Dearest Demon

by Violet Winspear

  'What do you want?' Suddenly her jaw unlocked and she was able to speak, only to sound as if she resented him for intruding upon her.

  'I lost sight of you—I suppose I wanted to find out if you were enjoying the music and the dancing. Are you?' His voice was quite impersonal, but that thin lance of moonlight that stabbed through the bougainvillaea and across his face revealed the twitch of a muscle beside his mouth, and Destine had the sudden feeling that there was something tensely controlled about him, that a look, a word, even a slight movement from her would release from that lethal control. Her breath quickened and her hands were pressing into the wall behind her, almost bruisingly. The magic of the night, the enchantment, had drawn closer… but in a frightening way.

  'They're exciting,' she said, and she had to strive to keep her voice steady. 'The real and the forbidden that someone like me is fortunate to have seen and heard. The tourist in Madrid or Seville is really missing something.'

  'That's true.' A curt edge to his voice seemed to touch the nerves just under Destine's skin. He swung a hand and petals fell, stroking against her skin so that she shivered. 'It isn't everyone who comes to Spain who is allowed to catch a glimpse of our true way of life. We remain, especially so in the south, a feudal people who cling to the old traditions because they have a fervour and an integrity that is more satisfying than the modern way of life.'

  The music beyond the curtain of flowers, so dense over the arcade that anyone glancing this way wouldn't see that it was occupied, had changed to the marimba, a dulcet sound that mingled romantically with the feminine laughter and the drifting scent of woodsmoke.

  'No stranger,' he said, 'could ever really understand our ways. You were angered by Fernando for no real reason, for we accept pain as we accept pleasure; we enjoy the triumphs and the tragedies of life in equal measure. Fatalism is the marrow of our bones, and it has a strange way of making most things endurable.'

  'It seems a cruel philosophy to me,' she said. 'It means that if you can accept pain almost with pride, then you can inflict it. I imagine that's how the Spanish Inquisition came into being, and how a Golden Age for Spain was made possible by slavery.'

  'England had her share of slaves,' he said ironically. 'Children of ten were working down her coal pits, and men died by the score on her tropic plantations, literally worked to death for the white gold known as sugar. In every human being there is a seed of cruelty, señora. Only the angels are perfect, and would I sound too much a devil if I said that the angelic can be a trifle tedious?'

  'I could never imagine you consorting with angels, señor.' Her tension found a little relief as she smiled at his remark. 'Half angels, perhaps, for you're not altogether a devil—' .

  There she broke off, confused, alarmed, like someone who had dashed headlong into a patch of brambles. And there was no way to extricate herself, for he had heard her quite distinctly and she could feel him looking down at her even as she turned her eyes swiftly from his face.

  'That is quite a confession from a girl who avowed that I was devilish.' He spoke drily, and yet with a lazy deepening of his voice that sent a wave of emotion over Destine. When he spoke like that there was a sensuous, almost caressing quality to his words, making her aware of the brown throat from which they arose, a column of warmth and strength, pulsing with the vital life force of the man. Her fingers dug into the stone of the arcade as if to benumb the incredible urge to feel the warm neck of the Don between her hands.

  What in heaven's name had got into her… all day she had been like someone possessed of an alien force!

  'I must go—' the words scraped her throat. 'Lugh will be wondering what has become of me—'

  'So already you call him by his first name, eh?'

  'It's quite usual, in my country,' she rejoined. 'The use of first names is quite a casual thing.'

  'So I was incorrect in thinking that you didn't want the intimate attentions of this man?'

  'Don't be absurd—' She caught her breath. 'Intimacy has nothing to do with it. He's friendly and we speak the same language, and it's just like a Latin to read headlines where there is really only small print!'

  'Perhaps that is because we are so intrigued by the in­scrutable mysteries of life—and love.'

  'Love!' she exclaimed. 'Do you imagine I've fallen in love like some convent girl let out among men for the first time?'

  'In some ways you have been in a kind of seclusion—a self-imposed chastity to do with being a bride and widow on the very same day.'

  'That, señor, doesn't mean that I am now ready to break whatever vows I took to myself when Matthew died. I'm not a Spanish girl! I could never give myself to a man I didn't love with every fraction of my heart, every nerve of my body, and every cell of my soul!'

  'You say that with great conviction, but have you con­sidered loneliness?'

  'A nurse is never lonely, señor.'

  'I talk about her when she is off duty and closes the door on her patients and those who work alongside her. Then there can be only the ticking of the clock, or the infernally cheerful voice of the radio announcer, never giving her the satisfaction of a flash of temper, and offering only the jest that a million other women will share. Rather than en­dure that, it is very much easier for a Spanish girl to give herself to a man who will be tolerably good to her. Spaniards don't make ideal husbands, but they are rarely boring.'

  'It all sounds very cold-blooded to me.' Destine, on the other hand, didn't feel a sense of coldness, only a quickening of alarm as the Don stretched an arm to the wall and casu­ally enclosed her in an angle of the arcade. Then he seemed taller than ever, indescribably closer, so that she breathed the tang of his own special tobacco on his clothing, and the more subtle aroma of his warm skin. The racing pulse in her throat felt as if it might choke her, and as panic spread through her body she wanted to thrust herself out of his way before… oh God, before what? He touched her and it be­came impossible to ever pretend again that he meant nothing to her.

  'Cold blood can never flow between a man and a woman, and what you really mean to say is that it seems unromantic that a Spaniard should be shrewd about marriage rather than reckless.' He gave a laugh so brief it was almost a growl. 'The English are so amusing. They insist on being as cool as a cucumber in the face of cannon and curse, and the truth is that the worm of reality eats away at their romantic hearts, even as their women flirt on the beaches with young men who will marry the girl chosen for them by their grandmother, and the men sit in the cafes and start at the flamenco dancers who at home have two or three pequeñas. The Latin is a realist, señora. He only looks as if he might be Rudolph Valentino.'

  'What is he in reality, señor?' Destine just couldn't resist asking, and curiously enough she felt no real resentment at the way he mocked the English. He was so incredibly right about them. At the deep heart of them they were the romantic gallants of the world, sons and daughters of a selfless, sacri­ficial past, a people who could still be rallied to fiercely defend their green and crazy island. Images rushed through the brain when anyone thought of England, barbaric under Roman rule, but ready with pike and incredible loyalty by the time the Vikings were rowing their longboats along the bird-haunted marshes, steely eyes glittering through their helmets and terrible enough to make any heart quake but that of the villagers, the monks, the knights who rushed to the side of their king and conquered one of the strongest, cruellest, most pagan of foes. And there were the chalk cliffs tumbled to the sea were the blood-red poppies on their delicate stems… symbols of all the dying, all the loving given to a land that was still the most glorious of all.

  Destine lifted her chin and her blue eyes shone with a quiet pride. 'I know the English, señor. I knew my husband, but tell me, what is a Spaniard?'

  A silence prevailed as he considered her question, and she stood there, tensely more aware of this man of another nation, of a totally different ideology from her own, than she had ever been of anyone… even the man she had married. Her
heart felt shaken, and her body felt curiously defenceless as she pressed herself against the wall, as far away from him as possible.

  'Strange as it may seem, señora, the typical Spaniard does not resemble Don Juan and is much more in the mould of Don Quixote. His respect for honour is almost religious in its intensity and he wouldn't think twice about defending his honour by cutting to the bone the throat of his detractor. I feel you shudder, but you asked for the truth, did you not?'

  'Yes,' she whispered, and beyond the wide spread of his shoulders and the soft rustling of petals she could hear the pulsing rhythm of the Latin music… passion, symbolism, threat.

  'The flamenco dance is a duel between a man and a woman,' he said. 'It is sensual and yet it imposes a restraint that makes even the brush Of her frilled shirts against his person a beautiful and forbidden caress. Watch the dance carefully and not once will you see the couple actually touch each other, not in public, not in front of the crowd, who are yet made unbearably aware that they watch a dance of passion. It is in the nature of the Spaniard to hate a dis­play of his innermost feelings and in front of other people he may often show indifference or downright coldness to the person most closely attached to him. It is, of course, a differ­ent matter within the high walls of his home, behind the iron grilles of his windows. He may even be ruled by the woman in private, but his public image must always be that of a proud man. Sensuality may repose in his lips, his glance and sometimes in what he says, but he kisses only in private, except for the courtesy kiss on the wrist of an elderly relative. In lots of ways he is cloaked in his reserve, but at heart he carries the lance of Quixote and he tilts at strange dreams—the saudade in his soul; the search for the im­possible.'

  'And you call that being unromantic?' A smile came, fled around Destine's lips, and then was gone as with a shocking suddenness the Don dropped his hand to her shoulder and she seemed to feel his touch right through her skin to her bones, so that a tingling, electric dart sped to the very core of her.

  'Don't!' The word broke from her like a gasp of pain.

  'I shan't, when you have answered a question of mine. Why defend this cicatrice of mine when you flinch from it? Why make a drama of a farce, eh?'

  'Farce?' The word choked her. 'Do you have to be so cynical?'

  'Perhaps cynicism saves me from sinfulness. There are times when it would be an inexpressible relief to sin—even you—even you must have felt this, mi bruja blanca.'

  My white witch!

  Destine held her breath, and then lost it, almost com­pletely, as with an abrupt savagery she was swept close to the Don, his hands biting into her body. 'El momento de la verdad, that is how it is in the arena when the raised sword glitters in the sun. A moment of terrible truth! Tell me now that you hate me—tell me!'

  She tried, desperately, but his arms were around her and she could feel their strength and their warmth right through the material of her dress, holding her so forcibly that her dress was drawn up from the warm crevices at the back of her shaking knees. This wasn't the first time she had been in his arms, but never before had there been this instant and overwhelming desire to stay in them, locked close in her slimness to the power and strength of his body.

  Hate… the lost memory of hating him spun out of the orbit of her mind and her body and all she was aware of was a warm languor as her head tilted back against his arm and her lips received his without struggle or surprise, or the will to ever break away from the ravishing sensation that she felt as his hard mouth seemed to melt into her own and she was pressed with a punishing tenderness to his heart.

  When, groaning, he drew his lips away and buried them in the soft side of her neck, she gave way at last to what wouldn't be denied and clasping his head with her hands she pressed her lips to his scar, running them up and down the cicatrice, as if in this way to ease the memory of his pain.

  'We kiss like this, but it can never happen again.' He spoke the words against her skin, so that the very movement of his lips seemed like a caress before the torture. 'You must leave Xanas very soon; you will return to your own country and you will—forget me.'

  'And will you do the same, Artez—forget?' Her voice was choked with the anguish of the held-in tears. Her fingers dug into him and no longer was he the dark and distant stranger who used mockery to shield this heart that felt as if it wanted to join itself to hers, beating hard against her, only the silk of his shirt a second skin between them. The image of him there in the perfumed darkness made her feel dizzy, his black hair across his brow and his mouth a brand of desire across the quivering, silent cries in her throat.

  Oh, God… he seemed a part of her as no one else had ever been… not even Matthew.

  No, not even Matt, so kind, so clever and courtly. Never had she flared into anger with him; never had there been this tumult of mixed pleasure and pain.

  'Ah, Don Cicatrice,' she whispered, unable to raise her voice for the weight of his mouth. 'I think I'll die if I have to go away from you.'

  'Dying isn't that easy, niñita. Sinning is a lot easier and it will come to that if you stay where I can see you each day and be aware of you each night. I am not a free and youthful Spaniard who can play dragonear at your window. Por cierto, I must climb in through that window, or I must send you away. You understand me. I don't have to be explicit, do I?'

  She shook her head against him, and was more aware than ever of the hard strength to which surrender would be heaven… and hell afterwards when she had to see him with Cosima. He would never hurt Cosima. What he felt for her had nothing to do with this hard physical need which Destine felt in him. He was strong enough to control desire, but he had no defence against the compassion which Cosima aroused. He would marry her… and send Destine away from him.

  'It has to be,' he said. 'Ay, if only you had gone that first day, then it would have been a clean cut without the torn flesh. This cicatrice on my face will be nothing to the one inside me. Mierda! Why did you have to come to Xanas with your hair like a silver flame and your eyes blue as the heaven we can never share? Why couldn't your hate be real—I sometimes believed that it might be, until you flung sherry into the handsome face of Fernando. Por dios, it took all my control not to sweep you into my arms when you did that. I wanted to hold you, and then take you far away with me. No woman should be so—so beautiful!'

  'Ah—' the little cry was torn from her as he suddenly thrust her away from him and turned with animal instinct away from her, brushing through the curtain of bougain­villaea.

  'I am coming, Sanchez,' she heard him say. 'I was being solitary and indulging in a day-dream, amigo'

  'Cosima wants you,' said the other man. 'I believe she is feeling fatigued and would like to be taken home.'

  'I am at her service,' said Don Cicatrice as they went out of earshot. Destine trembled, for she hadn't caught the approach of Sanchez as the Don had. Another moment and he would have caught them together and there would have been no way to avoid scandal, for the Don's arms had been holding her.

  Still felt as if they were hard and warm around her, but the truth was that she was alone as never before, the 'other woman' in the life of a Spaniard who was honour bound to put duty before desire.

  Desire… was it only a physical flame that burned between them, that time and distance would extinguish? 'You must go away,' he had said. 'You must—forget me.'

  Forget the way she had reacted to his kisses… to the closeness of his strength and his control. She had sensed that control and it had been far more exciting than if, like other men, he had allowed his body to be his master. It proved his power and his superiority, and it gave some indication of the superb lover he would be.

  Destine pressed her hands to her burning face. It was in­credible that she should feel this way about a man to whom she could never belong in an honourable way. It was a realisation from which she wanted to flee… something to which she wanted to run with arms outflung and her heart thrown open, uncaring of his people and their sou
thern code of honour.

  A terrible code that bound him to a woman who would never give him her love, or a son of his splendid body.

  A choked sob broke from Destine. She who wanted to cry out her love had, instead, to hide it as if it were something shameful. She had to behave as if the Don meant no more to her than the aloof nephew of her employer. Aloof… could she ever pretend again that he was distant and arro­gant when she had been close enough to have felt the turbu­lent beating of his heart? Could she look at him with cool eyes when her veins seemed to run molten each time she remembered his lips against her skin?

  Could she leave him when she wanted so much to love him? Yes, she loved Don Cicatrice—not in the way she had cared for Matt, but in a way so different that there was no sense of betrayal. Her kind and generous Matthew would not begrudge the reawakening of her heart, and her senses… senses she had not been aware of until the Don had aroused them under the savagely tender assault of his lips.

  And on that awakening she must turn her back, going her lonely way, leaving behind her that tall, scarred personage who would marry td become a protector rather than a lover.

  The prospect was chilling and all the warmth had seeped out of Destine's body and she felt cold… abandoned. Even as she found love again, she had to let go of it. Neither she nor the Don were natural sinners, so from now on, in the words of Rupert Brooke, it must be:

  'Each in his lonely night, each with a ghost'

  The farewells were affectionate. 'You must come again, both of you!' Susana Castros hugged Cosima, and dared to do the same to Don Cicatrice. Then she looked at Destine with cooler eyes. 'You will be going home to England, eh? Now that our precious Cosima is restored to health?'