A Gift for a Lion Read Online Free

eye for having kept them all waiting, and allowed herself to be shepherded back to the
Luana
.
    She had hoped that the wine and the dancing would have made Mary sleepy, but as they undressed awkwardly in a rather fraught silence in the tiny cramped cabin they shared, Joanna soon realised that Mary wanted to talk - and was merely biding her time. It was also obvious that she viewed herself quite erroneously in the role of peacemaker.
    Mary was quite willing to acknowledge that Paul should not have said what he did, but neither, she pointed out, should Joanna always expect her own way.
    'Tony's patience won't last for ever. After all, living with other people requires give and take,' she declared sententiously.
    'Precisely,' Joanna agreed a little drily, allowing Mary's rather self-righteous remarks about making sacrifices for the person you loved and not always expecting to be the centre of attention to drift over her.
    But after her cousin's voice had died away and been replaced by quiet, steady breathing, Joanna lay awake, thinking.
    Mary had been right about one thing, she decided. There should be an element of give and take in a relationship. The main problem with her father and herself was that they both seemed to be takers, she realised a little wanly.
    It was not a particularly comfortable thought and she switched her attention to her plans for tomorrow with a pleasurable feeling of excitement. On her way through the saloon she had appropriated one of the local guide books that were kept on the boat, and now she reached up to the shelf above her bunk for the small torch she kept there.
    The book dealt mainly with the larger islands in the vicinity, like Corsica, Sardinia and Elba. Saracina, which lay to the north of Corsica, barely merited a paragraph, but that was probably as much as its size warranted, she thought. As if anyone would want to keep people away from a place that size!
    But as she read the book, she soon discovered that people had once been kept away with a vengeance. One of the features of Saracina, which appeared to be mainly rocky with a small fertile hinterland, was the remains of some old fortifications built by the islanders of long ago to keep away marauders like the Saracen Turks and Barbary pirates who had been the scourge of the Mediterranean one time.
    Joanna pursed her lips. In the ordinary way she would have enjoyed a visit to what was left of the fortifications. She liked scrambling around on historical sites and letting her imagination have full play. But this time, she felt she would stick to her original idea and find a quiet little beach to stay on, well away from Saracina town itself or any other centres of population that might exist. After all, on a beach she would be doing no harm to anyone, even hostile islanders who liked to emulate their ancestors by defending their privacy with guns.
    She tossed the book aside and lay down, switching off her torch, her mind roving as it sometimes did before sleep claimed her.
    'I won't be selfish any more,' she thought drowsily. 'I will gave Tony more consideration, and I'll make an effort to get on with Paul and not expect everyone to give way to me all the time.'
    But such virtuous resolutions deserved one final fling, she convinced herself—her trip to Saracina, before she settled down and became a solid citizen.
    She was almost asleep when the thought came to her, forcing her to sit up, fumbling once again for the guide book and the torch.
    But though she searched right through the book, nowhere, to her relief, could she find any reference to lions, past or present, on Saracina.

CHAPTER TWO

     
    Joanna never forgot her first view of Saracina. It rose out of the faint haze that hung over the sea, a black jagged shape against the unbroken blue of the sky and water. In spite of its rather forbidding aspect, she felt her pulses quicken, and that faint, strange excitement stirred in her stomach again.
    It had all been worth it after all, she