Dragon Bay

• Author: Violet Winspear
• Publisher: Harlequin Presents #6
• Year: 1973
• Setting:
• Amazon Listing: Dragon Bay - out of print

Reader Comments

Dragon Bay is a brilliantly plotted romance and adventure story, with some major conflicts occurring throughout the book. The heroine is Kara Stephanos, first seen in the The Honey Is Bitter Winspear novel. In that story she was the juvenile niece of the principal character, a Greek shipping magnate with a strong sense of family and tradition. Here we see Kara's story continued.

Kara's crush on Mikos has blossomed into love, and she is shocked by the marriage of Mikos in America to a beautiful girl from a wealthy family. Domini takes pity on the girl's humiliation in the midst of the family looking on and Paul dispatches a yacht around the Mediterranean and Caribbean to amuse her and she gets over Mikos. The book starts as Kara alights on a small island in the South Pacific.

Kara is young and beautiful but hardly vain and sophisticated. Her family's wealth and power have sheltered her from the worst of society. In the era the book was written, the mid to late sixties, mores are still family oriented and the risque world of the islands cafe society is far from what she wants. Kara's emotional turmoil gives her newfound intellectual clarity, she muses on the name of a man signed in before her in the hotel register, Lucan Savidge. She reflects he's probably a doormat or an accountant.

Kara is not spoiled or mature, and when she wakes up in the bed of a man's bedroom she is forthrightly upset. Furthermore, the man in question is a devil of a man with red hair, a sexy way about him, and a lord on the island society pillar. Kara has walked into the wrong hotel room due to a faulty door number, and the occupant returned and went to bed unknowing she was there. Kara has landed in the bedroom of Lucan Savidge, and the waiter who brings their coffee no doubt spreads the tale throughout the kitchens and staff.

Kara is unready to deal with the situation. The two have breakfast, where the wily man ferrets out Kara's secrets. He is quick and smart, good looking and wilful, but he too has problems on his mind and begs her to have dinner with him. Kara gos to dinner and minds her manners, unwilling to get caught up in any other type of bond. Lucan challenges her to enjoy the island for the time being. Before long they have an uneasy truce.

Lucan is working toward an end. Later Kara realizes that Lucan knows their spending time together will be talked about. When a woman at a island function makes innuendos about telling Paul about Domini's affair with a notorious womanizer like Savidge, she is rumbled. Lucan knows Kara's infatuation with Mikos has kept her sheltered from knowing much about men and their dating habits. Lucan is more aware. one night out a fortune teller sees Lucan in her future, a red haired man who will bring her pain. When the bitchy woman, jealous of Lucan;s attention to kara, speaks to her, she implies a juicy scandal is on the horizon for the Stephanos family. The backstabber slashes at Kara, and her newfound pride dissolves.

Lucan learns of the threat and abrubtly offers marriage. Kara is startled but sees into the escape from her close knit family life where the tragedy of Miko's loss will be reiterated over and over again. Lucan waxes about the fabulous plantation estate he lives at, Dragon Bay. he talks about his twin brother Pryde. Lucan too has ghosts and they marry in a quiet ceremony designed to stave off cruel gossip and embarassment for Kara and her family. Just the purchase of her wedding dress makes eyebrows rise due to Lucan's supposed reputation.

Kara's Aunt Sophula is Miko's mother, and the plague of reminders at the Stephanos compund would never end. The boat trip up the river to Dragon Bay spares Kara the duties of a wedded woman. Lucan wants her but keeps aloof. Kara soon learns why. Arriving at the stunning picturesque mansion on the lip of Dragon Bay, she sees that family and tradition have also roped Lucan into strange choices. Kara is stunned to realize that Pryde is confined to a wheelchair but emanates an erotic dread she canot cope with. There is also a sister and a child who belongs to the famiy.

Winspear weaves a brilliant structure of two halves of the whole. Pryde is the real villain, who dominates everything from his handicaped position. Pity and sympathy make Lucan a slave to his brother's wishes. Kara learns Pryde suffered his injuries long ago after challenging Lucan to an uphill climb. Kara learns that Lucan's mother pitted the twins against each other, enjoying their rivalry and deliberately focusing on Pryde as the elder son.

Lucan's sister is a mystery. She lives at Dragon Bay, whule being pursued by the family lawyer. The child, Rue, is obviously of the same red hair and complexion of the family, and many accept her for an offspring who found its way home. Kara learns in time that Pryde has managed Lucan into a reputation for being a rake he doesn't deserve to manipulate him into marriage to give Dragon Bay an heir. Kara and Lucan fence and feint in this maelstrom of image, drama, family tensions, and attraction.

Mysterious legends have sprung up about the tobacco and cane fields the estate yields. A voodoo woman tends Pryde ad Lord of the Manor. Lucan works like a field hand and Pryde watches Kara with desire. Kara herself is now trapped in a marriage with a tormented stranger who cannot let her in. Kara connects with Rue, remembering what it's like to exists in a family with so much at stake. Lucan gives Kara an ultimatum: bear a child or leave Dragon Bay. She is not ready to do either.

Mysterious "accidents" begin to occur around Dragon Bay. The book take a Gothic turn when Lucan's sister shies away from realizing true love. Kara also realizes Pryde's command sand wishes control Dragon Bay. If Pryde wants her, can Lucan say no? Storms pound the cliff where the old house stands on the bay. Lucan detects tension between Kara and Pryde and becomes jealous, angry, and baffled.

Kara's attention to Pryde has an instinctive purpose. Kara discovers that Pryde can walk and has been framing Lucan for fall for some time. Pryde has been nursing the grudge of the lost footrace for years and wants his pound of flesh. The Savidge mania for dramatic extremes comes forth. Lucan was returning from a trip to Paris when he met Kara, after being turned down for marriage. Pryde had pressured the match, knowing model Cecile would never ruin her figure with a baby.

But now Pryde wants Kara, and with Lucan out of the way he can have her. Kara struggles to escape Pryde after she has caught him walking to arrange another "accident". He taunts her with his power and strength, even from the wheelchair. It's a tour de force of character conflict. Pryde is the Savidge "bad boy" Lucan was thought to be. Doesn't she want the real thing?

Lucan saves Kara at the end as storms and eroding soil push the mansion off the cliff of Dragon Bay. Discovering a mutual love in the middle of the tragedy, Kara and Lucan voiw to build a new life of happiness at Dragon Bay. The romance of Mikos and what happens to him shows that they have twin boys and are happy ever after.

The Stephanos back story illuminates this book. Kara is an unspoiled woman of good character caught in a romantic infatuation. But without the experience of the Stephanos clan, with their family tradition and close knit love, the story might not be credible. Lucan catches her before disillusionment with life sets in an ruins her.

The plot of the twin brothers, the fantastic estate, and the Winspear trademarked "marriage bind" is also present. This is a highly functional mystery story, because the reader discovers that Lucan has taken the blame for Rue when she is in fact his sister's child. The Pryde plotline neatly waves in why Lucan has such a bad reputaton and why he is so bitter and torn with respect to his family. We see why Lucan is attracted to Kara, why she fits in his world.

Related Titles

• The Honey Is Bitter