Gift For A Lion

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 in 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.

‘Get in, signorina.’ The leader, his lips slightly compressed, spread her own towel on the seat for her to sit on.

Joanna silently complied. She had no choice. The only cheering thought was that the men who had dragged her back from the sea were equally wet and uncomfortable as their uniforms steamed in the sun. One of them sat on either side of her and the leader climbed into the front beside the driver, giving some orders in his own language to the remaining men who presumably had to walk to wherever she was being taken.

The jeep set off with a jerk which threw her sideways. She recovered her balance with as much dignity as she could. She still had no idea where they were going, she realised in dismay, but guessed it had to be the town of Saracina itself.

She gazed around as they drove along the narrow road, white with dust that led away from the sea. In many ways it was little better than a track, she thought, gritting her teeth as the jeep jolted over a particularly deep rut. But it seemed as if she was to see something of the island after all, which had an irony all of its own.

What she could see was rather as the guide book had described, rocky and rather arid, but the lower slopes were thickly covered in a bushy undergrowth, growing almost to the height of a man's waist in parts. Numerous flowering plants were to be seen amongst the greenery and a warm, pungent smell wafted into the jeep as it sped along. There were few really memorable landmarks to guide her, however, even supposing she did manage to escape again. And if she did, was this necessarily the best way to come? Presumably the town of Saracina itself had a harbour. She tried to reckon how much money she had left after her payment to Pietro. Supposing she could get her hands on it, would it be enough to bribe someone to take her back to Calista?

The scenery was gradually becoming more rugged, and the hills on each side were becoming steeper and developing a kind of grandeur. One of them, lying ahead of them slightly blurred by distance and heat haze, was almost tall enough to qualify as a mountain, Joanna thought, shading her eyes to look at it.

But there were no people about, and not even any real houses, just a few tumbledown stone shacks with empty sheep pens attached to the side of them.

She turned to one of the men sitting beside her.

‘Dove tutti? Where is everybody?’ she asked haltingly.

The man shrugged and burst into a long excited speech in which the only really comprehensible word seemed to be ‘palazzo'.

Wasn't that a palace? Joanna wondered dazedly. Did a tiny island like this really warrant such a place, or had she misunderstood? But before she could inquire further, the leader had turned angrily from the front seat.

‘Silenzio!' he barked, and her informant subsided, looking hot under the collar to add to his discomfort.

The leader appeared to be feeling the heat too, for he was unfastening the jacket of his uniform and removing it, before handing it back to one of Joanna's escorts with a muttered instruction. The jeep was climbing steeply now and the mountain was looming over them. Joanna could see the white slash of a waterfall cascading down its side and she craned her neck for a better view. Perhaps when they reached the summit of this hill they were climbing, they would see the town and she would find out if the palazzo existed or not.

The jeep breasted the hill and Joanna leaned forward eagerly, peeping round the driver's rather portly frame. But before she had more than a fleeting glimpse of clustering red roofs somewhere below them, and the vivid gleam of the sea again beyond, something dark and muffling was thrown over her head. She cried out hysterically, trying to fight herself away from the hot, smothering folds.

From a long way off, the leader's voice said, ‘I regret, signorina, this necessity, but you are neither to see nor to be seen. Those are my orders. You will be more comfortable if you stop this useless struggle.'

She slumped in the seat, limp and wretched, conscious only of trying to breathe through the thick folds. It was his uniform jacket, she thought, and hoped vindictively that the seawater would ruin it.

She lost all count of time, all idea of distance as they drove. Every jolt seemed somehow worse now that she could not see, and she was flung about at every bend because she was unable to brace herself beforehand. She felt as helpless as a baby.

The motion changed. Everything was suddenly much bumpier. A cobbled street? she wondered. The jeep swung sharply to the left and began to climb again. Then it halted abruptly and Joanna could hear men's voices talking. They were laughing again too. At her? In spite of the stifling heat of the jacket and her fear, she was suddenly searingly angry. How dared they treat her like this? When she discovered who was responsible, she would make them sorry they were born. ‘Or perhaps they will do the same to you,’ an insidious inner voice whispered, and anger gave way again to a shudder of fear.

An order was shouted and they were moving forward again. More cobbles. An odd sound somewhere close at hand—water splashing. Could it be a fountain? The jeep stopped.

‘Please to alight, signorina.’ The request was as courteous as ever.

It was good to be on her feet again, even if her legs did threaten to betray her if she took a step.

‘There are some steps to climb. Giuseppe will help you.'

She put out her hand and felt the sun-warmed stone of a wide balustrade. She lifted her foot, feeling for the edge of the step, and began to climb with Giuseppe making encouraging noises behind her.

‘Only one more,’ said the leader's voice. ‘We have arrived, signorina. Soon you can be comfortable again.’ He laughed. ‘There is a reception committee waiting for you.'

And then she heard it—the sound that lifted the hair on the back of her neck as it penetrated her blind, stifling helplessness. The long low, rumbling growl of a large animal.

The sound seemed to fill her head, pressing down on her as the blackness dipped and swooped, and Joanna heard herself scream as, for the first time in her life, she fainted.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE was lying on a hard, narrow bed in a small dark space. That was the first panic-stricken thought as she came reluctantly back to the surface of consciousness. But as her eyes became more accustomed to the dim light, she realised that she was lying on a couch in a small arched recess, protected from the room beyond by a massive carved screen in some dark wood.

She sat up slowly, one hand to her head. She felt dizzy and rather sick and was just about to lie back again and wait for the spasm to pass, when she heard in the outer room the scrape of a chair and the sound of papers rustling.

She was not alone. As Joanna assimilated this, she became aware of other things. That the coverlet which lay over her was heavy with embroidery, that the couch, although hard, was apparently a valuable antique and—a rather more shattering discovery—that she was wearing nothing but a man's black silk dressing gown. She paused for a moment, letting the hot angry flush that suffused her body die away, then moving as stealthily as she was capable of, she pushed away the coverlet and slid to her feet.

The exquisite mosaic floor was cold to her bare feet, but she moved on it noiselessly to the edge of the screen and looked around it.

It was not a very large room, and the main item of furniture, apart from the shadowed shelves of books in expensive leather bindings which covered three of the walls, was an immense desk in the centre of the room. Joanna was unable to tell what time of day it was as heavy shutters had been drawn across the windows. A lamp on the desk, incongruously modern, was the room's sole means of lighting, but it was apparently sufficient for the man who sat at the desk, absorbed in the legal-looking document he was holding.

She could not take her eyes from his face. He was not conventionally handsome, with that high-bridged nose and the sardonic curve of that thin-lipped mouth, but he was—arresting, she supposed. Her gaze took in the thick tawny hair hanging almost to the collar of his cream silk shirt, and the way his heavy lids hid the colour of his eyes.

He reminded her of someone—she racked her brain trying to remember whom. It was something to do with a picture she had once seen—not a photograph. She felt instinctively it had not been as modern as that. And then she remembered. It was a reproduction in an art book she had once looked through—a portrait of some Renaissance prince—and he looked like this man who sat only a few yards away from her.

Just as she was telling herself she was being absurd, he spoke, his voice low and resonant. ‘I am not a peepshow, signorina.'

Joanna flushed, angry that for all his apparent absorption he had known of her presence. She felt like a child again, caught peeping through the banisters at her father's guests.

Instinctively she drew the dressing gown more tightly around her and re-fastened the sash, then lifting her head with an air of confidence she was far from feeling, she marched out from behind the screen and across the room to the desk.

‘Who are you?’ she demanded, hating the huskiness that nervousness had engendered in her usually clear voice.

‘I am the master of Saracina.'

The sheer arrogance of the simple statement almost took her breath away. She was aware that she was gaping at him, and furiously took control of herself.

‘I see,’ she said, allowing the inflection to be deliberately sarcastic. ‘Then you can arrange for me to leave this island and return to Calista and my friends.'

‘I could,’ he agreed. He still not looked at her, but was studying the papers in his hand.

She forced herself to give a light laugh.

‘You speak as if there was some doubt.'

‘No doubt at all, signorina. I could, but I will not.’ He looked at her then, and she gasped as her eyes met his, tawny eyes, flecked with gold, vividly alive and wildly at variance with the almost patrician hauteur of his face and voice.

‘Are you implying that I am some sort of prisoner here?’ In spite of herself, she faltered over the hateful word.

‘It is more than an implication, signorina. It is the simple truth. You are my prisoner, and you will remain here until I decide you may go.’ He reached towards an ornate silver handbell on the desk. ‘I will have Josef conduct you to the room I have had prepared.'

‘Wait,’ she spoke sharply, and flinched as his eyes flicked haughtily over her. ‘I mean—this is ridiculous! You know nothing about me, or even who I am. You can't just keep me here against my will.'

‘Even though you came here against mine?’ He spoke softly, but a shiver drew an icy finger down her spine. She decided desperately that the only thing to do was brazen it out.

‘If that is the case, then I'm sorry,’ she said. ‘I—I didn't realise this was private property. I can assure you I won't make the same mistake again.'

‘But you will make different mistakes,’ he said slowly. ‘The mistake of lying to me, for example.'

‘I haven't lied to you,’ she protested, aware of the telltale pounding of her pulses.

‘No? Then it was not you who danced in a bar at Calista last night? It was not you who quarrelled with your friends when you were all warned quite clearly to keep away from this place? The warning seemed definite enough to your friends. You are the only one who has chosen to disregard it. The only thing that need concern us now is your reason for doing so.'

Joanna was silent. She realised she would rather die than admit to this haughty Italian—bandit—that she had come to Saracina out of sheer wilful perversity, precisely because she had been told not to.

‘My reasons are private and need concern no one but myself,’ she said eventually. ‘It's true I was warned against coming here and equally true that I'm sorry I ever set foot on the place. Is that enough for you?'

‘Alas, no.’ If the words were regretful, the tone was not. ‘You came, and for the present you must stay.'

‘Indeed?’ Joanna's nails bit into the palms of her clenched hands. ‘You may change your mind when you hear who I am. My father is not entirely without influence, and when he hears about this—outrage …'

‘The only outrage has been committed by yourself. You have trespassed where you had no right.’ He sounded almost bored. ‘And your identity is no mystery, Signorina Leighton.'

He opened a drawer in the desk and removed a folder which he tossed across the polished surface to her. Joanna opened it almost mechanically, numbly registering that her name was neatly printed on the manilla cover. Inside there was a photograph of herself, blown up from a newspaper print of some mouths before, she noticed, as well as every press cutting in which she had ever been mentioned, all neatly tabulated.

‘Where did you get hold of this?’ she demanded huskily, throwing it down on the desk so that some of the contents spilled out.

‘That need not concern you,’ he said. ‘But it may help to convince you of my sincerity when I say that your identity makes no difference to me at all. You are a very well known young woman.'

‘And my father is a very well known man,’ she completed for him, savagely. ‘So you're going to hold me for ransom?'

He sighed elaborately. ‘No, signorina, I am not.’ He opened the file again and looked at some of the cuttings, his brows raised. ‘But if I did, what price would you put upon yourself, I wonder? Not very high, perhaps, if these are anything to go by.'

She felt her cheeks grow warm. ‘Are you sure they tell the whole story?’ she asked, wondering why she should attempt to justify herself to this man.

‘Young, spoiled, headstrong—the pattern doesn't seem to have altered greatly.’ He closed the folder and tossed it back into the drawer.

‘You seem to have gone to a great deal of trouble.'

‘It is one way to become acquainted with a prospective guest.'

Joanna's legs were shaking under her. Frowning a little, he waved her towards a highbacked chair with a leather seat, similar to the one he was already occupying. ‘Sit down, signorina, before you fall down. My floor is hard and it would be a pity to bruise a second time such exquisite and utterly pampered skin.'

She sat frozen as the implication of what he had said sank in.

‘Whose dressing gown is this?’ she asked unsteadily.

‘It's one of mine.’ He spread his hands in a mockery of an apology. ‘It is not worthy of you, signorina, but with no women in the palazzo, suitable garments were difficult to come by in an emergency.'

‘Emergency?’ This wasn't—couldn't be happening to her. It was a nightmare, and oh God, let her waken from it soon.

His voice went on. ‘Your clothing—such as it was—was soaked from your ill-advised attempt to escape from my men. I could not leave you to catch pneumonia.'

‘Then it was you …’ The shame of it prevented her from finishing her words. The caress of the silk on her skin was suddenly abhorrent as she visualised herself naked and helpless under this man's disturbing amber gaze.

‘Don't look so stricken, signorina,’ he said crisply. ‘You didn't deny my men the privilege of a glimpse of your undoubted beauty. Am I supposed to be less human? Or would you have preferred their attentions?'

Her eyes felt as if they were burning, but she was incapable of tears. Finally she lifted her head and looked at him. He was leaning back in his chair, out of the range of the lamplight, and his expression was hidden from her.

‘If you wanted to totally humiliate me, then you have succeeded,’ she said quietly. ‘I can only hope that you're now satisfied and that I can leave without any further delay.'

‘Has humiliation also rendered you deaf, signorina? You are not leaving.'

‘I think you must be mad!’ she fought against the bubble of hysteria rising within her. ‘You can't keep me here—surely you see that? My friends know where I am. They'll come and search for me, and you can't take all of us prisoner.'

‘I have not the slightest intention of doing so, and I would not count on any search being made. Your friends believe that you are my willing guest.'

‘Why should they believe that?'

‘Because they have received a note, presumably from you, which tells them so, and asks them to send on your luggage.'

‘They'll know it isn't from me. Tony knows my writing.'

‘Then he will recognise your signature.’ He tossed something across the desk to her. With a sinking heart she recognised her cheque card, taken no doubt from her wallet in the beach bag. ‘Your style is a distinctive one, signorina.'

‘So you're a forger as well as a kidnapper,’ she flung at him. ‘What a list of charges there'll be when I get free of this place, unless you mean to add murder to your other crimes!'

‘Such hard words.’ That detestable mockery was back in his voice. ‘You did go to considerable pains to visit me, after all. Am I now to be blamed because I take equal pains to keep you here?'

For a moment she stared at him impotently, then suddenly the tears came, slow and scalding, and she buried her face in her hands and gave way to them. A thousand miles away, it seemed, a bell was ringing, but she took no notice, even when a kindly arm assisted her out of the chair, and a voice encouraging her in heavily accented English murmured in her ear as she moved in a blurred, obedient dream to the door.

The room itself was beautiful. In spite of the rage and humiliation that consumed her, she could appreciate that. She could also appreciate the fact that the door was locked and that exquisite wrought iron grilles effectively blocked the only other possible escape route through french windows on to a balcony beyond. The french windows themselves stood tantalisingly open, a soft evening breeze, warm and scented, wafting into the room.

Lying across the enormous divan bed on her stomach, her chin propped in her hands, Joanna tried to think calmly and clearly about her predicament. She wept no longer. A phrase that the much-loved nanny from her childhood had often used strayed into her mind. ‘Temper's tears are soon dried, my dear.'