'Then I'll send him a formal invitation right this minute.' Bettina Grayson hurried happily away to her cabin to write the invitation, and Yvain leaned over the deck rail and studied the water that could look so calm and yet hold the deeps of never-come-back.
'Is it true what people say?' Kent spoke softly above her auburn head. 'Has the elegant Raquel ambitions to be a marquesa?'
'Don't you think she would be perfect?' Yvain kept her gaze on the water. 'She's beautiful and she can be very gracious. She should make the ideal mistress of a castle, the most charming and witty hostess.'
'Surely a man is entitled to a little more than that?' Kent's hand touched Yvain's hair. 'Surely even an aloof hidalgo wants to be loved with passion?'
'Don't you think Raquel is passionate?'
'About as much so as a marble statue.'
'Kent, you hardly know her!'
'I know her type, honey. They aren't exclusive to Spanish islands.'
'Have you been acquainted with lots of girls, Kent?'
'A fair few,' he admitted with a laugh. 'It's something of a game in America, but like most men I know what kind of a girl I want for keeps. Have you heard that line about Helen of Troy?' "Is she worth keeping? Why, she is a pearl." A guy knows a real pearl from a cultured and Raquel is mighty, cultured and lacks the glow that warms a man.'
Kent was lithe and fair-haired, his eyes as blue as the sea as he turned Yvain to face him. 'I have something I'd like to give you. I found it in a quaint little shop on the plaza, near that stone calvary. Spanish calvaries are darn realistic! That streak of the martyr in Spaniards.' He dug his hand in his. pocket and drew out a twist of tissue paper. 'You've earned a present for being my guide and my model all this week.'
Yvain watched helplessly as he untwisted the paper and showed her a link bracelet agleam with tiny talismans. A ladder, a horseshoe, a cat, an apple, a heart ... there were about a dozen of-them, beautiful little objects, cool and golden against her skin as she clasped the bracelet about her wrist.
'Oh, Kent!'
'Cute, isn't it?'
'You shouldn't give it to me.'
'Why ever not?' A deck light revealed the puzzled smile in his eyes. 'Girls in America expect to be given little tokens of a guy's esteem.'
'We aren't in America.' She fingered the talismans and then she smiled because it really was an irresistible gift and Kent's eyes were so kind and quizzical. She reached up impulsively to kiss his cheek. 'Many grateful thanks, Kent. I'll always love your bracelet.'
'I'd like you to feel like that about the donor.' Suddenly his arms were around her, her head was tipped back and his face went dark with shadow as his lips came down to meet her own. His lips were warm, caressing, and she accepted them with the need to discover if his kiss could make her forget everyone but him ... everything but the moment.
'Yvain ...?'
She buried her face against his shoulder, shaken by her own lack of feeling, her longing for the stormy enchantment of a love glimpsed only in a dream. Perhaps
every girl had a dream that had to give way to reality?
They went ashore in the small launch and Kent escorted her to the castle. A few of the lights were on, but the sea tower stood dark against the starlight.
'The place looks rather grim,' Kent remarked, and he took her hand as if reluctant to let her enter the house of her guardian.
'That's because it's night time,' she said. 'In daylight the walls have a mellow look and the patios are bright with flowers. The sea tower looks romantic as it stands against the blue sky. Rapunzel could lean from its windows to watch for her lover.'
'Have you leaned from the windows of Don Juan's tower?' Kent's voice roughened, as if he suspected her of feelings a ward shouldn't feel for a handsome guardian.
'He works up there and he likes his privacy. I don't intrude on him, Kent, unless he invites me to.'
'But you've been alone with him in his tower?' Kent persisted.
'Once or twice. It's a rather exciting place, with panoramic views of the island.'
'He lords it up there, eh? The lion of the island in his den.'
'He doesn't prowl back and forth.' She gave a slight laugh. 'He is quite human, and rather lonely. Sometimes he's in pain with his leg, but he's proud and doesn't like people to know about the pain. Strong men don't like to admit to a weakness, do they? They are so foolish. It's weakness of character that women don't like.'
'And how much do you like the man?' Kent's fingers pressed the golden talismans against the fine bones of her wrist, hurting her a little. 'This Byronic character who lives in a castle, who walks with a limp and has a dark, handsome face? Yvain, little fool, you know as well as everyone else that it's noblesse oblige when a man of title thinks of marriage!'
'Do you take me for a romantic idiot?' She snatched her hand free of Kent's. 'Only in a shilling novelette would a marquis fall in love with a maid-companion!'
'We're talking about what you feel for him.'
'I feel grateful, Kent. Does it matter so much that he hasn't got white hair and a beard?'
'Yvain,' Kent gave a groan, and then a laugh, 'I guess I'm the idiot. It's just that you're so different from other girls I've known. I want to keep you that way even as I want to touch you and awaken you. I can't bear to think that anyone else ... do you understand?'
'Men may eat their cake, but girls must remain nicely frosted?'
'It's a little selfish of a guy to want that, but he does, and when he finds a girl . . .'
'You want an assurance that my frosting has not yet melted?'
'Your voice is all frosty, Yvain.'
'Can you wonder?' Her fingers sought the handle of the patio door. 'Please, Kent, let me go now. Tomorrow we'll forget all this at the fiesta.'
'Invite me in for a nightcap?' Kent bent his head and spoke coaxingly against her ear. 'I promise to be a good boy.'
'I . . . I'm tired.' This was true; all at once she felt as if her mixed emotions had worn her out.
'Poor kid,' he murmured. 'You're all mixed up, aren't you? But, honey, you've got to decide about Saturday. You've got to make a decision.'
'Let me make it tomorrow,' she pleaded. 'I promise I will.' 'You must talk it over with the Spanish guardian, eh?'
'I . . . I think I must, Kent.'
'Don't let him persuade you against coming with us. After all, he was sending you away to Madrid.'
'Yes.' A cold shiver ran all the way down her spine. 'Now I'll say good night, Kent.'
'Good night, Yvain.' He carried her hand to his lips and the talismans made a jingling sound as he kissed her fingertips. 'Is that how a Spaniard does it?'
'I suppose so.'
'Has Don Juan ever kissed your hand?'
'Why should he?'
'Maybe because he's named after a guy who loved the ladies.'
'I do assure you, Kent, that my guardian loves only one lady, and he will attend your mother's party because Raquel will be there.'
'I find you much more enticing.'
'Gracias, senor, and now good night!' She broke free of him with a little laugh and escaped into the castle through the patio door.
Hasta manana.' There was an exasperated laugh in his voice. 'Girl out of a fairy tale!'
CHAPTER TEN
A smile lingered about her lips as she crossed the hall to an antique table and placed on a letter salver the party invitation to her guardian from Bettina Grayson.
He would see the envelope when he came in. He had probably spent the evening with Raquel and her father, and she would have told him that she was going to the farewell party the Graysons were giving on board their yacht, before they sailed away on Saturday. He would attend the party to be with Raquel, and he would meet Kent.
Her heart quickened as she passed by the golden room on
her way to bed. She recalled the music her guardian had played to her, and she remembered the fiery anger in his eyes when he had ordered her not to treat him as if he were a dodderin
g invalid. Tonight the golden room was in darkness and the piano was still. Don Juan was with the woman who would soon have every right to keep the castle rooms as they were, or to make changes in accord with her own personality. The lion would not interfere. He would indulge the woman who came here to make life less lonely for him.
Yvain ran up the stairs to her turret room and she hoped he had been a little less lonely while she had been here. She knew tonight that she would accept Kent's offer to sail away with him and his mother. In Madrid there might come a time when she would see Don Juan with his wife. There would be no chance of that in faraway America.
Before retiring she opened her wardrobe and took another look at the costume she had hired for the fiesta tomorrow. It had a velvet crimson skirt banded at the hem with black ribbon. The little black jacket was of velvet with buttons of filigree silver and slitted sleeves to show the mass of frills on the cream blouse. Silver and coral beads were worn with the costume and she had bought several loops of these. Also a lace-edged mantilla, which she tried on in front of the mirror.
It framed her pensive face and was creamy against her auburn hair, and the lamps on her dressing-table set gleaming the little charms on the bracelet Kent had given her.
She fingered the little horseshoe, for luck. She touched the tiny apple, for temptation. She studied the little gold heart and wondered about love. Most people longed to be loved and to each individual love meant something different. It meant passion or security. Companionship instead of loneliness. Understanding, a hand to hold in sunshine or shadow.
Yvain met her own eyes in the mirror and saw reflected in them her own particular longing. 'It is love that I am seeking for. But of a beautiful, unheard-of kind.’ Yeats had written those lovely words and they expressed what Yvain longed for in her heart. A love like no other. A love that meant romance; that quickened the heart with its wonder, its fear and enchantment. A love that swept a girl off her feet and kept her forever in clouds.
'You romantic fool, Yvain!' She laughed as she said the words, but the longing didn't leave her eyes and she turned quickly away from the mirror.
She was tucked up in bed and it was late when she heard her guardian arrive home in the car. She heard the door of the car slam shut. She pictured him as he limped up the steps and into the hall of the castle. He would pause beside the letter table. He would take up the envelope she had put there and hold it a moment in his long fingers before opening it. He was deliberate about such things, almost as if he savoured the element of surprise. Leaning a little on his ebony stick, he would read the invitation. He would glance up slowly and his eyes would settle on a tapestry or an ornament. He would savour their well-known beauty as he considered the invitation from the unknown Graysons. He would go to the party because Raquel would be there. He might also go to satisfy his curiosity about the American woman and her son. He would have heard by now that his ward had been seen around the island with Kent Grayson.
The morning of the fiesta dawned bright and sunny. Yvain heard the bells ringing in the convent and in the church down by the harbour. A holiday sound that blended with the sunshine on the sea. In a mood that swung between gaiety and apprehension she dressed in her fiesta costume and went down to breakfast wearing it. She had braided her hair and pinned it into a coronet, and she paused in front of a mirror in the hall and studied herself in the island dress.
Framed by the antique mirror she looked as if she had stepped out of a distant century ... and then she pressed a hand to the leaping pulse in her throat as a tall, dark figure loomed in the mirror behind her.
'Good morning, Yvain.' His voice sounded extra deep, and she felt his eyes travelling over her, taking in the creamy frills of her blouse, the velvet bodice, the long crimson skirt. 'You look charming, nina. Almost a senorita of the island. Come, we must cut you a carnation to wear in your hair.'
He held out a hand to her and as his lean fingers closed on hers, there ran all through her a thrill that was curiously warm and cold at the same time. As he led her out to the garden, she cast him a shy side-glance.
'Are you going to the fiesta, senor?' she asked.
'Of course.' He met her eyes and smiled in his subtle way. 'I rather enjoy this particular fiesta, which is called the Procession of Adam and Eve. It was introduced to the island long, long ago by the Galician bride of an ancestor of mine. She was homesick for the things she had left behind her and she persuaded her indulgent husband to re-create the procession, held each year in the mountains of Galicia, and now held each year on the Isla del Leon.'
'It's exciting.' Yvain caught at her long velvet skirt as they went down some wide stone steps to the sunken garden when the air was richly perfumed by the carnations that grew in such profusion, clambering over every piece of statuary and draping the walls in a tawny-pink and scarlet scented cloak.
Don Juan took a little mother-of-pearl knife from his pocket and cut the stem of a flower that still had the dew on its tawny-pink petals. He handed it to Yvain with a slight bow, and shyness gripped her and her hand shook a little as she fixed the flower in her hair.
'It's a wonderful day for a fiesta,', she said, and she buried her face in a cloak of carnations as if to cool its warmth. What was the matter with her? He wouldn't bite her head off when she told him that she was spending the day with Kent Grayson.
'It has been arranged that we watch the procession from the balcony of the mayor's house. It is directly on the plaza and the procession will pause there and the dancers will perform to the music of the band.' Don Juan directed her to take a seat at the circular table set for breakfast on the patio above the sunken garden. She was glad to sit down, for her knees felt shaky.
'Don Juan ...'
'Yes, nina?' He poured orange juice from a carafe and placed a glass of it in front of her.
'I ... ' She took a sip of the juice and wished he was less kind to her this morning, less shattering in his stone-grey suit, less sure of her obedience when it came to the plans he made for her.
'You have something to tell me, Yvain?' He raised a black eyebrow, always a danger signal.
'How vivid the carnations look and smell this morning.' She smiled nervously at Luis as he placed eggs flamenco upon the table and a dish of crisp little, kidneys. The sun glinted on the coffee pot, and she tensed again as Luis went silently away, leaving only the sound of the bells and the buzzing of the honey bees. She took a fried egg and kidneys from the chafing dish, and buttered a twist of bread without being able to look at her guardian. Why wasn't it easy to talk to him any more? Why this sense of constraint? It wasn't all on her side. He was gracious enough, but in a distant manner. Her heart turned over. It was as if he knew already that she had chosen to spend fiesta day with Kent Grayson.
'Yvain,' he carried his table napkin to his lips and she followed the action until she met his eyes, 'you seem nervous of me. If you wish to tell me that you have made other arrangements for the fiesta, then please do so. I shan't bite your head off, or lock you in the tower for the day.'
She gazed in a kind of wonderment at him. When he smiled like that she wanted only to please him, but when they arrived at the fiesta, Raquel would be there and she would look so stunning in her costume, so much the real senorita, that he
would have eyes for no one else.
'I ... I have made other plans,' she admitted nervously. 'I promised to spend the day with someone else.'
'A young man?'
'Yes.' She took a gulp of her coffee. 'I expect you've heard of the Graysons from Raquel. They're Americans and very nice and I've become rather friendly with them. I hope you don't mind?'
'These are the people who are giving a party on their yacht, eh? I understand that they depart tomorrow at noon?'
She nodded. 'Senor, is it all right if I spend the day with Kent?'
'From all accounts, nina, you have been spending each day with him for the past week. I should hate to deprive him of your company today when he has to leave tomorrow.'
>
She caught the sardonic smile that played about her guardian's lips and she felt a sudden painful longing to tell him she was leaving the island with the Graysons. It was something she had to tell him, some time before tomorrow, so why not now? He might not look amused then. It might even hurt him a little that she chose to go so far away that they wouldn't meet again.
She was about to speak when she caught his gaze upon the bracelet Kent had given her, and which she had chosen to wear with her costume today because today she needed the talisman to bring her luck and courage.
'I have not seen that before!' His hand shot across the table and gripped her wrist. 'Is it a trinket you bought yourself?'
'Kent bought it for me —'
'I see.' His fingers gripped until she wanted to give a little cry of pain; in his eyes she saw a little flame of anger. 'You have known this young man less than a week and you accept from him a gift that in Spanish eyes is the sign of a betrothal.'
'Kent's an American, senor.' The talismans glittered as the sun caught them, the little apple and the heart swung together on her captive wrist. 'I don't suppose he even knows much about the courting habits of the Spanish.'
'Did you know, Yvain, that here on this island a Spaniard still gives to the girl he loves the symbolic wrist chain, so that everyone might know that he lays claim to her?'
'I've heard about slave bracelets, if you're referring to one of those.' She threw the words at him across the table, hurt and angry and frightened, and uncaring any more of what they said to each other because she could run to Kent. He would take her away and be kind to her.
'I suppose in a sense the betrothal bracelet does mean that a couple are enslaved.' The lean fingers slackened their painful grip, but still they held her captive, as did his dark eyes, with a tawny smoulder deep within them. 'That is what love is all about, my young romantic. A lover says te quiero, I want you. A lover's arms are not always gentle, and the woman who is unprepared for this is still a child.'
His fingers slipped to the bracelet and he examined each charm in turn. 'This young American has an eye for what is unusual and bewitching. Eve's apple I notice, and the ladder to the stars. Is it a farewell gift and not the love token I thought it?'
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