The Girl at Goldenhawk [antikvár]

CHAPTER ONE The s^ was so incredibly blue, as if rinsed out from sapphires melted by that hot sun beating down on the white-gold beach. The slim and ringless hands of Jaine Dare gripped the iron-grilled raihng of the balcony upon which she stood.: Sozinha, as the Brazilian people called it, all on her own. She took a deep breath of the hot, strange and pungent air, perfumed by the sea and the coral and the lush flora that grew in this part of the world. The sun lay brazen upon the waves as they raced in over the coral beds and unrolled like rich silk upon the sands. The scene was bo± a delight and a pain in the eyes of the English girl, who was more accustomed to the moderate displays to be seen on the shores of her own land. Her gaze ran over a bed of huge shiny boulders at the edge of the beach, rising to a headland smothered in wild orchids and feathery dwarf-palms, leading to a township called Porto de Zanto^ The Port of Zanto had its pldce in history on account of the nuns who were carried off from their convent by pirate raiders and ransomed for rubies from the coffers of the Duque Pedro Almanzor de Ros Zanto, lord of a million acres of Brazilian territory, including this port and all the surrounding count^side. Jaine had read about it in the guide book die had bought at Rio airport; it had all seemed rather romantic, especially when it stated that the Duque Pedro of those days had loved one of the kidnapped nuns, who had entered the convent of the Wailing Doves after she and die Duque had quarrelled. Suddenly there was a shimmer of tears in Jaine's eyes as the painful delight of this place acted upon her usually con-