The Cazalet Bride

by Violet Winsper

  She closed her eyes for a cat-nap, and suddenly felt a shadow blocking out the sun. Her eyes blinked open, and standing before her on the flagstones was Alvedo Andres, thumbs in his belt, a lazy smile on his lips. 'It is as I have thought before,' he said. 'There is a hint of the witch about those green eyes of yours.'

  'Shhh!' she indicated the sleeping boy and got to her feet. 'You are here early,' she added, walking with him to the edge of the pool, where the water glimmered myrtle green.

  'I was at a loose end and I came to see how my pupil enjoyed his swimming lesson.' Alvedo smiled down at her. 'I have never seen you in a swimsuit - it becomes you.'

  Ricki was suddenly very conscious of the brevity of the white suit and she wished to goodness she had put on her trews and sweater. She slipped into a sitting position at the edge of the pool and dangled her bare feet in the water. Alvedo lounged against the trunk of the Judas tree and watched her. 'Is it possible that I make you shy?' he mur­mured.

  'Not exactly shy,' she rejoined. 'But I'm aware that Spanish protocol frowns rather on the bikini.'

  'It is less - daring than some I have seen worn by tourists along the Costa Brava,' he laughed. 'But why should a girl hide herself away if she is shapely? My artis­tic eye is charmed. You are a nymph I should like very much to paint. Will you sit for me?'

  I - don't know.' Drops of water scattered from her toes like liquid pearls in the sunlight. 'Very soon Jaime and I are to go on a visit to the ranch of Don Enrique Salvadori - there may not be time, you see. Jaime grows stronger and more active, and soon I shall not be wanted here any more.'

  'You mean,' he came and stood over her, you will be leaving Andalusia ?'

  'I shall be leaving Spain when my work here is finished.' She glanced up at him, and her hair had dried in ruddy tendrils about her temples and her ears. 'You didn't think I had come for good, did you?'

  He gazed down at her, a sudden glint in his brown eyes. ' Que guapita eres !' he exclaimed, and she flushed at the compliment and shook her head.

  'Don't call me pretty, Alvedo,' she pleaded. 'Don't - flirt with me.'

  'Can it be that you are afraid of falling in love? He settled on his haunches beside her, smiling, attractive, very much the romantic Andaluz in his open-throated white shirt and narrow black trousers. 'What is there about love to fear, chica?' His tone was indulgent. 'It was the Marquis de Gustine who rightly said that love is life for those who find it in Spain.'

  'I came here as a tourist, and then I agreed to tackle this job, but - love was not on my list,' she returned lightly.

  'Prudence is a comfortable chair,' Alvedo laughed softly, 'but one grows drowsy sitting in it. Ah, Ricki, I like very much the cool charm of British girls; their air of retreat - which is also a beckoning. Hike the freckles across your small nose, and the hint of fire in your hair. I cannot believe that you mean to be left to dress images.' She gave a laugh, for the expression he used was the Spanish equivalent of being left on the shelf. 'When one has a satisfying job,' she began

  'There is only one satisfying job for a woman.' He looked at her meaningly and imprisoned her wrist with warm fingers; the fingers of her free hand clenched over the tiled edge of the pool and she felt a dart of alarm. She cast a glance over her shoulder the boy slept on, but there were trees through which a tall figure could come striding, silently and abruptly, to see her seated here at the poolside with her hand enclosed in that of the tutor's.

  'Alvedo, let me go,' she whispered urgently. 'I won't listen to such talk it isn't right'

  'Of what are you nervous now?' he gibed. 'Do you think there are ghosts here - or do you fear someone who is very much alive?

  She gave a little start which she couldn't control, and saw his eyes go narrow. 'We are safe from Don Arturo,' he said coolly. 'For him there are ghosts, so he keeps away.'

  'I've known him to come here,' she was trying to pull free of Alvedo's fingers, but they had tightened and were hurting her a little. Seen close like this his face was dark and reckless; her nervousness, and her bare white arms and legs were obviously exciting him. She wished Jaime would awake. Alvedo would not try anything like this with the boy looking on.

  'You have been alone here with Arturo?' The tutor's eyes held a glitter of curiosity. 'And how did he behave, like a man or an employer?'

  'Like an employer, of course.' Ricki was rapidly losing her temper. 'It can be said about Don Arturo that he always behaves with courtesy.'

  'So - only with courtesy?' Alvedo's eyes were still nar­rowed as they took in the flash of her eye, and the colour which had risen to her cheeks. 'Does this disappoint you, guapita? Would you like to see him in another sort of mood - a passionate one, perhaps?

  'How dare you say such a thing!' Ricki brought round her other hand and fought to unclasp his fingers from her wrist, but he only laughed at her struggles and suddenly both her wrists were held captive in his hurting hands.

  'There is more to Arturo de Cazalet than pride and iron, little English Miss, and you cannot tell me that he has had you beneath his roof for a month without noticing that you have soft, untouched skin and eyes like tilting jades.' Alvedo suddenly jerked her to her feet and, being wet from the pool, they slipped on the tiles and to save herself she had to fall against him. In an instant his arms closed round her, and as her head tilted back so that she could demand her immediate release, the tendrils of cypress and palm rustled behind her as though brushed by a wind.

  She saw first the stare in Alvedo's eyes, then his arms relaxed from around her and she was free - free to turn and, see her employer standing by the trees. Tall, cold-eyed, clad in a grey business suit that told her he had come straight from the conference table to see how Jaime had enjoyed his water exercises. Ricki could tell at once what he was thinking, and hot colour ran up her neck to her very temples.

  Then Jaime stirred in his chair, opened his eyes and gave a yawn. 'What a long dream I have been having,' he announced innocently.

  The Don strode over to his nephew and lifted him into his arms. 'Come, chico,' he said, 'I will carry you to the house. It is almost time for your luncheon.'

  Bemused, perhaps, by his nap, the child did not protest at finding himself in his uncle's arms. 'Rickee,' he was actually laughing over that grey-clad shoulder, 'you have such a funny look on your face.'

  The skin of her face felt tight now her flush had re­ceded, and she knew she had gone white with the reactive shock of seeing Don Arturo over by those trees, so still, so dark - so contemptuous!

  She shot a look of dislike at Alvedo, who was lighting a cigarette, then snatching up her trews and her sweater she ran into the caseta and slammed the door behind her. She dressed quickly, feeling curiously sick and empty. A sixth sense had told her that the Don might come here this morning to check on Jaime, and she couldn't help wondering if Alvedo had thought the same and deliber­ately brought about that scene by the poolside. It could only have looked like a love scene a particularly inti­mate one, she in that brief swimsuit, her hair tousled from drying in the sun

  She combed her Hair vigorously, and dashed lipstick over her pale mouth. Her hand was shaking, she noticed, as she snapped shut the powder-compact she had bought herein Andalusia.

  Andalusia, the place she had grown almost to love, now it looked as though she would be sent away, dismissed with all the contempt of which her employer was capable. 'I did not employ you to dally with the child's tutor,' he would probably say. 'It would seem, after all, that your career is of less importance to you than the kisses of a philanderer.'

  Ricki nipped her lower lip with her teeth, and was glad when she stepped out of the caseta to find Alvedo had gone.

  As she made her way through the walled garden to the arched slave door, she tried to tell herself that the Don was a cold autocrat who disliked emotions in other people because his own had died. She tried, defiantly, to draw comfort from this, but still it hurt to be taken for a little sensation-seeker. Twice, now, he had caught her in Al-vedo's arms
; it was inevitable that he conclude there was something between them.

  She hurried across the patio to an archway into the house. Alvarez was in the hall and he informed her that Don Arturo had taken his nephew to the nursery-suite and was now lunching alone in the dining-room. Ricki ran upstairs to her own luncheon with Jaime, visualizing that dark, lonely man eating alone in the long room panelled by cypress wood and Cazalet portraits. Then she winced as something jabbed the palm of the hand that caught at the balustrade of the stairs; she paused to take a look and saw the dark point of a rose thorn in her hand. As she hastily pulled it out and sucked the place, she thought of the bush of small wild roses she had touched on her way through the garden of the caseta. Her thought moved on to the single white rose in a vase on the Don's desk roses and dark thorns. The loveliness of a rose compelling the adoring hand.the sudden stab of the hidden, secret thorn.

  Ricki felt herself go cold, and hurried on up the stairs to Jaime.

  When Alvedo came to give the boy his lessons, Ricki made herself scarce in her room. She sat out on the bal­cony, a book resting idle on her lap. Down in the patio there was a burst of activity now siesta was over, and Ricki watched one of Sophina's sons saddling a couple of horses. One was the big dappled grey which the Don usually rode; the other was honey-coloured with a silky black muzzle. She was wondering who her employer was riding with, when she heard behind her the rapping of knuckles on her door.

  She rose and crossed the room, quite unaware that her fingers were clenching the shamrock in the neck-opening of her blouse. Upon opening the door she found herself staring up at the Don. He was already dressed for his ride in a fine linen shirt, half-secured at the throat with a strip of leather; breeches, and knee-length boots latched by a trio of sturdy straps. A broad-brimmed cardobes hung at the nape of his neck, the black strap across his brown throat.

  ''I am about to take a little exercise, Miss O'Neill,' he said, quite unsmilingly. It unloosens me after being at a desk. I should like you to accompany me.'

  Ricki had been out riding a few times since coming here, but never with her employer, and she felt a flutter of panic at the idea. Was this his way of getting her alone so he could dismiss her from his employ?

  As she stood there in the doorway, netted in her indeci­sion, he swung a brown hand and his whip curled round one of his boots. 'Are you coming - or not?' he asked, and his dark eyes were steady on her upraised face.

  'If you wish me to ride with you, senor, then of course I'll come.' She heard the tremor in her voice, and knew forcibly that she didn't wish just yet to leave this house in the valley. But his word was law here; if his decision had been made, then there was no fighting it.

  'Good.' The whip curled again round his boot with a whispering hiss. 'I will give you ten minutes in which to change into your riding clothes. Come to me down in the patio.'

  'Very well,' she said, and watched him stride away to­wards the stairs, forceful and dictatorial, yet always with that hint of loneliness about him. Ricki glanced at the little thorn wound in the palm of her hand, then remem­bered that he had given her just ten minutes in which to get ready.

  She hastily changed into the divided skirt she wore for riding, clipped the chinstrap of her own grey cordobes, and arrived down in the patio in some breathlessness. He waited with a booted foot resting on the mounting-block, his cordobes tilted forward to aid the darkness of his eyes and his level black brows.

  'What amazing punctuality for a woman!' His teeth flashed in a brief smile as he assisted her into the saddle of the honey-coloured horse and assured himself that the stirrups were adjusted correctly to the length of her leg.

  'This horse is a beauty, senor ,' she remarked.

  'I saw him for sale just last week,' Ricki felt the Don's side-glance as he swung on to his own mount. 'A Spaniard can never resist anything that gives pleasure to the eye.'

  They cantered out of the patio under the massive stone arch, as strong and time-mellowed as the walls of the farmhouse. The sunshine was still quite hot but not un­comfortable, and soon their mounts stretched themselves in a gallop, and Ricki decided to enjoy the sheer pleasure of riding this silk-mouthed, supple horse and to forget what was to come when their gallop was over.

  Her companion seemed to be part of the big striding grey, and Ricki knew he was firmly holding his mount back so that she could keep abreast with him. She shot him a smile under the tilt of her hat, and saw him answer it. A tingling shock of pleasure ran through her, and she knew that the spell of this barbaric and exciting land was upon her. Its rocks, its shadows and its fierce sun were in the blood of its people. Here it was no wonder that the mystery and passion of love were all the keener.

  Eventually they sat their mounts, poised on the rim of the valley. Heat hazed the acres of wheat and barley, and Ricki thought warmly that a countryside tended by hand and ploughed by oxen was beautiful beyond words. Reaped by the sickle, it had a Biblical wonder about it.

  The sudden upsweep of her glance caught a look of almost pagan pleasure on the Don's face as he gazed down into the valley. He wasn't just enjoying a sense of power and ownership, she realized. He was as moved by the wide and splendid view as though seeing it for the first time.

  'The valley never fails to enchant me,' he murmured. 'I have known it all my life, yet each time I come here I am amazed anew by its wonder, and my own pleasure.'

  'You love it, that's why,' she said shyly.

  'And the pleasures of love are continually renewed, eh?' His dark eyes came suddenly to her face. 'Do you now speak from experience, Miss O'Neill? You who asserted that you had no personal feeling about that many-sided emotion which we call - love?'

  She flushed and looked away from him, feeling the shadow of Alvedo Andres across the sun. 'You refer, of course, to that scene you witnessed this morning, senor, She spoke stiffly. T do assure you that it was not what it seemed. My feet were bare and wet on tiles beside the pool. I slipped and Alvedo - caught at me to prevent me from falling over.'

  'Miss O'Neill,' there was the faintest edge to his voice, 'if there is an impulse of attraction between you and the good-looking Alvedo, then it is your own concern. If I appeared angry this morning, it was only that I am too Spanish to care much for the courting habits of the less traditional.

  Ricki felt her spine stiffening, and her fingers clenched on the bridle of her mount. 'Senor Andres and myself are not courting,' she said indignantly. 'I did not come to Spain for that purpose, and well you know it, senor.'

  'The better acquainted one becomes with a woman, the less one is able to understand her.' The brilliant hardness of his gaze flicked Ricki's face. 'Women are creatures of extremes. There is no middle course for them they either hate or love.'

  'Or feel entirely indifferent,' she flashed, and she was looking right at him, uncaring in her sudden anger if he took her thrust as meant for him.

  He shrugged, making it plain that he was indifferent to her personal regard for him.

  'Love,' she added, 'is depending on another human be­ing for happiness, and I don't think I'd care to land my­self in that kind of predicament.'

  'So,' his smile was ironic, 'we agree about something, Todo o nada, all or nothing. It is a painful fact to face, is it not?'

  Ricki glanced away from him, across this land to which he belonged in his every fibre. Espana, land of the proud. Land of those who loved with a fervour that frightened her, for it drove them to the cruel vendetta if they were crossed.

  'You shiver a little.' He had reached across and she felt his fingers touch her wrist, then withdraw. 'We rode too hard, perhaps?'

  'No, I enjoyed it.' She forced a smile to her lips. 'Why did you invite me to ride with you, senor?'

  His mouth compressed into the stern line that took away youth from his face, and for a long moment he was silent. Her heart pounded. She knew that what he had to say would alter her life from this moment. A bird flew, startled, from a nearby bush. The sun was sinking a little in the we
st, webbed in strands of orange and saffron, and the shadows of pines were growing longer, the olive leaves were trembling a little. A sign of rain, she thought. The Don had told her that when he had shown her round the groves the other day.

  'Come,' he slipped with sudden decision from the back of the grey, 'we will give the horses a rest while we talk.'

  He came round to her and she felt the lean, hard grip of his fingers as he assisted her from the saddle. For a strained moment she was close to him in dismounting; her arm brushed his chest and she breathed the open air and sunshine on him. She glanced up, and her eyes were wide with the fear of what he was about to say. She wouldn't beg not to be sent away. She had her pride -but oh, how it would wrench her heart to leave Jaime, and the wild beauty of the valley.

  While the horses bent their heads to crop the grass, Ricki and Don Arturo walked over to a jutting ledge of rock above the valley and sat down on the sun-warmed stone. Nearby there was a strawberry tree, which flourishes in the south; an attractive evergreen studded with red fruits and glossy leaves. Beyond, set in the cliffs, were little lime washed houses with their Miranda balconies; and above all the proud and rugged Sierras.

  Ricki caught her breath on a sigh of mixed pain and pleasure, and beside her the Don said quietly: 'You are learning, I think, how to grasp the momentary joy and not to question what comes after.'

  She nodded, for it was true. Even as she dreaded what he was about to say, she couldn't help but thrill to the vista laid out before her eyes. 'I have never seen a place like this valley, senor she replied. 'It is surely the most fascinating part of Andalusia.'

  'The sweet breath of life is in the very air, is it not?' He lifted his face to the warm gold of the sun and her eyes dwelt on the strong, sculptured-cheekbones, the hard im­perious mouth, with its shading of sadness.

  'To be Spanish, senorita,' he murmured, 'is to- be touched a little by the fatalism of the East. Here we be­lieve that each man is a slave of his destiny.'