‘Did they, indeed?’ Samma said grimly. ‘Well, I hope they caught him and hanged him from his own yardarm.’
‘Not on your life,’ said Cicero. ‘He turned respectable, got a free pardon, and took up sugar planting. But they say every now and then the breeding throws up another Devil—a chip off the old block, like that old pirate.’
He paused. ‘This Mr Roche Delacroix now, why, they reckon he’s made more money than old Devil Delacroix himself. He owns the casino, right there on Grand Cay, and he has a boat-chartering business as well. He’s one rich guy, all right.’
‘And he’s here in this club right now?’ Margot asked huskily, her full lips curving in a smile. ‘This I have to see. Maybe when he’s dried off, he’d like some company.’
‘Perhaps—but I think he’s more interested in playing poker.’ Samma forced a smile. ‘Maybe I should have found someone else to pour a drink over.’
‘You sure should,’ Cicero agreed sombrely. ‘Why, honey, you don’t ever want to cross anyone from Lucifer’s Cay—specially someone by the name of Delacroix. That was one bad mistake.’
Margot rose, pretty and sinuous as a cat. ‘Then I’ll have to try and make up for it,’ she said, her lips curving in an anticipatory smile. ‘Wish me luck, now.’
She drifted out, and Cicero followed a moment or two later, leaving Samma alone.
She tore off Nina’s dress and bundled it back on a hanger. Never, ever again would she work at the Black Grotto in any capacity, although Clyde was unlikely even to ask her again, after tonight’s performance, she reminded herself wryly.
She dragged on her T-shirt and jeans, and walked back through the grounds towards the small bungalow she shared with Clyde.
She felt restless—on edge, and it was all the fault of that foul man. In just a few hours, he’d turned the quiet backwater of her life into some kind of raging torrent, she thought resentfully.
And nothing Cicero had told her had done anything to put her mind at ease. It was no wonder Roche Delacroix had been annoyed at her sketch, she thought restively. He probably considered she knew who he was, and was taking a petty swipe at his family history.
Well, let him think what he wanted. He would be leaving soon and, anyway, his opinions were of no concern to her. Indeed, she didn’t know why she was wasting a second thought on the creature.
But, at this rate, she wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Some hard physical exercise was what she needed to calm her down, and tire her out. She turned down the path which led to the hotel’s small swimming pool. She rarely got the chance to use the pool during the day, but that wasn’t too much of a hardship when she could come down here at night, and have it all to herself. And there was the added bonus that she didn’t have to bother with a costume.
She collected a towel from one of the changing cabins, stripped and plunged into the water. But, as she struck out with her swift, practised crawl, she couldn’t seem to capture her usual sense of wellbeing.
Oh, it wasn’t fair, she thought with a kind of desperate impatience. Of all the men who’d passed through Cristoforo, there had never been one who’d come even close to touching her emotions. Yet, in the space of a few minutes, Roche Delacroix, of all people, had given her a swift, disturbing insight into what it might mean to be a woman—even though he’d treated her for most of the time like a child, she thought stormily, as she turned for another length.
And then—paradoxically—had come that cynical—that abominable offer.
‘A year out of your life.’ His words seemed to beat a tattoo in her brain. How dared he? she raged inwardly. Oh, how dared he? And it was no comfort to tell herself that he’d simply been amusing himself at her expense. After all, a man like that could have no real interest in an inexperienced nineteen-year-old. Margot, or even the absent Nina, would be far more his type.
But soon Allegra would be gone, she tried to console herself, and she would never have to see Roche Delacroix or think about him again.
She hauled herself out of the water, and began to blot the moisture from her arms and body, then paused suddenly, a strange prickle of awareness alerting her nerve-endings as if—as if someone was watching her.
She stopped towelling her hair, and glanced over her shoulder, searching for a betraying movement in the shadows, listening for some sound. But there was nothing.
She was being over-imaginative, she told herself, but she still felt disturbed, and she resolved to give nude swimming a miss for a while. If one of the waiters from the club, say, was taking a short-cut through the garden, there was no need to give him a field day.
She pulled her clothes on to her still-damp body, and set off back towards the bungalow, her head high, looking neither to right or left.
Probably there was no one there at all. But everything was off-key tonight because of Roche Delacroix, and she would be eternally grateful when he turned his back on Cristoforo for ever.
Because, to her shame, she knew she would always be left wondering just what that—that year out of her life might have been like—with him.
SAMMA was woken from a light, unsatisfactory sleep by a crash, and a muffled curse. She sat up, glancing at the illuminated dial of the clock beside her bed, whistling faintly when she saw the time. The poker game had gone on for longer than usual.
She lay for a few moments, listening to the sounds of movement from the kitchen, then reached resignedly for her robe.
Clyde was sitting at the table, staring into space, a bottle and glass in front of him. The eyes he turned on her were glazed and bloodshot.
He muttered, ‘Oh, there you are,’ as if he’d been waiting for her to join him.
She said, ‘I’ll make some black coffee.’
‘No, sit down. I’ve got to talk to you.’
She said, ‘If it’s about what happened earlier—I’m sorry …’
‘Oh, that.’ He made a vague, dismissive gesture. ‘No, it’s something else.’
He was a terrible colour, she thought uneasily.
He said, ‘Tonight—I lost tonight, Samma.’
The fact that she’d been expecting such news made it no easier to hear, she discovered.
She said steadily, ‘How much?’
‘A lot. More than a lot. Money I didn’t have.’ He paused, and added like a death knell, ‘Everything.’
Samma closed her eyes for a moment. ‘The hotel?’
‘That, too. It was the last game, Samma. I had the chance to win back all that I’d lost and more. You never saw anything like it. There were only the two of us left in, and he kept raising me. I had a running flush, king high. Almost the best hand
