Dearest Demon

by Violet Winspear

  'I hope I have courage,' Destine said, with dignity. 'At least I know what it is to have been married to a good, kind man.'

  'Cosima tells me he was killed on your wedding day?'

  'Yes—' Destine caught at her bottom lip and some of the old bitterness swept over her and she wanted to blurt out that a Spaniard had been responsible for Matt's death and the last thing on earth she wanted was to replace him in her heart with a man of Latin blood.

  'Better to lose a man that way than any other.' The sharp eyes darted to Cosima and then back to Destine, and it came as an inexpressible relief when a long shadow fell across the table and the voice of Don Cicatrice broke in on the con­versation.

  'Are you catching up on all the old scandals and hearing of the new ones, Cosima mia?' he asked, and the strong smoke of a cigarro drifted downwards and wafted into Destine's face, almost with the shock of a blow. It was a blend of tobacco entirely personal to him, and the smoke seemed to penetrate into her pores as he stood making casual conversation with the two Latin women, a tinge of sardonic humour in the deep timbre of his voice.

  Destine sat there with her fingers locked about the stem of her sherry glass, for even as the mother of the Castros brothers made answer to his remarks, she darted several inquisitive looks across the table, to where Destine sat in the shadow of the Don. Her heart thumped. What did the woman think… that because she dwelt at the Casera de las Rejas, and because she was young and not exactly hideous, she was of some sort of interest to the Don?

  I can't bear this for very much longer, she thought. Being an object of curiosity to these people who find it so im­possible for any woman, young or old, to be disinterested in men!

  'Well, hombre, what did you think of Saladin?' Fernando Castros had approached and as he spoke he slapped the Don on the shoulder. The taller man turned and the sun struck with sudden brazen cruelty across his scarred face. Even as Destine looked at the two men, so did Cosima, and she seemed to stare at the good-looking Fernando with a sudden bleakness in her eyes.

  She's thinking of Miguel! The words flashed through Destine's mind. She's remembering how appealing he is, with something of the appearance and the charm of Fer­nando Castros. She's wondering how she can live without Miguel, but that won't stop her from marrying the Don. She has to prove to these people that she can marry again, and it won't matter to her—afterwards—if she makes life a hell for that tall man standing there with irony in his eyes.

  'It's one devil of a good-looking animal,' the Don drawled, in answer to Fernando's query. 'But can it run—really run, my friend, so that it beats my Primitivo?'

  —Are you making a challenge, amigo?' Fernando drew himself up very straight, but still he remained a head shorter than the other man.

  The Don lifted his cigarro with a lazy movement of his hand; and yet his entire body seemed charged with a force never fully dispelled, not even after a long day in the plan­tations. He wouldn't be afraid of any challenge, for it wouldn't really matter to him if he won or lost. It was the actual physical effort that he enjoyed; the feel of a fine horse going at full gallop across the sabana, the rush of the wind in his face, the cares of the mind lost for a while in the pleasure of the ride.

  'What will you bet?' Fernando asked him. 'There is more fun if there is a prize to be won.'

  'Is there?' the Don cast an enigmatic smile across the patio. 'What have I, amigo, that you prize?'

  'The horse Primitivo itself,' said the other Spaniard, and there was a sudden sharp look in his eyes that reminded Destine of his mother. 'Do you still dare to ride if my Arab outdistances your mount? I know you set great store by your animal, but do you dare to gamble with him?'

  The Don considered this, gazing at the smouldering tip of his dark cigarro. 'No,' he said at last. 'I know that Primitivo can outride your horse, Fernando, but I ride only for pleasure. My regrets, amigo, but I don't chase the hare, only the wind.'

  'You are backing out?' Fernando exclaimed.

  'One can't back out of something one hasn't entered.' The cigarro was dropped into an ashtray and ground to a black stub with a decisive movement of the lean dark hand. Destine watched with a kind of fascination and listened intently. Always in Latin conversation there seemed layers of meaning… an arabesque of words twining around a central theme, and right now it seemed to her that Fernando Castros was trying to prove himself the superior man, more daring than the Don, more willing to gamble with his goods.

  'I've never known you to be chicken-hearted before,' he gibed. 'If I lost the race to you, then you would have Saladin. Do you hear me weeping because I might lose something for which I paid a lot of money?'

  'What of that?' Don Cicatrice shrugged his shoulders. 'Primitivo was a wild, free colt whom I roped in the hills. I paid no more for him than a few bruises and some oats. His value lies in the pleasure he and I have found together when we ride. I don't just own him, Fernando. He means more to me than that, and I wouldn't cheapen what I value by plac­ing it on the table of chance.'

  A short silence followed his words, and then Fernando gave a laugh. 'I remember Manolito once saying that you never once saw him fight in a corrida. I wonder, amigo, if that fire long ago took the fire out of you?'

  Even as Destine heard what Fernando said, she leapt to her feet and before she could control herself she had flung the remainder of her sherry into the taunting, good-looking face. There were gasps of shock from his mother and from the other women who witnessed the way she hurled the wine so that it ran down the olive-skinned face and spattered the white shirt front.

  She didn't care a jot. It had been the note of admiration in his voice when he mentioned Manolito as much as the cruelty of his remark which had propelled her to her feet, driven to the edge of control and beyond it by the Don's stony acceptance of the insult.

  'How would you like to be burned?' she asked angrily as Fernando pulled out a handkerchief and mopped his wet face. 'I've seen people and children brought into hospital with burns, and there's nothing on earth more awful than their suffering. You—arrogant and sure of yourself, and sur­rounded by your family, what do you know about suffering? You should be ashamed of yourself for saying such a thing!'

  'What is happening—what is wrong?' Susana had come running from the house, followed by a small girl who began to cry.

  'Hush! It is nothing! Of no moment at all!' In a couple of strides Don Cicatrice had reached the child and bending down he swung her to his shoulder. 'Ah, how much bigger you have grown, Perdida, since last I saw you. Come, there is no need for tears. Your papa, I assure you, is not crying—he has a little wine in his eye, that is all.'

  And distinctly, even in the midst of her distress, Destine caught the note of sardonic humour in his voice.

  Susana stared at her husband, reaching out a hand to feel the dampness of his shirt. His mother had risen to her feet and the look she directed at Destine was one of fearful dignity. 'How dare you do such a thing to my son?' she boomed out.

  'I—I'm sure he'll recover,' Destine said, and she could now feel herself shaking with reaction. 'A little sherry in the face certainly won't leave him with a scar.'

  'You—you impertinent snip!' The dowager raised her fan, held it, and at once Susana caught at her mother-in-law's arm in abeyance. Her pretty face was distressed as she looked at Destine, and then at her husband, who still seemed unable to believe that any woman would throw the dregs of her wine in his handsome face.

  'Won't someone please explain—'

  It was Cosima who broke the tension by bursting into a peal of laughter. 'Fernando, you look so hurt. And my dear Destine, you really don't need to leap to the defence of my novio. He's quite used to people making remarks about his face, and he's really quite hardened. Heaven help me, what a comedy. It's quite made my day!'

  'It's ruined my shirt,' Fernando snapped, and then to Destine's sheer amazement she learned why Spaniards had a reputation for being unexpected.

  'You have a good aim, señorita.' He
gave her a quizzical smile and seemed to forget that she was not a single girl. 'You also have a quick temper, so heaven help the man who marries you, and let us hope he stocks up well on shirts before the wedding day.'

  'Come, querido, let us go and find you another shirt.' Susana took her husband by the arm and led him towards the house. On their way they passed Don Cicatrice with their small daughter, and through the rain of the fountain Destine watched, numbly, as Fernando paused and said something very quietly to the Don. He inclined his dark head, and Destine noticed that the chattering Perdida was totally unafraid of the lean scarred face.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  That day at the finca was rounded off by a musica y danza, which went on after a general siesta, when the guests followed the example of the family and rested in cool rooms beneath purring fans until the afternoon sun began to lose some of its intense heat.

  Destine shared a small side room with a young cousin of the hostess, and as she lay on a divan in the shade of the drawn louvres she tried to close her mind to memory… she ached to fall asleep as easily as the Spanish girl, but as the minutes ticked by she lay relentlessly awake and at the mercy of the images that kept racing across her mind.

  She pressed her hot face into the cushion of her couch… she didn't really care that she had made Fernando Castros look undignified in front of his wife and friends; what con­cerned her and made her feel so restive was that her action with the sherry had been so instinctive so that nothing on earth would have stopped her from reacting like… like some vixen defending its cub.

  As a nurse she could tell from the Don's scarring that he had suffered acutely at the time of the accident, and as she had stormed at Fernando Castros there was hardly another pain that was so unbearable, so racking, so close to hell on earth as a third-degree burn. The actual recovery from shock and pain was torment in itself, and she would have flung an entire bucket of water in that self-complacent, unspoiled face if one had been handy.

  She hated cruelty… yes, that was why she had reacted so fiercely. There had been nothing personal in it, and yet it must have looked so much like the action of a woman personally concerned… perhaps involved with Don Cica­trice, the bespoken of Cosima Arandas, who could never leap to her feet in defence of the man she was supposed to love.

  Love… oh no! Destine turned restively and wished with every atom of her body that she could slip away from the finca and not have to face those curious and accusing eyes when siesta was over and the party reassembled for the evening. What excuse could she make to go when it would only look as if she were running away? No, she had to stay and face the music… that of guitars and castanets.

  It wasn't the first musica y danza she had attended in Spain, but it was quite unlike those parties arranged by her godmother in the more sophisticated city of Madrid, where evening dress was worn and the food was served daintily on china plates, while a smooth trio of guitar players strummed the well-known melodies of the Latin world.

  Here at the finca a whole pig was roasted on an outdoor spit, and on a long wooden table set beneath the trees of the patio, on big plates of polished copper, were piles of devilled corn garnished with tomatoes and peppers, bowls of shrimp and avocado salad, trellised pastries stuffed with meat and onion, spiced sausages, baby marrows, roast potatoes, and an enormous apple and cherry pie coated with rich brown sugar. The entire feast looked good and smelled delicious, and on a smaller table stood straw-wrapped jars of strong Spanish wine, alongside bottles of sherry, manzanilla, and brandy. For the younger people and the children there were pitchers of fruit juice and a punch made from sliced peaches and passion-fruit.

  The party, announced Susana, had been arranged directly Cosima had given her word that she would come for the day. But now that Cosima planned at some future date to be­come the wife of Don Cicatrice, then there was added reason for a celebration.

  Fernando, looking very much himself again in a sleek dark suit and a frilled shirt, encircled his wife's waist with his arm, and it seemed to Destine that his eyes skimmed her face a moment before he looked directly at Cosima and the Don. 'All of us here,' he said clearly, 'wish our two friends the best of future happiness. I have known Artez since we were boys, and we even did our military service together. I don't hold it against him that he has an iron seat and can ride any horse, even those of the Spanish cavalry at Cuerto, where we often galloped in the desert, and I know that he won't use an iron hand to keep his wife as good, sweet and obedient as mine. It is good, right, that a Spaniard should marry a girl of his own people, for the Spanish girl is like the carnation, she has no thorns to stab a man.'

  Applause greeted Fernando's speech, and as Destine stood tense near a lovely weeping fuchsia, a tall figure came to her side and quietly slid a glass into her hand. She glanced at Lugh Davidson in the golden light of the wall-lanterns and saw that he was looking at her with gravely enquiring eyes.

  'Aren't you afraid that I shall go crazy again with a glass of sherry?' she asked him, a little twist to her lips.

  'It was a trifle unexpected.' His dark brows contracted. 'One somehow expects a fiery Latin to react in that way, but you look so—so cool and composed.'

  'It just goes to show, Lugh, that you can't judge a book from its jacket.' She lifted her sherry and tasted it a trifle defiantly. 'Are you, like everyone else, judging me now as the secret amarata of the Don who couldn't endure to have him mocked for his scarred face? The truth,' she gave a cynical little laugh, 'is far less romantic. He and I couldn't be more opposed to each other. We're ice and flame—oil and water—hare and hound. It's just that as a nurse I've seen badly burned people admitted into hospital, and any nurse or doctor will tell you that of all the injuries they have to deal with a case of burning or scalding really shakes them. Burn cases don't scream, they quietly moan with an agony that is beyond screaming. Had I been Susana, who looks as if she has been fed on cream and kisses all her life, I daresay her husband's remark would have slid off my mind like a drop of oil. But I know a little about suffering and I reacted—instinctively. That's all I know—there's nothing personal between Don Cicatrice and myself. He doesn't altogether like me. He has shown that on more than one occasion, and though I can't assure these other people that I'm not his light of love, I wanted you to know.'

  After that it was a little easier for Destine to enjoy the evening festivities and the food, wandering with Lugh, plate in hand, and talking to him with an ease that had been absent from their encounter earlier that day. Maybe be­cause she had revealed that she wasn't as cool and controlled as she looked, but was still very much a girl at the mercy of her feelings.

  She felt a sort of protectiveness in the Welshman, as if she had found a friend in place of the suitor she hadn't wanted. The moon rose over the finca and seemed to swing in the purple sky like a big golden bell. From beneath the shrubs stole the scented breath of heaven, and pale showers of vine-rose glimmered beneath the filigreed patio lamps. The night, the people and the music had a strange beauty, and Destine believed that nothing would be more evocative of the Spain she would remember than the sal españo!a of the dancing couple who sprang to the centre of the patio and faced each other like a pair of beautiful tigers. The girl wore a polka-dot dress of red and white, profusely frilled, and the man, with black sideburns running down to his chiselled chin, had on a skin-tight black suit, the frills of his shirt-front gleaming white as his teeth.

  Destine caught her breath at the sheer physical beauty of the couple, as still as if caught on the canvas of a Goya a moment before the polished castanets began to click on the girl's upraised hands, her fingers pushed through the colour­ed bands of the shell-shaped instruments that were like the heartbeat of this land.

  The couple began to dance, the man so dark and sensuous against the twirling skirts of the girl. They were the los amantes of Spanish legend, the desert blood still running strongly in their veins under the golden skin. They touched, then withdrew; they were caressing and then they were cru
el, taunting each other with their pliant bodies and their flashing eyes.

  It was a ravishing scene set against the thick white walls of the finca and the shade of Moorish alcoves, in which seemed trapped the scent of spice and dark leaves. Destine was unaware that she had moved away from Lugh, whose eyes were pinned upon the dancing girl, until she found herself alone in one of the alcoves, pressed back against the wall as if she wanted to hide herself, and she was almost hidden by a cascading plume of purple bougainvillaea.

  Something wet and warm rolled slowly down her cheek and she wiped away a tear with no real sense of surprise. That was why she had drawn away from Lugh, because of this sudden ache in her heart… this awareness that tonight marked for her the beginning of her farewell to Spain. She had fought not to feel this way about Manolito's country… she had wanted only the bitterness, never the poignancy of a Spanish night drenched in flower and moonlight and the throb of music from the Moorish courts of love.

  Love… she caught her breath. Why did she have to think of love when it had nothing to do with her; when the music and the magic of the night were for those who had someone to whom they could turn in a security deeper and stronger than the fleeting passion of the senses?

  She sighed and heard the rustling of bougainvillaea petals… a tall figure emerged and, dark and shadowed, she took him for Lugh, come in search of her. 'So there you are!' The man spoke, and the deep voice went through Destine like a knife, for it wasn't the voice of the Welshman but that of the man whom she had imagined with the woman he was bound to marry.

  He came closer and a shaft of moonlight struck him and made his dark head seem darker, and she saw the play of shadows around his lips and the lean strength of his jaw. She had not spoken to him since that incident of the sherry, and now there swept over her such an awful feeling of shy­ness that she couldn't answer him but could only stand there with desperation in her eyes. Why couldn't he have left her alone? Was he curious, like the others? Did he want to know why she had defended him? Well, there wasn't any answer that made sense when he was so big and powerful and so obviously capable of fighting his own battles.