Island of Darkness Read Online Free PDF Page A

Scottie, but she could not face Jason Connor again yet - not until she was much more sure of herself. “Should I go over and see Scottie again?” she asked, and Clive smiled.
    “I’m not advising you, honey,” he said softly. “But it seems a shame to punish Scottie because you don’t like his boss. From what you’ve told me, he’ll miss you.”
    “I suppose it does seem a shame,” she conceded, willing enough to be convinced. “Maybe - maybe if Maria’s still playing up, and Roberto wants me go for him again - Well, perhaps if the opportunity arises, I’ll go.”
    Maria, pacified and ready to allow herself to be persuaded, was back at work after only a couple of days and all had been reasonably well for well over a week now. Since Leonora was not inclined to visit the rock without the excuse of having a chore to do for Roberto she began to almost wish that Maria would explode again and give her an excuse. Scottie, she thought, would think she was being as good as her word and staying away deliberately.
    It was difficult to know what to do for the best, and she was rather surprised at herself for taking it all so seriously, for she had been to the rock only four times, yet there was something irresistible about the place and its residents that made her want to go back.
    She enjoyed taking her small boat out and her uncle often teased her for her solitary pleasures, but she had yet to find anything on land as satisfying to her soul as sailing round the little bay with only her own company. Not that her kind of boating was strictly sailing in the true sense of the word. It was not like being under sleek white sails and having the skill to handle a boat that chopped and changed direction with every puff of wind. She envied what her uncle called real sailors, but had never attempted to try her hand at it so far.
    Today it was unbearably hot ashore, but on the water it was cool and pleasantly breezy and she looked at the passing coastline with the same almost smug pleasure she always did. It was a familiar route, from Terolito to Maciemo, just across the bay, and she needed to do little more than keep her hand on the tiller and take a more or less curving line across from one to the other.
    The coastline looked slightly hazy in the heat of the day, the hills rising behind and above the dusters of houses on the shoreline, with other little white houses scattered like snowflakes on the green background of the hills themselves. There were little boats bobbing at their moorings, their sails now and then tugging anxiously at a passing breeze.
    It would be difficult to find a more idyllic spot to live and not for the first time she smiled at the good fortune that had brought her here when her uncle could have chosen to live almost anywhere in the world. He was an artist and he enjoyed his work, but he was not dependent on it for his living and so his enjoyment was not blunted by having to follow his art where he could make most profit from it
    She was vaguely aware of a billow of white sails to her right, but not soon enough, and before she fully realised it the sailing dinghy was bearing down on her and so close there was no time to take avoiding action. Sail had precedence, of course, but it was too late now to even attempt to take evasive action and collision was inevitable.
    “Look out!” The instinctive warning cry came too late and there was a nasty grating sound as the two craft scraped together, bobbing jerkily on the resultant wash.
    Leonora hastily registered the fact that there were two occupants in the other boat, and little more at the moment. One of than was swearing quietly but volubly in English, while the other was shouting further warnings as the two craft came into contact and she hastily switched off her engine.
    A hasty scramble in both boats resulted in the collision and the damage being far less serious than it might have been, but even so some paint was scratched from her own boat’s bright blue