by Susan Barrie
“Why?”
“Because it is Constancia’s birthday that is of real importance. Our engagement isn’t even very real ... or it has never seemed so to me!”
“I see,” he exclaimed, and if she had been looking at him she would have seen that his mouth was set, and his eyes assumed an expression that might have puzzled her very much indeed.
But they were driving into the courtyard of the Formera home, and Constancia herself was waiting to watch them alight from the car, a very demure and delightfully dressed Constancia, holding a white lace parasol above her head, and wearing white lace gloves. Dona Ignatia had just emerged from the house behind her, and a chauffeur-driven car was waiting to take them out to tea with one of their numerous friends.
Dona Ignatia acknowledged the return of her brother and his fiancée with the coolest little bow and smile before she climbed into the car, but Constancia stood waiting with her parasol partially lowered to have a few words with her guardian.
“You had an enjoyable lunch? I am glad,” she said, and smiled up at him with her melting, pansy-dark eyes ... and no two eyes could melt as swiftly, or as disarmingly, as hers did whenever she was near Don Carlos. Apart from that, in her girlish muslin with cherry red flowers embroidered all over it, and cherry red ribbons streaming from her hat, she had all the appeal of a seventeen-year-old, combined with the added allure of a true beauty. One who was at her prime, for Spanish girls lose this sort of beauty swiftly, and are often over-mature in their twenties.
Don Carlos put her into the car with a tenderness that suggested he was handling Dresden china.
“You, too, have a good time,” he said, watched the car slip under the arch, and then turned back to April as if he had forgotten entirely her somewhat disconcerting observation about their engagement. Or it should have been disconcerting to him.
But apparently it was nothing of the kind!
Constancia made no attempt to cement a friendship with April, or even to lay the foundations of one. She was polite every time they came face to face, and encouraged by her guardian she talked English with April, and occasionally asked questions about England, and the way of life over there. She took a certain amount of interest in April’s English-made clothes and shoes, her hair-style—which she once attempted to copy, although the effect was too dishevelled to be attractive—and her make-up. Dona Ignatia permitted her to use only lipstick, but as her skin was naturally deliciously creamy, and her eyelashes required no beautifying treatment whatsoever, this was more than enough.
Nevertheless, there was a faint glitter of envy in her eyes sometimes when she watched April’s soft hair swaying gently on her neck, and studied the way in which the faint touch of eye-shadow which she used in the evenings emphasized the depth and brilliance of her eyes. April’s eyelashes were light brown, and she had to darken them a little, but her make-up was so discreet that even Dona Ignatia could take no exception to it.
She had several attractive linen frocks in her outfit, frocks that were severely simple in the way they were made, and Constancia expressed a wish to acquire linen frocks. Slacks represented a topic that was taboo, and April put hers away and was careful never to refer to them.
“But there’s no reason why we shouldn’t go shopping together some time, is there?” she suggested. “You have so many charming dresses I shouldn’t think you need very much, but I could advise you about daytime dresses and cardigans,” having observed the way Constancia had admired the one or two pastel-tinted sweaters she had appeared in. “We do rather go in for that sort of thing in England. Scottish knitwear, you know!”
This seemed to puzzle Constancia, who had heard of Scotland but never visited it; but in the end she shrugged her shoulders and returned ungraciously:
“Thank you, but Dona Ignatia advises on most of my clothes, and when I require something special she orders it for me. Of course, when we are in Madrid we do a lot of shopping, but Seville is too provincial to be smart. The dress that I am to wear for my birthday celebration is to be ordered from Paris.”
She sounded as if that was the final triumph. “How nice,” April commented, trying hard not to show any offence, and to be as patient as she knew how. “Not many young girls of your age have their dresses bought for them in Paris. You are lucky!”
“Yes, I am, aren’t I?” Constancia agreed complacently. “But that is the way it has always been. Carlos is so good, so kind, and he can deny me nothing. He never has been able to do so!”
“Then you really are fortunate,” April offered another comment, “to have such a generous guardian.”
Constancia glanced at her obliquely under her thick eyelashes as she swayed to and fro in a hammock that was swung in a cool corner of the patio, beside a thick hedge of hibiscus. She had been riding her fiery Andalusian horse before breakfast, and she was still wearing her short scarlet skirt and polished boots. A gaudy neckerchief encircled her shapely throat, and her hair was in the tangle it often was at this hour.
“Perhaps you find it difficult to understand why Carlos should be so very generous to me? Why he can never say ‘no’ when I coax him enough!” Her eyes smiled. “He loved my mother!”
April flinched.
“Her portrait hangs in the house in Madrid. It is in Carlos’s own study. You will see it when we go to Madrid.”
April said nothing.
“She was very beautiful, and that is why the portrait remains where it is. I do not think you will be able to persuade him to have it removed.”
“I have no intention of influencing Don Carlos about your mother’s portrait,” April told her, with so little expression in her voice that the other stared at her.
“You have not? But most women would be jealous ... a Spanish woman would be jealous!” Her eyes grew contemptuous. “But you. are English, aren’t you? And Rodrigo says the English are a cold people! I would never permit another woman’s portrait to hang in the house of my husband ... I would tear it down with my own hands!” She looked as if she was capable of doing that very thing, and taking a venomous delight in it. And then the complacence returned to her expression, and she smiled—the smile of a born coquette. “But I am beautiful, like my mother. Don Carlos is aware of how beautiful I am ... don’t you think so, senorita?”
Dona Ignatia rustled across the floor of the sala in one of her stiff silk dresses, and she called to Constancia to go to her room at once and change out of her riding clothes. Constancia went, as if she was aware that she had scored a bulls-eye, and was leaving a certain amount of secret turmoil behind her.
Don Carlos asked April whether she wished to attend the cocktail party to which both Lady Hartingdon and her daughter had invited them, and when she said lethargically that it didn’t very much matter to her whether they went or not he made up her mind for her.
“We will go,” he said, looking at her rather shrewdly. “We will go, and we will take Constancia. It will be good for her also.”
“If you think it will be good for Constancia, then by all means let us go.”
She was unaware that her voice was dry.
He looked at her even more shrewdly.
“It is you I am thinking of,” he told her. “It is natural that you should sometimes wish to be amongst people who are of your own kind, and who speak your language. The fact that I speak it doesn’t give me an English type of mind,” smiling a little oddly.
That was true, she thought, gazing at him. He saw her eyes widen.
“Any more than the fact that you are rapidly acquiring Spanish gives you a Spanish type of mind!”
That was very true, also, and her eyes grew wider still. She couldn’t help wondering just how different he was from an Englishman of the same age, and with the same experience of life, and whether they ever thought the same thoughts, and had the same sort of secret desires. Whether his mind and hers were utterly dissimilar. Whether they ever thought the same thoughts!
He smiled again, even more oddly.
�
�All men are alike under the skin!” he murmured, proving he could read her mind, “or so we are told! But you don’t necessarily have to believe it!”
Then as he saw her colour delicately he took her hand and surprised her by kissing it.
“We will go, shall we?” he said softly. “We will go to the Hartingdons? And perhaps Senorita Jessica will have some ideas we can adapt for Constancia’s birthday celebration. I have decided a formal dinner will be much better for the announcement of our engagement!”
CHAPTER XI
THE formal dinner took place less than a week later, and the Hartingdon cocktail party preceded it by a couple of days.
The Hartingdon house was typically Spanish, but it was filled with some very beautiful English furniture. Sir James Hartingdon was such a lover of Spain and the Spanish way of life that he would have been quite prepared to dispense with English chintzes, flowery carpets that merely attracted the moth, and comfortable English suites of furniture with deep cushions and yielding springs. But Lady Hartingdon wouldn’t have been happy for a moment without her afternoon tea and her lace-edged tray-cloths, family photographs crowded together on occasional tables, and a diningroom sideboard stacked with silver.
Sir James was a very charming man, who had forgotten what it was like to live in England, but had served his country well abroad. He enjoyed meeting people—all sorts of people—and he enjoyed meeting April very much indeed. He told Don Carlos he was highly delighted that he was marrying one of his own countrywomen, and although Lady Hartingdon didn’t altogether echo his enthusiasm she smiled bleakly at April, and Jessica smiled less bleakly, but with a heartiness that was undoubtedly a trifle forced.
She was wearing a striking cocktail dress of emerald brocade, and an arresting emerald bracelet flashed on her wrist. It was just possible it was not real, but it drew attention to the excellent shape of her forearm, the whiteness of her skin, and her long-fingered hands.
Constancia, who was wearing one of her demure dresses with a lot of white frilling at the neck, had a special smile for Jessica as soon as she saw her. It was a grateful smile, as if she was quite sure she owed her invitation to her, and she was in any case a keen admirer of Sir James Hartingdon’s daughter.
From conversations April had gathered that Jessica had displayed a lot of interest in Constancia, and the two often rode together, and went on shopping expeditions together. The unfortunate violet slacks had been bought during one of these expeditions.
Now Constancia edged as close to Jessica as she could, although several young men were endeavouring to surround her, and keep her isolated from the rest of the room. It was a very big room, and a lot of people helped to fill it, and a lot more people overflowed on to the terrace and the cool lawns outside it Sir James employed a positive team of gardeners, and his lawns were as green as they might have been in England, while the scent of his roses was like a kind of incense.
Most of the guests were Spanish, and they stood or sat about in groups, looking rather solemn, as they usually did do on public occasions. There were several pretty girls like Constancia—although not one was as lovely as she was—a number of matrons and elderly men, and a mere handful of younger men. And most of the younger men were congregated about Jessica.
She didn’t flirt with them, but her smile and her looks seemed to hold them captivated. Shy fiancées who wouldn’t have dared to exchange more than a nod and a smile with members of the opposite sex who were not doomed (or looking forward) to marrying them sat with their chaperones in the laps of the huge chesterfields and sipped innocuous glasses of lemonade while the only beings of any interest to them behaved like moths irresistibly attracted to a candle, and the candle—until Don Carlos arrived with April and Constancia—was Jessica.
Then the interest shifted—not so noticeably that she could take offence—and April felt herself the cynosure of many pairs of dark, masculine eyes, just as she had sometimes done in Madrid. Her soft brown hair, swinging on slender shoulders, provided them with a distraction that was also a novelty, and they gravitated slowly towards her, waiting for Don Carlos to present her, which he did after he had presented her to all the dowagers and the younger women.
April’s dress was clear lime green, and her accessories were all white. Her hat was shady, and there was a single white flower nestling under the brim, which lent her a touchingly youthful look. Don Carlos’s ring showed through the fine nylon gloves she wore, and as she held out her hand many pairs of eyes dropped to it ... but these were feminine eyes.
Don Carlos had been the catch of the district, but now he was caught, and the women were all filled with a burning curiosity. In the hearts of many mamas there must have been a burning vexation, also, and perhaps that accounted for much of the stiffness April sensed in the women. The men, without exception, were all charming to her, although they dared not do more than look their admiration with Don Carlos keeping so close to her side that every time she moved she felt his sleeve brush against her bare arm, and frequently his cool fingers were underneath her elbow.
His attitude was possessive, even if his expression gave away nothing at all, and April had the feeling that practically every woman in the room envied her either a little or a great deal. And the thought crossed her mind that, if she were what every woman there imagined her to be (with the possible exception, that is, of Jessica Hartingdon, who was not the type to be easily deceived, and Constancia, who was too close to her guardian to be deceived)—if she was a happy bride-to-be, waiting impatiently for the day when she became the Don’s wife, and had every reason to anticipate happiness as his wife—then she would indeed be someone to arouse envy.
But as it was, every time he said, “This is Miss Day, who is to become my wife,” she winced inwardly. Winced, and longed to be able to know that one day she would be, in very truth, his wife! For it was no good deceiving herself ... it hadn’t taken her long to overcome the antagonism his autocratic ways had at first aroused in her, and that coldness and hardness she believed to be part of him were all part of a deadly charm that had ensnared her as if she was a rabbit caught in an actual snare. Each time she felt his fingers brush against the slightly moist flesh of her upper arm—for it was very hot, and the fans in the room didn’t make much difference to the temperature, with so many people collected together—she felt as if an electric spark was generated, and a tiny, tingling shock sped along all the sensitive nerves of her body, as well as right down to the tips of her fingers.
But he remained cool and remote, smiling at her, fetching her a drink with ice chinking in it and lots of revivifying lime, placing her in a chair in a shady corner of one of the lawns when the heat and the conversation—the effort to appear completely normal, and completely happy—overcame her to such an extent that she turned pale, and had to beg him in a whisper to take her out into the air and away from everyone for a short while.
The corner of the garden to which he led her was beautifully secluded, and roses formed a bower that added to their seclusion, and scented the air with their perfume. April drew in deep breaths of it, gulping it down into her lungs—that and the cool breath from the sea, that was growing cooler with the slipping of the sun towards the west—and Don Carlos stood beside her and looked down at her with an anxious expression on his face.
All his remoteness and his detachment had gone, and his dark eyes were alive with concern as he studied her.
“You are better now?” he asked. “That room was very hot, and it is far too overfurnished for our climate ... but Sir James prefers it that way. He likes to live in Spain and keep a little corner of England alive in his heart as well! Or Lady Hartingdon does.”
Perhaps, one day, April thought, I too...!
And then she looked into his face as he dropped into a chair beside her, felt her heart do a kind of somersault at the extent of the anxiety she recognized in his eyes, and the unusual softness of his mouth. Such a devastatingly handsome mouth, and when it was not smiling a little grimly, or
a trifle mockingly. When she found that she couldn’t drag her eyes away from it, and her heart thumped wildly ... Then she knew that there were circumstances under which she could live in Spain for the rest of her life—live anywhere, away from all familiar things, and be divinely happy, if ...
If...? But it was a big “if”! If he was beside her always, and he loved her, instead of merely wanting her to be his wife for some reason that she couldn’t properly understand! If that suddenly tender mouth, instead of kissing the back of her hand, lightly and gracefully, as it frequently did, might one day draw close to hers and fill her with utter ecstasy as he kissed her, as every woman yearns to be kissed by the man she loves!...
And suddenly the thought of being loved by Don Carlos was so overwhelming that, instead of recovering her normal colour, she turned even paler.
“I will take you home!” he exclaimed instantly. “You really are not well!”
But she assured him that she was perfectly well. She took a firm grip of herself—averted her eyes from him—and the colour came seeping back into her cheeks, and then started to burn them, and the whole of her throat and brow, as the utmost confusion replaced the wild longings of a moment before.
“Nevertheless, I think I will take you home,” Don Carlos said, as if he was perturbed by her changing mood, her fluctuating colour. “I will collect Constancia, and we will all three make our adieux.”
Constancia had been introduced by Jessica to a young Englishman who was staying temporarily in the district, and although she was normally shy in the presence of any man who was not either her guardian or Rodrigo, she seemed to be getting along very well with him. He was a young artist, who was travelling through Spain, and he was staying temporarily with the Hartingdons. He was some sort of cousin of Jessica’s, and he had a tinge of her red in his hair, but his eyes were blue instead of the strange sort of jade green that hers were.
It was quite obvious that his artistic eye appreciated Constancia very much indeed, and although she had started the day in a slightly sullen mood she was laughing and displaying her perfect little white teeth, and her eyes had a velvety brilliance about them when Don Carlos returned to collect her, with April, looking more like herself, accepting the support of his arm.