Dearest Demon

by Violet Winspear

  'Artez must accompany you,' the Marquesa said. 'To ensure that you arrive safely at the airport.'

  'There is no need.' Panic caused Destine to speak off­handedly. 'I really can take care of myself—after all, I came alone to Xanas, and I would prefer to leave on my own.'

  'How independent the English are! Artez, you must insist that you go with her. It is the correct thing to do, Destine, for you are now a friend of the family. I should be most anxious about you if I thought you were all by yourself on that train.'

  'Madre, don't fuss,' drawled Cosima. 'If Destine doesn't wish to have a dueño in charge of her, then let the matter rest. As you say, she is English and unaccustomed to leaning on a man. That is the trouble with Latin women, we grow up believing ourselves helpless if we haven't a man in command of us. I can tell that such an attitude arouses great impatience in Destine, who is quite determined to run her own life.'

  'All the same, nothing can alter the fact that Destine is a young woman.' The Marquesa had decided to be obstinate, and with a needle glittering above her frame of embroidery she stabbed her nephew with her usually gentle eyes. 'Artez, you will go with the señora. It will be no problem getting a seat on the train, for fewer people travel by night. I shan't rest if I know she is on her own—she is far too pretty to travel alone in Spain.'

  'You hardly flatter the Spaniard, Tia.' The Don spoke with lazy amusement and took a pull at his cigarro, leaning there against a column of the sala, so placed that his scar was concealed by a falling shadow.

  'On the contrary, I pay him a compliment. It is no secret that the Spaniard likes a pretty face, and that, Destine, is why we guard our girls. Our men are enormously virile and therefore dangerous—Artez is smiling, as you will notice, but he knows that I speak the truth. A Spaniard will respect any woman who abides by our code, but heaven help the woman who leads him on.'

  'I've never led a man on in my life.' Destine protested. 'Really, Señora Marquesa, even in the deep south women can't be expected to wear the veil and trot at the heels of a man. All that is past and done with!'

  'Many things will never be of the past or done with, not while women are made differently from men. I shudder, child, to think of you alone in a railway carriage and at the mercy of some man who won't respect you because you are alone. I am sure that even in England it isn't wise for a woman to travel at night without a companion. It really is a pity that our trains are so uncomfortable and overcrowded during the daytime—the only answer is that Artez escorts you. You will then have a comfortable seat and there will be no danger from anyone.'

  'It is no use to argue,' he drawled, just as Destine would have argued. 'I shall come with you.'

  No… the word cried through her, as silent and as loud as the beating of her heart. She looked away from him, and the silence gathered speed and it was suddenly too late to make the protest that would have saved her from being so dangerously alone with him, shut away from the intrusive world in the dim, plushy interior of a Spanish railway com­partment.

  She knew that he watched her through those night-dark lashes; she knew that he waited to be denied those night-dark hours, but with all her foolish heart she wanted them. After all, they had not sought them. His aunt had insisted that he travel with her as far as the airport, and it was there that they would say goodbye.

  There in the departure lounge they could kiss goodbye, and only strangers would see them. And if she wept as she turned away from him for the last time, who was there to wonder why?

  'Now that is settled, let us talk about something else. May I have a light for my cigarette, mio?' Cosima had fitted a cigarette into a jade-green holder and now she was looking at the Don with glittering eyes, narrow and tempered as he strolled across the sala to the side of her sofa. A pale, brocaded sofa that set off her fragile figure in a dress that matched the holder In her hand.

  'You shouldn't smoke quite so much,' he said, as he bent to her and applied his lighter to her cigarette. She just looked up at him and deliberately blew smoke into his face. Destine's nerves gave a jump and she knew at once that Cosima had wanted him to refuse his escort of the departing nurse. Love wasn't her reason, nor yet the jealousy that goes hand in hand with an intense physical love. He was her preux chevalier and he had no right to extend his chivalry to another woman.

  Oh, God… Destine wanted to be gone, here and now. She wanted an end to all of it, her nerve ends anaesthetized in the busy wards of a London hospital.

  'What is good for you, mio, is good for me.' Cosima gestured at his cigarro. 'I hope you aren't going to be the kind of husband who takes his own pleasures while expecting the little wife to be a sweetly submissive shadow in the back­ground? I mean, how am I to know? The way you treat your women is a closed book to me—is it possible that there is someone close at hand who can tell me what you are like between the covers of a bed—ah, forgive me, I mean a book!'

  'Cosima!' The Marquesa gave her daughter a shocked look. 'What are you saying?'

  'I am sure you heard exactly what I said, Madre.' Cosima lay back against a cushion and with a delicate kind of inso­lence she smoked her cigarette. 'I don't think we can ignore the fact that the old wiles and intrigues haunt the very air of Xanas—did I read it in a story of Ibn H'azm, "our honey is not made for the mouth of the stranger"? But then Eve wasn't forbidden to eat the apple. It was Adam who was warned that paradise would turn to hell if he took a bite of the pale flesh with its delicate flush.'

  And this time Cosima's eyes were upon Destine's face. 'Yes, Madre, you are right, she is pretty with colour high on her cheekbones, and eyes so blue they seem celestial. Are you as divinely good as you are beautiful, or is there a side to you that is tempestuous and stormy? I do believe there must be, especially when I recall the sherry running like tears down the face of Fernando Castros. Such a handsome face, that makes me think of Miguel.'

  'Cosima, how can you mention that man? I thought you had put him out of your mind and now you speak of him, in front of Artez. Have you no sense of propriety?' The Marquesa gave her daughter an affronted look.

  'None, where Miguel is concerned. Do you imagine, Madre, that I am the light of desire in the eyes of Artez? He pities me, he doesn't love me, and I won't put him through hell—as Manolito did!'

  With a sudden movement that must have caused her pain, Cosima sat up and her face was naked with a terrible truth.

  'He never even whispered it in his delirium that it was Manolito who caused that fire with a cigarette he shouldn't have been smoking. I think the Obregon curse found its last resting place in Lito and I hope when he died that it finally died with him. I won't carry it on by marrying Artez—I think he should marry the one who loves him!'

  Silence… a fierce, emotional missed-beat in the heart of time, and Destine was unaware of being on her feet until she felt the tiles of the hall under the soles of her shoes. She ran, for she had to get away from these people… she should have fled them from the very start, when she had learned that this was Manolito's house, where happiness was not allowed in.

  A gush of night air struck at her, filled with the rampant perfumes of a hundred flowers climbing the walls of the enclosed patio into which she had escaped, only to find herself a prisoner as the Don came swiftly and silently on her, heels, swinging her to him, taking her savagely against his hard chest.

  'Why—oh, why can't you leave me alone!' She pounded at him and he didn't stop her. He allowed her to exhaust her­self, until she fell silent and defeated against him.

  The silence was all around them, broken only by the cicadas in the treetops, chirring away in the darkness that far above them was pierced by star-points, countless pieces of silver stabbing the night sky.

  'Let it end, Artez,' she whispered. 'Let me go—alone, while things can still be mended between you and Cosima. Oh, how could she have said all that—hurting her mother—hurting you! All the week I've felt it coming, a sort of storm, and now—'

  'Now the storm is upon us, ninita, a
nd it must be faced. There is no more hiding what we feel for each other—'

  'It's a cursed love,' she gasped. 'From the very beginning! It's Manolito laughing at us from hell itself! I must go away—I will go away—you can't stop me!'

  'I can't, my white witch, but I can come with you. What did you say to me? That I would never put a woman before the valley? I can and I shall, and nothing on this earth will stop me.' His arms held her with a bruising pain that swept the sufferer so close to heaven it was frightening, because it was only a fever of the moment and she couldn't surrender to it.

  'You can't leave,' she said. 'Your life is here—you've given too much to the valley to ever give it up. I wouldn't ask you—'

  'You ask so little that it's time someone gave you every­thing. Is my love enough, ninita? Is my life?'

  'Everything that means anything to you is here,' she said, and she was almost crying. 'You belong here and you know it, and I can't stay here with you. If I had never come to Xanas you and Cosima would have been all right together—it would have made your aunt so happy.'

  'A false happiness, and Tia will learn to accept that I must now live for the one whom I love.' He cradled Destine's face in his hands and he looked down deeply into her frightened eyes. 'Don't look as if I'm about to immolate myself in the flames of destruction. These are the flames of love, and we leap in together—come, queridisima! Come!'

  Together, everything left behind, the tears, the kisses on the sad cheek of his aunt, the hot south and the memories, they travelled fast through the night, heading for the possible dream.

  They talked of Australia, far into the small hours, she deep in his arms as they sat there in the dim, plushy comfort of a Spanish railway compartment. Dawn came with a flaming beauty that promised all they hoped for, and looking from the window Destine said softly: 'The fire and the beauty, these are Spain—these are love.'

  'These are love, my love.' And his arm held her close and looking up at him she saw the sun rising in his eyes.