“Beautiful!” she exclaimed, looking down on the tranquil loveliness of palm trees, cacti, flower beds, well-trimmed shrubs, geometric walkways, benches, and a central splashing fountain. For the first time, Alyssa had some comprehension of just how truly large the hacienda was.
“Sí, muy hermosa,” Mara admitted before disappearing into the bathroom. There was the inviting sound of hot and cold water blasting to mingle within a white-porcelain tub.
There was as rap on the door, and Alyssa moved automatically to open it. Mara beat her to the punch, though, emerging from the bathroom with surprising speed. Alyssa wondered at the keen sense of hearing which had allowed Mara to hear the knock over the bath water.
The opened door revealed a young boy, probably in his early teens. He had a head of dark curly hair, dark black eyes, and clear, dark-complexion. He was dressed all in white, except for his sandals, which were made of twisted yellow hemp fiber. He carried a wood-and-tile tray on which was a frosted silver pitcher of liquid, a glass, and a plate tented by a linen napkin,
Mara plucked off the napkin, critically eyeing the arrangement of small sandwiches she’d uncovered. When everything under her scrutiny apparently passed her inspection, she silently nodded the youth her permission for him to enter the room and place the tray on one of the available small tables. His job complete, he beat a hasty retreat, punctuated by a shy smile when Alyssa, for a brief moment, managed to catch his eye.
“Something light to eat,” Mara said, “and some lemonade, from freshly squeezed lemons, to hold you over until later.” She poured the latter.
“Yes, please” Alyssa accepted the glass, appreciating its coolness against her fingers and palm. Although a slight breeze somehow managed to enter over the balcony, the heat of the progressing afternoon, out-of-doors, was still evident within the room.
“Fresh lemonade, a bite to eat, a nice bath, followed by a brief siesta, and you’ll be feeling yourself, again, in no time,” Mara promised, as if she were a doctor prescribing the ultimate cure. “You’ll see.”
“Yes,” Alyssa said, more than ready to agree. She found it enjoyable to be in the company of this friendly servant, more so than with the obviously ill-at-ease Ramón. At least, Alyssa had sensed intuitively Ramón had been made ill-at-ease—likely by her. She knew just enough about Spain to suspect its men were still so steeped in their false illusions of “macho” as not to appreciate being placed completely under a woman’s authority.
Why had Lalo Montego, Spain’s most macho of macho, left his bulls and his estate to Alyssa, instead of to, Adriano, his own son? No one had yet been able to answer that question to Alyssa’s satisfaction—and certainly not to the satisfaction of her mother.
“Lalo always was screwing up his loyalties,” Karen had said to her daughter. “But, then, he ever only professed to have had but one true friend: Joaquín Hidalgo. And, he showed just what he really thought of that, didn’t he?”
As much as Alyssa had pressed for more details, Karen hadn’t obliged.
“Best not stir up that cesspool at the moment,” had been her mother’s concluding comment.
Alyssa now placed her glass back on the tray, picked up one of the remaining sandwiches and followed Mara into the bathroom.
As Mara helped Alyssa out of her clothes, Alyssa took stock of herself in the un-steamed segments of the mirror. She decided, as she always did when she took the time for cool analysis of herself, that she was neither all that good nor all that bad in the looks department.
Actually, she was being modest, as any man would have gladly told her, had he but been given the chance. Alyssa had spent a good deal of her life behind mansion walls, and within all-girl schools, relatively sheltered from men and their compliments.
Actually, Ty Gordman had been the only real boyfriend she’d ever had. Although he told her often enough that she was beautiful, she wasn’t prone to believe him, especially since he was so obviously too smitten to be truly candid.
“Where else, my dear, do you plan to find another man so handsome, so socially well-connected, and so head-over-heels in love with you?” Karen had frankly wanted to know.
Alyssa had been tempted to ask just what made her mother any great authority on what did, or didn’t, constitute a good marriage prospect, since none of Karen’s marriages had turned out any great success story. Often, Alyssa found herself wondering if even her mother’s marriage to Alyssa’s father would have survived if forced to stand the real test of time.
Mara’s eyes were less critical than were Alyssa’s of the young woman’s obvious charms. Mara knew a real beauty when she saw one and could appreciate that Alyssa had somehow managed to arrive at young womanhood without being obnoxiously aware of her physical perfection. Mara had seen more than her share of attractive young women paraded through that very house by Lalo Montego when he was alive. The majority of those great beauties had been so aware of their physical attributes that their knowledge had made them less appealing than they might otherwise have been.
“Is the water too hot?” Mara asked, watching Alyssa tentatively begin her descent into it.
Actually, the “tub” was a small pool built into the floor, lined with the same sunburst-centered deep blue tiles that covered the walls, floor, and ceiling.
“The water’s fine,” Alyssa answered, taking one more small step down into the glaze of steaming liquid heaped, here and there, with fluffy mounds of bubble-bath-spawned suds.
In the mirror, her duplicate reflected back: blonde hair, smooth skin, exquisitely long legs, slim waist, ample breasts, and sensuous shoulders and neck.
She sat, letting the water cover all of her except her neck and face, as Mara moved quickly to pile Alyssa’s mane of hair atop the young woman’s head and wrap it securely into place with a heavy towel.
Mara, who only vaguely remembered Alyssa’s mother, was quite convinced Alyssa could lay claim to most of the mother’s remembered good looks. That said, from what Mara could divine, on such short notice, the daughter’s disposition was far better than the mother’s had ever been. Then, again, Lalo Montego had something about him that eventually made all of his women less than lovable. There had been something decidedly destructive about Lalo’s relationships with women—and men. Any woman. Any man, except, maybe, for Joaquín Hidalgo. Mara conjectured that Lalo had never loved any of them. All he had ever loved, up until his bitter end, had been his precious bulls and the times he spent in the corridas with them. At least Alyssa had been spared Lalo Montego.
Lalo had been the victim of a bull-horn thrust which should never have caught him in the belly. He’d been way too old to be fighting bulls in the bullring at the time. Yet, he couldn’t stay away; and, despite what some people had thought, it had nothing whatsoever to do with the large sum of money the promoters had paid him for his come-back. Lalo Montego always had plenty of money, even before he ever stepped into his first bullring as a boy of thirteen.
For some reason, he had simply been drawn to the corrida, even at the very end. Apparently, it had made no difference that his coordination wasn’t what it had once been, nor that the bulls were no the less dangerous.
No matter what all the bleeding liberals said, the bulls were not always destined to be bested on every Sunday afternoon. Ask Lalo Montego, wherever he was—in heaven or, more than likely, in hell.
Kneeling to wash Alyssa’s back, Mara didn’t like to think of Lalo actually in hell; although it was suspicions of his presence there that saw her praying for his soul each and every night. He had destroyed and mangled a lot of lives, even if he had always been kind to her. But, then, he had never really loved her. If he had, she, too, might have come to have a different impression of him. Strangely, it was the ones Lalo seemed to love the most (if he loved at all), who had ended up suffering the most at this hands.
“Do you think it would be all right if I just stayed where I am for awhile and just soak?” Alyssa asked, knowing that Mara had finished on her back and was n
ow merely going through the motions. “It really feels so glorious.”
“You soak, then,” Mara said. “I’ll go unpack your things to makes sure it gets done properly. As you’ll soon find out, some of the girls around here need someone to take a firm hand. I’ve tried my best to keep them in tow; but, any great house needs a master or mistress in residence to take up the slack resulting from most everyone’s natural inclination toward laziness at the first opportunity.”
“You’ll have to help me, Mara,” Alyssa said. “Until I get the rhythm of things, I’m afraid I’m rather out of my element.”
“Don’t you worry, honey,” Mara told her. “You’ll do just fine.”
The servant retreated to the other room where Flavio had unobtrusively deposited Alyssa’s luggage.
Alyssa slipped deeper into the womb-like warmth of the water. She laid her head against the edge of the tub and shut her eyes. She didn’t actually fall asleep; but, she was very close to it when Mara returned to yank a large Turkish towel from the warming rack.
“You don’t want to stay in there so long as to catch a chill,” Mara warned with concerned authority.
Reluctantly, Alyssa obeyed her summons from the bathtub, enjoying the warm towel that quickly wrapped her.
The bed was turned down, revealing its crisp white sheets and providing a welcome invitation, indeed. Alyssa, whose last couple of days seemed filled with plane and car rides, suspected she was beginning to suffer the nemesis of all long-distance travelers: jet lag.
“What you need now is siesta,” Mara informed. “After which, you’ll be in good shape.”
Alyssa exchanged the towel for one of her nightgowns and crawled into the bed.
She must have gone to sleep as soon as she hit the mattress. Though, it didn’t seem all that long before she was being coaxed back to consciousness by a gentle but insistent nudge of her arm.
Pulled drapes had converted the room into twilight; even though, it was still daylight outside.
Alyssa stretched deliciously, enjoying the sensuous pull of her muscles and spine. She recognized Mara by the bed. She didn’t notice the concern etched on the Spanish woman’s face.
“Oh, but that did feel good,” Alyssa said. She added, somewhat guiltily, “I could have slept for hours.”
“I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Señorita,” Mara apologized, but.…”
“No apologies necessary,” Alyssa interrupted, threw back the lone sheet which covered her, and came to a sitting position. Her toes sought out, and found, the slippers that Mara had put beneath the bed earlier. “Certainly, I didn’t come all of this way to spend all of my time in bed.”
Her slippers on, she stood and snatched her robe from the back of the nearby chair. She walked to the windows to throw back the drapes and let in sunshine which, somehow, seemed less hostile than it had during her long drive to get there.
It was only when she turned back to Mara that she realized the Spanish woman was concerned about something.
“Whatever is the matter?” Alyssa asked, moving closer to Mara. Now, there was no mistaking the anxiety written in the expression on Mara’s matronly face.
“Ramón wanted to see you, whenever was convenient,” Mara informed. “I told him you were sleeping; but he now insists that what he has to say really won’t wait.”
And, that sounded more than a little ominous!
“Do you know what he wants?” Alyssa asked. At the same time, she wondered what she should wear, until she realized Mara had already solved that problem by having laid out a white blouse and a light blue skirt.
Mara answered by delivering an exaggerated shrug.
Alyssa suspected the woman knew what Ramón wanted but probably wasn’t talking. Alyssa contemplated giving her the third-degree, but, then, rejected that as being out of hand. Whatever it was Ramón had to tell her, she would find out soon enough.
“Tell Ramón I’ll be down shortly,” Alyssa said.
“I did keep telling him you were still resting,” Mara mumbled under her breath as she exited the bedroom and pulled the door shut behind her.
Alyssa hurriedly dressed and spent a quick few minutes at the vanity table getting her hair and face back into presentable shape. Then, she left the bedroom and headed along the hallway to the stairs that descended to the living room.
Ramón was standing, not sitting, as if he were uncomfortable inside the big house and would have far preferred sitting a horse somewhere out on the plain.
“Ramón?” Alyssa greeted as soon as he’d spotted her. “Mara said you have something urgent to tell me.”
“Urgent, yes,” he agreed. He held his hat in both hands, twisting it along its brim.
“Would you like to sit down?” she suggested.
He shook his head, obviously wanting none of that.
She waited while he continued to say nothing and look extremely ill at ease.
“There’s a problem?” she ventured, thinking that the way things were going, the two could very well end up standing there all night.
“The bulls,” Ramón said finally.
Alyssa decided he was quite charming in his nervousness. He was probably younger than she originally suspected. The sun had a capacity for aging people beyond their actual years.
He had shiny black hair that looked as if it would soon need trimming. He had large black eyes, full mouth. His nose looked as if it might have been broken once—even twice; the slight misalignment, though, didn’t detract from his overall good looks.
Consciously, she brought her mind back to whatever the problem at hand. It certainly wasn’t the time to be appraising the help’s physical attractiveness.
“What about the bulls, Ramón?” She wondered how he could be persuaded to just come out with whatever it was he had to say. She was beginning to fear that she might have to extract the information piece by piece, like a dentist pulling a cracked tooth.
“The dead bulls,” he obliged, finally, before stammering to yet another silence.
“The bulls that were shot…by someone, you mean?”
“Yes,” he affirmed.
“Why don’t you simply tell me what you have to say, Ramón?” she suggested, trying to be patient. “At this rate, we’re liable to be spending this day and the next rooted to this very spot.”
“The men,” he said, paused, and then continued, “brought in somebody. He’s out in the barn.”
“Brought in whom? Out in what barn?”
“They were angry,” he explained cryptically. “Understandable, yes?”
“I see,” she said, really not sure she was seeing anything at all but hopeful she was making progress of sorts. Eventually, the pieces of the jigsaw were bound to fall into place.
“It’s the son,” Ramón said so lowly that Alyssa almost missed what he said.
“The son?” she jumped in on the faintly delivered cue. “Whose son?”
“Señor Montego’s—Adriano.”
“Lalo Montego’s son, Adriano? Where?”
“Out in the barn.”
“He’s the someone who has been killing my bulls?”
“I think you should come,” Ramón said. “The men are upset. You understand.”
“Certainly, I understand,” she said, knowing intuitively that, come what may, it was an owner’s position to take the side of employees. Why was Adriano Montego killing her bulls with a gun? And, what was he doing back here, now, in that he had dropped out of sight during the time period in which the will was going through probate, surprising Alyssa’s mother to no end when he hadn’t protested the delivery of the Spanish property into her daughter’s hands? The way Alyssa came to understand it, Adriano would have had every reason to be upset by the share his father had left him, compared to what was left a young woman Adriano had neither met nor seen. For some reason, Lalo and his son were on the outs at the time the elder Montego met his death in the afternoon.
“If you think I should see him, then, of course, I shall se
e him,” she said. “As a matter of fact, why don’t you take me to him now?”
“Yes,” he agreed, obviously relieved. Had he actually assumed that she, as a woman, would break down and become hysterical?
They headed for the door where Mara magically appeared with a scarf for Alyssa’s head.
“You don’t want to get sunstroke your first day here,” Mara said.
Alyssa thanked her and followed Ramón outside, around the house, and off toward the stables and the barn in the distance.
She looked for indications of her other employees and saw none. It seemed strange that, since her arrival, she had seen only four people: Ramón, the foreman; Flavio, the chauffeur; Mara; and, the young boy who had delivered the tray of sandwiches and lemonade to her bedroom.
After all, the ranch had a permanent payroll of over one-hundred people. And, while some of those undoubtedly spent most of their time out on the range, watching the bulls, some of them had to be in charge of upkeep at the hacienda and its immediate grounds. Possibly, the regulars from around the house were just staying low, waiting to see how Alyssa was going to cope.
“Luís!” Ramón called.
Alyssa realized her initial surveillance of the emptiness had failed to pick out one man partially shielded by a couple bales of hay. He left his spot and headed in their direction. He had been so positioned as to have Alyssa wonder if he’d been strategically placed to keep people out of the barn, or to keep one particular person in.
Ramón made perfunctory introductions. Luís looked uneasy, almost to the point of embarrassment. Alyssa kept her greeting to a slight nod of her head in his direction.
“Quiet?” Ramón asked Luís.
“Sí,” Luís replied.
“Good.” Ramón continued forward, drawing Alyssa and Luís in his wake. He stopped beside the barn door and turned to Alyssa.
“They were angry with him, you understand?”
“I don’t care who he is,” she said. “He shouldn’t have been killing my bulls, should he?”
“Exactly,” Ramón agreed, hopefully beginning to realize that his new boss did understand, even if she was a woman easily misconstrued to be less likely to comprehend things like loyalty to the land, and to the bulls, and.…
Matador, Mi Amor Page 2