The Cazalet Bride

by Violet Winsper

  She smiled as if at a jest, but after he had said good night and left her alone in the dimness of her room, she stood for several minutes leaning against the closed door, listening to her heartbeats and thinking of what he had left unsaid Pluto, after carrying off the girl, had held her in bondage!

  Ricki walked through the shadows of her room, pluck­ing her warm dressing-gown off the rail of her bed and throwing it around her shoulders as she went, out on to the gallery above the main patio. The rain had ceased and left behind in the air a wonderful freshness in which mingled the smell of drenched creepers and trees. Ricki drank in the tangy air like wine wine of Andalusia, combating just a little the curious mixture of fear and fascination which had befallen her in the Don's company tonight.

  Her eyes followed the flight of a moth that seemed to glimmer pale emerald in the darkness; she heard a Spin­ning Jenny among the trees, and caught the restless whinny of a horse down in the stables. Perhaps the spirited grey which the master of the valley liked to gallop about on!

  Strange, unpredictable man, she thought, and now she knew why her night-time encounter with him in Toledo had made her wary of him; she had sensed in him depths dangerous to a woman because they held loneliness and reserve, and pain.

  'We of Spain have medieval hearts, Alvedo Andres had said.

  And here at the Granja, Ricki had discovered this to be true. This old Iberian farmhouse held the past a prisoner, situated as it was in a valley where hawks nested among the rocks, where hidden streams caught the sun like broken glass, and thyme and spruce grew wild among the ancient olive trees. The Granja slumbered in the hot sun with the grace of a tiger. It brooded in the dusk with the hooded eyes of an eagle

  'And you, my girl,' Ricki laughed ruefully to herself, 'have too much imagination by far! To your bed, you Gael, otherwise you'll be short on the beauty sleep you need for the Don's dinner-party tomorrow night!'

  Next morning, Ricki could hardly keep from Jaime the fact that his grandfather was coming to the Granja that evening. This exciting piece of news kept him lively all day, and when his bedtime came round he was still chattering away like a cricket. His abuelito was coming up­stairs to see him, wasn't he? Also Tia Rosina, and Tia Beatriz, though she was not quite so soft and nice as Tia Rosina?

  Yes, Ricki assured him. Those three good people would be bound to come up and see him. Now would he be a good muchacho and go to sleep?

  'I cannot go to sleep,' he rejoined. 'My stomach is full of bees.'

  'You funny one, you!' She laughed and thought it an apt description of excitement. 'I promise on my honour to bring the little aunts and the grandfather up to see you later on. Now do settle down, poppet. I must have a bath, and then I have to dress up in my finery. I dare not be late downstairs.'

  'Are you afraid of the patrono? Jaime asked in a whisper. 'Shall I ask my abuelito to take both of us away from him?'

  'Now don't be silly,' she chided. 'Don Arturo is not an ogre.'

  At last she got her charge off to sleep, and went along to her room to get ready for the dinner-party. She put on her best dress, the green of wood sorrel, with a bateau neckline which bared her white young shoulders. The lamp on her dressing-table cast a flattering glow over her reflection in the mirror, and not displeased she picked up a chiffon handkerchief, lowered the lamp and made her way to-| wards the stairs.

  Was it by chance, or design, that Don Arturo was stand­ing at the foot of them as she negotiated their twists and turns to the hall? Anyway, there he was, looking dark and distinguished in his evening clothes, the sophisticated glint of gold at his shirt cuffs.

  'Spaniards are punctual only at the bullfight - Don Enrique especially so.' He smiled down gravely at Ricki, then indicated that she precede him into the cuarto de estar. 'Would you care for a glass of wine while we wait, Miss O'Neill? No doubt you are feeling somewhat nervous at the thought of meeting these relatives of Jaime?'

  She agreed that a glass of wine would be welcome, and went to stand by the fireplace. The fire had been lit and the Cordoban screen moved to one side; the vivid blue leather framed Ricki as she stood feeling slight and very feminine in her attractive dress.

  'This is not pomegranate wine, Miss O'Neill. The Don's glance flickered over her as he picked up a decanter. 'It is a prosaic sherry which I am sure will not stir that vivid imagination of yours to thoughts I find rather disconcert­ing.'

  She blinked at the idea of disconcerting him. 'You do not appear to think me like other men, he said dryly.

  'Well, you're my employer,' she fenced. 'I am sure my status as your employer has little to do with the way you regard me.' His eyes quizzed her disconcerted face as he handed her a glass of sherry. 'Do I look so very different from other men ?' She could almost have laughed aloud at the question. His look of lordly hauteur was not seen every day, and who else had eyes so dense and compelling?

  'You are a strange, elusive child,' he then murmured.

  'I'm not a child!' she protested, conscious of his gaze upon the neckline of her dress and the way it revealed more of her shoulders than would be thought decorous by a Spanish woman. 'Do I look childish?' she asked defiantly.

  'You look very charming,' he said indulgently. 'The green of your gown matches your eyes and contrasts with your hair - and now please excuse me! I hear the car of Don Enrique.'

  He strode from the room and Ricki was left gazing wide-eyed at her reflection in the baroque wall mirror. She ought to feel flattered by the Don's remark, but knew he had no more than told a 'child' that she looked present­able for a party.

  The room in which they dined was large and ornate, with Pastrana tapestries on the walls, Iberian figurines on pedestals, and furniture with a wine-toned gloss to it. Moorish chandeliers hung lighted from the high, painted ceiling, and it seemed to Ricki as dinner proceeded that each minuscule tinkle of the jewel-toned crystals was like the echo of the long-lost laughter of the houris who had once lounged under the lamps in a Moorish palace. The crusading Aguinardas had probably taken the lamps as booty, now they lighted the dining sala of this Andalusian farmhouse.

  'I notice you are fascinated by the Moorish ceiling, Miss Oneeil.' Don Enrique Salvadori was a charming, still very vigorous man with a head of iron-grey hair, cheekbones that thrust prominently from sun-seamed skin, and a black patch over his left eye that gave him the look of a Spanish buccaneer.

  'I'm astonished,' she smiled back at him, 'by such a love of beauty in such a barbaric people.'

  'I had an idea such a thought was running through your mind.' His smile revealed strong, still very excellent teeth. 'But beauty and cruelty often go hand in hand, you know,' he added, and she was aware at once of the sharp lift of Don Arturo's head.

  Don Enrique helped himself to pepper. 'The occupa­tion by Moors of Andalusia influenced not only our architecture but our temperament. We Spaniards love beauty,' here his lively right eye flashed from Ricki's green eyes to her white young shoulders, 'but we are also addicted to the bullfight.'

  'Enrique,' spoke up Tia Beatriz, the more dominant of the sixty-year-old twins, 'I am sure Miss Oneeil is not interested in the bullfight. Very few English people are. They think it cruel, do they not, Miss Oneeil?'

  'I'm afraid so, she admitted.

  'Yet many of your tourists are to be seen attending the corridas in Barcelona and Seville, said Don Enrique.

  'I expect they go mainly out of curiosity. I can't imagine many of them enjoying so barbaric and one-sided a sport,' Ricki replied.

  'Hardly one-sided, nina!' Back went the iron-grey head of the ganadero and he roared with laughter. 'Bulls are strong, fearless, agile and cunning. An espada is but a man, with only a piece of silk to cloak his frailty and his fear of those curving weapons of horn el toro carries upon his great head.'

  'The matador isn't alone as the animal is,' Ricki" argued. 'He has his team of picadors and that poor bag of bones called a horse to distract the bull's attention.'

  'Ah, the horse.' Don Enrique pulle
d a mouth. 'It is the horse in the bullring who upsets the British, eh? They do not care to see the poor brute put through the agony of the puntago?'

  'Who would?' she shuddered. 'Their vocal chords are cut, aren t they, so they can't scream?'

  'I regret so.' A tinge of amusement flickered on the old man's mouth and he cast a glance across the table at Don Arturo. 'You are right, hombre, she has the spirited heart, this one.'

  Ricki felt startled by the remark, but she wouldn't look at the man who had said it in the first place and so reveal that she had taken notice of it. What did he imply, any­way? That she was a female who could not be pushed around - a type he must find very irritating with his Latin ideas regarding women!

  'How cruel men can be!' she exclaimed, half out of annoyance with that lean dark autocrat facing her.

  'You think there is no cruelty in women?' The question came swiftly from across the table, cutting like a lash. 'Do not flatter yourself, Miss O'Neill.'

  'Arturo,' Tia Rosina gave his wrist a tap with her fan, 'what an ungallant remark. Why, one look at Jaime's nurse is enough to show how kind she is. Such beautiful eyes!'

  'But green as a tigress's,' he gibed.

  Ricki looked at him, then, and couldn't keep a flash of animosity out of her green eyes. He saw it all right, and mockingly raised his wine glass as if to say that he felt exactly the same way about her.

  A manservant brought in a big platter of rich Spanish trifle and when it was served and they began eating it, Don Enrique - who had refused a helping of the sweet -talked to Ricki of the tapestry battlepiece on one of the panelled walls. It depicted the battle of Lepanto, with Spanish galleons sailing into action against a scimitar of Turkish galleys, the long lines of oars dipping into the churning sea, the sun glinting on armour and steel, the gold and crimson emblems of Castile blowing in the wind.

  Ricki wondered, as she listened to the man at her side, whether he spoke so kindly in order to soothe the sting left by her employer's remark about the cruelty of women. The old rancher must have been flicked by it, as well, for it had been his daughter who had taught Don Arturo how cruel a woman could be!

  The long, very Spanish meal came to an end, and the two little aunts went with Ricki to the cuarto de estar, the men remaining at table for a smoke and glasses of Manzanilla, the sea-matured wine so well liked by Spaniards.

  'It was much of a surprise to us, when we learned that Arturo had brought here an English woman to care for Jaime.' Tia Beatriz stirred her coffee and frankly studied Ricki, who had sat down in one of the old-gold loveseats. 'He is a man who is not easy to know, someone you might find a little difficult at times.'

  'I don't see him very much,' Ricki said, keeping her voice light and friendly. 'Jaime, of course, is no trouble at all and we're friends already.'

  'Is there any hope that he will eventually walk, Miss Oneeil?' Tia Rosina was looking at Ricki with gentle, in­quiring eyes. 'I am sure that Arturo's infelicity at times is brought on by worry about the pequeno. He grows im­patient to see him as other boys, which is only natural. Jaime will be the next master of the Granja if Arturo does not marry '

  'Sister, you are too much the romantica? Tia Beatriz scoffed. 'Arturo is a man - unlike yourself he will not marry himself to a memory.'

  Tia Rosina flushed and fingered the golden lyre-brooch that was pinned among the creamy frills of the lace jabot at the neck of her black dress. 'You never liked Juan Leparos, did you, Beatriz? You helped, I know, to have him sent away from the ranch.'

  'He was a common bull-herder,' her sister said tartly. 'You would not have been happy with such as he.'

  'Happier than one who has no children of her own,' Tia Rosina returned, with a flash of spirit. 'I should not now be married to a memory, as you put it.'

  'No, you would be a grass widow,' Tia Beatriz rejoined. 'When your vaquero grew weary of your refined ways, he would soon have sought gayer distractions in the cafes, and you know it, my sister.'

  Tia Rosina gazed down into her black silk lap, and Ricki couldn't help feeling compassion for the gentle twin whose romance with a vaquero had been thwarted by her dominant, less appealing sister. They were amazingly alike to look at, but the touch of hardness in Beatriz would always have made her less attractive than Rosina.

  'What are your impressions of this part of Andalusia, Miss Oneeil?' Beatriz had a sharp way of springing a question and waiting like a jetty-eyed bird for a reply. 'As you are from England, you cannot be used to the extremes in temperature which we have here ?'

  Or the extremes in temperament, Ricki thought. 'I love the sun,' she smiled. 'I don't know whether you've heard or not, but Don Arturo agreed to have the small swimming pool and the adjacent summerhouse cleaned out so Jaime and I can use them. Water exercises will be of immense benefit to him, you see.'

  'The pool and the caseta are to be restored to use?' Beatriz exchanged a significant glance with her sister, then sat forward and peered hard at Ricki. 'How clever of you to have persuaded Arturo to do this thing - to let the son of Leandro have for a playground the place where so much unhappiness for this house had its beginning. It' was there - and I presume you have heard by now the ser­vants' version of the story? - that the old Senor Cazalet found Conquesta's note of elopement, and where he col­lapsed from a fatal heart stroke.'

  Ricki murmured an assent, and suddenly the full force of the Cazalet tragedy swept over her, plunging her into a vivid recollection of the furious way Don Arturo had come striding towards her through the twining shadows and brambles of that ghostly garden. He had looked as though he meant to strike her, but she had opened the slave-door and entered the garden in all innocence. She hadn't known that she was invading a place which held such grim memories for him.

  'W-when I suggested to Don Arturo that he reopen the place, I had no idea his father had been stricken down in the caseta? she faltered. 'H-he didn't tell me '

  'Will there be danger in allowing Jaimito to go into water?' Tia Rosina asked nervously.

  'Hardly any at all,' Ricki assured her. 'I shall be with him all the time, and then again he will have the added security of an inflated ring. He will love the water, so please don't worry.'

  'How can we help but worry, Miss Oneeil?' Tia Beatriz had a brooding look as she spoke. 'The child only just escaped death in his uncle's car, therefore it would not do for him to meet it in Arturo's pool ' and there she broke off, a finger swiftly at her lips as the door opened to admit the two Dons.

  'The man is an artist with the cape,'. Don Enrique was proclaiming. 'His Veronica is the most daring thing I have seen in years - he lets the bull fairly scorch the silk of his cape!'

  I too, have seen a Veronica equally daring.' Don Arturo spoke deliberately and his eyes captured Ricki's as he crossed the room in his graceful yet autocratic way, hold­ing her gaze as he passed the loveseat in which she sat, and paused to lean his shoulders against the dark marble of the mantelshelf.

  'Well, little aunts, do you approve of Jaime's nurse?' he asked, glancing with a hint of sardonic amusement from one twin to the other. 'Is she as you expected her to be?'

  Tia Beatriz shrugged her shoulders. 'She is very young, Arturo, and you know that in my opinion a male atten­dant is better for the child.' She gave him a sharp look. 'Why did you suddenly decide to employ a mere girl?'

  He arched an arrogant black brow at the question, while Don Enrique, now enthroned in a high-backed chair, gave a snort of impatience. 'Beatriz, you grow acid on the vine, while Rosina goes to sugar,' he growled. 'The boy needs a young woman around him, someone to sing and cry with him, and to give him the cuddling he misses from his mamaita .'

  Ricki caught her breath at the remark, and she couldn't for the life of her stop her glance from leaping to the man who lounged beside the glowing cavern of the fireplace. He seemed quite unmoved, until the flames suddenly! leapt and highlighted his profile and she saw how taut the muscle was beside his mouth.

  'Enrique ' Tia Rosina fluttered her fan nervo
usly, 'I think it would be nice for Miss Oneeil and Jaimito to come and spend a few days at the ranch. We could take them into Seville in the carriage and I am sure they would both enjoy a look at the Alcazar.'

  'You would like to visit our ranch, Miss Oneeil?' Don Enrique asked. 'You do not think the small picaro would find it tiring?'

  Before replying to these questions, Ricki thought it tactful to turn to her employer for his opinion. He nodded gravely in answer to the query in her eyes. 'If Jaime is fit enough to travel, then by all means accept the invitation,' he said.

  He spoke rather coldly, she thought, but she did like the idea of visiting the Salvadori ranch, and the change of environment was bound to do Jaime a lot of good. 'I should like to come,' she said to the Salvadoris. 'Thank you for inviting me.'

  The old rancher stretched out benevolently in his chair, his iron-grey head pillowed against the padding, a big dark-stoned ring gleaming on his hand as he gestured with his cigar. 'We will show you the tientas, the testing of the young bulls. You will enjoy that, Miss Oneeil,' his right eye twinkled, 'for it does not involve any cruelty at all. Also, as I am soon to be seventy years young, we will have a party and you will learn to dance the Angelina.'

  'I've heard of the Angelina,' Ricki smiled, liking this rugged, old-young man very much. 'It's a ring-dance, isn't it?'

  'Yes, and gay as first love, nina,' he told her enthusias­tically, spilling cigar ash down his silk waistcoat and ignoring his sister Beatriz as she tut-tutted. 'The rings when formed are made up of girls and men in alternative positions. The music strikes up and ole, we dance! Ar­turo,' he flashed an imperious glance at the younger man, 'go to the piano and play the music of the Angelina for Miss Oneeil.'

  'You would like me to play?' Don Arturo looked directly at Ricki.

  'Very much, senor ,' she replied. 'I'm fond of good music.'

  'Then I will play.' He shrugged, as if not really interes­ted in her likes or dislikes, and as she watched him go to the piano and put back the lid she told herself yet again that he was coldest, most armoured individual she had ever met in her life. What did the Salvadofis secretly think of him? Did it worry them that he had the legal guardianship of young Jaime? Possibly, judging from the way Tia Beatriz had spoken earlier on!