'Wild honey, senorita. Like most Spaniards I have a sweet tooth. Tell me,' he was looking sardonic as he accepted his cup of coffee from her hand, 'was the young Alvedo providing you with an example of our expertise when I interrupted him?
'I am sure you drew your own conclusions,' she fenced.
'Perhaps so.' He took a sip at his coffee. 'But beware of starting a casual flirtation, perhaps out of boredom,' which a fiery Andaluz might mistake for something more serious.'
'I am sure Alvedo is far too sophisticated to be in any danger from a girl like me,' Ricki said sweetly. 'There is no straw in his hair as far as I can see.'
'Others of this region are still a trifle old-fashioned, the Don said crisply, 'and I would advise a little more discretion about the places you choose for your demonstrations of affection.'
Ricki almost choked on a mouthful of coffee at that one, and because he was looking so very much the Castilian overlord tonight - and looking down that hawk nose of his! - she felt she had to defend what had not occurred for the sake of defending romance. The spontaneous embrace between a young couple really in love; the joyful warmth that had obviously played so small a part in his own courtship
'When two people are in love,' she said, 'they are quite lost to their surroundings when alone together - as if marooned on a tropic island.'
'Then it must have come as quite a shock when I galloped on to your island and broke the spell,' he drawled. 'No wonder you looked at me with daggers in your eyes.'
'Yes, no wonder,' she agreed airily. 'Will you have another cup of coffee, senor?'
'Thank you, no.' He turned aside to place his cup and saucer on a side table, and Ricki took in swiftly the hard, fine definition of his profile; its severity and its hint of suffering. She tensed in her chair and knew suddenly that she was not enjoying this teasing game. Suddenly it had jabbed home to her that he had found her with Alvedo where the Devil's Tears ran down over the rocks where the lovely Conquesta had died. What a place to choose for a kiss! That was what he must be thinking!
She was gazing at him rather helplessly, wondering how to put right the false impression she had foolishly created in his mind, when he said: 'I am expecting company tomorrow evening, Miss O'Neill, and I wish you to dine with us.'
His tone commanded rather than invited, and Ricki's immediate thoughts were dominated by a sudden picture of herself among a group of his dark-avised, cigar-smoking business associates. 'There is no need for apprehension,' he gave a rather unkind laugh. 'Don Enrique Salvadori comes to dine and he will be bringing his sisters with him.'
' Jaime's grandfather? Relief and interest shone in her eyes.
'Exactly so, the abuelito of young Jaime.' Don Arturo quirked a quizzical eyebrow. 'The senor grandero wishes to meet the nurse of his grandson, and I am sure you will find him a most diverting man to converse with. The little aunts are also very charming. They are unmarried twins, you know, and alike to look at as a pair of sea-shells, one with the demure ways, the other with the sharp wit, of ladies in a Jane Austen novel.'
His teeth glimmered in a smile, and his eyes for a moment were almost boyish. 'I have never known them wear anything but black silk to their ankles, with lace jabots at their throats. Can you imagine them?'
Ricki returned his smile. 'Who introduced you to the novels of Jane Austen, senor - your English grandmother?'
'Was it much of a surprise,' he looked directly into her eyes, 'to learn that I have all this English blood running in my veins?'
'You're so entirely Spanish in looks and outlook that it was bound to surprise me,' she admitted. Then her glance ran from his, circling the walls of his study, dark but for the bright splash here and there of a painting. 'I try to vizualize your grandmother in this rambling Spanish house, senor, and I wonder if she ever rebelled against the almost oriental seclusion of those days.'
'She and my grandfather were very happy together, said the Don, looking amused. 'She came willingly to her oriental seclusion, as you put it, and the match was - as we put it buen amor.'
Heaven-made, Ricki translated to herself. A real love match for the English girl who came to live in this house in the valley the Cazalet house that in those days had not had a shadow hanging over it.
'Tell me something, Miss O'Neill,' the Don had disposed of his cigarette and was sitting forward with his long hands clasped around his knees. 'Several times I have passed Jaime's room of an evening and I have heard you singing to him. I have tried to fathom the words. They had an attractive strangeness to them.'
'Oh ' Ricki flushed slightly, for she didn't have much of a voice and from Sophina she had learned that her employer was fond of good music and singers. A Portuguese opera singer came to stay at the Granja now and again, Sophina had said. She had a lovely name, Irena Marcos, and Ricki wondered if the singer was like her name to look at
'I sometimes sing to Jaime in Gaelic, she explained. 'My father's people lived in the wilds of Ireland and I picked up the Gaelic from them.'
'Children have remarkably quick ears, have they not?' He smiled slightly. 'I, as a child, picked up a love of music from my grandmother and she taught me how to play the piano.'
'I wondered who it was who played the piano in the cuarto de estar' Ricki smiled back shyly at him, and thought how different he looked right now, talking about his grandmother and touching on his childhood | |i a fleeting gentleness had stolen the stern look from his face, and she guessed that he had needed tonight someone to talk to after the worry of Jaime's fall.
'Do you find this house an intimidating one?' he asked. 'There are many corridors, many old portraits and tapestries, and furniture that creaks a little in the night
Don't forget the owls, senorj she half laughed. 'It is an old house, but I find it fascinating.'
I am glad to hear you say that.' His gaze held hers. 'We agreed, did we not, to part company if you found this house too isolated, too far from the diversions you are used to. It is fortunate that you find Alvedo Andres such a good companion '
'Alvedo and I are just friends, she broke in.
'Of course,' he inclined his head and seemed not to be particularly interested in the relationship. 'This Granja, you know, has its foundations in the Roman occupation, and no doubt you have seen the Latin inscriptions carved in some of the walls and on the stone well in the main patio?'
'There's a strong Moorish atmosphere which I like best of all,' she said. 'The tiled bases of the fountains, and the seats of the patio benches are beautiful.'
'The colours and patterns of the azulejos are definitely oriental, he agreed. 'El suspiro de Moro is still heard in Andalusia, echoing in the music of the fountains they designed some of the country people talk of seeing them riding through the morning mists.'
'The trails of mist do look rather like white cloaks,' she smiled. 'Andalusians remind me of the Irish, they are so poetical in their superstitions.'
'Some of those books tell fascinating stories of the Moorish occupation,' he gestured at the ceiling-high book cabinet. 'The intrigues at the Byzantine courts, the battles between the Knights of Castile and the Sheikhs, the badinage between the harem beauties and their masters. It is a colourful world you would enjoy, nina, if you could read Castilian.'
'I must teach myself,' she laughed.
'I daresay the young Alyedo would enjoy that task,' he suggested.
'Perhaps.' She shivered suddenly and leant forward to feel the warmth of the fire against her hands; somehow she did not think she would be here long enough to learn how to read the Castilian language. She could hear the thunder booming above the Sierras and dying to a low echo over the valley; the logs hissed as big drops of rain came down the chimney. You became part of a household pattern without fully realizing it, and she knew that when the time came for her to leave the Granja, the break would hurt as it had hardly hurt at all to leave the hospital.
From a corner of her eye she saw her employer rise to his feet. We will have a glass of the
wine which I brought up from the cellar this evening,' he said, and while he busied himself pouring it out, Ricki rose also and took a look at the paintings on the wall of the study. They were medieval Spanish scenes that made her think of Alvedo's sketches and the way he had torn them to pieces in front of her. He didn't like it, she thought again, that young Jaime showed signs of natural artistic talent. It was his jealousy of the boy that had made him drive so furiously along that ravine road and her wild fear of that moment was showing in her eyes as the Don came across to her with the filled wine glasses.
She felt his sharp scrutiny as she took from his hand a flared bowl on a filigreed stem of silver. The wine was limpid, innocent-looking - until she tasted it. 'My goodness,' her eyes were misty from the sweet strength of the wine as they met the Don's, 'how strange a flavour, yet nice. It isn't sherry?'
He shook his dark head. It is a pomegranate wine which we distil here at the Granja,' he told her.
Wine of the gods! Fruit of regret for Persephone, who ate of the pomegranate and was carried down into Hades by its dark overlord! Ricki couldn't resist a glance at her own dark host, and she guessed from the smile curling on his lips that he was sharing her thoughts.
'So fragile a vessel,' he held up his goblet,'t o hold so strong a wine. Drink up, Miss O'NeilL'
And telling herself not to be sp fanciful, she obeyed him as he strolled away from her to stand where the long ruby curtains were drawn across the windows. Ricki heard the j thunder, then the curtains billowed behind Don Arturo like a tongue of flame Lucifero after his abdication from the heavens, she thought wildly, and because he was so disturbingly quick at reading her mind she turned hurriedly to one of the wall paintings. 'What an intriguing picture that is,' she said. Ts the man with the ladder a lamplighter ?'
'He is a La Manchan romantic carrying a wooing ladder on his back,' the Don explained. 'A young man would place such a ladder against the iron rejas of a girl's window and woo her through the bars.'
'Eating the iron,' Ricki murmured.
'Exactly so.' Eyes dark as night swept her young face. You are interested in the old romantic customs of Spain,
senorita?'
'All things romantic have an appeal for women,' she replied, 'and the boldness of your land, the hot sun, the hint of cruelty, all combine together to produce the right setting for - passion.'
'Not of love?' came his deep-throated question. 'Spain is said to be the last stronghold of romantic love.'
'I can believe that,' she admitted, 'if you are talking about the volcanic kind.'
'Would it really be worth having if it were not a strong and turbulent emotion?' he asked. 'It should be dangerous and exciting, and in a woman spiced with fear, for that fear spices love in a man.'
'You make it sound a cruel experience, Don Arturo.' Ricki's fingers had clenched on the silver stem of her wine glass.
'They say there is truth in wine.' He smiled as he studied the limpid gleam of the pomegranate wine. 'Love is conquest and submission. It hangs coloured lanterns in the poorest cottage, and when born of illusion it dies of disillusion. It is rooted in the soul of woman to love, we say here in Spain, and she can no more evade it than '
' The month who cannot resist aflame!' Ricki's eyes were drawn to his as those words were drawn out of her, and she was nettled by his male assumption that love was the main preoccupation of all women. 'It's a bit turn-of-the-century, senor, to assume that all women are panting to be enslaved by a man and his demands,' she took a breath. 'When women discarded all those hampering petticoats, they discarded with them the male-encouraged notion that they were meant to be bound by restrictions. Women enjoy now a sense of being equal and free.'
'To kick up their heels?' he drawled. 'Not at all.' Her eyes flashed danger green. 'To take our proper place in the scheme of things, and maybe do some-ting about stopping you men from blowing the world sky-high with your explosive tempers and bombs.'
'You advocate a United Nations of women, eh?' He looked amused.
'It isn't such a bad idea.' She tilted her chin. 'I bet we'd make a better job of keeping the peace than you men seem able to. Wine, women and wars are all you think about!'
'Ay Dios mio!' He arched a black brow at her outburst. 'I bring here a nurse for my nephew and find I have a young Dido on my hands. It will all be the same one hundred years from now, you know, so just enjoy the things meant for a girl to think and dream about.'
'That's a typical male remark,' she flashed. 'You men just can't bear the thought" of women having anything in their minds other than wedding bells and babies!'
'Well, do you not see, chica, amusement was slashing a line down his swarthy cheek, 'we have to believe, more than ever in this technical age, that there is something simple and fundamental left in our lives. There is really nothing that is more fundamental than a woman, and if she should become enchanted by science and inflicted with political ambitions she would lose her earthy magic and we men our one abiding anchor. It has always been the one great strength of woman that through everything she has remained the eternal Eve, offering the consolation of her arms and her simplicity after man has bitten once again the apple of discord.'
'You put it very colourfully, senor.' Ricki gazed into her wine glass, and there was a flush perhaps from the wine in her cheeks. How had they got around to discussing such disconcerting subjects as love, wedding bells, and the arms of Eve? She breathed a low sigh of relief when he switched to a more avuncular topic and asked for a rundown on Jaime's progress to date.
He listened to her with quite a serious air, but she caught the twinkle in his eye when he said: 'You know, Miss O'Neil, the career-minded are usually very detached in their attitude towards human relationships, but you are as protective towards my nephew as a young tigress with a cub.'
A tigress with a cub! She felt the blush that ran up her neck into her cheeks at that remark. 'Y-you rarely see us together,' she faltered. 'How can you know '
'I see all that I wish to see here at the Granja.' He spoke dryly. 'Come, you look quite guilty. Do you not like to be caught out as a woman of warmth rather than a cool-hearted careerist?'
'Jaime is an easy child to grow fond of ' Then, meeting his eyes, she said: 'I hope you don't mind the attachment that has formed between us?'
'He will feel it, when the time comes for it to be broken,' Jaime's guardian said crisply.
Ricki winced as though a lash had flicked her skin, for she too would feel it when she parted from Jaime and lost his childish affection, his grave-eyed smile, and the way he cuddled down of a night with the amusing rag-rabbit she had made him. During the day she had to hide the rabbit in her room. Sophina would jeer at him, he said, for having such a toy. She would tell her sons that Jaime de Cazalet was a baby.
'It isn't easy for a woman to keep her distance with a child,' Ricki said stiffly. 'And it's often easier for a child who has suffered to give trust and affection to a stranger. Jaime is sensitive beyond his years, and past events and the people connected with them are still painful to him.'
'You are quite a philosopher yourself, Miss O'Neill,' the Don drawled.
'I am merely a person trained in the art of caring for hurt people,' she rejoined. 'Once Jaime is able to get about like a normal boy, he will forget the past '
'And forgive the ogre, eh, for helping to kill his mother?'
The Don's face was a mask of pain as he spoke, and his eyes were night-dark, with lines biting deep at the sides of them. Ricki stared back at him wordlessly, and now there was no sound of thunder, no hiss of rain. The storm outside had abated, but here in the study the tension could be felt. Then Ricki's employer swung away from her and the click of his wine glass on wood was like a sharp tap against a nerve. She gave a shiver and realized that the whispers had crept into her mind and left doubts - doubts which her eyes had not been able to conceal from him!
'It grows late,' he said, and when he turned to face her, his expression was the one she was mo
st used to, stern, a trifle grave, with faint shadows haunting the planes and hollows of temple and jaw. He took her wine glass and as he set it down on the table, the rims faintly clinked in an echo, it seemed to Ricki, of duellists touching foils before a fight. He followed her from the study, after extinguishing the lamps, and they walked side by side across the hall, across the escudo set in the cobbles, and she felt the light touch of his fingers under her elbow as they mounted the stairs.
There is something curiously intimate about going upstairs with a man, and Ricki was conscious of this. The brush of dark corduroy against her bare arm, the warm, hard feel of a male hand under her elbow, the square shoulder several inches above her head. What was he thinking? she wondered. He was so withdrawn when he was silent, even though they touched as they reached the head of the stairs and the gallery lay ahead of them, pooled with shadows and niches.
'When my mother came to this house as a bride,' he spoke so abruptly that Ricki gave a start, 'she wished to bring certain goods and chattels from her home in Gas-tile. My father indulged her whim and that is why Aguinarda portraits hang on the walls of this Andalusian farmhouse, and why such suits of armour stand on guard in its corridors.' He slanted down at Ricki his brief flicker of a smile and pointed out in a wall niche the black and visored armour she often hurried past on her way to her room. It was realistically shaped to the figure of a tall man, and there was a black plume on the helmet that moved in a sudden draught.
The Don held open her door, and as she passed him, she looked up at him and wanted to ask if the whispers in the valley held truth or misconception. Her heart drove the question to her lips, but all that came out was a husky: 'Buena noche, senor. Thank you for the invitation, and the pomegranate wine.'
'Wine of the dark god, eh?' His dark eyes scanned her upraised face. I hope you do not feel that it was Pluto, after all, who came by in his chariot and carried you off?'
The Cazalet Bride Page 11