Compulsion

CHAPTER ONE

The first pearly haze of mist which always hung along the skyline was beginning to clear as the sun rose out of the sea far out on the horizon. A level line divided sea and sky at the farthermost limit of the eye. The air was cool and Lissa breathed it with closed eyes. Her favourite moment of the day. Soon it would be languorously hot and even the voices of the birds would sound drowsy, reluctant. At the moment they were calling melodically as they flashed past the palms flanking the beach, their gaudy plumage exploding like fireworks against the blue sky, busily searching for food before the heat became too oppressive.

St Lerie was a small island, one of those which had for centuries lain in French hands and whose outward culture bore strong: French influence. Street signs, shops, had French names. The law was French in origin. Even the people's names were French, although few of them had ever been to France.

Lissa had lived there since she was four. It was the only home she could remember. Her memories of England were instilled by other people-myths, rather than memories. All her own past lay here, at St Lerie, and she loved the island for its beauty even if she feared it for the sudden, cruel violence which could erupt without warning, in howling wind or rain, or in an earth tremor which toppled buildings and took lives.

Luxuriant, hot, brilliant with tropical flowers in impossible colours, the island was comparatively unchanged by the modern advent of tourism and Western ideas. Thick wedges of forest still covered it, choked with tangled dangling creepers, alive with snakes and mosquitos and insects. Most of the people lived along the coasts in small towns and villages.

Among the palms behind Lissa as she wandered along the beach lay the white walls of the Casino Palace Hotel, shadowed here and there by scarlet flambeau trees which grew close to the building. This had been her home for nine years. She had spent most of those years in a convent boarding school on the far side of the island, coming home for an occasional weekend or the long school holidays.

She worked there now, singing island songs, accompanying herself with a guitar. Lissa was under no illusions about her own voice. It was small and light, flute-like, a child's voice rather than that of a twenty-year-old. The guests seemed to like it, however. She had made her own translations of the songs, following the meaning rather than the actual words, and she enjoyed singing.

Ahead of her along the pale pink sands ran her dog, Fortune, his short white legs racing as he galloped in and out of the surf which thundered up on to the beach.

'He crazy, that dog!' Gaspard often said, shaking his grizzled head in amusement, as Fortune rushed into the sea to swim, barking, his white head bobbing up and down. Gaspard had been in charge of the gardens for years, his black face shining with perspiration as he methodically pruned or watered, singing the island songs in his deep, slow voice. Lissa had loved to follow him around, learning the old songs which had their own unique St Lerie flavour.

Glancing around, she saw a great wave rolling down on the dog's white head, which disappeared in the blue swell. Lissa stared in alarm, waiting for Fortune to reappear. When he didn't she kicked off her sandals, unzipped her dress and dropped it on the sand. In bra and panties she ran down the beach into the water. Fear dragged at her heart.

She was so distressed that she did not hear the second splash which followed the launching of her own body into the sea, but she did hear the movements of another swimmer as someone drew level with her.

Surprised, she turned her head, the wet strands flicking across her cheek. A man's blue eyes met her own. She had never seen him before. He must be a visitor, perhaps a guest at the hotel. His black head moved alongside her for a second while he said coolly: 'I'll get him.'

'I think I saw him,' she gasped, pointing. She had just caught sight of a blur of white in the rolling blue water.

'Go back!' The black head shot ahead of her. Lissa kept swimming, despite his autocratic command. It was her dog and she was responsible for him.

He had an edge on her, his long body streaking through the water at a speed she could not match.

He dived into the rush of water, only his brown feet visible. As Lissa watched, sick with anxiety, he surfaced again with a limp white object. Lissa reached for her dog. The stranger gave her a wry look.

'Wait!' He struck out strongly for the shore again and she had no alternative but to try to keep up with him. It wasn't easy. Although she had been swimming since she could walk, this man was physically far stronger. The sun gleamed on his muscled brown arms and shoulders as his powerful strokes took him closer to land. The black hair was flattened all over his skull so that it looked like a sleek cap.

He waded up the beach and laid the dog down on the sand. Lissa tumbled out of the waves beside them, breathing heavily. The stranger was already kneeling beside Fortune, his hands deftly moving, his strong body swinging in a pulsing rhythm as he tried to pump the water from the dog's lungs. She knelt beside him, biting her lip, watching anxiously.

'Will he be all right?' she whispered.

The stranger shot her a sardonic look. 'Well, don't ask me to give him the kiss of life!'

At that moment Fortune came to life with an agonised yelp. He was promptly sick. The man released him and stood up, pulling Lissa with him, his hand coiled round her wet arm.

'Leave him,' he said. 'Even a dog needs privacy at these moments!'

Fortune continued to be sick, shuddering, and Lissa exclaimed tenderly, 'Oh, poor Fortune!'

'That will teach him to try to swallow half the ocean,’ the stranger said with a smile.

Lissa looked at him gratefully. 'Thank you. You saved his life. I might not have got there in time.'

'You swim very strongly,' he congratulated her. 'You probably would have managed it.'

'I'm not as good as you are,' she said, shaking her head. He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful swimmers she had ever seen.

'You're built rather differently,' he murmured, his eye wandering down her, a faint smile curving his mouth.

Lissa felt her skin heating, as she suddenly became aware of her almost naked state. Her wet bra and panties were completely transparent in the rising sun. Thin nylon and lace, they clung to her slender curves and left her totally visible to the interested blue eyes observing her with such close attention.

He looked up and grinned, unashamed of his leisurely scrutiny. 'Charming,' he drawled, openly mocking.

Lissa looked away. Her dress lay some way off on the sand where she had dropped it. As she ran with a stammered word to get it, she felt the dark-haired man staring after her and burned with embarrassment.

She was very glad to snatch up the dress, step into it and zip it up. Slipping into her sandals, she turned, feeling safer.

Fortune was on his feet again, shaking himself vigorously. She whistled and he galloped up to her, grinning widely, as though he had performed some magnificent feat.

'Bad dog!' she scolded.

He rolled an eye at her, licking her hand, and she lovingly tousled his wet head. His pink skin was visible beneath the short damp white hairs.

'He's pleased with himself, isn't he?' The stranger had slowly strolled over and was watching them, his long legs planted apart, his damp calves dusted with clinging sand.

Lissa knelt to hug her dog, shaking him, torn between relief and a faint lingering shock at what might have happened. 'You dare go swimming again at high tide!' she told him. He licked her nose and she laughed.

She felt a strange shiver run down her back as the dark shadow of the stranger fell across her. She looked up, her eves enormous, and met his eyes

His were a fierce dark blue which was made deeper by the golden bronze of his skin. He was the same colour from head to foot, indicating that he spent a lot of time in the sun, although not as much as a native of the island would do, since his colour was lighter than theirs. Some of the local men had skin like mahogany from hours in the sun and surf, their bodies constantly exposed to wind and drying heat. This man had smooth, polished skin which rippled like liquid gold over sinews and muscles suggesting a great fitness and physical strength.

'Are you staying at the hotel?' Lissa asked, shifting her startled eyes from the compelling shaft of his stare with a sense of odd uneasiness.

'Yes. I arrived last night. Are you?'

'I live here.'

'On the island? Or do you mean at the hotel itself?'

'At the hotel.' Lissa felt a deepening disturbance at the way he was watching her. She stood up, holding Fortune's collar. 'Thank you so much for saving his life. I can't tell you how grateful I am.'

'Yes, you can,' he told her drily.

She looked at him in surprise, her eyes widening.

'You can have dinner with me.' He gave her a smile which lit up his whole face, the lines around eye and mouth cutting deeply into that golden skin, his blue eyes very bright. 'I'm sorry.' she stammered, her flush growing, 'but I work in the evenings.' 'Work at what?'

'Singing,' Lissa told him.

His dark brows flew upwards. He skimmed her again in obvious disbelief, the dark blue eyes narrowed. 'Singing?'

He sounded incredulous, and that wasn't surprising because at the moment, with her sand-stained dress clinging so closely to her wet body, her hair in saturated disarray, her small face innocent of make-up, she no doubt did not look like a professional singer. She probably looked more like a schoolgirl, she thought wryly.

She wasn't a professional singer, anyway. She only sang at the Palace because she was engaged to Chris. He liked her soft little voice and he had taken a chance on customers liking it, too. So far, luckily, they seemed to do so.

'I sing twice nightly in the cabaret,' she told the stranger.

'Really?' He was looking amused as he watched her. 'I must catch your act. Maybe we could have a drink together afterwards.'

Lissa looked away. Fortune had wandered up the beach on his way back to the hotel. 'Maybe,' she said vaguely. 'Thank you. I must go now.'

He was obviously on the beach to swim. Looking across the sands she saw a rolled towel flung down, sunglasses and a book.

'Well, enjoy your morning,' she said, retreating.

He stood there, his powerful body gleaming in the sunlight, the brief black swimming trunks emphasising the muscled thighs and flat stomach, his hands on his hips as he watched Lissa walk hurriedly away.

She did not look round, but she could feel the blue eyes watching her all the way into the shade of the clustering palm trees.

She felt strangely relieved to be out of range of those hard, narrowed eyes. The stranger made her feel very nervous, very aware both of herself and him. It was a sensation new to her and one she did not particularly enjoy.

As she walked back up to the hotel she found him occupying her thoughts. Lissa rarely noticed their visitors; she was too accustomed to the comings and goings of tourists. The black-haired man did not fit into the usual categories and she found it impossible to dismiss him easily from her mind.

She left Fortune sitting in the sun, scratching himself vigorously, and went into the back entrance of the hotel. Joseph looked up from the meat he was placing in a marinade. 'What happen to you?' he asked in his rolling Carib accent. 'You look like you been swimming in your dress.'

She told him and he roared with laughter, his liquid dark eyes dancing. 'Crazy dog!'

'He nearly drowned,' she said.

'That dog too lucky to drown,' Joseph said seriously. He was deeply superstitious, imbued with the island traditions. Although the staff were not allowed to gamble in the casino they gambled in private, often losing a week's wages on one hand. Chris said they still held cockfights back in the forest, out of sight of the law, which forbade it, and large sums changed hands on the outcome of a fight. Lissa looked at Joseph's friendly, goodhumoured face and hoped he did not attend the cockfights. The thought of them made her feel sick.

She went to her own room in the staff quarters and showered before changing into a skimpy white top and brief shorts. When she looked at herself in the mirror before she left the room she found a faint flush still lingering in her tanned face. A slim girl of medium height, she had very long, blonde sun-bleached hair which she normally wore sleek and straight around her face. Her skin was a uniform gold and her green eyes slanted beneath the fine, thin brows she darkened artificially to give more depth to her eyes.

She was healthy, physically active and energetic, and it was revealed in her figure; the rounded curves slimmed with constant exercise and light meals.

As she thought, of the dark stranger her frown deepened. She had found his appraising gaze disturbing. Living at the hotel she was not unaccustomed to being admired by visitors, but she couldn't remember any of them very clearly once they had gone.

Her years in the convent school had left her largely very innocent and untouched. Her feeling for Chris had obscured every other man from her. She had barely noticed any of them, but something about the stranger forced him on her consciousness.

He was unlike anyone she had ever seen before. Most of their guests came partly for the sun and partly for the gambling. They spent their days on the beach and their evenings at the tables. Their attention was not easily distracted from the ebb and flow of luck around the gambling rooms. Lissa had learnt to recognise the various faces, the predictable expressions, of the hardened gambler. Their fixed excitement, their restless boredom away from the tables, betrayed them. She had felt none of that in the dark stranger.

He had had amused, self-aware eyes, a cynical sophistication in the lines of his face. Razor-edged profile, hard mouth, eyes which stripped and probed-Lissa was not impressed by him.

That he was handsome couldn't be denied. Men with shoulders as wide as that, bodies as superbly fit, were usually to be seen on the beach showing off their expertise in the water for the avid gaze of bored wives whose husbands spent all their time at the table. Looks like that, in Lissa's experience, often went with vanity and a slight stupidity. She had fended off grinning assaults from these beach lizards, before now, and been only too happy to leave them to the admiration of female guests looking for a holiday romance while their husbands gambled.

The stranger she had met that morning did not come into that category, though. She struggled to place him, unable to imagine him at a desk or doing some routine job. He had an air of such cool self-assurance, the look of a man who has no doubts about himself or life, yet who can laugh at both, take neither very seriously.

He was unusual. Lissa hated admitting it, but she couldn't get him out of her mind.

She went down to the offices which lay behind the hotel foyer. As she walked past Rebecca's office she heard the typewriter going. She opened Chris's door and the men inside the room stopped talking and looked round. Their faces had been, hard and intent.

She caught a flash of something in the atmosphere which she had sometimes felt she saw before, but as always, it vanished before she had time to pin it down.

Chris grinned at her casually, milling back his lair hair with- a lazy hand. 'Hi, sweetheart. Come in- we've just finished talking.'

The other men shifted their feet.

'I'll talk to you later,' Chris informed them, Smiling.

They were smiling, too, as they filed past Lissa, greeting her one by one, while Chris leaned back in his chair, watching.

His father had been the owner of the Palace before it became a casino. Lissa's father had run the hotel for years and Chris had been as near to a big brother as Lissa had. Her mother had died when Lissa was six. Bitten by a snake in the garden, she had fainted before she could struggle to the house and by the time, a quarter of an hour later, she was found it had been too late to do anything to save her. Lissa's father had never recovered from the shock and he had never remarried. He drank far too much for years and it was a complaint of the liver that finally killed him while Lissa was still at school. Chris's father had generously taken over her education. When she left school it was only natural that she should come back to the Palace. It was her only home and, by then, Chris and his father were her only family. The many chains that bound her to Chris had been formed over a lifetime. She was fond of him as well as being in love with him. When his father, too, died of a heart attack, Chris had leaned heavily on her for comfort and support. He had been very attached to his father. Lissa knew that she was both sister and lover to him.

He laughed at her anxiety over his gambling, but he tried to reassure her, too, and although he was too deeply entangled with it he nevertheless tried to keep it under control for her sake.

Chris was a man with a lazy, casual nature. He loved the sun and the sea. He had bright, laughing blue eyes and a skin as bronzed as her own. His thick untidy fair hair was bleached as fiercely as Lissa's. They made a striking pair when they were together. Chris had boyish good looks which lacked the sharp edge of the man she had met on the beach that morning. Lissa loved the easy-going charm of his smile.

'Fortune almost drowned this morning,' she told him.

'What stopped him?' Chris asked, grinning. 'If he chews any more of my furniture I'll drown him myself!'

The telephone rang. He answered it and Lissa wandered to the window to stare out across the manicured green lawns. Sprinklers were fountaining across them, a rainbow flash of light in the cascade of water. In the flower beds which Gaspard kept so magnificently were hibiscus, bougainvillea, amaryllis and honeysuckle, the vivid gaudy colours of the fleshy petals too startling in the sunlight. Guests were beginning to stroll down to the beach. Some of the women carried the bright patterned paper parasols which the hotel sold-made by local women, they were very popular.

Chris had a whole fleet of women working for his shops. He sold a wide range of goods made very cheaply by local workers. Beach wear, from straw sandals to straw hats; gay metal or earthenware ornaments, jewellery, local paintings, hand-painted pottery.

' Pierre wants you to come down and rehearse,' he told her putting down the phone. 'That new song-he's done a new arrangement for the band.'

'Oh, good,' she said, smiling and blowing him a kiss before she left.

Although they had been officially engaged for almost a year, they had not yet become lovers. Chris had occasionally advanced a step or two, but Lissa's convent education and their shared childhood had made a sort of barrier between them which she had not yet allowed him to cross. Chris wasn't the man to force that barrier; he was too lazy. He waited, smiling a little wryly, and Lissa liked him for his patience. The decisions had all been hers. Chris would have married at once, but Lissa felt at nineteen that she was not yet old enough for marriage. On her twentieth birthday Chris had brought the subject up again and she had hesitated before asking him to wait a while longer. 'Give me time, darling,' she had pleaded, and he had grimaced and said broodily: 'That damned convent!' Lissa laughed, but she knew that he wasn't far wrong.

Girls who had been at school with her had tended to take one of two directions. Either they kicked over the traces violently on getting away from the convent atmosphere or they were shy and nervous with the men they met.

Lissa was not shy or nervous of Chris, but she was aware that her own attitude was bred by the careful disciplines of the sisters who had brought her up.

When Chris kissed her, she kissed him back lovingly but she felt no urge to hasten her marriage. She was half alarmed at the idea of it. It was such a vast step and she did not feel ready to take it yet.

That Chris was beginning to feel slightly impatient hadn't escaped her. When they kissed she could, feel his excitement and was wary of it, knowing she felt none of the physical pressure she could sense in him. He never pushed things too far; he had never actually frightened her. Chris still felt protective of her, thought of her in the old brotherly terms from time to time. It was this warm relationship which made Lissa unsure of her own feelings and, necessarily, of his-she was not certain how adult their feelings for each other were.

She went down to the nightclub which took up a large part of the basement of the hotel. The lights were low and Pierre was picking out a tune on the piano as she walked in to meet him. Thin, curly-headed, he was a native of St Lerie himself. Gaspard, the gardener, was one of his uncles. Pierre had eight, scattered throughout the island. The family sprawled from one side to the other, involved in most of the local activities. Pierre was musically untrained, like Lissa, and quite brilliant. He had taught himself all he knew and could play most of the instruments in the band better than the current musicians playing them.

'Come on, girl,' he said in his soft island drawl. 'Listen here.'

She listened and nodded, liking it. The band were all local people, too, and had played together for months.

'Now, let's get real tight,' Pierre told her. 'Ready?'

They went over it again and again until she and the band were, in Pierre's favourite phrase, 'real tight', playing and singing the arrangement as close to perfection as Pierre would accept.

Lissa knew she owed her own musical education at the club to Pierre. He was tireless and merciless in his search for the best sound and he took no half-hearted work.

'You'll never be a world-stopper, but that shouldn't stop you working at it,' he told her.

He was faintly scathing about her little-girl voice. Pierre had a girlfriend with a magnificent, black-silk body and a voice that could break windows, but although on nights when Lissa was off, Chris allowed Jo-Jo to sing with the band, he thought their clients would prefer the innocent simplicities of Lissa's voice to Jo-Jo's shattering chords. Pierre did not agree-not just because he was living with Jo-Jo but because for his sort of music, Jo-Jo was superb.

He did not hide his opinion and Lissa secretly agreed with him. 'Gamblers don't want to listen to loud music,' Chris told him. 'They don't want to listen to anything. They want music that makes a low wallpaper while they think about the tables.'

Chris dropped in to listen to their final run through and smile approval. The song Pierre had arranged for the band was one of his uncle's favourites. It had a deceptive innocence. Under the limpidly sung words ran a visible strain of sensuality, an ambiguous edge to the words. Lissa had translated the song into English herself, but Pierre hadn't liked her translation; she suspected he thought it was too sweet. Pierre had worked on the words himself and Lissa found the secret echoes in them faintly disturbing. She was slightly flushed as she caught Chris's surprised and amused eye.

'Clever stuff,' he told Pierre. 'That's not how Lissa had it.'

Pierre shrugged his thin shoulders. His forehead gleamed with sweat. He had been working in the stuffy club for hours now.

'She hadn't caught the flavour,' he said, and Chris grinned.

'I bet I'

Lissa's skin glowed with heat and both young men looked at her with sly amusement.

'What're you going to wear; honey?' Pierre asked.

Blankly she said: 'I hadn't thought. Why?'

'Jo-Jo an' me seen a dress that would look fine with this song. Jo-jo's aunty in Provence Square got it. Why don't you go down and try it on?'

'If Jo's Aunty Therese is selling it, it won't suit me,' Lissa said firmly. She knew the type of dresses Therese sold.

'Go on, darling,' Chris urged, 'try it on. It's time you started wearing smarter clothes.'

'Chris!' she protested, but was overruled. She found herself being driven down to Provence Square through the dusty crowded streets of the little town. Ville-Royale had been built originally around a shore fortress of which little remained now but the crumbling walls and some rusted cannon stuck fast in the stones which had supported them for several hundred years.

During race riots in the early nineteenth century the huddled wooden houses had burned to the ground and cannon fire had raked the crowded streets. Today there were garages, luxury shops and gay restaurants fronting the badly made road. Tourists in bright clothing strolled along in their straw sandals and hats, it had taken St Lerie longer to catch up with the twentieth century than other Caribbean islands, but they were just beginning to appear on the tourist map.

An unspoilt paradise set in jewelled seas, the brochures promised, and so far what tourists found matched that assurance, but as tourism made its usual inroads on the lazy life of the islanders no doubt things would change. Already prices in the tourist areas had risen steeply beyond that demanded in the unchanged villages in the island. There were more jobs but conversely more discontent. The dress shop in Provence Square was housed in an old frame building which had been garishly painted. Therese was a large, slow-moving lady with a deep molasses voice and a wide smile. Lissa looked at the dress which Pierre had told Therese to set aside for her and her eyes rounded.

'I couldn't wear that!'

Chris eyed it interestedly. 'Whew!' he whistled through his teeth 'Try it on, darling.'

'No,' said Lissa.

Aunt Therese beamed at her and moved her bodily into the fitting rooms like a slow bulldozer shifting some light object out of its path. Lissa was still protesting with flushed cheeks and horrified eyes as Chris stared at her incredulously five minutes later.

'Wow!' he said simply.

'You like?' Therese asked with a broad smile,

'I definitely like,' Chris nodded. 'We'll take it.'

'It's expensive,' Therese warned without any real worry. Chris was looking at Lissa in a way that made it obvious such concerns as cost wouldn't even cross his mind.

'I couldn't wear it on stage!' Lissa protested.

'Wrap it up,' Chris told Aunt Therese.

'Chris!' Lissa burst out.

He grinned and his eyes glittered with excitement. 'Baby, I love it, and you're wearing it tonight.'

'I feel half naked in it!' The way Chris was staring at her made her feel disturbed. He had never looked at her like that before and she did not like it.

It was the sort of dress which she would have guessed Jo-Jo would choose-a lustrous black satin cut on the simplest, most revealing lines. Sleeveless, backless and close to frontless as well, it clung smoothly to the small, high breasts and fitted her slender hips like a second skin. Her tanned flesh glowed golden in the harsh electric light, the warmth of her body emphasised by the daring dress.

'Where did you get that figure from?' Chris asked, enjoying the unobscured view of it he was getting, 'Even in a bikini you've never looked like this.'

'It's this dress!' she wailed.

'I'll say,' Chris agreed, and Aunt Therese gurgled with enjoyment.

She saw them off the premises, beaming. Everyone on the island knew Chris and treated him with deferential respect. As they walked through the town everyone they met greeted Chris with a quick smile and a very eager word.

That evening Chris stood with her back stage, eyeing her curved body in the black dress. 'Baby, when are we getting married? My patience is wearing thin.' He kissed her, his hands lightly sliding from her waist to her slim, smooth hips.

'Liss,' he whispered huskily. 'Liss, marry me soon. Just looking at you tonight is driving me insane.'

She drew back, alarmed, from the heated look in his eyes. Chris met her nervous glance and grimaced.

'God, that damned content! Liss, grow up, baby. I love you and you love me. What are we waiting for?'

Lissa did not know. She looked at him apprehensively, anxiously, 'We'll talk about it, shall we?'

'What else do we ever do?' he asked, his mouth wry. 'I'm sick to death of talking, Liss. I want to do something.' He did not need to expand on that, the urgent gleam of his eyes spoke for him, and her colour deepened.

She was relieved when she heard the band move into the final number before her own. I must go, Chris,' she said quickly, and he sighed, shrugging.

'Okay, but we'll talk later,' he threatened, half smiling, half grimacing.

She hurried away, so disturbed by the little exchange that she forgot the revealing nature of her new dress, her anxiety and shy embarrassment. When the crash of chords announced her she walked out with the blue spotlight shimmering round her, still dwelling on what Chris had said, and was quite taken aback by the whistles and clapping which broke out. Her green eyes opened wide. She looked at Pierre, who grinned, white teeth flashing, and made a circle in the air with finger and thumb, a triumphant teasing little gesture which eased the moment for her slightly.

She leaned on the piano, looking at him as he went into the number. Turning her head, the long blonde hair flicking over her shoulder, she began to sing, as they had rehearsed all day. The room was unusually quiet, Lissa was used to a constant low murmur as people talked and drank, but tonight they were oddly intent. She felt them quicken into amusement as the song went on with the teasing ambiguity which Pierre had given it. Laughter was soft, appreciative, as though they did not want to miss any following words.

Applause burst out as she stopped singing. She smiled and bowed, surprised and pleased, and as her eyes moved round the tables she saw a familiar face at one of them.

He was leaning his head on his cupped hands, his elbows on the table, his black head half in shadow. The light fell harshly on his lower face, throwing into relief the stark angles of cheekbone and jaw, the hard sensual mouth. The blue eyes were veiled by lowered lids through which she felt him watching her, but she could not glimpse anything of the expression in those eyes. Even so she was strangely jarred by something in the way he stared.

She sang one of her own translations next. It was a light, cheerful song which had originated on the plantations in the nineteenth century, a song the slaves had sung as they cut the cane. The grumbling impudence was tinged with the humour which she loved in the islanders. They had laughed, as they laughed now, at cruelty, tyranny, their oppressed condition, finding the joke even in slavery. It was a tune which made people's fingers click and their feet start to tap. By the third chorus some of the audience were joining in mutedly and she encouraged them with a quick smile and nod.

She went off to applause and the limbo dancers ran on to the stage. Several of them were related to Pierre and winked at her as they passed.

'Fantastic,' said Chris, putting an arm round her waist. 'Hey, did you see what was at the side table at the front?'

Lissa stiffened and looked at him in startled enquiry. 'Who?' She felt a strange anxiety as she asked that. Who was the man whose blue eyes made her feel like running away whenever they touched her?

'Lucifer,' said Chris, and laughed. 'In person.'

Dazedly Lissa frowned. 'What?'

'You must have heard of him,' Chris urged. 'He arrived yesterday. He's got a damned great yacht parked in the roads.' He looked wry. 'I hope he isn't going to milk us dry, baby. Why do you think they call him Lucifer? He's got the devil's own luck, and I don't fancy being bankrupted overnight.'

'Who is he?' Lissa asked slowly.

'Luc Ferrier,' said Chris. 'Come on, darling-Ferrier. Surely the name rings a bell?'

She shook her head, her eyes blank.

'He's always in the papers. He's the sort of gambler who never refuses the odds. A real wild one.'

'A gambler,' said Lissa, her voice filled with distaste.

'One of the biggest,' Chris said.

'A professional?' Lissa hated professional gamblers. They turned up all the time, people who lived by gambling, who drifted from casino to casino. Hard, obsessed and faintly inhuman, they seemed unaware of anything but the win and loss of the tables.

Chris shrugged. 'God knows. He may have a private source of money or he may live on what he wins, but he certainly turns up at most places sooner or later. And he rarely loses, and never for long. He has a lucky streak a mile wide.' He grinned at her, 'As I said, hence the nickname. I gather someone looked at his scrawl on a cheque and said; "So that's who you are… Lucifer." His name looks like that, written fast, I suppose.'

'Don't play with him,' said Lissa on a peculiar strained note. She could not have said the idea of Chris playing against that man should bother her so much, but all her instincts cried out against the idea.

Chris was grinning absently, as if he hadn't even heard her. She saw his fingers stretching and clicking and her blood ran cold. She knew that unconscious little gesture of his-it meant that Chris was itching to play against someone. People who run a gambling house should never gamble themselves-it is too dangerous. Chris had an obsessive streak, a competitive urge to prove himself against other gamblers, as though it were a duel between them, a duel he needed to win.

'Chris,' she said anxiously, clutching his arm.

He looked down at her, bright-eyed and excited. 'Darling?'

'Are you listening?'

'Of course I am,' he said in abstracted tones, then looked at her with brighter interest. 'And I'm looking, darling, Liss, in that dress you do something drastic to my blood pressure. If you don't hurry up and marry me I'm not even going to wait for the banns to be put up. You've kept me waiting long enough.'

Lissa gripped his arm, taking a deep breath. 'Promise not to gamble against Luc Ferrier and I'll marry you next month.'

She saw the abrupt flicker in his face, the taken-aback frown. 'What?' He was evading the issue, hedging, his blue eyes shifting from her.

"Promise,' she pleaded, looking at him beggingly.

'Darling I can take Ferrier,' said Chris, grinning. 'Don't get uptight about him. You're a funny little bunny, aren't you?' He kissed her nose and hurriedly said something about having to check on the front. She stared after his disappearing back in disturbed intensity. Chris had deliberately refused to promise not to gamble with that man even with her promise to marry him dangled as bait. Lissa did not like that. She stood there, biting her lower lip, and worrying.