Persepha glanced at the hat at which he gestured. ‘You said to buy a sunhat,’ she reminded him, and that little claw of fear slid away. ‘Don’t you like it, señor.’
He had never yet reproved her for being forever formal with him, and with a quirk of his eyebrow he took hold of the hat and tinkered with its adornment of the two orange-coloured fruits. ‘The object looks rather like a phallic symbol,’ he drawled. ‘But I don’t imagine that it struck you that way, eh?’
Her flush deepened at his dry words and the wicked glint in his eyes. ‘No! I merely thought it a rather amusing hat. Aren’t you going to let me wear it, then?’
‘My chica, I am not that tyrannical in your estimation, am I? Nor so deprived of a sense of humour? If you wish to wear the absurd thing, then by all means wear it - on the beach.’
He handed her into the car and they drove to the Cafe Valentino, which was a colourful restaurant near the seafront, its parasoled tables set on a plage above the wash of the ocean itself, where a fine white beach ran to the water’s edge, a pale contrast to the warm blue tint of the ocean.
This was the kind of place which appealed to Persepha, and she couldn’t help but ask herself why Don Diablo was putting himself out to please her today. She shot a curious glance at him as they took their seats, and when his sardonic eyes met hers, she glanced away again. After their five weeks together was he hopeful that she was already to give him the one thing he really wanted of her? In the smooth grey material of his suit, which was such a contrast to his tawny darkness, he looked every inch the hidalgo, the muy hombre of intense virility and determination. He had told her that he admired the fighting spirit of the British, and that she supposed was what he wanted in his son; the ruthless and conquering Latin blood intermingled with the unconquerable spirit of her own nation.
It was quite something to be desired, she admitted to herself, but where did the love come in? A child should be born of love, not of arrogant ambition on the father’s side. A child should evolve from an absolute melting together of two people passionately attached, and as her fingers clenched around the glass of cool pineapple juice which had been brought to her, she prayed to whatever gods would listen, here in this land both pagan and intensely religious, that she would not have the Don’s child.
Long ago, or so it seemed, she had thought that if she ever married and had a child she would like to call him Marcus. But in those days she had not envisioned this kind of marriage ... in those idle moments in the deep window-seat of her bedroom at Stonehill she had youthfully hoped that whoever married her would cherish her as Marcus always had.
‘And what else did you buy?’ The Don’s deep voice broke in on her reflections and she gave a start and looked at him with wide eyes in which that distant dream seemed to shatter, or that was the illusion as the dappled shade of the parasol played across her face, the soft sea wind playing with the scarlet fringes.
‘Oh, a couple of shirts to wear informally about the hacienda,’ she said. ‘The patterns are really eye-catch-ing.’
‘Are they?’ He took a long sip at his pisco sour. ‘Is it your intention to catch my eye with them?’
‘No - what I mean is - they’re just for casual wear.’ She bent her head to her drink and drew the juice deeply up through the straw and felt it flow cool and sweet down her dry throat. ‘The shops here are filled With bright and attractive goods. Your people are clever with their hands, aren’t they?’
‘Very much so, and they are your people now, querida. You and I are one flesh, or do you still think of yourself as held against your will, and have dreams of escaping from me?’ Though he spoke lazily, there was an intent look in his eyes as they dwelt upon her face, with its smooth skin, finely-boned features, and wide-spaced eyes into which a little gold had spilled from her shining hair. A glint of possessiveness came into the Don’s expression, and he suddenly leaned forward and his lips seemed to be edged as if with steel.
‘One flesh, amiga, do you hear me?’
‘I hear you,’ she said, tensely. ‘I don’t doubt for one moment that all you care about is the flesh that you like to see in silk and valuable jewels. It excites your eye to see your living possession adorned for you... there must be a touch of the Moor in you, señor. Will you choke the life out of me if I ever seem to stray, like poor Des-demona?’
‘I would not advise you to test my temper and tolerance in that direction, Persepha. As you say, I place value on the virtue of my wife, and one of the great moments of my life was finding you so utterly virtuous.’
And when he said that it was as if for vivid seconds this sea cafe vanished and in its place was the perfumed luxury of her bedroom at the hacienda, with the slide of silk beneath her as with lean hands that brooked no refusal, no amount of fight, the Don made her submit to him.
‘It was one of the dark moments of my life,’ she flung at him, her voice a low quiver, her eyes hating him for bringingalive that memory, ‘when I found I had married a monster!’
‘My dear,’ he laughed softly, ‘do you spend time each day finding new names to call me? No, don’t answer my question! I can see that it causes you no effort to find these charming noms de guerre. Well, at least they are honest and not the honeyed endearments of a woman who only pretends to be in love. With you, amiga, I know where I am.’
‘Do you?’ she said, and she gave him a look which she purposely meant to be provocative. ‘I shouldn’t bank on that, mi esposo. Still waters are said to run deep.’
‘And the British are deep, eh? Partially submerged like icebergs.’ As he spoke he began to eat the delicious trout which had been placed in front of him by the silentfooted waiter. He squeezed lemon, added pepper, and smiled slightly.
‘Yes,’ she retorted, ‘and icebergs can be dangerous, señor. You have heard of the Titanic and how it was sunk even as it proudly flaunted its strength and grace.’
‘You know, vida mia, you are picking up the Latin fondness for wrapping a dagger in a piece of silk. Latin roots do join those of the Moor, and through the Moor they are buried in the sands of biblical days, and the parable was always a favourite style of expression, then as now. Beware, chica, or you might become impregnated with our ways.’
‘Heaven forbid!’ she rejoined, and she flinched at the word which he used so deliberately. ‘I should hate to become cruel and self-willed, with nothing in my heart but ambition.’
‘What would you know of what is in my heart?’ He buttered a small hunk of brown bread. ‘You have never taken the trouble to find out. You suppose that I carry a piece of concrete in my breast, don’t you?’
She glanced up from her plate and regarded him with cool eyes. ‘I know that you have no real feeling in your heart for me. I’m just a shape which appeals to you; a structure of skin and bone that you treat like a filly who dislikes the halter. You’ve exerted all your rights as my owner, but if you think I’m going to - to like you for it, then you can think again.’
‘I am thinking, chica, and at no time can I recall ever asking you to like me. This is very good trout, eh? Quite excellent. You see, I like this trout and I eat all but the bones, but I wouldn’t dream of sharing my life with a trout.’
Despite herself, and all that she shrank from in this ruthless man, he had a dry sense of humour that Persepha was not proof against. She wanted to laugh aloud at his remark and had to bite her lip in order to control the urge. She wouldn’t, she swore inwardly, give him the satisfaction of having amused her.
He glanced up from his food and she felt the knowing flick of his eyes, and from under her lashes saw his lean fingers reach for his glass of pale gold wine.
‘Do give way or you’ll choke,’ he drawled. ‘Do you think, Persepha, that I don’t know something about you after these weeks of ours together? You enjoy a joke, and you like it to be a little earthy, and do you know what that proves?’
‘No, you tell me, señor. You’re the authority on women ... of that there isn’t a scrap of doubt.’
‘Love?’ Persepha laughed now, and scornfully. ‘If you spoke of hate, then you’d be nearer the mark. Has a woman ever said to you before, Don Diablo - I hate you?’
Between them, after she had spoken, there hung a silence so intense that the sounds of other diners, their chatter and the tinkling of their cutlery, was suddenly over-loud. Persepha herself was gripped by a tension into which each small sound erupted like a shock-wave, and she watched with a kind of fascination beyond fear as the Don’s fingers clenched around the stem of his wine glass until she felt certain the pressure would crack the glass. But these were sturdy cafe glasses and not those fine antiques from which they drank at the hacienda. One of those beautiful things would have gone to smithereens in his hand, for the knuckles stood out whitely against the tawny skin.
‘Again you are brave in company,’ he said, and there was that in his voice which promised retribution when they were alone, of the kind that she fought against with such spirit only to be defeated by his superior strength of body, his ruthless resolve to have his own way despite her struggles, her use of tooth and claw, and words she hadn’t dreamed she had picked up from those gambling com-panions of her guardian. She had called him more than a devil, and that word was in her eyes right now, flung at him across the table of a crowded restaurant.
He inclined his dark head in mocking acceptance of what she silently called him.
‘And what will you have for dessert, something sweet?’ he asked, the very essence of sarcasm in his voice. He snapped his fingers for the attention of their waiter, and as Persepha sat dipping her fingers in the little bowl of water to which a rose petal had been added, she noticed from under her lashes the way a trio of women at a nearby table were staring at her husband.
They were Latin women, but so smartly dressed that they were probably the wives of officials here in town. Their eyes held that warm Latin appreciation of an attractive male, and there was no way that Persepha could deny the Don’s sensual appeal to every female eye but her own. The way his skin gleamed like warm copper against the white silk of his shirt and the grey of his suit. The way his eyes drooped lazily, their true expression partially concealed by his lashes. The way his shoulders promised an overriding strength in the embrace of man and woman.
Gil Howard had said that the Mexicans were hot-blooded, but the Don was never going to make her blood boil with anything other than temper. Oh, she’d be such a shrew that he’d regret mightily the day he ever set eyes on her ... she’d never look at him the way those women were looking!
Scorn made a cold mask of her face when one of the women, clad in a dress the colour of purple lilac, managed to catch the Don’s eye. She looked directly at him and her eyes were twin pools of dark glimmering invitation. Out of sheer curiosity Persepha then glanced at her husband to see his reaction to that open signalling of a woman probably bored by her own husband and on the lookout for an affair with someone else’s.
Don Diablo was looking back at the woman and his face had that bronze Aztec chiselling that always sent a litde shiver running through Persepha. So might one of the Aztec lords have looked as he raised his whip and brought it down across the skin of a slave.
With eyes as cold as jet he out-stared the woman, until all at once she gave a rather shrill laugh and returned to her gossiping. But her olive skin was flushed and Persepha realized that something in the Don’s look had made the woman feel as cheap as a harlot on offer in the market place. With just a look he had taught her a lesson, and as if to underline it he reached lazily for Persepha’s gold-ringed hand ... this is mine, the gesture seemed to indicate. This girl who looks at no other man, and is even nervous of my touch.
‘Never,’ he said to her, and his tone of voice was deeply harsh and inexorable, ‘never become like that woman over there. If you ever do, then the story of the Moor and Desdemona will be re-enacted, I promise you.’
‘Oh?’ Persepha felt his touch on her fingers like a warm brand; a threat and a caress in the hard fingertips. ‘Don’t you find her awfully attractive? So Latin and dark-eyed, so curvaceous and willing? You do surprise me, señor. I should have taken her for your type.’
At these words his fingers tightened to the point of pain, but Persepha strove not to wince, and was only released when the waiter came with their sweet, a delectable salad of passion-fruit, grapes and sliced banana with a bowl of the thick cream that Mexican cooks were so adept at whipping up and which tasted heavenly, even to Persepha who hated to admit that anything provided by the Don was less than bearable.
She couldn’t help but enjoy the salad and cream with a delicate greed, and all the time she sensed the Don watching her with a curious intentness.
‘You are in excellent appetite today, chica,’ he remarked. ‘Is it the sea air, I wonder? Or could there be some other reason?’
He could mean only one thing, though she wanted to say scornfully that she’d rather be put to death than have to carry his child, she kept her painful fury reined in tight against her breast. She looked at him with blank eyes, as if she didn’t comprehend his meaning and had no idea that he longed for her to be pregnant with his son and heir.
‘I’m just a pig for cream,’ she said lightly. ‘This fair hair of mine is just hair, you know, not a halo. I have my greeds just as you have yours, señor.’
‘Touché,’ he drawled. ‘You have a sharp little tongue and should have been named Kate, except that I prefer the name you were given. It has a rare quality just like you, mia.’
‘You mean that it has a fateful one,’ she corrected him, her small white teeth crunching a big blue grape. ‘I’m named after Persephone, as well you know, my own dark lord, and though your hacienda may not be quite like Hades, it feels like it to me.’
‘You find nothing there that pleases you?’ He spoke in a dry tone of voice, as if he well knew her feelings with regard to his home. ‘No beauty in its gardens, no pleasure in its water-walks, no delight in its patios or its rooms? I should say there was far more to please the senses at the hacienda than I saw at Stonehill. It seemed grey and grim to me.’
‘Stonehill was my home,’ she rejoined, giving him a resentful look. ‘I loved it, which is more than I can say for the Hacienda Ruy. It’s just a gilded prison as far as I’m concerned.’
‘And I your jailer, eh?’ He ordered coffee when the waiter came to collect their dessert dishes, and also asked if they had a certain brand of cigar. A box of the cigars was brought almost at once, and Persepha watched silently as the Don selected one and rolled it between his lean fingers in order to test the crispness of the leaf. A light was supplied by the deferential waiter, who when he brought their coffee also brought a dish of bonbons, delightful, almost oriental confections, some of nougat, some of chocolate and others of real candied fruit. A slight smile touched the waiter’s swarthy face as he glanced at Persepha, who in her sleeveless dress, dappled by the softly moving shadows of the parasol, looked very young, and very fair in contrast to the dark, powerful figure of the Don, who was so obviously her patrón.
‘Sweets to the sweet.’ The Don pushed the bonbon dish towards her after the waiter had gone. ‘Come, chica, you said you were feeling greedy and the candy does look inviting.’
‘Are you hoping to fatten me up?’ She spoke lightly, but couldn’t quite meet his eyes as she took a piece of nougat and popped it into her mouth. ‘Spaniards as a rule like their wives to be plump and I don’t quite meet that specification, do I? In fact, señor, I often wonder why you chose to marry a woman who obviously has no affection for you, and barely any respect—’
‘Respect?�
�� He took her up sharply then, and flicked ash from his cigar with an impatient movement. ‘I certainly don’t ask for the schoolgirlish affection which you gave to that guardian of yours, but I do demand that you respect your position as my wife. What is private between us is of no concern to the world at large, but when in public you will conduct yourself as a lady, with your sharp little claws sheathed and your language restrained. I sometimes wonder if Marcus Stonehill was the correct sort of person to have charge of a young, impressionable girl. His household was entirely male, and I understand at times a veritable gambling den. It’s a wonder he didn’t try to make a pseudo-boy of you.’
‘I wish he had!’ Persepha stirred her coffee so fiercely that most of it flew over the edge of the cup into the saucer. ‘I wish he’d taught me how to earn my living as a card sharp, then I wouldn’t be under your authority! Yes, Marcus liked to gamble, but he never imbued me with the fever for it. He kept me out of that side of his life.’
‘How innocent of you to say that,’ the Don drawled. ‘I think, querida, that he used you as a small white mouse enticing in the tomcats - ah, if you aim that bonbon dish at me in public, then you had best beware of me in private.’
‘You - you really are a devil!’ Her face actually whitened as she looked at him, fear and distress burning in her eyes. ‘But if you think you can turn me against the memory of Marcus, then you’re out of luck. I knew his faults and his virtues, and funnily enough I loved him for both. I only hate you and I see no virtue in you at all — unless it is that you treat your peons with more courtesy than you treat your wife!’
‘Don’t raise your voice,’ he cut in, and now his eyes were glittering with that icy fury she had induced in him once or twice before, which had sent her running from him like a scared young animal, seeking some means of escape but finding only a place to hide, once in the huge kitchen of the hacienda, where she had grabbed an onion and a knife and to the utter amazement of the girl working there had proceeded to strip the vegetable to bits, tears raining down her face, both fear-induced and onion-induced.
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