'And what of the women?' she heard herself ask.
'They, in the main, are the slaves of love,' he replied, and his eyes flashed round to meet hers, penetrating and searching. 'I angered you in speaking of your - friendship with Alvedo Andres. It is no more than that? I demand the complete truth.'
'I never speak less than the truth, Don Arturo? she retorted, stung.
'Ah, how the green eyes flash!' He gave a sudden, surprisingly warm laugh. 'You have quite a temper, la inglesa. But what is a woman without a temper?'
'You, senor, have quite a talent for exploding my temper.' She smiled, and then it wavered on her lips. 'Do I take it that you might reconsider not giving me my notice ?'
In a second his eyes had narrowed and she heard him draw in his breath. 'We talk at cross purposes, I think,' he said quickly. 'You thought I meant to dismiss you - for indiscreet behaviour?'
She flushed slightly at his choice of words. I know you thought your nursing-attendant had lost all sense of discretion,' she said wryly. 'But you must admit, senor, that circumstances sometimes appear to be what they are not.'
'Too true.' A smile, cynical and thoughtful, flickered on his lips. 'You appear reluctant to leave our valley, Miss O'Neill. Can it be that you have developed a feeling of attachment for - all this?' He gestured widely with the lean hand on which gleamed the crested ring of the Gaza-lets.
'Yes, I have grown fond of the valley, and of your nephew,' she admitted. 'It would come hard - it will be hard to leave.'
'But you need never leave,' he said quietly.
'I - don't understand ' her eyes, wide and wondering, were fixed on his face, and all was still but for the clouds now scudding across the sun and dimming the landscape.
'Then, to be more explicit,' he suddenly took her hand and, dark head bent, he examined its paleness in contrast to his own sun-bitten skin. A smile quirked his lips and Ricki caught herself staring at the shadows of his lashes. 'Do you recall what I once told you, that way back in my ancestry there is British blood? This is interesting, no?'
'Please ' her fingers moved restlessly in his, 'what has your past to do with - with my future?
'I am, perhaps, pointing out that our basic backgrounds are not so very different.' His eyes took in deliberately every facet of her upraised face, they dwelt on the tension outlining her mouth. 'Miss O'Neill, would you consider becoming my wife?' he asked.
The big, life-moving, shattering things are not grasped all at once. They have to be absorbed by the heart and the nerves, and in this instance they had to be absorbed by someone braced for a dismissal rather than a proposal. Ricki's gasp of surprise, a choked little sound, seemed locked in her throat so that further speech was not possible for long moments.
'You - are speaking seriously?' At last she could speak.
'Where marriage is concerned no Spaniard plays about.' His eyes were fixed on her pale, almost shocked face. 'I am seriously asking if you will marry me.'
'But why?' Her riding crop was shaking in her hand, and suddenly it slipped from her nerveless grasp. She leant over to pick it up, feeling confused and unreal. A girl looked gratified, or prettily flustered when a man proposed to her she didn't behave in this clumsy way. Ricki swallowed dryly. 'Why?' she said again.
'Why not?' He spoke without expression. 'You assure me you have no other commitments of the heart. You like the valley and have settled down to our rural life very well. You are fond of Jaime, and he of you'
He paused there, significantly, and in her mind Ricki filled in the remainder of his sentence Jaime needed a mother! She stared at the Don, her hands clasped tightly over her riding crop, her thoughts tumbling through her mind as though on a treadmill. Don Arturo needed to make amends to Conquesta's child, and he saw her, Ricki, as the perfect sacrifice. Jaime loved her, so Jaime must have her in place of the mother whose death was on the Don's conscience
There at that point Ricki's thoughts grew unbearable and she jumped to her feet. 'I'll stay here with Jaime for as long as you want me to,' she said. 'But I can't - marry you. I can't!'
He got to his feet as well and they faced each other in the clouded glory of the sun's waning. A breeze plucked at Ricki's hair, and her throat hurt where the strap of her cordobes was stretched across her white young throat.
'You need not fear that I would expect love of you,' he spoke with cold, almost savage frankness. 'I speak of a marriage of convenience only. For the child a mother, for you a home and a position of some importance in the community. Are they not fair exchange for a career that, if you remain unmarried, will peter out in the end to a small pension and an impersonal flat?'
I know well enough what an unmarried woman can expect from the future, Don Arturo,' she said. I know that in the end all she has is the memory of service well rendered and none of the comforts of children grown and grandchildren in whom to renew herself. It's a cold prospect, but one I'd sooner face than '
'Marriage with a man you do not love.' His words were edged by ice. 'It is a brave and admirable sentiment, Miss O'Neill, but the young are brave and at your age the lonely future -seems as distant as the polar regions. And like all women, despite your independent talk of wanting only a career, you are confident in your heart that an exciting lover will stride into your life one day and sweep you off your feet.'
He swept her youthfulness with his dark, very adult eyes, You would not know what to do with such a man if he came along. He would frighten you with his feelings, for in many ways you are still very young. It is that in you to which Jaime responds.'
'He will not always be a child,' she said, her heart hammering from his look and his words. 'He will grow and branch out, a-and we two will be left with each other -and our lack of love.'
Something flicked across his face when she said that, then was lost behind the sudden blankness of his eyes. Ricki saw it, and felt sure he restrained the impulse to shake her into submission to his desire - his loveless desire to make recompense to the woman he had loved.
T can't marry you,' Ricki spoke clearly, and it was so quiet just here that her statement sounded even more emphatic. C I can't do it, even for Jaime's sake.'
'Then we will forget I ever mentioned a subject so distasteful to you.' His smile was a lash of irony, flickering on the fine scrolling of his lips and dying before it reached his eyes. 'But would you not like to see the betrothal ring I would have placed on your hand?'
He was looking at her as he took a small box from the pocket of his breeches and sprang the catch. The clouds had parted from the sun and in the orange-gold of its last rays the rubies of the ring glowed red as blood. Ricki's throat seemed to have fingers digging into it as she stared dumbly at the ring; she was picturing the Don's long fingers holding Conquesta's hand as he slid the ruby ring on to her finger.
'This,' he said deliberately, 'is the betrothal ring of the Aguinardas. My mother was the last woman to wear it.'
Not Conquesta? That was the question in Ricki's green eyes as they lifted quickly to his face.
'Conquesta preferred the Cazalet emerald,' he said in answer to her unspoken question.
Beautiful as she, .Ricki thought. Fiery, tempestuous,' not still and glimmering as the rubies were. Then, abruptly, he took a step closer to Ricki and his fingers captured her wrist and he held the antique ring in contrast against her white hand, 'You have the skin for rubies, chic a.' He spoke crisply, no hint in his voice or his eyes that he found her skin pleasant, perhaps inviting to touch.
But then, Ricki thought wildly, she was not a woman to him, merely an obstinate pawn in a game of make-believe. First he used Jaime as a gambit, now he attempted to entice her with the family rubies!
'If you think I can be bought, then you're very much mistaken,' she said coldly. 'You can't buy people, Don Arturo. Haven't you learned that yet from Jaime?'
It was the cruellest thing Ricki had ever said to anyone and she caught her breath as she felt the painful grip of his fingers and saw anger
leap like flame in his eyes. 'You know even less of the world than I had supposed.' He spoke with contempt. 'There are many people to be bought, so why should I suppose you any nobler, my English Miss ? Any less self-seeking ?'
'L-let me go!' She tried to break the grip of his fingers about her wrist, but they were much too strong for her and she was left gazing helplessly up at him, her heart racing with the sudden panic of a hare in a trap.
'You - you judge all women alike,' she said shakily. 'It isn't fair to do that '
'You think I compare you with Conquesta?' His voice was menacing in its softness, and the sudden queer light of the sun played over his face so that there seemed savagery in his cheekbones, and a leaping, barely reined devil in his eyes. 'How quick you are to draw conclusions out of the very air!' he mocked. 'I assure you there is no comparison.'
'You know what I mean.' Ricki flushed under the mocking probe of his eyes. 'She treated you badly a-and made you bitter towards all other women.'
'And is that why you refuse to marry me?' His eyes narrowed. 'You are afraid of the things of the past - and of me?'
She gazed back at him, magnetized by the eyes that were dark as the valley when night fell eyes in which dark secrets could well be hiding. Ricki needed, then, an armour against him, a defence that would stop him from coming any closer to her. 'I - don't love you,' she said. 'It would be wrong to - marry you.'
He didn't let her go, and he could surely feel the thud of her pulse as he subjected her to a small ordeal of silence. : My peace of mind is shattered, he drawled at last. 'How shall I bear up under such a blow to my feelings ?'
'To saddle yourself with a wife just for Jaime's sake would be going a bit far,' she said, stung. 'And there's no guarantee that he would accept me as a - a mother, even if I were prepared to fall in with your scheme.'
'And you are not prepared to fall, eh?' He turned over her wrist very deliberately and quizzed it.
'Throwing the rope after the bucket never drew any water from the well,' she pointed out.
'They only sink together, eh?' He gave a brief laugh, then shrugged his shoulders. 'Have patience, we say here in Spain, and the mulberry
leaf will become satin. If I strive for a little more patience, the love I want may perhaps grow like silk out of the green leaf - but what if it does not materialize?'
'Thou art more deep damn'd than Prince Lucifer!' leapt into Ricki's mind. But still she couldn't marry him! As she had pointed out to him there was no guarantee that by doing so she would ease the burden of his nephew's dislike; also the idea of sharing with Arturo de Cazalet the cold fare of a loveless marriage was appalling.
'I'm sorry, senor,' she spoke as gently as possible. 'I can stay on at the Granja only as Jaime's nurse.'
'There is nothing for you to be sorry about.' He was looking again at her wrist; his other hand thrust the ruby ring out of sight in his pocket. I appear to have bruised you, Miss O'Neill. How do I make amends for my savagery?'
'I - I angered you,' she met his eyes confusedly. 'Please let's forget about it.
'I am not quite that savage.' He smiled gravely and ran a finger over the bruises. 'Will it salve these to hear that you are to take Jaimito to the Salvadori ranch in a week's time?'
'Why, Jaime will be thrilled,' she exclaimed, her own feeling one of deep relief at the thought of getting away from the Granja for several weeks.
'Because his abuelito means so much to him, eh?' The Don released her wrist. 'Again I apologize for the bruises - but in the heart of every Spaniard there is a sleeping devil, you know.'
'And I roused him at my peril,' she smiled shakily. You roused him - at the peril of both of us.' Don Ar-turo gazed down into the darkening valley; the sun had flared and gone and the promise of rain was bringing a tang out of the earth. Here and there stars were studding the filmy lace of the sky, and dark hawks winged across the mauve path down which the sun had gone home.
The bold line of the Don's nose and jaw were outlined I against the dusky sky, and Ricki gave a sudden shiver. She felt cold and a little tearful and she wanted with all 't her heart to be gone from this spot.
'Come, let us go home,' he said, and his fingers held her elbow very lightly as they walked over to the horses. He assisted her, and he must have sensed the sudden depression in her.
'Please,' he said, 'dismiss from your mind all that we have said this evening. It was of no real importance, you know.'
'Of course not,' she said, yet as they rode home to the Granja she wondered if it would be possible for her to forget, and to stay here, as she had promised, when she and
the boy returned from their visit to his grandfathers ranch.
Could things ever be the same between her and the Don? Gould either of them dismiss all thought of his proposal of marriage, even if it had been one of convenience only?
She had dinner with Jaime that evening, then they played snakes and ladders, and when he grew drowsy she sang softly to him until he drifted off to sleep. She had not yet told him that their visit to the Salvador ranch had been arranged; tomorrow would do for that momentous piece of news.
For a long while she sat on beside his bed, watching him asleep in the soft glimmer of the lamp. Tenderness gripped her throat as she took in each detail of his finely etched young face, and that absurd replica of the point that centred his uncle's thick dark hair. She sat there, helplessly magnetized, then she glanced down' at her wrist and saw the dark bruises from the Don's grip. Sudden, inexplicable tears stung her eyes and hung wet and heavy on her lashes. How deep had been his love for Conquesta, that he could think of marrying for the child's sake only?
Ricki drew a sigh and heard it with faint surprise as she rose quietly to her feet and leant forward to touch a kiss to Jaime's dark hair. Then she went to her own room where the brasero was glowing and sending out its tangy smell of crushed olive stones. She undressed and slipped into bed with a book, but the story could not hold her, she kept thinking of her ride with the Don and his proposal of marriage there above the valley - his valley.
She set aside the book on the bed-table and eclipsed the lamp, and the fall of darkness brought more clearly the patter of rain on the vines that meshed the ironwork of her balcony. She recalled what she had thought upon first seeing those cages of wrought iron - that they made her feel like a captive of Don Arturo de Cazalet.
She was no captive. She still had her independence, and much as she cared for Jaime, much as she felt the magic of this place, there had never been any doubt in her heart that it would be wrong to surrender her freedom for security alone. Security was certainly worth a lot, but Ricki knew that love was beyond price and the Don had not offered his love.
It was a relief during the remainder of that week to have the pool in which to occupy herself with Jaime. He had developed quickly a love of the water, and upon a couple of occasions his uncle came to watch him at his exercises. The Don would quietly smoke a cheroot, not speaking after the initial formality of his greeting, and after watching them in the pool for about ten minutes he would turn and go away. Ricki would then relax from the tenseness that had begun to stretch her nerves whenever she saw him, and she was more than glad when Sunday came at last and it was time for her and Jaime to set out on their trip across the plains to the Salvadori ranch.
Don Arturo was driving Jaime and herself to the ranch, and Ricki strove to appear nonchalant when she and the boy, along with their suitcases and the folding wheelchair, were settled in the estate car.
Looking cool and courteous, the Don placed a cushion at the small of her back, then he leant over to his nephew and said gently: 'You are quite comfortable, chico ?
'Yes, thank you, senor tio .' The boy gave the man a tentative smile, and did not shrink back when the lean brown fingers gave his chin an affectionate tweak.
'You are happy to be getting away to the ranch of your abuelito, eh?'
The boy nodded and slipped a hand into Ricki's, made a trifle shy, she thoug
ht, by his own unexpected response; to his uncle. The Don was looking lean and distinguished in a suit of light grey. His shirt was very white, his tie a dark wine red, and when he took the driving seat in front of Ricki she saw in a shaft of sunlight a few silvery threads running through the raven darkness of his hair. She was curiously touched.
He always seemed so strong and armoured, yet he was but a man like any other man. He had had his dreams and his hopes, and now youth was slipping away, and whatever the truth behind the Cazalet tragedy, Ricki no longer felt any fear of the man who would drive Conquesta's child and herself down past the Devil's Tears.
The road that wound round the valley was a corniche of sheer twists and turns, until they seemed poised above a great green bowl. The dramatic beauty of the scene made Ricki catch her breath, as always, while Jaime's eyes looked big as brown pennies in his small olive face. She wondered, with a catch at her heart, if he was reliving another ride, with two other people, and felt the tensile clinging of his hot young fingers.
The Don drove with smooth speed, and soon they had left the valley behind and their wheels were throwing up the red dust of the road through the plains. They saw the chalk-green cacti that dotted the land, and giant aloes bristling with small yellow flowers. The spacious, sun-hot plains reflected the great clouds that rolled over them. They exhilarated, and yet took the breath away. They were endless as the sea, backed by a tapestry of wild mountains rising up into ice-capped crests.
The only traffic they met on this road was that of farm carts with wooden frames and sides made of plaited rope. They were pulled by mules or oxen, and the brown-faced drivers called a friendly greeting as they passed by. These greetings were in the broad Andaluz to which Ricki had become accustomed, and it came to her anew that it would come hard to leave this land of rocks, of strange shaped olive-trees, a sun that sometimes scorched the earth, and a people who were untouched by the discontent of those who dwelt in cities.
The Cazalet Bride Page 15