as Carol hadn't.

  Carol's hands clenched together .. . she had been swept into an infatuation by the Italian charm of Vincenzo Falcone, and it had died in that moment when she had caught him with Cynara in his arms. Cynara, her own bridesmaid at a wedding which had been as false as Vincenzo's declaration of love for her.

  Love... she was a girl désenchantée in the house of a man with every reason to hate a woman with long blonde hair.

  The future loomed ahead of Carol like the big bedroom to which she returned ... a future filled with terrifying uncertainties. With half her mind and heart she wanted to take flight and leave Falconetti, but with the more spirited side of herself she wanted the advantages that being a member of this family would provide for Teri. She Couldn't face the thought of returning to Chalkleigh and a renewal of their life with the Aunts, and at the same time she was daunted by an image of their life in one of the poorer parts of Rome, where Teri would go to a rundown school and spend hours in the streets with ragamuffin children while she worked in some café as a waitress or a kitchen help.