IN LACE, SHIRLEY CONRAN EXPOSED THE FABULOUS DEPTHS OF EVERY WOMAN’S RICHEST FANTASIES. NOW SHE CREATES A VIVID, EXOTIC WORLD, FILLED WITH BLAZING DESIRE AND INCREDIBLE ADVENTURE, IN HER MOST SENSATIONAL BESTSELLER YET…
SAVAGES
THEY ARE RICH, PAMPERED EXECUTIVE WIVES. FIVE BEAUTIFUL WOMEN, SURROUNDED BY GLAMOUR AND LUXURY … UNTIL, ON A REMOTE SOUTH SEA ISLAND, THEY ARE SUDDENLY THRUST INTO AN ADVENTURE THAT AROUSES THEIR RAW UNTAMED EMOTIONS, THE PASSIONS OF THE WILDEST…
SAVAGES
“MEN IN POWER … BEAUTIFUL WOMEN IN JEOPARDY … SEX … SAVAGES HAS EVERYTHING.” —The Los Angeles Times
“THE AUTHOR OF LACE HAS DONE IT AGAIN…”—Elle
THE CRITICS GO WILD OVER SAVAGES…
“A TRULY GRIPPING READ….”
—USA Today
“A FASCINATING READ WITH AS MANY ENGROSSING CHARACTERS AS LACE….”
—The Detroit Free Press
“ELECTRIC WITH SUSPENSE… CONRAN HAS INVENTED A NEW GENRE—THE FEMALE ADVENTURE YARN.”
—Newsday
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
SHIRLEY CONRAN, best-selling author of Lace and Lace 2, divides her time among London, New York and Monte Carlo. In addition to her powerhouse fiction blockbusters, she is also the author of Superwoman, The Superwoman Yearbook, Superwoman in Action, Forever Superwoman and The Magic Garden. Ms. Conran, who trained as a sculptor, has also been a journalist and an editor, a facet of her career that includes a stint as a columnist for Vanity Fair magazine. She has recently completed the adaption of SAVAGES into a treatment for a six-hour television mini-series.
“SHIRLEY CONRAN’S NEW NOVEL MAY SET OFF A CAT-FIGHT AMONG ACTRESSES TRYING TO EARN ONE OF THE FIVE JUICY ROLES…”
—Cincinnati Post
Shirley Conran Strips Away the Silken Veils of Civilization in…
SILVANA: The cold, elegant wife of the retiring company president, she was once a bewitching, sensual beauty. Now, on the island of Paui, she will fight to the death to survive…
SUZY: A voluptuous, sexy social climber, she believed money could buy safety. Now she must confront her darkest fears…
PATTY: A California blonde, she ran miles every day, trying to forget her past. On Paui her physical strength is the women’s greatest asset, but her violent temper is a danger to them all…
CAREY: The only one with her own career, she drowned her fears in champagne at company parties. Now, cut off from civilization, she finds a surprising strength—and an unexpected weakness…
ANNIE: Sweet-natured and shy, she was tormented by powerful sexual yearnings. Trapped in a nightmare world, she teeters between utter despair and extraordinary courage…
“GRIPPING AND NEARLY IMPOSSIBLE TO PUT DOWN…CONRAN HAS WRITTEN A GOOD, LUSTY ADVENTURE TALE.”
—Rave Reviews
Books by Shirley Conran
Lace
Lace II
Savages
Published by POCKET BOOKS
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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
POCKET BOOKS, a division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
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Copyright © 1987 by Steiden Enterprises NV
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ISBN: 0-671-72719-2
ISBN: 978-1-4516-9917-3(eBook)
First Pocket Books printing July 1988
POCKET and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster Inc.
FOR MORTON JANKLOW
WITH AFFECTION, RESPECT AND GRATITUDE
To do is to be.
—John Stuart Mill
CONTENTS
BOOK ONE: The Golden Triangle
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
BOOK TWO: Paradise
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
BOOK THREE: Panic
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
BOOK FOUR: Survival
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
BOOK FIVE: Peril
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
BOOK SIX: Itambu
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
BOOK SEVEN: Shadow of Death
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Acknowledgments
BOOK ONE
THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE
1
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 25, 1984
Slowly, silently the door swung open. That was odd, thought Lorenza, because since that silly kidnap threat, the invisible security precautions at home had been rigorous. She pushed at the blackened, heavy medieval door. She had known its weathered vertical ridges all her life; her great-grandfather had brought this wooden door, along with the rest of the manor house, from the Cotswolds across the Atlantic to Pennsylvania. For twenty-three years—all her life—she had seen daydream pictures in the door’s wizened indentations as she waited for it to be opened.
“Where is everybody?” she called, as she stepped onto the old York stone of the entrance hall and kicked off her scarlet pumps.
Nobody answered. The echoes of the bell died away.
In stockinged feet, Lorenza walked back outside the front door and glanced beyond her red Ferrari Mondial, carelessly parked askew at the bottom of the steps. She gazed around the quiet parkland that fell away on all sides from the house to distant woods and the Ohio River, but she saw nobody.
Once again, Lorenza gave the bell three peremptory tugs, then walked over to one of the ancient stone lions that stood at the top of the steps. She patted its stone head, as she always did when she came home, then pulled off her sable coat and draped it over the lion; it was warm for the end of October.
She wandered back into the hall and looked up at the lifesize Sargent portrait of her great-grandmother. “Robbed? Raped? Kidnapped? Where do you think they all are, Greatgrandma?”
Lorenza had the same abundant but wispy russet hair as the anxious-looking lady in the pale-gray satin ballgown, but she didn’t have the same twenty-inch waist; Lorenza was chubby, like her mother, especially now. At last she was pregnant! She’d married Andrew sixteen months ago, in June 1983, and since the day she’d returned from her honeymoon her mother had looked hopeful. Lorenza had only to watch her mother stroke her six black cats—sinuous, small panthers—to know that she loved with her hands and longed for a grandchild to cuddle.
In her stockinged feet, Lorenza padded to her right, through a suite of reception rooms linked by double doors; there was no sign of anyone in the morning room, the salon, the library or the ba
llroom, beyond, which ran the full depth of the house and led into the orangery.
As she returned through the library, Lorenza noticed her mother’s reading glasses lying by a scatter of papers on the silver-gray carpet. So her mother was around somewhere, she thought. Idly, she picked up two invitation cards, a newspaper and a travel brochure. She looked with interest at the travel brochure, on the cover of which was pictured a tropical beach; palm trees waved against an aquamarine sky, above which scarlet words promised: “Paradise can be yours on Paui.” Lorenza flicked open the brochure and saw photographs of a low modern hotel, tropical gardens, black women with pink flowers stuck behind their ears, trays of flower-decorated drinks; young, clean-cut, bronzed white couples smiled into each other’s eyes as they dined under the stars, swam in an azure pool, swung golf clubs and tennis rackets or enjoyed a champagne picnic on a deserted beach. “Just north of Australia and south of the equator, you can reserve a slice of paradise for yourself,” the brochure suggested. “Toll-free reservations 1-800-545-PAUI.”
Lorenza threw down her mother’s papers, returned to the hall and shouted again up the ancient stairs. Her voice echoed around the oak-paneled minstrel’s gallery, but once more there was no response. She pattered to the back of the hall and peered through the double doors onto the terrace, where three fountains were linked by flowerbeds, the whole neatly framed by rows of box hedge. Although the Grahams employed three gardeners, her mother was often to be found weeding the formal Italian garden, beyond which the lawn sloped down to the Ohio River. Today there wasn’t a soul in sight.
Lorenza headed to her left, down the passage that led past the dining room and her father’s study to the staff quarters. No one in the kitchen … No one in the pantry … No one in the staff sitting room … No one in the flower room. But this house contained a butler, a cook, three Filipino housemaids and her mother’s personal maid. Where were they all?
The linen room was off the staff sitting room. In front of a pile of unfolded sheets, a shapeless woman in a white smock was slumped in a rocking chair, her sleeves rolled up over skinny arms with sinews that stood out like a man’s. On the back of each hand was a delta of thick blue veins.
Lorenza tiptoed over, tickled the woman’s ear and bawled into it, “Ciao, Nella!”
With a shriek the woman leaped to her feet, clutching her breast. “Oh! You very bad girl, Miss Lorenza!” As Lorenza hugged her, Nella added in a muffled voice, “You give me the heart attack, then nobody to cook for the family.” Nella had been transplanted from Rome when Lorenza’s mother had first arrived in Pittsburgh as the new Mrs. Arthur Graham.
Lorenza yelled, “Where’s Mama? And where’s everyone else?”
Nella was deaf and had to be bawled at. She used her deafness as a convenient excuse for not hearing anything she did not wish to discuss. If pressed, she would thump the square of white fabric that jutted out between her flat breasts and hid her old-fashioned box hearing aid, saying, “This thing no damn good again, needs fixing.”
Nella said, “Your mama give staff free afternoon, because us all work late tomorrow night for your papa’s birthday party. Your mama, she gone shopping.”
“What for?”
“Clothes.”
“But Mama always buys her clothes in Rome.”
Nella looked uncomfortable. “Well, maybe not clothes, but is a secret.”
“Aw, come on, Nella.”
Nella looked furtive, but what Italian cook can keep a secret? “Your mama go shopping with the decorator to choose things for your apartment upstairs. Your mama have your rooms redone, because of the baby.”
“But Andrew and I live in New York, and the baby will live there with us, not here.”
“Your mama say, just in case.”
“Just in case of what?”
Lorenza’s attention was distracted as she heard an engine softly hum in the distance. She pushed open a diamond-paned window, hung out and waved at the white Van den Plas Jaguar as it moved sedately up the gravel drive. She said, “Mama must be the only person in the world who drives a six-cylinder Jaguar fifteen miles an hour.”
“Your mama have plenty accident in her cars. Your mama not fast, but not careful. Always she think about other things, always some other place in her head. Your papa want she have some man to drive her, but your mama, she say too much trouble, is just someone else to organize.”
But Nella was talking to the air. Lorenza had rushed off to meet her mother.
Silvana Graham hurried up the steps, dropped two gift wrapped packages at the top and hugged her daughter. “Put your shoes on, darling! Mustn’t catch cold, it’s bad for the baby.” She had a low, lilting voice like a flock of doves, a voice not unusual in Rome, but rare in Pennsylvania. This soothing quality of Silvana’s voice permanently irritated her husband, because it sounded as if she were trying to calm him down, and therefore reminded him of his high blood pressure.
Lorenza kissed her mother on the lips. It was Silvana’s bewitching mouth that had captivated Arthur Graham the first time he saw her, laughing in a seaside café at Santa Margherita, on the Italian Riviera, in 1956. Sophisticated, cosmopolitan Arthur had been surprised by his own reaction to the sensuality and insouciance of the big-breasted, cheerful seventeen-year-old with the loud laugh. Twenty-eight years later, only Silvana’s mouth remained the same. The big dark eyes had lost their sparkle, the heavy black hair no longer tumbled around her shoulders but was tamed back in a tight, graying French twist.
The two women moved toward the library. Shoeless Lorenza waddled with pregnant self-importance; her mother’s slow, regal carriage just offset a heaviness that threatened to turn into bulkiness, but even her upright head could no longer disguise the start of a double chin. Women thought Silvana Graham elegant but unapproachable; men thought she was over the hill, twenty-five pounds too heavy and not worth making a pass at. Silvana moved through life in a lethargic dream, propelled forward only by timetables. “Mustn’t keep the servants waiting” had been the constant admonishment in the small palazzo in Rome, near the Borghese Gardens, where Silvana was born, and where her parents still lived.
In the library, Lorenza picked up the tropical island brochure. “What’s this about, Mama? Are you escaping at last?”
Silvana laughed at their old joke. “No, it’s a business trip. We’re leaving next week for Australia. Nexus is holding the annual conference in Sydney this year. After that, we’re having the usual top-brass working holiday. Your father has chosen Paui because he’s never been fishing there, and apparently there are plenty of sharks. He’s never caught a shark.”
“There’s something to be said for being president of a corporation.” Lorenza threw herself on the silver brocade sofa, propped her feet up and started to discuss her pregnancy with the obsessive concentration of a five-months-pregnant first-timer, who little realized how bored she would be by the subject in two months’ time. Although her baby wasn’t due until late February, Lorenza now looked at her life as if down the wrong end of a telescope: it had shrunk to a circle that included only her husband and this blurry-faced sexless baby. Silvana listened to her daughter’s self-important chatter. “Andrew feels … Andrew knows … Andrew wants me to give up my job … Andrew thinks he should look after my money. It’s one of the things I want to talk to Papa about. Andrew says it’s ridiculous to have someone else invest my money, when he’s a broker … Andrew says …”
Silvana said, “Why give up your job? I thought you enjoyed it. Although I never understood why you took a job in the first place.”
“Don’t you remember? Gran said it would give me an interest.” Lorenza remembered that Arthur’s mother had also implied she didn’t want Lorenza to follow her mother’s aimless path, padding her life out with trivia in order not to notice that she was merely marking time until she died. Gran had always had eccentric ideas.
Lorenza laughed. “It’s just an itsy-bitsy job at Sotheby’s. Andrew says I haven’t learned as much abou
t pictures as Gran expected, and I don’t use my history degree. I’m polite to people on the phone, help someone else to catalogue the paintings and occasionally take telephone bids at auctions…. I’ll have plenty to do at home, looking after Andrew and the baby.”
Silvana lifted the heavy silver coffeepot from the tray that Nella had just placed in front of her. “Nella’s sister is coming from Varese to be your nanny. You’ll have plenty of staff. You’re luckier than most women. You’ll have time to do something, to continue to be somebody.”
Lorenza looked surprised. “Mama! That’s sixties Women’s Lib talk!” She laughed affectionately. “It’s taken you twenty years to catch up.”
“No, it’s taken me twenty years to notice.”
“Notice what?”
Silvana rubbed her pearl necklace against her cream silk collar, a sign of mild agitation. Hesitantly she said, “Few women are as happy after marriage as they expected to be.”
“What are you talking about, Mama?” Don’t say you and Papa are going to split, she thought. She asked in alarm, “Aren’t you happy? Haven’t you got everything that you could possibly want?”
Everything except what matters most, thought Silvana.
“What more could you possibly want, Mama?”
“To feel that I exist.”
So it was only that. Lorenza stretched out one arm and gently pulled Silvana’s hand toward her pink Fiorucci maternity overalls, so that Silvana could feel the hard little belly beneath. “Of course you exist, and so does that.”
Silvana said, “I hope it’s a boy.” She hesitated again, then added, “I meant what I said about your job. I don’t want your life to be eaten up without your noticing it. One day you look up and think, Where did it go, my life?” She shook her head. “Don’t laugh, Lorenza. The people you love can swallow up your life, if you let it happen. You won’t notice it’s happening or how it happens—and if you do notice, you won’t know how to stop it.”