Beloved Tyrant

by Violet Winspear

  Julio officially interviewed Lyn in his office later that day. Here he catalogued the duties required of her as Leoni’s governess. “The child, despite the mischief in her, is intelligent, Miss Gilmour, but she will refuse to take an interest in the things which are not alive and vital. If she wishes to go walking or riding then you will comply with her wishes. The time for her real education is not yet at hand, and what I really require for her is a companion of patience, humour, and a liking for fresh air and sunshine.”

  “You don’t consider me too young for the job?” Lyn wanted this point determined once and for all.

  He smiled, and a hint of the family arrogance glimmered in his eyes as he took in her youthful appearance. “I feel tolerably certain, Miss Gilmour, that you will make an excellent companion for my daughter. You can ride?”

  “Yes, senor,” Riding had been a much-liked recreation of David’s and he had been her teacher. Wishing to please him, she had been a good pupil.

  “Excellent,” said Julio. “I have just the filly to suit you.”

  “Thank you,” said Lyn with a smile, and she decided that she liked him far more than she liked his daredevil, mocking brother.

  Leoni was a model of subdued behaviour the following day. Lyn hunted a book of fables out of the library, and her softly modulated voice lent itself very effectively to the task of spinning a tale. The southern blood in her small charge was responsive to the colourful stories, and in a while Leoni wanted to sit in the circle of Lyn’s arm while she listened to the story of the three princesses who had glass hearts.

  The child was the oddest little mixture; a tiger cub one minute, and the next a kitten who nuzzled Lyn’s shoulder with her dark head.

  Lyn heard Glenda’s sports car drive away about four o’clock and she guessed that Rick had finished work on his painting for the day. He had probably gone back to the casa with Glenda ... but Lyn was mistaken and she looked dumbfounded when the door of Leoni’s playroom opened and Rick strolled in.

  His black brows climbed towards the dense peak in the centre of his hairline as he took in his young niece, sitting so mildly within the circle of Lyn’s arm. Then he treated Lyn to a sardonic bow from the hips.

  “One swallow doesn’t make a summer, I might point out.” He came to the window-seat and gazed down at Leoni with quizzical blue eyes. “And how are you feeling today, you young baggage?” he enquired.

  Leoni blinked her long lashes at him. “I’ve got a glass heart,” she informed him limpidly. “I have to take great care not to crack it.”

  Lyn checked a smile. “Tell your uncle you are feeling fine, Leoni, and thank him for asking.”

  Leoni turned her gaze to Lyn’s face and for a moment she plainly trembled on the verge of mutiny. “He’s teasing,” she muttered. “He doesn’t really care about me.”

  “Your uncle pulled you out of the sea, so of course he cares about you.” As Lyn spoke Rick ruffled the child’s hair with a lean brown hand, and she noticed how long and well-shaped were his fingers, steely and yet artistic. He was a complex mixture; far harder to understand than either Rosa or Julio Corderas. He was unpredictable, and it was a trait that made him dangerous to know.

  “You really deserve to have your bottom spanked for that trick yesterday, magpie,” he said. “Next time I will let Davy Jones have you.”

  “Who’s Davy Jones?” Leoni wanted to know.

  “He keeps a big larder at the bottom of the sea and he has it stuffed to capacity with naughty little baggages who disobey their elders,” Rick assured her, with a straight face.

  “You’re kidding me,” Leoni giggled, and pressed against Lyn with youthful roughness.

  Rick’s teeth flashed against his tanned skin and as Lyn watched him talking nonsense to his young niece, she found herself thinking that there was a great deal of charm in him, when he cared to exert it, and there was much courage as well. It would, Lyn decided, take a woman like Glenda to manage him ... in as far as a tiger could be managed. Her own innate kindness of heart shrank from the image of Rick Corderas in love. He would love like a flame ... like the sea ... elemental in his passion.

  Julio’s men returned from the cattle muster that evening and suddenly there was a great deal of fresh activity about the hacienda. Several of the bachelor cowhands occupied a nearby bunkhouse, and when Lyn retired to her room that night she heard a young man twanging the strings of a guitar and singing in a low, melodious voice a range song.

  The master of the hacienda meant his daughter to enjoy the great outdoors, and a glossy sorrel filly was set aside for Lyn to ride. Rosa said at once that Lyn must have riding clothes and they drove into the nearest town to buy them, canvas trousers that were cool in the saddle, a couple of check shirts and a sweater, and long soft-leather boots. Rosa said the sweater must be in moss green to contrast with Lyn’s hair. “I know, honey, how you feel about subdued colours, because of your young man, but I bet he wouldn’t want you to look drab. I bet he loved you for your looks - and you are extremely pretty, especially now, with more colour in your cheeks. It isn’t that I’m hardhearted, Lyn. I’m just realistic.”

  “Like your brother,” Lyn murmured.

  “You mean Rick?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sometimes wonder if he isn’t a little bit of a dreamer. He’s an artist, remember.”

  “He paints life as he sees it, Rosa. He doesn’t embroider, or go to the other extreme and distort the human frame, or a tree. He has a straight eye, not a dull or a mad one.”

  “Do you admire him, Lyn?” Rosa looked curious. “I had the impression you found him a bit overpowering.”

  “I admire his work, but—”

  “But apart from that you don’t like him?”

  “I’m sorry, Rosa

  “Don’t apologise, honey.” Rosa gave a laugh. “There are times when I could murder him, but that’s because I am more Americanized than he. In Rick resides the true Latin blood, the old arrogant conquistador nature, when men took what they wanted without a by your leave. He’ll either make heaven for the woman he marries, or hell. In any case, life with him will never be dull for the poor girl.”

  Their shopping completed, they went to lunch on the terrace overlooking the velvety grounds of the Polo Club. Both the Corderas brothers were members, and Rick played whenever he was back in Monterery.

  “Whereabouts in Spain does he live?” Lyn glanced up from her prawn cocktail, and she had the strongest feeling that Rick would have chosen one of the older parts of Spain in which to work and dwell.

  “Andalucia,” said Rosa. “It’s wildly old and beautiful, as befits the nature of the man. But I sometimes wonder how Glenda will react, if they ever decide to settle down together.”

  “Do you think they will?” Lyn visualized them together and thought again how physically well matched they were. Even their temperaments seemed alike.

  Rosa stirred with her hand the wisteria that overhung a nearby wall. “I often wonder why Glenda married Henry Martell when Rick has always been around. It couldn’t have been solely for money, for Rick commands high fees. It might well have been over this question of living in Spain. Glenda likes a sophisticated night life, and Andalucia might strike her as more than a few miles off the high-life map. And Rick is one of those who would say, ‘Whither I go, woman, you follow!”’

  Lyn smiled, for there was little doubt in her mind that Rick would be master of his destiny and that of the woman he chose to marry. She breathed the warm and fragrant air of the polo fields, and hoped that Leoni was behaving herself in the care of Dona Estella.

  The weather was at its best right now, and Lyn and her small companion took daily rides about the estate, for Julio had specified that Lyn keep the child within the boundaries of his extensive property. Colourful gauchos and lean, drawling cowboys attended the huge Corderas beef herd, and Lyn was startled to find one day that she attracted some of the younger men, seated on her sorrel filly in her cool riding clothes, her hair glo
ssy in the sunlight, an indefinable British reserve clinging about her.

  She would say good day to the men, and then ride on with Leoni, and she was embarrassed one morning when the reins of her mount were caught and held by a brown hand, while the owner requested that she attended a dance with him the coming Saturday evening.

  “Aw, come on!” he urged, as Lyn sat gazing at him in consternation. “There’s more to life for a pretty girl than tending to the wants of a spoiled kid.”

  His eyes flicked over the slender lines of her figure, and Lyn rather angrily snatched the filly’s reins out of his hand. Leoni was watching the encounter with large and curious eyes, and Lyn thought it time they rode on.

  “I really don’t get any time for dancing,” she said, and she swung her mount away from him. She felt him staring after her and gave a cold little shiver. Since the death of David she had not thought of herself as being attractive to men, and this one in particular had hard and insolent eyes.

  Lyn avoided the cowhands as much as possible after that incident, but she couldn’t ignore her own reflection when she combed her hair in front of a mirror. She was acquiring a soft, tan, while her mouth held the rosy freshness of regained health. Her heart might be buried with David, but her body was responding to the kiss of the Monterey sunshine, and her ears were delighted by the summer sounds of bird song. Her appetite had returned, and when Sister Todd wrote to ask how she was liking her job, Lyn replied with honesty that she was liking it very much. She and Leoni had made friends, and now she was feeling so much better she could cope with the child’s outbreaks of mischief. She was giving the child affection, and it was something no child could resist.

  The routine of Lyn’s days had a fairly even and enjoyable rhythm, and then early one morning there was a thump on her bedroom door that sounded so imperative she was awake in a flash and scrambling into her robe. She hastened to open the door and was amazed to see Rick Corderas standing in the corridor, clad in leather boots and riding gear.

  “Get dressed and come for a real gallop,” he ordered. “I’ll saddle up for you.”

  Lyn stood gaping at him and he snapped his fingers in her face, mocking her out of her trance. “By now you’re a good enough horsewoman to keep up with me,” he said. “Don’t keep me waiting!”

  Lyn gazed after him as he strode to the stairs, spurs like Mercury wings glittering at his booted heels. She was completely astounded by his invitation, and then to her own surprise she broke into a slight chuckle. How graciously he had asked her to ride with him, and how typical of his arrogance to take her acceptance for granted!

  The air down in the stableyard was tangy with horses and hay. Beyond where the mountains peaked the sky the early morning sun was spreading a corn-gold net over their jutting sides. The chaparral further down their slopes was patched like moleskin, and birds abandoned the trees for the heights.

  Lyn felt the supple hardness of Rick’s hands as he assisted her into the saddle of her filly, then he stood away, appraising her. She was slim-bodied as a boy, almost, and colour stung her cheeks at the deliberate way Rick studied her. “You have a good seat,” he approved. “A nice straight back, and a firm grip—”

  “I’m so glad you approve,” she murmured drily.

  “If I told you that you make a pretty picture, you would hate me,” he rejoined. He swung into the saddle of his black stallion - Tarik, a show-off with a tossing mane and a long tail. Rider and mount were well matched! Proud and virile the pair of them, exulting in their male strength and all its danger.

  Lyn’s hands tightened on her mount’s reins and she felt strangely young and untried, despite the love she had known and lost, as she followed at the heels of the stallion. They cantered beneath an archway and when the hacienda was left behind the two horses plunged side by side towards the hills.

  CHAPTER IV

  It had been an exhilarating gallop, over the hills, into the blue early distance that had now broken into gold as the sun rose higher. Now they had come out upon a craggy headland that jutted above the swish and foam of the rock-strewn water. The plateau was known locally as the Crow’s Cliff because it was so much like the fierce Pena Grajera in Spain.

  As Rick explained this, Lyn studied his hands on Tarik’s reins; ruthless and brown-skinned, firmly restraining the vital stallion, a carved gold ring glinting on the third finger of his left hand. Lyn saw a pair of clasped hands embossed on the face of the ring, and the design was so beautifully wrought that she knew the ring belonged to another century; to the old Spain whose call this man had answered, so that Monterey had become a place he visited from time to time.

  The crisp morning air was filled with sea spray, and the sage that abounded here added a spicy edge as the breezes made it shimmer into a purple haze.

  Rick slanted a glance down towards the sea, which splashed endlessly over the black rocks, spraying their sides with foam and long tresses of sea-wrack. “There is a strange lure to the sound of water,” he said. “The lure, perhaps, which is in the voice of the lover who doesn’t intend to be denied - the whisper of destiny.”

  “The sea is cruel,” Lyn replied, listening with him to its cruel, seductive sound.

  “Only because it holds the spell we are drawn to even as we fight it. It is creative, passionate and eternal.”

  “It holds destruction!” The words broke from Lyn.

  “So does life, but in the process we receive pleasure as well as pain from the process of living.”

  As he spoke he looked at her; she was aware of his ice-blue scrutiny, but she couldn’t meet it. His words had struck at the wound in the heart of her; at her shattered hopes and future uncertainty. At the joy which had been like a rainbow, quivering with colour, and then gone as though it had never been. “Are you feeling hungry, Lyn?”

  It was his unexpected use of her first name rather than his question which lifted her brown eyes to his face. Glints of humour danced in his eyes, while his mouth was faintly mocking. “What is it short for - Lyn?”

  “Lynette.” She glanced down again and stroked the side of her filly’s satiny neck.

  “Very nice,” he drawled. “The shortening of names is a barbarous custom that could only be permitted in a so-called civilized land. I shall call you Lynette.”

  Her bottom lip had a restive quiver. She had not expected an overture of friendship from him, and she hardly knew if she wanted it or not. He was ... oh, why not face it! He was not an easy person to be friendly with. His was too definite a personality, so that the ordinary civilities shrivelled away and contact with him became a kind of conflict. A game of thrust and parry; a duel of words and looks. Like Toledo steel he would never bend, soften or submit. In all combat with him a woman would either surrender or run away.

  How is your appetite?” he murmured.

  “Aroused by our gallop,” she admitted.

  “Then let us go and have breakfast.” He wheeled Tank, and Lyn cantered her filly in the stallion’s wake. She thought they were going back to the hacienda, but after a ten-minute gallop through the hills they came to a small chapel with a bell-tower, whose rough gold walls seemed encrusted with the sunshine of centuries. They cantered in through the open gateway, and they must have been noticed through one of the lower windows, for the front door was swept open and out came a lionesque old man in a sweeping black cassock.

  “Father Ilario!” Rick swung from the saddle and shook hands with the priest, whose seamed face had lighted up with pleasure and welcome.

  “I know, my son,” he smiled. “You have come to eat breakfast in my garden and to be for a while a boy again. You are very welcome, Ricardo, and also the young lady.”

  “Thank you, Father.” Rick turned to Lyn and before she could draw breath to protest his hands were upon her waist and she was being lifted from her own saddle with consummate ease.

  After Lyn was introduced to Father Ilario she walked with Rick beneath an archway into a garden set within grey-green madrone trees, so encha
nting, so lost in time, that a sigh of delight parted her lips. She put a hand to the golden trumpets of a clump of wild nicotine, while tiny waxen orange-flower petals fell on her chestnut hair. The air was redolent of a hundred wild and lovely scents and the trees were filled with bird song. It was a garden of peace and beauty, and a wave of gratitude ran over her heart that Rick should bring her to the chapel.

  She sat with him at a wooden table and enjoyed lime-tree honey on crisp home-baked bread, spiced apple cake, and figs with the bloom still upon them. Their coffee was nectar, drenched in golden-yellow cream.

  “Wonderful!” She sat back replete, and smiling.

  “Hunger is the best of sauces.” Father Ilario turned from feeding a grape to a brightly coloured macaw swinging on a branch and cawing the odd word as it accepted the grapes.

  “Do you make this delicious honey yourself, Father?” Lyn put a finger to the jar in which it glinted green as jade.

  He came and sat at the table and they talked of bees and gardens while Rick went inside the chapel for a few minutes. Quite unexpectedly the old priest said: “The heart is also a garden, my child. Planted with both thorns and flowers, watered by our tears and fed by the sunshine of our laughter. And out of the pain where a flower has died there can bloom another. Perhaps it will take a new shape, a fresh fragrance, but when it springs into being, allow it to flourish - do not tear it out by the roots because it presumes to grow in cherished soil.”

  Lyn gazed at the priest with startled eyes. His eyes were dark and infinitely wise. “We who live close to God are also close to both heartache and joy,” he told her. “I know that you have been hurt and that you have grieved.”