He ran his fingers along the keyboard, as though he hadn't played for a long time and they needed flexing, but as soon as he began to play he brought the primitive rhythm of the dance right into the room, and Don Enrique began to beat time to it, nodding at her to do the same. But she was too shy of her employer's dark, sardonic eyes, and she wondered if the lovely silk shawl draping the piano had belonged to his grandmother.
A cameo of him. as a small boy sprang into her mind, seated at that keyboard, raised to its level by a pile of sheet music, learning his scales and glancing up now and again for the smiling approval of his fair-skinned grandmother. So vivid was the impression that she gave a start when Tia Rosina leant forward from her couch to say quietly: 'Arturo plays now a song his grandmother was very fond of. She, also, came from England.'
'I know the song,' Ricki whispered back.
'Then will you not sing it for us?' asked Tia Rosina.
'Oh no!' Ricki shook her head and spoke louder than she intended, catching at once the mocking attention of Don Arturo.
'Come, are you shy?' He lifted his voice above the music. 'I heard you singing earlier on.'
'That was different.' She blushed as the dark eyes of the Salvadori family dwelt on her, simultaneously.
'Miss O'Neill is afraid that we will be more critical of her singing than Jaime,' said the Don mockingly. 'The British are an amazing race, are they not? The men dare the devil himself on the battlefield, and the women are the most intelligent in the world, yet neither can bear to be caught out in a sentimental action. They would rather be thought cold than warm.'
'Better to be reserved than truly cold!' Ricki was sparked to temper and she just had to get in a thrust at him.
He raised a black eyebrow and their eyes met across the room in a jet and emerald explosion. 'Never challenge a Spaniard, he said, 'unless you are prepared to accept the consequences.'
And as she sat there in her loveseat, shaken by the implication in his words, he finished off what he was playing and rose from the piano bench. 'There, I have done my party piece,' he said, shutting down the lid.
'I have known you play for hours when Irena Marcos has been here,' Tia Beatriz reminded him. 'Do; you find her more inspiring than you find us, Arturo ?'
'You are always stimulating company, little aunt,' he rejoined dryly. 'But I must admit that Irena is so superb a singer that it is a joy to accompany her.
'At the piano, and no doubt elsewhere,' Tia Beatriz suggested tartly. 'Does she plan to visit the Granja in the near future?
'I should not be at all surprised to see her car come sweeping through our gates one of these days,' he drawled. 'And now shall we have some fresh hot coffee with conac?'
'That would be welcome before we make a move,' said Don Enrique, and his one shrewd eye was fixed on Ricki as her employer went over to press the service bell.
'It always makes me feel a little sad when a party is almost over,' mourned Tia Rosina, and her sister remarked at once that it was childish to want to hang on to used-up pleasures. Ricki, however, gave her favourite twin a sympathetic smile, knowing exactly how she felt.
'Before very long we will be having my party at the ranch, Don Enrique reminded Rosina. 'It will be fun to arrange, much of a change for us old ones as Miss Oneeil will be bringing the chico.'
'Jaime will be thrilled when I tell him,' Ricki said. 'His abuelito means about everything to him.' She hadn't paused to choose her words, and she wai aware, at once of the forbidding silence that followed her remark. She bit her lip nervously, and it was quite a relief when the door opened and Alvarez wheeled in the coffee trolley. Tia Beatriz proceeded to pour it out, while Tia Rosina chattered away like a bird in order to relieve an atmosphere that had grown palpably tense. When Don Arturo paused beside Ricki with the conac bottle, she could feel his eyes on her and she didn't dare look at him, thanking him in a strangled way as he enriched her coffee with the brandy.
She wondered, in a dull, guilty way, if subconsciously she had meant to hurt him if she had hurt him.
Before the party broke up, the two little aunts wanted to take a peep at Jaime, who, as it happened, was lying in the lamplight with his eyes wide open. Ricki left the twins cooing one each side of his bed and ran downstairs to tell his grandfather he was awake. 'Ah, then I will go up and have a few words with him!' Looking pleased, he hurried across the hall and mounted quickly to the gallery - every inch a pirate for a boy to love, Ricki reflected
'You are wondering why Jaime lives here with me instead of at the ranch of his grandfather, eh?
Ricki turned slowly to face her employer, her eyes giving away her thoughts to him. Youre his legal guardian, of course,' she stood fidgeting with her chiffon handkerchief, 'but there is his physical welfare to think of and he - he might be happier with his grandfather.'
'Jaime is a Cazalet, the Don said, and she saw him touch with a lean hand the big, embossed family bible that stood on the reading-desk nearby. 'He belongs here at the Granja.'
'But, senor, if a child is not contented - oh, I'm not saying that you don't provide every comfort, every attention but children are funny little things a-and like grown-ups they have their prejudices '
'I understand all that, and I appreciate your concern for the boy, but,' an adamantine note crept into the Don's voice, T shall not change my mind.'
'Senor '
'You waste your breath, Miss O'Neill,' he cut in. 'I know what I am doing, and I really must add that you are ruled by your heart rather than your head. Jaime would be spoilt abominably at the ranch of those well-meaning old ones, and I wish before anything that he grow up a man. A man, Miss O'Neill, with a sense of responsibility.'
'You - will allow me to take him to the ranch for a visit?' she asked, feeling defeated and chilled by the iron resolve of this particular man.
'I am not the complete ogre of the castle,' he responded dryly. 'When I make a promise I do not break it.'
She flushed slightly, and perhaps it was a self-defence mechanism that unloosed her fingers on the chiffon square so that it fluttered out of her hand to land on the Cazalet escudo, still holding its colours among the foot-worn cobbles of the hall. The need to retrieve the square gave her an excuse to escape from the Don's eyes, but as she bent down he bent too and their eyes met above the carved escudo, while their hands touched, without intention, as they reached together for her handkerchief. Her fingers fled as if from the touch of flame, and as she stood up she could feel the wild thumping of her heart. Bending down too quickly had caused it, she told herself, but knew very well the real cause.
It was a mixture of fear and fascination for there was no denying that there clung to this man the subtle magnetism that dings to most members of an old, proud dynasty. She knew, also, that she dealt with a man who was quite implacable; one who never broke a single re-solve that he made!
The Saivadoris came down from saying good night to Jaime, and Alvarez brought a large overcoat and a pair of old-fashioned cloaks out of the coat closet in the hall. 'I have informed Jaimito that you are bringing him on a visit to us,' whispered Don Enrique, boomingly, into Ricki's ear. 'How his eyes sparkled! He was very thrilled.'
She smiled, and couldn't help thinking how much more boyishness there was in the old rancher than in Don Arturo, who was half his age. She walked out to the patio with Don Enrique, where his big car waited with its headlights beaming on the whitewashed walls of the outhouses and the abundant tangles of wild roses and honeysuckle that grew in various nooks and crannies. The night air had grown cool and sharp, and Ricki clasped her bare arms with her hands as she stood conversing with Jaime's grandfather. 'The chico has a passion for my- vaqueros,' he laughed, 'and I have promised they will give for him a display of horsemanship when he comes to stay for a while at the ranch. Ah, if only '
There, with an audible sigh, the old rancher broke off and turned to ask his sisters if they were ready. Ricki gave a start as something silken and fringed landed on her ba
re shoulders and arms - the lovely shawl from off the Don's piano, accompanied by a curt comment that she would catch a chill if she stood long out here with uncovered shoulders.
'Thank you,' she said, and wished there wasn't always a hidden sting in his remarks to her. What was it he disliked the most, her European mode of dress, or the fact that she had got on so well with Don Enrique?
She stood in the side-glimmer of the car's lights as he kissed the small ivory-coloured hands of the twins and handed them into the upholstered interior of the car. Don Enrique took her own hand and lightly kissed the back of it, his piratical eye twinkling brightly at her. 'If I were the caballero of my youth, Miss Oneeil,' he smiled, 'I would be kissing the palm of your hand.'
'Really?' She joined in the game and smiled back at him. 'Is a kiss in the palm more significant ?'
'In Spain it is very significant,' he chuckled. 'We are a subtle people, nina, and our ways to the heart are more quietly ruthless than you would believe.'
'A kiss in the palm of the hand doesn't strike me as ruthless,' she scoffed.
'Then it is obvious you have never received such a kiss from a Spaniard,' he rejoined teasingly. 'What he can imply with such a kiss is really too much for those diminutas orejas of yours, so I will leave you to glean the knowledge for yourself.'
During this playful exchange Ricki was aware of her employer standing by with a sardonic expression, while Tia Beatriz peered inquisitively out of the car window. Suddenly Beatriz could contain herself no longer and she called out: 'You forget your years, Enrique. The night air is not good for old bones!'
'What would you with such a sister!' He threw up his hands. 'It is no wonder, Beatriz, that you have never received the kiss about which I speak - you have gall under your tongue instead of honey.'
'Better there, brother, than in my intentions,' she shot back at him. 'And now, mi gran caballero, please tear yourself away from Jaimito's nurse and get into the car.'
'I am coming, my tortolas? he said sweetly, adding with a direct look at Don Arturo: 'The boy is looking very much improved, hombre. There is no doubt in my mind that you have placed him in kind and clever hands.'
Ricki flushed with pleasure at the warm sincerity in Don Enrique's voice, and his hasta la vista was still ringing in her ears after the big car had rolled out from under the stone archway on to the road that led away from the valley, towards the open plains where the Salvadori ranch was situated.
'A smile lingering on tier lips, she drew about her the folds of the silk shawl her employer had flung about her shoulders. Overhead the stars swarmed like fireflies, while the dusky air was spiced with the scents of flowers and creepers that had been sun-drenched all day. Then, suddenly, she alerted into a slim figure of delight as from among some nearby cypresses there came the sweet piercing song of a night bird
She stood there, unbelieving and enchanted by the quavers and trills of the first nightingale she had ever heard singing, her head cocked towards the cypress spires where stars glinted as though hung there. 'How beautiful and just a little bit sad,' she murmured.
'Like life and love,' said a voice at her shoulder.
She caught her breath, turned too quickly to hasten indoors and stumbled on the edge of a raised cobblestone. Warm, swift hands took and steadied her. 'Is the wine of the pomegranate still troubling you?' said the Don mockingly.
He firmly held her shoulders pinned against his chest, his hands about her bare arms under the fringes of the shawl, and her heart was in her mouth in case he was about to prove, here and now, that to challenge a Spaniard was to invite dire consequences. Then she gave a little gasp as he spun her towards him, a doll he had taken into his hands, whom he could near enough break in half if he so wished!
He tilted her chin with a long index finger and scrutinized her face in the starlight. There wasn't a hint of a smile on his mouth, but she saw something alive and taunting glimmering in his dark eyes. 'Are you tired after the party,' he asked, 'or have you lost your courage now-that you find yourself alone with me?'
She wanted like anything to laugh in his face, to say defiantly that he didn't scare her in the least, but never before had she been so close to the flexible strength of the man, to the dark mystery of him in an atmosphere heavy with the scent of honeysuckle and roses, and haunted by the sad-sweetness of the nightingale singing in the cypresses. She felt the pulse that beat in her throat and saw his eyes fix upon it. He was so near intolerably near enough to take her mouth
She went taut, her every nerve shocked wide awake and up on its toes at so shattering a thought, and then with a laugh he said: 'Are you afraid I shall kiss you?'
'Goodness, no!' His mockery was like a jet of icy water in her face, and it was even more intolerable that he should have guessed her thoughts. 'I'm well aware that you're merely trying to scare me by implying such an intentions-she added coldly.
'Let me remind you, chica, that you stumbled and I caught hold of you to steady you. Come,' his tone was dry, 'do I really deserve such suspicion from you?'
'No one, Don Arturo, could accuse you of being an easy person to fathom,' she rejoined, 'and being a woman I prefer open country to the edge of a chasm.'
'So I am to you a chasm, eh? I am full of shadows and crags and depth, and I unnerve you?' His hands tightened for a moment on her slim arms, then slackened. 'How young you are! I forget that the British take longer to grow up than the Spanish.'
He released her suddenly, as though the game of baiting her had lost its edge. He stood aside so that she could precede him into the house, and she hurried ahead of him, in out of the scented night where the nightingale added its 'ravish'd' notes. She removed the silken shawl from around her shoulders and handed it to her employer without meeting his eyes. 'Good night, Senor,' she said politely. Thank you for a most interesting evening.'
'Buena noche, Miss O'Neill.' He inclined his dark head. 'For me, also, the evening has had its moments.'
She couldn't help but look at him when he said that, but his eyes were inscrutable and it was impossible to tell whether he mocked her or meant what he said. She gathered her skirts and walked quickly to the stairs, her heels clicking on the stones of the hall, and as she ran upstairs she was hoping that Jaime's grandfather would write soon to say that everything was prepared for their visit.
CHAPTER SIX
During the following week Ricki and Jaime used the swimming pool for the first time, filled now with water, the mosaic tiling of the pool showed up in lovely wavering patterns, while the little house of shells looked really cosy and was well aired of ghosts, Ricki thought, since she had been in and out watering the plants, arranging in the chairs the bright new cushions she had made for them, and hanging on the walls attractive oddments such as colourful gourds which took strange shapes when they dried and became hollow.
Ricki had sent to a store in Seville for swim-wear for Jaime and herself, along with inflatable rubber rings to support the boy in the water. He was excited and nervous as she dressed him in his swimming trunks - Alvarez had carried him down to the caseta - and when Ricki felt his fingers clenching the Gaelic floss of her sweater she suddenly unfastened the chain which held her good-luck shamrock and put it around the boy's neck. 'There, now you'll be safe and protected in the water,' she assured him with a smile.
'What about you, Rickee?' He fingered the shamrock and studied her with his great serious eyes. 'Will you be safe without your charm of good luck ?'
'I'll tell you what I'll do,' she ran over to where a patch of vervain grew in the sun and plucked a sprig. 'I'll wear this in my hair - there, how does it look ?'
'It makes you look nice.' His eyes had begun to smile. 'But what is the good of that?'
'Vervain is a magical plant, my lad.' She did an Irish jig for him among the shadow patterns cast on the flagstones by the boughs of the trees, and his laughter rang out, fresh and young here where his lovely mother had sat watching her admirers sporting for he
r amusement in the water.
Having coaxed the child into a more relaxed mood, Ricki whipped off her sweater and trews to reveal her own swimsuit, and in a few more minutes she and Alvarez had eased the boy into the water and he was floating, all big-eyed and still a little scared, in the support of the rubber ring which Alvarez had inflated.
'Well, my pigeon,' Ricki joined her charge in the water, 'how do you like yourself?'
'I am floating like a duck, Rickee.' He paddled with his arms and could see his own legs punily kicking about in the water, while his devoted Alvarez stood on the rim of the pool and smiled down encouragingly at him.
'It is good, this swimming,' Jaime informed him, and his childish laughter mingled with Ricki's as she got up to a few of her antics, and then began the more serious business, of teaching him to draw in his legs and then kick out.
'Kick like a little mule, chico, she urged. 'In, out. In, out. That's the ticket - oops, mind you don't swallow all the water!'
She allowed him only an hour this morning, as this was his first time, and after she had towelled him they stretched out in cane chairs at the poolside and enjoyed the lemonade and biscuits which Alvarez brought to them.
In a while Jaime snoozed, healthily spent after his frolic in the pool, and Ricki gazed around her and recalled what she had said to the Don about the laughter of a happy child being needed here to bring the place back to life. It was a grand morning, the sky an ardent blue through the boughs of the Spanish lilacs, the tapering cypresses, and the purple-trailed Judas tree. The air was motionless and scented, and butterflies skimmed from flower to vine, where trumpets of cream, purple and gold were meshed in the jade green. Pruning away of the tall weeds and tangly shrubs had revealed lemon trees, low and fairy-like, and hedges of pomegranate.
Ricki breathed the pomegranates - fruit of regret for Persephone. She grinned to herself, for here in the sunshine the story could not send a cold shiver running over her skin besides, there was no tall, dark man to add reality to the plot.
The Cazalet Bride Page 13