Ricki stared at her. 'I - I don't understand you, she faltered. 'What do you mean?'
'The Devil's Tears - they run down over the rocks where the auto fell over the ravine,' the old lady drew in her breath with a hiss. 'A bad place to die - a bad place!'
Ricki joined Alvedo in a mood of faint melancholy, and a sleepy-eyed waiter brought Granizada to their table under an awning. The drink was made up of shaved ice and lemon juice; the ice was like snow in the tall glasses, and Ricki, who had grown hot walking about, was grateful for the drink.
While waiting for Ricki to join him, Alvedo had been making sketches of the people passing back and forth across the square, a pedlar on a burro hung with baskets and tiny bells, women yarning at the fountain with pitchers on hip and shoulder, a cowled monk looking dark under a colourful taurine poster
Ricki felt a slight jolt of surprise as she studied the sketches, for though she could see that Alvedo's technical ability was quite good, his people and animals somehow lacked the fluid movement she had noticed in several of young Jaime's drawings. But perhaps Alvedo's real talent lay in painting on canvas, and she glanced up to pay him a polite compliment only to find eyes fixed hard and glittering upon her. He knew, she thought wildly, that already the child exceeded him in talent and he didn't like the knowledge!
'H-how medieval these people look,' she said, a shade too heartily. 'There must be scenes for putting on canvas all over Spain?'
He nodded, then took the sketches rather roughly out of her hand and tore them into pieces.
'Oh, why did you do that? she exclaimed,
'You know why!' He shrugged, and dropped the pieces into the ashtray between them. They left the cafe in a short while, and he drove the car at such a rate along the valley road that Ricki clung by her fingertips to the edge of her seat. She caught at one point his sidelong glance, and she wanted to cry out to him to slow down for it was here, to the sound of water rushing below in the increasing darkness, that another car had hurtled over the edge of the ravine!
Then, abruptly, he braked and everything was still but for the sound of the Devil's Tears and the beating of Ricki's heart. She gazed, appalled, at the few inches of roadway that divided them from the ravine that in the gloom was bottomless as human folly. She shivered and; turned to look at Alvedo as he caught at her hands. 'The devil got into me just then,' he said contritely. 'But when I drive along this road I always feel compelled to go fast when I reach this particular spot ' He broke off and stared into the twilight that deepened over the valley and turned trees to strange shapes whose foliage rustled and moved
Had he also loved Conquesta? Ricki wondered. Had she captured his heart as well, only to break it?
'Does the past haunt you as well, Alvedo?' Ricki asked.
'So it must be, for anyone who knew Conquesta,' he replied. 'She was lovely and laughing except when Arturo was one of our group. You felt at once the change in Conquesta when he appeared. As a rose folds in its petals when the darkness and the coldness touch them, so it was with her in his company. Her laughter would lose its gaiety, her eyes their sparkle. They would follow him and seem to beg of him to let her go!'
'He loved her,' Ricki whispered. 'In his place '
'Would I let her go?' Alvedo demanded. 'Perhaps not.'
'Then why condemn him so harshly? He's only a man and, being also a Spaniard, hardly likely to see anything wrong in an arranged marriage. I've been told,' Ricki added, 'that Conquesta regretted her runaway marriage when it was too late'
'Some called it regret, but it could have been fear,' Alvedo's gold rings were digging into Ricki's fingers. 'Leandro should have taken Conquesta away from the valley, but he accepted a position at her father's ranch and, gay-hearted Andaluz that he was, he saw no harm in re-establishing contact with his brother ah, but you shiver, pequena!' I forget that you sit here in the evening air in so light a dress.'
Before Ricki realized his intention and could ward it off, he put his arms around her, and the further surprise of hearing the galloping of a horse held her motionless as a large grey and its rider loomed out of the dusk. She stared, wide-eyed, as the rider reined in beside the car and took in swiftly her lightly clad figure in Alvedo's arms. 'So this is where you are!' The words seemed to flick against Ricki's skin. 'You have been absent from the Granja for several hours, Miss O'Neill.'
Don Arturo sat looking down at her as though at a cheap little sensation-seeker, his nostrils dilated in a scornful way that both angered Ricki, and made her pull sharply out of the tutor's arms. 'I'm surely entitled to a little recreation while my patient takes his siesta,' she flared. It's no more than you allow your other hirelings,'
'My other hirelings, as you put it, do not take their recreation in parked cars on public highways.' His face against the starlight was chiselled and utterly cold. I came in search of you, Miss O'Neill, because Jaime has had a fall - not a serious one, but it frightened him and he will j not be consoled '
'A fall, senor?' Ricki's anger was lost in a rush of concern. 'Oh, what was he doing - how did it happen ?'
'I imagine he was trying to walk.' Don Arturo wheeled his mount so he was facing towards the Granja. He added sardonically: 'I will ride ahead to tell the boy that his beloved tata is on her way home to him - pronto!'
The big grey broke into a gallop at the prod of a spur, | and Alvedo swore under his breath as he grabbed at the starter. The engine raked the quiet with a grating sound, the car started forward, then stalled, and Alvedo wished the Cazalets in a place deeper, hotter than the valley.
'Hurry up and get her going,' Ricki urged.
'The gas gauge is low,' he muttered. 'She will warm up in a few seconds.'
Again he produced the raking, sounds that seemed to grate against Ricki's ragged nerves, and she caught at the door handle. 'I can make it faster on foot, she said, and the next instant she was out of the car and running down the road with Alvedo calling her name in exasperated tones.
When she reached the Granja she was out of breath and had a stitch in her side. She hastened across the hall and up the stairs,, the flames of the wall lamps dipping in the breeze she created as she hurried along the gallery and rounded the bends that led to the nursery-suite. The bedroom door was standing ajar and when she pushed it open the first thing she saw was a man's shadow etched by the lamplight against the white wall; standing below it beside his nephew's bed was Don Arturo and he was urging the child to cease crying before he made himself sick. 'What is a small bump on the head of a growing boy of seven years?' he asked. 'Come now, let me dry those silly tears for you.'
The man drew a handkerchief from a hip pocket of his riding breeches, but the boy would not be persuaded to lift his face from the pillow in which it was buried. 'Go away - you!' he said, muffledly. 'I don't w-want you - I w-want Rickee '
'I'm here, Jaime.' She crossed the room, not looking at Don Arturo, set aside her handbag and sat down on the side of the bed. She took hold of Jaime's thin, shaking shoulders and, realizing this was indeed his beloved tata, the boy huddled into her arms like a forlorn puppy and as she stroked back the dark hair from his feverish forehead she saw the slight, shiny bump he had sustained.
'What were you doing, guapo?' she murmured. 'I've told you not to try any tricks when you're alone, now haven't I?'
'I w-wanted to see if I could's-stand up,' he hiccupped.
'On the bed, my silly pigeon?' she asked.
He nodded against her, and this time she did look at his uncle, a half-smile on her lips. Don Arturo did not return her smile, but stood lean, dark and withdrawn at the foot of the bed, his hands deep in the pockets of his breeches. The look of him always faintly startled Ricki when she saw him in riding attire; somehow his tweed jacket, khaki cords and knee-length boots latched by straps brought out the Andalusian in him. She was less conscious of his crisp haughtiness, more aware of a lithe strength overlaid by sun-darkened skin. His brother Leandro must have resembled him as he looked standing there, the
lamplight shadowing the lines beside his mouth and the hint of grey at his temples:
'The contusion does not strike you as too serious, Miss O'Neill?' he asked formally.
'Somewhat chilled, she took another look at the bump. 'Does your head hurt at all, Jaime?' she wanted to know. 'It aches.' The child wrapped his arms about her neck and pressed his forehead against her. He sniffed, and she accepted with a murmur of thanks the handkerchief Don Arturo held out to her. 'Come on, have a good blow,' she said to the boy. He obeyed her, lying passive while she wiped the last of his tears from his face. 'All this crying has given you a worse headache than you would have had, she scolded. Then she added casually: 'Did you manage to stand up ?'
His eyes wavered to his uncle, then back to her face. 'A bit,' he said. 'But it hurt me, and that was when I fell off the bed.'
'You are a tinker, aren't you?' She smiled and felt the collar of his pyjamas. 'Oh dear, you're quite damp from all that crying, Jaime. I'd better get you out of these into a warm bath, then we'll have some supper, eh?'
'Just you and me?' he urged. 'No one else, Rickee!'
Ricki didn't dare look at the breeched figure of his uncle, and curiously enough she felt rather sorry for him. His concern for the boy had sent him out searching for her, yet here was Jaime letting him know openly that he wasn't wanted. Not that she could imagine her autocratic employer sitting down to nursery supper and drinking hot chocolate out of mugs with Don Quixote pictures on them!
He was looking quite impassive as he said to his nephew: 'If you continue to feel so active, picaro, you will soon need a pony of your own. One of the mares is soon to foal; she is a spirited creature and her foal is sure to be a fine one. You would like him when he is born ?'
.My abuelito promised to let me pick out a pony when I am able to go to his ranch,' Jaime replied, referring to his grandfather, Don Enrique Salvadori, whose daughter had been Jaime's mother. 'Thank you all the same, Senor Tio'
With a sigh that was just audible, Senor Tio swung towards the door. 'Please to come and take coffee with me later on, Miss O'Neill,' he said as he strode past her. 'When you and the nino have had your nursery party together.'
The door closed on his lean, upright figure, and Ricki gave, her young patient a very serious look. Just now she had glimpsed pain in the Don's eyes, though he had spoken in a droll tone of voice, and she knew that it hurt him to be excluded from Jaime's trust and affection. 'Why won't you make an effort to be friends with your uncle?' she asked the boy. 'He keeps trying to establish a bridge, and you keep knocking it down. Now how would you like it if you offered me a sweet and I turned up my nose and refused it?'
The boy gazed at her with solemn eyes for several moments, then he said: 'Your nose is already turned up, Rickee,' and he touched the slight tilt that made her look - she often thought - more than ever like something that belonged in the woods where the toadstools grew.
'I bet,' Jaime added, his glance shifting to the large brown shape of her handbag, 'that if I wanted a sweet, you would give me one.'
'You can want on until you've had your supper, you little limb of the devil!' She had to laugh, if below it there lurked a sigh, as she went into the adjoining bathroom and turned on the hot water tap. She took a jar of bath crystals off a glass shelf and scattered them into the water, where they dissolved as her days here would start dissolving now Jaime had started to show signs of active progress. He would, she reflected, be out of her care within a matter of weeks, and Don Arturo would be dismissing her from his employ.
Her eyes met her reflection in the bathroom mirror, and she saw her own look of distress. There would, inevitably, be trouble with Jaime when his uncle sent his green tata, his playmate and story-teller, away from the Granja. She pushed tiredly at her hair. She could only hope, in the short time she had left here, to bring about a change of heart in Jaime with regard to his guardian. Things could not be left as they were between them the trouble was that the heart within each person was an island, with love a castaway who was accepted or rejected upon the bounds or limits of that island!
Jaime was tubbed, put into a pair of pyjamas, and then, sitting among the fresh sheets of his bed, he tackled with Ricki the supper which Alvarez brought up to them. A light soup, then veal kidneys with baby vegetables cooked in butter, followed by ice-cream. Jaime loved ice-cream and Ricki wondered if it had been made and sent up at the specific orders of his uncle a little fuss-making after his fright.
His fright was now forgotten, and he was looking very proud of his bump because it was the outward sign of his first victory over his helplessness. It shone like his eyes as he came up from a deep submersion in his chocolate mug, a brown moustache decorating his upper lip. 'I am blown out,' he announced, as Ricki took the mug and set it down on the tray with the other depleted dishes. .She wiped his mouth and decided to give him his net of chocolate fish in the morning; she didn't want his sleep disturbed by a bilious attack.
'Sing to me, Rickee,' he coaxed, snuggling down against his pillows. 'Sing about the little nut tree.'
She smiled and stroked the dark hair out of his eyes, feeling the grip of tenderness about her throat as she gazed down at his small, fine-boned face in the lamplight, his long lashes trembling with the threat of sleep, his nose a proud miniature of his uncle's. This child was indeed a Cazalet, and it was he Castilian blood in him that made his hates and his loves equally strong.
'All right, my squirrel, I'll sing about the nut tree,' she murmured, and watched him drift off to sleep to the fey little tune. She bent over him and brushed a light kiss across his bruised forehead. 'Sleep tight, guapo, ' she said softly. 'Dream about the pony your abuelito is going to give you, and which you will soon be riding.'
She lowered the lamp, carefully picked up the supper tray and let herself out of the nursery-suite. Her face had grown pensive; she was remembering the Don's invitation to coffee downstairs, and the cold, curt look of him as he had gazed down at her in Alvedo's arms. He had plainly taken that interlude for a romantic one, and she wondered if he was going to haul her over the coals, suggest that she behave with discretion more becoming to a physio-attendant. It seemed likely, for he didn't usually invite her to take coffee with him.
He wasn't always at home in the evenings, and when people came to dine they were usually neighbouring landowners. To her relief Ricki never received a summons to be the only female among a group of stern-avised Spaniards, who smoked cigars so strong that their aroma lingered in the air the morning after one of those business gatherings. She quite enjoyed her own company after she had settled Jaime for the night, the brasero in her room glowing with crushed olive stones, a fuel both warming and pleasant-smelling, a good book on hand to read, and always a small glass of wine to round off her dinner. That sophisticated glass of wine on her dinner tray always made her feel less like a Jane Eyre figure in a Victorian romance!
While Ricki was washing and changing her dress for her interview with the Don, she heard a couple of ominous storm growls in the distance, and she was on her way downstairs when lightning lit up the stained glass windows and thunder boomed out over the valley. Ricki wasn't exactly nervous of storms, but the electricity in the air always had an odd effect on the emotions - suddenly she was running the rest of the way down the stairs, arriving like someone pursued outside the half-open doorway of her employer's study.
She paused on the threshold of the 'dragon's lair', slim and hesitant in a dress the colour of young olive leaves, then from a far corner of the hall a door creaked open and she swung round to see emerging out of the door -it gave access to the cellars - a tall figure clad in shadows. He closed the door and came striding into the lamplight where Ricki stood, her shoulders pressing the jamb of the study doorway, her hands at either side of her gripping the wood, her green eyes gone to jade in her elfin face.
'Thunder on the left, a warning, eh?' The Don's eyes flicked her slim, tensed figure. 'Are you afraid of the elements, Miss O'Neill? You s
urprise me, I thought you emancipated in every way.'
'Oh, I am,' she assured him airily, but as she preceded, him into his 'lair', she knew she was feeling far from sure of herself.
In the study the ruby red curtains were drawn, logs burned cheerily in the fireplace, and lamplight muted the room's severity almost to cosiness. On the air, mingling with the resinous smell of the logs, hung the aroma of the coffee that was brewing on a portable stove.
Ricki took a startled breath, for the atmosphere was curiously intimate; The very fact that the Don was brewing their coffee was proof that he didn't wish their tete-a-tete to be disturbed.
CHAPTER FIVE
Don Arturo drew forward a small roundabout chair with bandy legs and scarlet cushioning, and Ricki sat down with a murmur of thanks. She felt him looking at her and her glance settled on every article in the room that saved her from a direct meeting with his disturbing eyes. A carved card-table of mahogany, with pools for counters and card trays let into the inlaid wood. A porcelain figurine on the mantel shelf which, significantly enough, was that of a girl with a dragon crouching at her feet. The cigarette box of hammered silver that opened and closed under the touch of long fingers, and the slim volume of Castilian verse that lay open on the reading arm of the chair the Don sat down in, facing hers.
She gave him a nervous smile and watched through her lashes as he lit his cigarette. He wore a smoking-jacket of dark corduroy, and there was about him a rather deliberate air as he crossed his long legs and took a pull at his cigarette. 'Perhaps you will pour out our coffee, Miss O'Neill?' he suggested. I know how nervous it makes a woman to see a man handling fine china with his clumsy hands.'
'What experts you Spaniards are about women,' she said lightly, glad to have something with which to occupy her hands and her attention. 'Will you take sugar, senor, or wild honey in your coffee?'
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