Pilgrim's Castle

by Violet Winspear

  'I can't understand how you could allow a stranger to masquerade as your — husband!'

  'The old woman assumed it ... he thought it wouldn't matter in the circumstances.'

  'How very short-sighted of him,' Rique snapped. 'That old woman has seen you again and let the cat out of the bag. All my friends will think you an adventuress.'

  'Are you so swayed by what everyone else thinks?' She studied his face in the moonlight, stern and young and rather hurt, like that of a boy who had found a defect in a toy he had grown fond of. 'You're really a very straitlaced Latin beneath your air of flirtation, aren't you, Rique? Well, it looks as if I shall have to make the most of being banished to the shelf.'

  'Don't make a joke of it!'

  'It is rather amusing,' she smiled wryly. 'To be thought a scarlet woman when only a few weeks ago I was a wallflower, tagging along in the wake of a woman who thought of no one but herself. I wonder what she'd say? That I should have kept my hair in a bun, I suppose.'

  'Yvain,' he gripped her shoulders and shook her, 'scandal spreads like a bush fire around an island and already people will be whispering about you. Don't you care?'

  She cared far more that Don Juan should not be found out as the man who had shared that cottage bedroom with her. He had been strangely kind to her, and her heart moved at the thought of him and she wanted to repay him for the things he had given her, especially these weeks of study with Raquel's father. She thought of his romance with Raquel ... and wanted in an instant not to think about that.

  'I should like to go home,' she said. 'It's past midnight and some of the other guests are leaving.'

  Rique seemed poised on the edge of impulsive words, and then he compressed his lips and looked at her face raised to his, a little sad and appealing, the moon in her eyes, her hair tousled about her shoulders from the dancing. Only a little while ago they had been enjoying the sardana, and the bride and groom had plucked the sweetheart sweets for them. Now it was ended: The sweetness had turned bitter on Rique's lips.

  They said their farewells and left the finca in the car of a friend. It was a great relief to Yvain when the turrets of the castle came into view, moonlit and brooding on their hilltop. She felt like Cinderella who had gone to the ball so gaily, and who returned home in tears.

  'Good night. . . .' The words floated back over her shoulder as she ran to lock the side door of the castillo. As she closed it behind her, Rique and his friend drove away.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  The butterfly lamps glimmered low in the patio as Yvain stole across to an archway that led into the castle. Moths glimmered green among the trees and a frog was croaking in the basin of the fountain. The shining slipper of a moon glided through the sky and made ghostly a pergola hung with blossom. The moonlight was cool, a cloak of silver in which she stood for a moment, part of the night and its mystery.

  And then as she stood there she heard the sound of a piano being played in the castle. The music stole out softly into the night, sad and enchanting, and as if drawn by the sound she followed until she came to the partly open door of the golden room. She paused and listened and it was so late, and the castle was so still, that a ghost might be in there - the room of Rosalita - playing the Chopin prelude. So lonely, heard in the stillness of the night, so that Yvain hesitated to look into the room.

  Her heart drummed softly, and then at last she found her courage and took the few steps that made it possible for her to see the pianist. The candelabrum was alight on the piano top and the twin flames moved, making jewels of the crystal drops and playing shadows over the profile of her guardian.

  He played on as if unaware of her, but she knew his instincts were too alert not to have sensed a presence. She felt instinctively that he was displeased with her. The quickening of her heart told her he had been waiting for her to come home. Though he wore a dark silk dressing-gown with a silk cravat tucked in at the neck, his hair was smooth and unruffled and it was obvious he had not been to bed.

  As the prelude drew to a close, the tumult of her pulses made her feel a little faint. She wanted to retreat from him, but she couldn't move. She wanted to speak, but the words wouldn't come. She would do anything, kneel at his feet, if he wouldn't treat her as a child who had stayed out too late and must be punished with a reprimand.

  There was silence in the room, and then he turned slowly to look at her, dark, stern, shaking her heart. His features had a taut and chiselled look, a certain pallor intensified by the dark silk of the robe and the cravat. His eyes were too compelling to be evaded. They held hers and she saw the shimmer of anger in them.

  'Are you aware of the time?' he asked bitingly.

  'I ... I know it's late.' Her voice held a tremor. 'I've been to a wedding ... it was a late ceremony and then there was a party and we didn't leave until after midnight ... '

  'We?' His voice went dangerously soft. 'I take it you mean yourself and Manrique Cortez?'

  'Yes, senor.'

  'The wedding was so gay and colourful that you couldn't bear to leave, eh? There was wine and music, and the dancing. I can tell from the look of you that you enjoyed the dancing.'

  'I loved the dancing.' She put a hand to her lips as if to still the shake in her voice. 'Is it wrong, Don Juan, to enjoy a wedding party? Am I so young and foolish that I can't be trusted anywhere but here or at my lessons?' His eyes flicked her face, her dress, the lace scarf draping her shoulders. 'You are too young to be out until the small hours. Now please come in and close the door. I wish to be told, Yvain, to whose wedding you have been. I gather they were friends of Cortez?'

  'They were the nicest couple!' Colour warmed her cheeks as she obediently shut the door and stood in a defensive attitude before him. 'The party was held at a finca in the hills belonging to the father of Alvarez, a Senor Velarde.'

  'Ah, so, a man of good name around the island. I am gratified that Cortez took you among people I can approve of. I have heard that he is not always so particular.'

  'You are being pompous!' Yvain exclaimed. 'I'm not a convent-bred senorita who has to be guarded against life. You are forgetting, senor, that I worked as a maid and lived back-stairs, and that I waited on the guests who came to the parties at Sandell Hall. It made a nice change to be a guest at a party tonight!'

  'I am pleased that you enjoyed yourself, but as your guardian I am permitted some anxiety when you are late coming home.'

  She studied his face by candlelight, but he didn't look anxious to her, only stern and annoyed. 'You had no need to wait up for me,' she said stiffly. 'Unless you felt that I needed a reprimand.'

  'I'm not reprimanding you, child.'

  'It feels like it.' She gave way to a wry little smile. 'Your frown is so black that my knees feel weak. If you go on looking so grim I shall probably collapse on the carpet with fright!'

  His lips twitched, a sign that he was relenting. 'I suppose I forget what it is to be young and in company that makes one forget the time.

  I forget that you have never been to a Spanish wedding and that you must have found it fascinating. Tell me,' he shifted his leg and gripped the ebony stick that was never far from his hand, 'what part did you enjoy the most?'

  Her thoughts ran back over the evening and she remembered the candles on the altar, the white lace extended over the bridegroom's shoulders, and the exchanging of the marriage rings. 'The ceremony itself, Don Juan.' Suddenly, with the grace of the young, she knelt and slipped a stool under his left leg. He stared down at her and she felt lost in the dark depths of his eyes. 'Why did you do that?' he asked.

  'I think your leg is giving you pain,' she replied, kneeling before him with the skirt of her dress like a green pool around her, her hair falling rain-straight around the stem of her neck, her face upraised to him, pale in the candlelight, with the shyness in her eyes because at last she had dared to talk about his pain.

  'You are perceptive,' he drawled.

  'You are too proud - always — to admit what hurts you, senor.'<
br />
  'I would become a bore, Yvain, if I groaned each time this limb of mine chose to be awkward. I have learned to live with it, and you must not pamper me.'

  'We should all be pampered now and then,' she smiled. 'Shall I pour you a glass of wine?'

  'Yvain,' . he leaned forward and his long fingers caught at her wrist and she was shocked by her instant reaction ... the thrill that ran into her very bones. 'You are not to think of yourself in servitude, ever again. You owe me nothing, least of all your sympathy. Do you understand?'

  'Yes, I understand.' She drew a shaky breath. 'I can take things from you because you have the money, but you refuse the bit of gratitude I have to give in return. It isn't much, but it's all I have to give.'

  He smiled strangely when she said that. 'One might take you for a Latin girl when your eyes flash. You will find in that cabinet over by the windows a decanter of pale gold wine. King Cophetua will be pleased to take a glass with his beggar maid.'

  Her eyes grew very wide as they dwelt on his lean face with its slightly wicked smile. 'Oh — yes!' She jumped to her feet and went to the cabinet that stood between the long silken curtains at the windows. There were gilded dragons on the doors that swung open to reveal an array of antique decanters and long-stemmed goblets, and

  Yvain busied herself with the wine pouring, and collected herself.

  It had swept through her like a storm that Don Juan de Leon would be devastating if he ever loved a woman beyond thought or reason. She could not believe that he loved Raquel Fonesca in such a way. Raquel would not be so restless if he did, seeking gossip and the pleasure of being admired by other men on the terrace of the Club Hidalgo. She would be content ... happy beyond anything to bask in the love of the lion of the island.

  Yvain held the goblets by their stems and crossed the room to her guardian, and as she felt his dark Latin eyes upon her she was afraid she would spill the wine, or trip and shatter the glasses. He was so real he made her nervous, and yet at the same time he was part of the dream she would carry away with her. She would remember him here, so much a part of the haunting fascination of the room of golden mirrors, the piano with its carved frame, the panels of Latin figures painted on a gold background.

  'Here you are, senor.' She handed him his glass of wine and watched the curving of his long hand around the bowl, his touch upon the cut-glass facets with fingertips that were so alive. His hands loved beauty, and could make beauty, and she wanted again to listen to his playing.

  'I wish you would play something else before I have to run away to bed,' she murmured.

  'Have you not heard enough music for one night?' His eyes held hers as he sipped his wine. 'I am sure Cortez played his guitar to you, and there is no other musical instrument that voices so well the mood of the moment, or the temperament of Spain.'

  Her eyes dwelt on the guitar that hung by scarlet ribbons beside the portrait of Rosalita. She could imagine him as a boy, seated at his mother's knee, listening as she played and sang to him of the land they had run away from. . . .

  'What would you like to hear?'

  She looked at him and knew that it must be something she would never forget. 'Play me something you are fond of, senor.'

  'Very well, Yvain.' He set aside his wine glass, and she went and curled herself around the cushion of an armchair. Her heart beat fast from the wine and the strange enchantment of being alone like this with Don Juan. She closed her eyes as he began to play, and it was just the music she would have chosen, lovely and sad, with the sadness of lovers who must part.

  He played the love theme of Tristan and Ysolde, and all through it Yvain sensed in the room the haunting presence of his mother. In her loneliness Rosalita had made this room her retreat from the coldness of her in-laws. Here she had waited for her husband to return to her from Spain, and at last she had run away to join him and in the hills they had fought together as partisans. In the hills he had died and she had taken her son far, far away. She had taught him to love music ... but she had taught him also to be wary of love.

  Yvain looked at the portrait and the passionate dark eyes seemed to meet hers. They seemed alive and aware, as if to say that to love too much was to court heartache and that Yvain had better take heed before she found her own life made unhappy by a love she was not born to have.

  The music died softly away and Yvain became aware that there were tears in her eyes. She blinked them quickly away as Don Juan turned to look at her. His eyes were the eyes in the portrait. The music he had played had been about a forbidden love. Perhaps in his subtle way he told her that she must leave him as she had come to him, as a waif of the night.

  'Did you like the music I chose for you?' he asked.

  She nodded. 'It was beautiful, senor, like the moment in church when a corner of the bride's veil was draped over her husband's shoulder. Something very special to remember.'

  'Do you know what that part of the ceremony implies?' His head and shoulders were dark against the candlelight, and his face was shadowed so that she couldn't read his expression.

  'I think it means that the bride submits herself to her husband's authority. It, seemed to mean something like that and was somehow so beautiful, the white lace against his dark suit and her dark hair, binding them together.'

  'The Latin vows are eternally binding, Yvain. On earth, in heaven, whether together or apart. Because of this a man must be very sure, and the girl must not be blinded by the things outside of love. She must feel more than admiration or affection for the man; more than gratitude because he may have been kind to her. Love is more pain than delight ... in the beginning.'

  Yvain could not read his expression, for in that moment one of the candles went out as if someone blew upon it. But if he spoke of love as a painful delight then he felt it, had been caught by it, and would marry for more than a son to carry on the tradition of his name. He would marry for his own sake, because he wanted the woman beyond anything else on earth.

  The room felt suddenly cold and Yvain gave a shiver. The wine had left its tears in the stemmed glasses, petals had fallen from the roses for Rosalita, and the candles were dying. She uncurled out of her chair to her feet. 'How late it must be, senor! I shall be falling asleep over my lessons tomorrow.'

  'Yes, it is about time we both went to bed.' He reached for his stick, but as if possessed it slid away from his hand and fell with a clatter to the floor. In an instant Yvain ran forward to pick it up. She held it out to him with a smile that was instantly banished by the look he gave her as he took it. A dark, savage look, as if he could have struck her with it.

  She backed away from him, bewildered and afraid.

  'Go to bed!' He gripped the stick as he towered to his feet.

  'Won't you say good night?' The words trembled on her lips, for he looked so angry, as if he couldn't bear to be helped by her.

  'Good night.' He turned away from her. 'In future keep your pity under control and don't leap to retrieve the things I drop as if I'm a doddering invalid!'

  'I'm sorry.' She felt bruised by his words, and tears were choking her as she ran out of the room and made for the stairs that led to her room. He wasn't kind at all! He was proud and cruel and she wanted to leave his house! She wanted to go miles away, and tomorrow she would ask Senor Fonesca to arrange for her to go to Madrid as soon as possible. There she would have a job. She would be independent. She could try at least to forget her devil guardian when she was far away from him.

  She slept fitfully and was glad when morning came. To her relief Don Juan did not join her for breakfast on the patio, and by nine o'clock she was on her way by car to the Villa Fonesca.

  As she was let into the house, Raquel came to her across the cool tiles of the hall, looking rather agitated. 'Papa is not well and has the doctor with him,' she said. 'Yvain, you will have to return to the castle. I cannot have you under my feet while I am looking after my father.'

  Yvain was instantly concerned for her tutor. 'I am sorry, Raquel! I thou
ght he looked rather tired yesterday, but it was a warm day and I put his fatigue down to the heat.'

  'On and off he has complained of a pain in his side.' Raquel made a significant gesture with her hands. 'The doctor has warned him about lifting those heavy books he has in the library, now he has gone and strained his heart and must rest for a week or so.'

  'Poor Senor Fonesca.' Yvain looked troubled. 'Is there anything I can do to help? I'm so fond of him and —'

  'My dear,' Raquel became beguiling, 'there is a favour you can do for me. You can take a note for me to Senora Grayson, the American woman who invited me to lunch with her today on board her yacht. I

  hate to let anyone down and she is rather charming.'

  Raquel turned to an elegant writing-table in the hall and Yvain watched as she wrote her note of apology. She was as concerned at breaking a lunch date as she was about her father, and Yvain felt like reminding her that a girl's father was a very special person and that no one could ever take his place. No other man in a girl's life was ever as gentle and understanding. No other love was ever as secure and undemanding.

  'Here you are.' Raquel handed to her a sealed envelope. 'The Senora Grayson's yacht is the Blue Dolphin. It's anchored about a mile off the island and one of the fishermen will row you out to it. Such an elegant craft, and I was so looking forward to being shown over it. The senora did drop a hint about a cruise... '

  'A sea trip would certainly be good for your father,' Yvain murmured.

  'Yes ... of course.' Raquel half frowned as she glanced towards the stairs. 'I must go up to him.'

  'Please tell him that I wish him better, Raquel. And that I shall miss our lessons.'

  'He should not be giving lessons.' Raquel spoke sharply. 'Lifting those

  heavy books has caused him to be laid up.'

  Yvain bit her lip. 'I shan't be taking many more lessons with the senor. I meant to speak to him today about my job in Madrid. I feel I'm about ready to tackle it.'