Beloved Tyrant

by Violet Winspear

  “Be careful!” Rosa laughed down at him. "She’ll bury you altogether, legs and handsome torso.”

  Felipe smiled up at her impudently. “You and Cort have my permission to wander off like the others for some quiet canoodling. Lyn will safeguard my - er - handsome torso.”

  “H’m.” Rosa cast a look at Lyn, who stood alone for a moment gazing at the sea, a certain pensiveness about her. “Perhaps, after all, you would be safer buried in the sand, Felipe.”

  He laughed softly, and Lyn turned to look at Rosa. “Yes, you go exploring,” she smiled. “I shall be fine - with Felipe.” Lyn made herself at home on a rug and put on her sun glasses. The afternoon grew slumbrous, while the tide had come in to lap like the tongue of an indolent tiger at the lopped black rocks along the shore. Now and again a bird dropped weightless through the blue sky, to land with a flutter of wings in a tree, and Lyn smiled to herself as she thought of Rosa strolling off with Cort, his hard corded arm encircling her slim waist, his wheaten hair making an attractive contrast to Rosa’s smooth dark hair.

  In a while Leoni’s chatter ceased, and sleepy after her big lunch she curled herself into a ball on a floral camping pouffe, her dark lashes innocently at rest on her warmly flushed cheeks. Lyn watched her and wondered about her, and checked a little perplexed sigh.

  Felipe suddenly rolled out of his sandy cocoon and flicked a cigarette out of the pack Rosa had left behind. “Light me,” he murmured.

  She found the matches and obliged.

  “You’re a rare creature.” He propped himself on one elbow and regarded her through the smoke from his cigarette. “Most females never stop chattering, but you know when to speak and when to be silent.”

  “I was listening to the sea and the birds,” she replied. “Listen, it’s rather like music.”

  “With passion and storm held at bay for a while, eh?”

  “Mmmm, it’s a little frightening, when you think of it, that all that blue and creamy ocean can be whipped into fury and turn dangerous.”

  “Aren’t human beings rather like that?”

  “Yes, I suppose they are.” Lyn filtered sand through her fingers, and gazed at the ocean, molten silver far out, foam-whipped as it surged to the shore.

  “You are suddenly feeling sad, though I can’t see your eyes.” He lifted a hand and removed her sun-glasses, and he gazed for a long moment into her eyes. Lyn felt his thumb in her small chin dimple. “Has anyone ever told you that you have the eyes of a fawn about to be sacrificed?”

  “How tiresome for me,” she said lightly.

  “Being sacrificed to the forces of love could be your destiny, little face.”

  Lyn stiffened at his words, and shook off his touch.

  “That was the reaction of a prude,” he said. “Life might have done something to make you wary of love, but please don’t become a prude. They are the worst sort of female a man comes up against.”

  “Why, because you find it hard to get your own way with her?”

  Felipe’s eyes narrowed, and then he jammed his cigarette down into the sand and he was reaching for Lyn when she jumped to her feet. Swift and lithe he arose, and she was caught as Glenda and Rick appeared from among the trees. Both voices broke off in mid-speech as both of them saw Felipe with his arms around Lyn.

  Lyn stood there, petrified, as Glenda strolled towards her cousin, a scarlet flower glowing in her hair. The colour matched her mouth, the curve of the petals her opulent lips. “It looks, Rick, as if we are interrupting a delicate scene,” she drawled.

  Felipe let go of Lyn, and she felt sure she looked white-faced as Glenda stared at her, her heavy eyelids drooped over her sea-green eyes.

  “The flower becomes you, Glen.” Felipe approached her, but when he would have touched the scarlet blossom, she slapped his hand away, a gesture that said more than words.

  “Rick,” she drawled, “has crowned me queen of the isle. You may give me a cigarette.”

  Felipe placed one between her very red lips and applied a match to it.

  “We found a patch of wild strawberries.” Rick was raking about in one of the hampers. “Ah, this will serve!” He dug out a plastic box which had held tomatoes.

  “What are you doing, Rick?” Glenda glanced at him. “Aren’t you going to laze in the sun - with me?”

  “I’m going back for the rest of those strawberries. Concetta has a sweet tooth and it seems a pity to let them go to waste.” His gaze found Lyn, abruptly and disconcertingly. “Come with me and see the interior of the island.”

  Lyn caught her breath ... what did he intend to do when they were alone, lecture her again on the perils of enticing a rake ... or did he mean to follow Felipe’s example? As she stood hesitant, a refusal half-formed on her lips, he caught her by the wrist and coolly marched her away with him.

  “L-let me go - how dare you!” Her struggles, alas, were as futile as those of a bird caught in the talons of a large cat.

  “Stop behaving like Leoni.” He gave her wrist a painful shake. “Or I shall be tempted to give you a spanking.”

  “Y-you wouldn’t be so presumptuous!”

  “Wouldn’t I?” His eyes held hers, so threateningly that her struggles were abruptly subdued. Gnawing troubledly at her lip, she let him lead her in among the cool green foliage. Birds fluttered, made a protest at the disturbance, and then settled down into their hideaways.

  “I know I’m thoroughly hateful,” Rick drawled, “even a brute, if I read your eyes correctly, but despite the way you feel about me, I shouldn’t like to see you—”

  “Drowning my sorrows in Felipe’s arms?” she flashed. “Believe me, whatever you see in my eyes when I look at you is a truthful reflection of my feelings. I find you overbearing - and arrogant!”

  Then she gave a cry as she was pushed against the trunk of a nearby tree. The plastic box bounced to the ground, and her eyes lifted wildly and she saw strange green shadows darkening Rick’s face, leaving only his eyes to glow with a frightening light. Rage ... something ... seemed to surge into tumult within him, and the next instant she was caught slim and helpless in his arms. She felt his mouth moulding itself to hers, suffered his warm, bruising closeness, and the lingering torment of a kiss that ravished the breath out of her.

  She stumbled, dazed, when he abruptly released her. He watched with hard sapphire eyes as she put a supporting hand to the tree behind her.

  “Now you have something to really hate me for,” he gritted. “I am not too keen myself on girls who set out after another woman’s husband.”

  The remark was so deliberately baiting that Lyn had raised her hand and slapped him across the cheek before she could stop herself. Pain ran along her fingers, and fear skidded across her heart, as the pair of them stood there, cloaked in shadow and glaring at each other.

  “Gracias.” He raised a hand and fingered his jaw. “Now we have both received something to remember.”

  Lyn’s bruised lips were quivering, hardly able to form the words she forced out of them. “I think you’ve been looking for an excuse to insult me. You know I’ve never encouraged your brother—”

  “Deny that you have lunched with him at the romantic El Ronda.” The words leapt at her. “Deny his presence in your bedroom last night.”

  “Senor Corderas came to my room to dispose of a beastly great spider planted in my tallboy by someone else who doesn’t like me, or want me at the hacienda.” Tears glittered in Lyn’s eyes. “All day I’ve been on the verge of making a certain decision - now you have made up my mind for me. I’m going away! I’m leaving the Hacienda Rosa, and you can find someone else on whom to exercise your cruel tongue.”

  They stood in that wooded clearing, stone images staring at one another. A tear splashed to Lyn’s cheek, but she fought the rest of the tide. To weep in front of him would only please him!

  She was turning away from him when he said: “It was not my intention to hurt you.”

  Her profile was pale, wetly starred by tha
t solitary tear. He had hurt her very much with his accusations. “I want only one man,” she said, distantly, “and he is the one man I can’t have any more. Not your brother, or Felipe del Rey, can ever replace David in my heart. If I had known that it could end so finally, so sadly, I would have chosen not to fall in love!”

  “We are not in possession of that choice.” Rick spoke rather grimly. “A good many people might choose not to love if they were free agents in the matter. There can be just as much pain in feeling love for the living—”

  “How would you know that?” Lyn flung at him. “You have never loved anyone deeply - except, perhaps, your mother.”

  “Except my mother, eh?” He bent to pick up the plastic box. “Do you think the spider was planted in your room by Leoni?”

  “It seems more than likely, but somehow I don’t think the child’s cruelty is calculated.”

  “Nor was mine, chiquita. Cruelty resides in all of us ... in southern blood it is possibly closer to the surface and more, likely to leap the barriers of our restraint—”

  “Oh, don’t make excuses for what you thought - for what you did.” Lyn pushed wearily at the tousled wings of her chestnut hair. “You’ve enjoyed baiting the English girl with the broken dream. Playing with her like a cat with a bird. Extending a velvet paw, then showing the gleam of your claws.” She met his eyes, half-shadowed by the pensile foliage of the green willow against which he had pinned her. “We can’t all be strong and ruthless. Some of us have hearts that aren’t quite so hard as yours. As if I would hurt Concetta when she has been hurt enough by the loss of her small son - and perhaps the love of her husband!”

  Lyn turned from him, but his touch on her arm delayed her. “Come and pick the strawberries. They are for her.”

  Somehow she would not have gone with him if he had pretended to be sorry for what he had said to her. But by not falsifying the situation he made it tolerable for her to follow him among the trees until they came to the quiet, cool place where the strawberries had grown wild and huge. It was their juice, so sweet and thick like syrup, which had stained Glenda’s lips. Lyn knelt and plucked them from their bed, while Rick lined the box with leaves. They looked attractive when placed in the box, and Lyn knew that Concetta would like them.

  How strangely complex was the heart of Rick Corderas. He could be so cruel ... yet towards those he liked he could be very kind.

  Lyn arose from her knees, all too aware that he did not like her.

  After they had retraced their steps to the beach, Lyn turned from Rick and left his side. Suddenly she felt cold and put it down to the reaction of that emotional storm, but the sun had been shining too brilliantly and now it had lost some of its radiance.

  Glenda, after sharing a sharp glance between Lyn and Rick, now stood surveying the sky, her ruddy head thrown back so that she resembled the figurehead of a Viking ship. “Shall we make a move?” she suggested. “It seems to be clouding up for rain, and you know how rough the sea can get off this part of the coast.”

  “There goes the devil’s chariot!” Felipe gestured at the black cloud racing across the face of the sun. “He’s been at his work, now he’s streaking off home to his fiery palace.”

  Lyn gave a shiver, for the sky was growing ominous and the waves were splashing higher over the rocks. “You look cold, honey.” Rosa tossed her a large blazer, and it wasn’t until Lyn had gratefully put it on that she noticed the silver-thread initials woven in the shield on the breast pocket ... R. C.

  She wanted to drag herself out of the blazer, but Rosa was looking at her and she was forced to control the impulse. But she was bitterly tormented by such close contact with a garment that clothed Rick’s bruising body, whose touch could still be felt by her skin, her nerves, her very bones. Like a brand that had left her marked!

  Her relief was acute when they were finally aboard the cruiser and she was able to change into her dress in Glenda’s cabin. Back on deck she gave Rick his blazer and his eyes were enigmatical upon her face as he took his property with a short word of thanks. He didn’t ask if it had kept her warm; he knew that she had worn it burning with resentment.

  By the time the cruiser chugged into Monterey Bay the sky had let down a grey curtain of rain. Rick tucked Leoni under his blazer, and she giggled merrily and thought it a great joke that in the stampede for the cars everyone else got soaking wet.

  “I’ll bring the picnic gear to the hacienda tomorrow, Rick,” Glenda called from the Pontiac.

  He turned from bundling Leoni and Lyn into the back of the estate car. “Right you are, Glenda. Adios!”

  She threw him a kiss off her bright fingertips, then the Pontiac swept out of the parking lot ahead of the Corderas car. Most of the way home Leoni knelt with her nose pressed to the window, streaming with rain on the outside and blurring everything. Suddenly she came to Lyn’s side. “It’s raining ever so fast,” she remarked.

  “Is it, pet?” Lyn smiled at her in a slightly absent way.

  The child blinked her dark lashes and knuckled her small nose, as though it tickled from some of the window dust she had been breathing. “I - I’m sorry about the sand,” she said at last. “Did it annoy you?”

  “Very much, Leoni.”

  “Oh.” The child pondered this grown-up answer. “Did you want to spank me?”

  “What would be the use? You would only find some other way to hurt my feelings.”

  “Your feelings?”

  Lyn nodded and looked serious about the matter. “I hoped we were friends, but you seem not to want my friendship after all.”

  Leoni wrinkled her nose like a rabbit. “I thought you were different from the others.”

  “Oh, in what way?”

  “I thought you wouldn’t go all soppy over my poppa.”

  Lyn bit her lip. “Leoni, your father came to my room last night to remove the enormous spider you planted in my tallboy.” The child blinked and stopped trying to wriggle away from Lyn’s hands. “What spider?” she asked.

  “Now don’t pretend to know nothing about it, Leoni. You put it among my underclothes to frighten me, a hideous black thing which I imagine you found in one of the barns.”

  “It must have got into your drawer on its own—”

  “We both know it didn’t, and you must learn to grow up and not play unkind tricks on people. They aren’t in the least clever or funny.”

  “But—”

  “But what?”

  “Oh, nothing.” Leoni tugged free of Lyn, a sudden mutinous set to her features that turned her into a pocket edition of her uncle. Lyn regarded her with exasperation, then a smile, quite uncontrollable, darted across Lyn’s face. In unconscious imitation of Rick his small niece had crossed one tartan-clad knee across the other and she was swinging her foot as he did when vexed.

  “Friends again?” Lyn asked.

  Leoni considered the matter. “But I didn’t do it,” she said. “I didn’t put the spider in your drawer, and I don’t want to be friends if you’re going to blame me, Lyn.”

  “Darling,” Lyn brushed at the child’s fringe, “are you telling me the truth?”

  “Yes, Lyn, honest.” Leoni crossed her heart. “I might have put a worm in your drawer but not a spider. Momma doesn’t like them and she goes all white when she sees one, and, Lyn, I do like you. I think you have a pretty face ... Pico says the cowhands do, as well, so I know my poppa thinks you’re pretty. I know he bought you those sweets because he buys Momma the same sort.”

  “Leoni!” Lyn took hold of her and hugged her. “Were you a little jealous because of the sweets?”

  “Yes.” Leoni mumbled the word against Lyn.

  “Why, your father only bought them for me because he thought how well I was looking after you. He likes to think you are being made happy, and I do try to make you happy.”

  “Poppa wishes I was a boy, like Pico. He gave my present to Pico.”

  “Only because you were naughty. You can’t expect to be rewarded wh
en you say rude things to people, my pet.”

  “Will you give me a present, Lyn?” Leoni wheedled, snuggling close and planting a kiss on the side of Lyn’s neck.

  Lyn had to smile to herself, and she thought irresistibly of Rick, being as arrogant and hurtful as the devil one minute, and then asking her in a deep, velvety voice to go and pick strawberries with him. This strain of charm and cruelty seemed to run deep in the Corderas clan, and one either accepted it or ran away from them.

  Lyn meant what she had said to Rick, back there on the island. She meant to leave the hacienda and intended to tell Julio that evening. She would say she was homesick for England ... and now her raw-edged reluctance to return there without David was blunted it was true that she missed the scents and sounds of her own land.

  The estate car had slowed on the ravine road, but now it picked up speed and in another ten minutes they were driving under the archway into the courtyard of the hacienda. A black sedan was parked near the entrance to the house, and Rosa stared at it as she left the front seat beside Rick.

  “I’d swear that was Doctor Judson’s car!” she exclaimed. “Yes, it is. He’s had that little hula doll hanging in the rear window for years.”

  “What would he be doing here?” Rick came to the rear door of the estate car and gave Lyn a hand out. Leoni scrambled past him, crying with that odd perception of children:

  “It’s my momma! She’s ill again!”

  The child went dashing into the house, and the three adults hurried after her. Dona Estella awaited them in the hall, and she was forcibly restraining Leoni, who wanted to go dashing upstairs. “There is no need for alarm, Rosa,” she said at once to her niece, who had gone pale beneath her tan.

  “Is it Concetta whom the doctor has come to see?” Rick demanded.

  His aunt inclined her head, with its high crown of plaited dark hair. “Please compose yourselves. She is going to be all right—”