Dearest Demon

by Violet Winspear

  'I think I had better warn you,' he said, 'that the Marquesa won't take kindly to anyone being too severe with her daughter. She was popular and vivacious and had the promise of a good life ahead of her, only to have everything snatched away from her just as her lips were at the rim of the glass.'

  'But she has her life,' Destine said quietly. 'She has that to be thankful for, and I might add that I have never been unkind to a patient; I have come here only with the idea of helping Señora Arandas to adjust to a different sort of life. Some victims of polio lose the entire use of their body, but she can use her arms, and she can take breath without the aid of a breathing machine. You must admit that she has more chance of making a happy life than those who are totally paralysed?'

  'Then let us hope that you are successful, señora.' His tone of voice was sardonic, and Destine shot a look at him and decided that he was one of those infuriating Latins who believed in saudade; of living in the past and taking punish­ment for not finding happiness. Infuriating to Destine be­cause, in a manner of speaking, she also had that attitude with regard to herself. She knew it wasn't right, and she would do her utmost to shake her patient out of that frame of mind and heart, but all the same it did apply to herself. Dreams half caught at. The wine of happiness dashed from the lips. How well she understood, and must and would fight with Señora Arandas to abandon her ghosts and let the future guide her out of the shadows of self-pity and loss of confidence in her womanhood.

  'Have we much farther to go?' She wasn't going to argue with someone who disapproved of her appointment as nurse at the Casera de las Rejas, and who seemed to think that it was better to let the invalid dwell in the past. She could only hope that she wouldn't see too much of him… no doubt he was employed to drive the Marquesa about in this quaint mode of transport, for the Condesa had often said that the Latin aristocracy had a tendency to live as their forebears had lived.

  'Another mile or so,' he replied, in an uncompromising tone of voice. 'It is a very Spanish establishment, señora, in a very isolated region of Spain, and no concessions of any sort will be made for someone from England, who is accus­tomed to the potted amusements of television and the disco­theque. The casa is built on the lines of a Moorish house, for long ago this region was in the hands of the Moors. It was they who brought the palm tree and the oleander, the azulejos, and the water garden. In the veins of most who dwell here in Xanas there runs a strong vein of the desert, and a liking for high walls that keep out the hot winds and the intruder.'

  'Do you regard me as an intruder?' Destine felt sure that he did, and though she also felt compelled to ask him what business it was of his, she kept back the words. There was something about him that forbade insolence, though he wasn't backward with his own sardonic remarks.

  'I regard you as the new nurse and nothing more,' he said. 'It was what the Marquesa wanted in her concern for her child, and so let us hope that you have the right medicine to offer.'

  'My medicine will not be too sweet, or too bitter, I can assure you of that, señor. I intend to do my best for Señora Arandas.'

  'Let us hope your good intentions last, señora. The even­ings can be very quiet at the casa, and you are young and probably accustomed to the company of the young doctors with whom you worked—'

  'That is none of your business.' This time temper over­ruled discretion and Destine felt quite furious with this—this servant who seemed to take it upon himself to offer warnings instead of a welcome to someone who had to earn her living just as he did; and she didn't want to find that she had travel­led miles to an uncongenial job. How dared he suppose that she was some sort of a flirt? And how unconsciously cruel he was to suggest that she amused herself with a doctor… she had lost the only doctor in the world for her. Now they were just white-clad models of cleverness and efficiency; if they had charm it failed to melt the ice around her heart.

  'You appear to have a temper,' he drawled. 'By all means use it on me, but none of us permit the Marquesa to be upset.'

  'I wouldn't dream of upsetting her,' Destine gasped. 'You seem to have formed a very low opinion of me, señor.'

  'Perhaps we have formed a low opinion of each other, señora. The midnight hour can have an odd effect upon the sensibilities, for it is the enchanter's hour, is it not?'

  'Yes,' she agreed, and cast a perplexed glance at his shadowed profile. 'The hour of bells, bats and ghosts—you would be annoyed at having to turn out so late in order to meet a nurse whom you consider is wasting her time and everyone else's in coming here. Your scepticism is dis­heartening, señor.'

  'I just don't want you to think that I am driving you to a fool's paradise, señora. A post in southern Spain could be regarded by some as a vacation rather than avocation, could it not?'

  'It never entered my head to regard this post as a sort of holiday in Spain,' she said indignantly. 'You seem to have a prejudiced view of English people, as if we are all after a good time and don't care at whose expense we get it! I am not one of that number, thank you!'

  Time will tell,' he said sardonically. 'You won't last long at the Casa de las Rejas if you are just another glamorous blonde on the hunt for a rich protector, dazzled by your fair skin and your phoney hair—'

  'My what?' Destine could hardly believe that she had heard him correctly. In all her life no one had ever suggested that her flaxen hair was unnatural, and here was this—this servant suggesting that she dyed it!

  'It is out of a bottle, of course,' he said. 'I caught a glimpse of your hair by the station lights—no woman could be so naturally fair, and I believe the fashion started in Holly­wood, did it not? To think that Hollywood was once part of the Spanish empire in California!'

  'You're the absolute limit!' Destine informed him, a blaze to her blue eyes that for so long had been cool as an English dawn. 'Who the devil do you think you are to talk to me in such a fashion? I shall report you to the Marquesa for your insolence—I'm sure she wouldn't be pleased if she knew how you speak to—to—'

  'Were you going to say "guests"?' he drawled. 'A Freud­ian slip of the tongue, señora. Did I not say that no English girl who has such a chic face and figure, not to mention the hair, would come to Spain merely to waste herself on an invalid woman?'

  'Yes, you did say it,' Destine spoke furiously, 'but it doesn't happen to be true. I have about as much interest in flirting with men as that—that horse has! I'm a widow—'

  'I had been informed, señora. English widows, unlike Lat­in ones, don't take to the black mantilla—though in your case the hair would look quite ravishing under the black lace.'

  'How dare you?' Destine felt a cold dash of shock follow­ing on her hot wave of fury. 'I fully intend to report you to the Marquesa. I can't wait!'

  'Neither can I?' he drawled, and at that precise moment the landau took a swerve around a bend in the road and there was a sudden gush of scent as they sped beneath a tunnel of jasmine. Jasmine! Like a burst of tiny stars, arching over twin walls that seemed to be part of a long arcade. The abrupt realisation that they had almost arrived at the casa was a distraction that took Destine's mind off the man at her side—for the moment, at least. They came to the end of the arcade and swept in under a great archway, past the towering girths of palm trees and great cascades of flowering vine. The air was alive with a mixture of per­fumes, distilled by the coolness of night after the heat of the day that kept the essences of the flowers locked away. Now they were released with an almost flagrant abandon, and there at the centre of the enclosed patio was the glimmering alabaster shape of a fountain, shut off right now to preserve the water that was precious in the south, so that the figures that held the basins were like pale ghosts in the light of lanterns attached by wrought-iron to the white walls.

  Destine's first impression was of a noble old casa, rambling around the huge patio, and towering into several galleries, with iron-screened balconies.

  The House of the Grilles. Rampant with tropical flowers and trees… remote and Mores
que… enclosing a family cloistered against the modern world from which Destine had come.

  The man who had driven her to the casa leapt down to the tiles of the patio with that silent litheness she had noticed before. He extended a hand to assist her, and she supposed that he was so accustomed to the elderly Marquesa that he took it for granted she would need his help in alighting.

  'I can manage, thank you,' she said, and couldn't quite understand her reaction against his touch. She believed had he tried to reach for her hand she would have leapt from the other side of the vehicle.

  He merely shrugged his shoulders and took her suitcase, leaving her to alight on her own. She glanced about her, seeing once again the way the ground-floor rooms were arranged around the courtyard, each with an oval carved entrance revealed by the wall lanterns.

  Her escort approached one of these entrances, and then turned to see if she followed him… Destine caught her breath, for in that instant the light of one of the lanterns fell upon his face and she saw haughty, well-marked features and forceful brows sheltering the incredibly dark eyes. The pride of that hawk-like face wasn't all that struck Destine dumb, nor that slight twist to the mouth that suggested a cynical man. Not even the terrible scar that jagged across the left side of his face, adding to his somewhat sinister look, was enough in itself to drain all the blood from her own face and make her feel that she was going to fall to the ground in a faint.

  'You!' she whispered, though she felt as if she cried it to the rooftops of the casa. Cried it for all ears as she had once, long ago in a nightmare, cried it in another forecourt with English oaks as sentinels instead of tall palm trees.

  He stared at her, not comprehending her look, and why her blue eyes so wildly accused him.

  'You,' she said again, 'or am I going mad?'

  'May I say, señora, that I haven't the slightest compre­hension of what you are talking about.' He moved and the lantern light slid off his face, leaving it masked again by shadows, the scar concealed and the deep arching of the black brows above the dark eyes and the hawkish, nose. But she knew him… she knew him… for his face had haunted her restless sleep too long for recognition not to be mutual.

  'Don't pretend,' she cried out. 'It was you who killed my husband!'

  'Dios mio!' A thread of shock ran in his deep voice. 'You are that woman, the one whose husband died when the car of my cousin ran into his car… was it three… no, it was two years ago! Ay, que pena! What do I say?'

  'Are you saying it wasn't you?' Destine felt she hated him even more for not having the courage to admit to his guilt. 'I saw you, and I shan't forget your face to my last day… at least, then, you didn't have the scar. I suppose you got that in another crash that possibly killed someone else!'

  'I was scarred as a youth,' he said. 'I have been called Don Cicatrice for as long as I can remember—it was my cousin, señora, who was at the wheel of the car that killed your husband. The Marques Vincent de Obregon—Manolito, my cousin. Son of the Marquesa, brother of the woman you have come here to nurse—did no one tell you, señora? Did you come to the Casera de las Rejas in total ignorance of these facts? It really is incredible!'

  Manolito, Marques Vincent de Obregon—yes, that had been the name of the reckless foreigner who had killed Matt. How could she ever forget it? And yet how was it possible that this man with the scar was so much like him? That black hair, those dark eyes, the high cheekbones and the mouth that seemed almost chiselled!

  'First cousins, señora, are often much alike,' he said. 'Manolito and I might almost have been taken for twins, but for this cicatrice that I carry on my face. I am known as Don Cicatrice—my actual name is Artez Dominquin y Amador Robles. My mother was sister to the Marquesa; she died when I was born and I was brought up in this house, side by side with Manolito. Many might not have told us apart, but I had this scar, and only you, señora, a stranger to Xanas, would mistake me for my cousin. The rest of Xanas knows that Manolito died in the bullring about a year ago. It was one of his pleasures, the baiting of the bull. It was one of his curses—to die at the age of thirty-four. It is said in Xanas that there is a curse on the Obregon family, and events would seem to bear out this belief. Would you not say?

  He waited tall and silent for Destine to answer him. All she could think of was that he looked like Manolito, and her godmother must have known this when she had arranged this post for her. Why… why in heaven's name had she done such a thing? How could Destine's ghosts ever rest if each time she looked at this man called Don Cicatrice she saw the almost living image of Matt's killer?

  'I—I can't stay here,' she said wildly. 'You'll have to take me back to the station so I can catch a train back to Mad­rid—'

  There won't be another train until tomorrow,' he said. Tonight you must stay here—'

  'No,' she shook her head, 'take me to the village, any­where—I won't sleep under the roof of that man—'

  'Manolito is dead, and you can't pass on the blame for what he did to those who are innocent of his deeds. It will help no one if you behave in this hysterical fashion—'

  'You—I've had enough of you and your insulting re­marks,' she flung at him. 'On the way here you called me an adventuress, and you said that my hair was dyed!

  'Ah, did I upset your vanity,' he asked sardonically. 'Do you hate me for that?'

  'I hate you and all your clan,' she said bitterly. 'I'd never have come here had I known—oh, what in earth made the Condesa do this to me? What possessed her—?'

  'The devil, perhaps?' He moved back silently into the lantern light and his own face looked devilish as the jagged cicatrice sprang into view again, outlining the left cheekbone as if a claw had been dragged through his flesh. 'You come to us as Señora Chard, yet was not the Englishman who died called Mitchell—Mathias Mitchell?'

  'Matthew,' she corrected him stiffly. 'Mitchell was my married name, but when I returned to my nursing I kept to my single name. It was too much to bear—too much a reminder of Matthew to be called by his name almost every minute of the day. Oh, God, what am I going to do?'

  'Tonight you must stay here,' he said. 'We are a long way from the village, and it is now well past midnight. The morning will soon come.'

  She glanced at the casa with eyes that hated it. Only one or two lights could be seen beyond the ornately grilled windows… iron wrought into lacelike patterns to enclose the secrets and the hurts of the Obregon family. Why had the Condesa done this to her? Had she thought that Destine should face people whose troubles were akin to her own—even; in a way, more tragic than her own?

  'Let us go in,' said Don Cicatrice, and there was nothing else that Destine could do but follow him into the House of the Grilles. Tonight she was at the mercy of the hour, but as soon as the morning came—

  'You will drive me to the station as soon as it's light?' she said. 'I can't stay here—I couldn't face it! Seeing you every day! You're too much like him—it's like seeing the devil resurrected!'

  'Is it?' He turned briefly to look at her and his lips moved in a slight smile… a smile that didn't reach his dark eyes.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Lamps had been supplied, but their light didn't penetrate into the far corners of the bedroom. There was electricity, he had told her, but it was turned off after ten o'clock in order to preserve the supply in the estate generator. They were too isolated for the local supply to be run this far, even for the Marquesa.

  When he said that there had again been that brief and cynical smile on his lips, as if very little had the power to deeply amuse him.

  Destine glanced about the room and saw the crucifix above the bed, with its plain white cover and tall carved posts from which was suspended the yards of netting to be drawn around the bed when it was occupied. This was a hot region and already the oil-lamps had attracted the attention of several large moths that buzzed around the globes and cast their winged shadows over the white walls.

  Always the white walls and the monk-dark shadows, thought Des
tine. They were almost a symbol of the Latin temperament, with no half-shades. There was no indecision of features or personality. The men were devils, or they were saints. The women were mothers, or they were nuns. It was a temperament that had its fascination… and its fearfulness.

  The long windows were draped in old-gold brocade from which the design had long faded. The lamps that hung from the high ceiling had a Moorish look about them, and the massive furniture was carved from woods that were meant to last down the centuries, kept polished with the beeswax she could smell so that it had the gleam of chased metal. Deep were the cupboards, large enough for a child to get lost in.

  Had the cousins played in these cupboards when they were boys in this house? Destine fingered the old-fashioned pots and jars on the dressing-table, and saw her own image reflected in the shield-shaped mirror. She was startled by how pale she looked, standing here like a ghost in this Spanish room, her silvery hair making her eyes seem darker than they were.

  This had been the house of the man who had killed Matt, and it was incredible that she should be here. What quirk of destiny had designed it so? What devil had whispered in the ear of her godmother to make that usually kind woman suggest that she come here?

  A tremor of sheer nerves ran through Destine's slender body. Even the contours and features of her own face seemed strange to her, and she walked from the mirror to the bed, across the carpets of Moroccan design, in which the colours mingled as naturally as dyes dropped into a blue ocean. She paused beside the bed and saw the four figures carved upon the bedposts… an angel and a knight at either side of the headrest, a dragon and a demon at the foot.

  Protection for the sleeper, even as danger advanced from the shadows.

  Destine backed away from the bed… no, she couldn't sleep here! She would sit in that woven-cane armchair placed near the windows, and wait for the morning to come. With the first light she would leave, for Don Cicatrice would be only too glad to drive her away from the casa. Though he hadn't known that she was the widow of Matthew Mitchell, he had from the moment of meeting her been dubious of her suitability as his cousin Cosima's nurse.