Free A Gift for a Lion by Sara Craven Page B

and she shivered, pressing her burning face almost convulsively into the cool linen of the lace-edged pillows.
    So much for her fighting words of hatred and revenge, she thought bitterly. Leo Vargas had shown her just how vulnerable she was as a woman. Another page for his dossier, and her spirit writhed in rebellion at the thought.
    When he had gone, she had looked at herself in the mirror, horrified at the stranger who stared back at her, with the huge, drowsy eyes and the mouth swollen and blurred by passion. She had wiped a swift, rejecting hand across that mouth, but it had done nothing to obscure the softness that her first real encounter with sensuality had brought to her features.
    She had remained by the window, staring rigidly into the darkness while Josef, tactfully silent, busied himself with the clearing away.
    At last she spoke, her back still turned, terrified of what he might read in her face. 'Josef, do I have to to have that portrait hanging in this room while I am here?'
    'But it has always hung here,
signorina
,' Josef said, in obvious surprise. 'You do not care for it? You are not like the other ladies who have occupied this room. They think the Lion Prince is
molto bello
.'
    'No,' she said tightly, 'I am not like the others. Were they locked in too?'
    There was a brief, unhappy silence, then Josef said diffidently, 'If the
signorina
could only understand… if it were possible to explain…'
    'So you're in it too,' she said, and laughed almost wildly. 'What has that
signore
done, Josef—made off with the millions from the Vorghese bank? Is that the reason for the guards—that he expects an armed landing to get them back?'
    There was a splintering crash from behind her, and she turned to see Josef on his knees picking up the remnants of one of the crystal wine goblets they had used at dinner.
    Her mouth went suddenly dry. Josef was too impeccable a servant to behave with such clumsiness without cause. Had her shot in the dark actually hit the target? Leo Vargas with his icy patrician air, and volcanic emotions—a thief?
    She shook her head disbelievingly. And yet it all fitted, she thought, trying to assemble her thoughts rationally. When she had accused him of concealing something discreditable, he had made no outraged denials. Perhaps he was merely relieved she had not carried the accusation a step further and called him a criminal to his face.
    It also explained, gallingly, a possible motive for his lovemaking, she realised. He probably thought she would be less likely to inform on him as his mistress, or had he merely hoped that his expertise in the art of seduction would have swept every other consideration from her mind? Had he visualised her as blind and tamed to obedience as the hooded falcon who sat in perpetual thrall on the wrist of the first Vorghese Lion?
    She said in a stifled voice, 'Please see if you can take that portrait away, Josef. I don't think I can bear it in the room with me.'
    'I will tell the
signore
how you feel about it,
signorina
, but I can promise nothing.' Josef sounded distracted, as if his thoughts were elsewhere. He bade her a rather stilted goodnight and left, and she heard the sound of the trolley disappearing down the corridor. But he had not been too distracted to forget to lock the door behind him, she thought bleakly.
    She switched off the lights, leaving only one of the shaded bedside lamps burning. She sat down in front of the dressing chest and picked up the hairbrush, to give her hair its routine nightly grooming. As she did so, she remembered what Josef had said about the 'other ladies' who had occupied this room, and she found herself unwillingly wondering who they had been. Perhaps they too had sat at this dressing table, brushing their hair in the lamplight, smiling a little as their eyes met in the mirror the bold, tawny gaze of the golden-skinned man who lounged on the wide bed in the shadows behind them. A little sob rose in her throat at the picture