The Sin of Cynara Read Online Free PDF Page A

magic, and then the next a mere cigar.'
      He struck a match and as he lit the cigar the flame was close to his face and Carol felt a shiver run through her. Yes, it had been fire which had destroyed that magnificent face, and for some sardonic reason of his own this man had never submitted to the knife of the plastic surgeon. He preferred to carry his scars, and she wondered why.
      As smoke issued from the edge of his lips, the door of this emotion-charged room was opened and a young girl of about sixteen came in. She gave Carol and Teri a surprised look, and then came to the baróne with a sort of shy eagerness in her manner.
      'There you are, carina,' he said, and glanced at
      Carol. 'This is my daughter Flavia, who will amuse the boy while we discuss your visit to us - your most unexpected visit. Flavia, take the boy to the orchard and pick yourselves some peaches - ripe ones, carina. Eat them in the grotto where it is cool and he can see the fish in the pond there.'
      'Yes, Papa.' The girl smiled and held out her hand to Teri, but he hesitated and looked up at Carol. She was hesitant herself about letting him go, but the baróne's young daughter seemed nice enough, and she was certainly very pretty with her flyaway eyebrows, her cheekbones high and tapering to a triangular jaw. She had a wide expressive mouth, and eyes of a clear brown.
      'The child will be quite safe with Flavia.' Now he spoke with a touch of the whip in his voice. 'Is he one of those pretty boys who clings to his mother all the time?'
      'No, he isn't,' she said, stung by his tone of voice. 'Teri isn't a nervous child at all, but this is a strange house to him, and a strange country. Caro,' she bent down to him and straightened the collar of his shirt, 'go with the pretty girl and see the fish in the flower house. I - I have to talk with this gentleman and it will be much more fun for you to pick fruit with Flavia.'
      'All right, Cally,' he said, and leaning his cheek to hers he whispered: 'She's prettier than her papa, isn't she?'
      'Run along with you, Buster.' Carol bit her lip and hoped to heaven the baróne had not caught Teri's whispered comment, but children were unconsciously cruel and he was probably used to it. 'And don't eat too many peaches or you'll have the tummyache.'
      'Our peaches are sweet, signora, at least,' drawled a deep voice above her head, and she dared not look into those sardonic eyes until the door had closed behind his daughter and her son... of her heart if not her body.
      'Please be seated.' A lean hand gestured at a high-backed chair near his desk and Carol was rather glad to accept his invitation, for now a kind of reaction to the man was setting in and her legs felt curiously shaky. In the first place she hadn't known that Vincenzo had a brother, least of all one whose air of command was impressive and alarming. He was like a dark-browed portrait by Diaz, but one which had gone through flames and emerged as a sort of ruined masterpiece.
      He resumed his own high-backed chair and sat there studying her from behind a screen of cigar smoke. Because his scrutiny was so disturbing in that face that still bore traces of Vincenzo, Carol let her gaze fall to the bronze faun which stood on his desk ; its workmanship was faultless and its surface seemed to gleam like a real skin. A man of impeccable taste, she told herself. A man who surrounded himself in his private sanctum with objects that had no flaw ... a compensation, perhaps, for the fact that he was himself so marked that many people would instinctively turn away their eyes from his face.
      But it wasn't his scars that made her so reluctant to look at him, it was his eyes, steady as a falcon's fixed upon a victim, making her as tense as any hare about to be swooped upon, her skin as tight and cold as if about to be clawed.
      As the silence grew she longed for it to be broken, and her fingers clenched each other when he moved his hand to tip ash