by Isobel Chace
He took her consent for granted, pushing open the door at the far end of the salon. ‘In the old days,’ he told her, ‘when we held dances here, we would open all the doors and make use of the whole floor. But that was a long time ago. These doors have become stiff with lack of use since then.’
‘It would make a magnificent setting for a dance,’ Megan said dreamily.
‘You like it?’ Somehow the question seemed important to him and she considered it carefully before answering.
‘Yes,’ she said at last, ‘I love it!’
‘You love easily!’ he taunted her.
Megan stepped through the open door ahead of him, embarrassed. He had a knack of making her feel gauche and peculiarly naive.
‘I don’t think I do,’ she said seriously. ‘I like easily—but loving is a different matter!’
‘So it is!’ he agreed laconically.
The room was so dark that she could only make out dim shapes that she took to be bookcases. Carlos opened the shutters and turned to face her.
‘This is my particular sanctuary. The rest of the family doesn’t often come in here.’
And never without his permission, Megan thought wryly. She was surprised, though, at his choice of room to make his own. This had originally been the library, and books still lined the walls, but it was now a study-cum-workroom, with a huge, elaborate desk at one end, a couple of easy chairs placed negligently before the carved stone fireplace, and a huge heraldic emblem covering the far wall, as aggressively arrogant as Megan felt Carlos to be himself.
‘The Vallori arms?’ she asked, keeping her voice as blank as possible.
‘No. Those are the Llobera arms. My mother was the only child of her generation and the last of the family.’
Megan felt unaccountably sad. ‘Aren’t there any of them left?’
‘I have my grandmother still alive, and an unmarried aunt. That’s all.’
‘But there are lots of Valloris?’
Carlos smiled. ‘More than enough,’ he agreed. ‘ At one time my father used to hang his own arms and my mother’s side by side in our house in Barcelona, but when he married again, Margot objected that her predecessor’s presence in the house was greater than her own, so my father took down my mother’s arms and put them away. I came across them by chance and brought them here. I am very proud to have them.’
Megan’s eyes filled with tears. ‘You must have been hurt,’ she said bluntly.
He shrugged, ‘Small boys are always imagining woes for themselves!’
‘Well, I think it was mean!’ Megan insisted.
He laughed at her. ‘Would you have allowed them to stay?’ he asked ironically.
She nodded her head defiantly. ‘Yes, I would! I’d have been proud of them!’
His mouth curled in disbelief. ‘I think not.’
‘But I would! They wouldn’t only be a reminder that my husband had been married before, they would have been a part of you!’ She stopped, a little shocked by what she had said. ‘I mean, you’d have been there anyway,’ she went on uncomfortably.
‘Another constant reminder!’
Megan’s eyes widened. ‘But one couldn’t be jealous of a small boy!’ she exclaimed.
He looked at her closely. ‘Perhaps you would not be,’ he conceded, catching a tear on his forefinger as it brimmed over her eyelashes. ‘It is hard to know that the son and heir is already waiting to inherit when you have your own children to consider, though. Pepe has always had to come second to me, except in his mother’s affections.’
Megan backed away from him, ashamed that he should have seen her tears. ‘I would have tried to love you equally with my own children,’ she said obstinately.
‘Perhaps Margot tried too!’
‘I don’t see how she could have helped it I You can’t have been very old—’
‘Old enough to be difficult. I refused to speak a word of English to her for a long time. The Spanish are a proud people, and I have all the pride of my race. I am sure I was a thorn in her flesh, as I meant to be. Not at all the forsaken small boy that a woman could have loved!’
‘I would have loved you!’
‘Would you?’ he asked very gently.
She nodded fiercely. ‘You wouldn’t have got the better of me!’ she declared. ‘I’d think pretty poorly of myself if I couldn’t win the affection of one small boy, Spanish or not!’
Carlos looked amused. ‘I think you probably would have succeeded,’ he admitted. ‘It would have been a novel experience to have had a pretty girl crying over me!’
‘I’m not crying!’ she said crossly.
‘No?’ His eyes mocked her. ‘You’re very young, Megan.’
She glared at him. ‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘More than you think,’ he retorted. ‘If you were older you wouldn’t break your heart over a boy who doesn’t exist any more!’
Megan bit her lip. ‘I think he does,’ she said in a whisper.
‘In me?’
She nodded briefly. ‘What is the rest of the house like?’ she asked quickly.
He put his hands on her shoulders and turned her to face the light, whether she would or no. ‘There is very little of the small boy left in me,’ he told her grimly. ‘I grew up a long time ago!’
‘Oh?’ She forced herself to sound light and amused, but she felt neither.
‘Do you doubt it?’
She licked her lips nervously. ‘No,’ she said.
His hands tightened on her shoulders, pulling her against him. She turned her head away, afraid that he meant to kiss her, and even more afraid of her own possible reaction.
‘I—I’d like to go to my room!’
‘It is you who hasn’t grown up,’ he chided her impatiently.
She freed herself impatiently from his restraining hands. ‘I’m old enough to prefer to be taken seriously!’ she informed him loftily. ‘More than old enough!’
‘Seriously?’ he repeated.
‘As a woman!’ she added self-consciously. She couldn’t help feeling that she was destroying her own case by having to point it out to him.
‘Indeed?’
She saw the glint in his eyes and was afraid. This time there was no escaping the pressure of his hands. He held her tightly against him and kissed her hard on the mouth, parting her lips beneath his.
She had expected to dislike it, but it wasn’t like that at all. It was the most exciting, the most marvellous experience of her whole life. She put her arms around his neck and hugged him closer still, wondering that any man should be able to stir her in this way. His hands moved down her back with an intimacy that alarmed even while it thrilled her. Then, as suddenly, she was free and he stood away from her, looking down at her as though she were a complete stranger to him.
‘You see,’ he said, ‘you are too young to tell when a man is serious!’
She threw back her head, her expression as proud as his. ‘You flatter yourself, senor. I know you would never be serious with a nobody like myself! Nor would I ever be serious over anyone as arrogant and selfish as yourself!’
‘I told you the boy in me is dead,’ he said coldly.
Her hands were shaking, so she put them behind her back to hide them from him.
‘He isn’t dead, senor. If he doesn’t live on in the man you are now, it’s because you deliberately destroyed him. I may be young, I may be very young, but I hope I never feel ashamed of what I was before—’
If she had hoped to anger, she had certainly succeeded. ‘That is enough, Megan,’ he snapped. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about.’
She was silent. She thought resentfully that it was easy enough for him to intimidate her at every turn and wished desperately that, just once, she might have the pleasure of placing him at a disadvantage. She pushed her hair back behind her ears and sniffed.
‘Are you going to cry again?’ he asked in exasperated tones.
‘No.’
He stood
quite still, waiting for her to recover her poise. ‘Do you wish me to apologise?’ he asked at last.
‘No,’ she said again.
‘I think I should all the same,’ he went on, not without humour. ‘I fancy that no one has kissed you quite like that before—’
‘Then you fancy wrong!’ she answered proudly. ‘I’ve been kissed often by heaps of people—’
‘That is not precisely what I meant,’ he interrupted dryly.
She cast him a startled glance, dismayed by the harshness of his expression and the unyielding look in his eyes.
‘Then what did you mean?’
‘I meant that you are very sweet and very innocent, no more than that—’
‘And boring?’
‘I didn’t say that!’ he replied, trying not to laugh.
‘Well, I think innocence is boring,’ she retorted unthinkingly.
‘Perhaps that is where men and women differ in their approach to each other,’ he suggested mildly.
She felt herself blushing. ‘Then—then—’
‘Then what?’
‘You didn’t dislike kissing me?’
He smiled at her anxious expression. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I didn’t dislike it.’
She breathed a sigh of relief. He seemed to be waiting for something, though, and she supposed that he was hoping to hear what she had thought of the kiss, just as she had wanted to know about his reaction.
‘I didn’t dislike it either,’ she said abruptly.
He reached for her hand and raised it to his lips, kissing her palm and curling her fingers inwards to hold the place he had touched.
‘You are very generous,’ he said. ‘That was much more than I deserved.’
She almost ran to the doorway in her eagerness to escape from the challenge his very presence presented her with.
‘I don’t see why,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘You’re probably very practised. Pilar says you know lots of women!’
‘Pilar talks too much!’
‘I suppose you think she shouldn’t know about such things!’ Megan added provocatively.
‘Not necessarily. But, like you, I prefer not to be discussed behind my back!’
She was immediately contrite. ‘We weren’t really,’ she assured him. ‘We were talking about your stepmother wanting to live in England. Pilar said that everyone expected you to marry very well and that they had expected the same of your father, only he fell in love with your stepmother and that was that!’
‘They were very much in love,’ Carlos confirmed unexpectedly.
‘And you?’ Megan asked before she could stop herself.
‘Me? Will I marry well?’
‘Will you marry for love?’
His dark eyes were enigmatic and very arrogant as he looked at her. ‘I hardly think that is any business of yours,’ he said tersely.
‘No,’ she agreed, feeling snubbed.
‘The woman I have chosen to be my wife will be very much loved,’ he went on smoothly. ‘She will be important because she will be my wife and the mother of my children. Does that answer you?’
Megan’s spirits sank and she knew a sudden envy of this unknown woman who was going to be Carlos’ wife.
‘I suppose she’s very lovely?’ she heard herself say.
‘I think so,’ he answered calmly. ‘One day you will be able to tell me what you think.’
‘No!’ she burst out passionately. ‘I don’t want to!’
His eyebrows rose enquiringly. Megan swallowed desperately, but the lump in her throat obstinately refused to be dislodged.
‘Come,’ he said gently, ‘I will show you your room. The rest of the house can wait for another time.’
He strode past her, opening and shutting doors with an unconcern that made her own nervousness of him seem all the more unnecessary. She was bitterly conscious of the way her heart thudded within her as she followed him meekly through the house and up the marble stairs to the bedrooms above.
‘My stepmother’s room is here,’ he said as they gained the top of the stairs. ‘Your room is opposite.’ He opened the door with a flourish, his eyes mocking her. ‘You should feel quite safe in here!’
Megan would have liked to have asked him where his room was, but she knew better than to give him such an opening. He wouldn’t spare her feelings, she thought, if he ever guessed how easily he stirred her emotions and how certain little things about him caught at her heartstrings, leaving her more vulnerable than she had ever been before in all her eighteen years.
She stepped into the room and stopped. It was like nothing she had ever seen before. An enormous four-poster bed took up the whole of the centre of the room, heavy curtains draped about it and gathered up together in a kind of knotted effect just below the ceiling, itself surmounted by what looked suspiciously like a coronet. Beneath the window was an oak chest, heavily carved and very ancient. On the other side of the bed was a marble-topped dresser, complete with a patterned china bowl and jug for washing purposes. It was the grandest and most awful room she had ever seen.
‘I’m to sleep here?’ she gasped.
Carlos eyed the bed meaningly. ‘Will it disturb your dreams?’ he teased her.
‘Of course not,’ she denied hastily.
‘It’s more comfortable than it looks,’ he told her kindly.
‘Have you slept in it?’ she demanded, prodding the mattress nervously. It was big enough for four people to sleep in, she thought. She had never seen such an enormous bed.
‘Often,’ Carlos said dryly. ‘This was my room when I was a boy, in fact until quite recently when I moved into my father’s old room. Perhaps that’s why my stepmother chose it for you.’ He smiled at her aghast expression and, turning on his heel, shut the door with a snap behind him, leaving her alone with her chaotic thoughts.
CHAPTER V
‘You’d better call me Margot,’ Senora Vallori suggested.
Megan nodded. ‘If you want me to.’
‘It makes me feel old to be addressed as Senora all the time. Heaven knows, it makes me feel old enough to have a companion wished on to me.’
Megan felt uncomfortable. She wriggled in her chair and looked at the sunshine outside, seeking inspiration from its warmth.
‘I thought you wanted someone English to live with you here—that you were lonely—’
‘So I am!’
‘Oh,’ Megan said inadequately, ‘I suppose it isn’t the same as going to England as you had wanted to.’
Senora Vallori sighed. ‘Carlos tells me that England isn’t the same as I remember it. I suppose he’s right. I’m used to the comfort of living in Spain now. The Spaniards give their women such a lovely, protected feeling!’
Megan was on the point of arguing with her about that, but she changed her mind, reflecting that she was not married to a Spaniard, and was never likely to be, and that therefore what seemed like loving protection to her employer seemed like a whole lot of petty restrictions to herself.
‘Can you drive a car?’ the Senora asked suddenly.
Megan nodded eagerly. ‘I drive my father’s car sometimes. He gave me some driving lessons for my birthday. But isn’t it more difficult having to drive on the right?’
‘Makes no difference at all!’ the Senora assured her. ‘It’s useful that you can drive, though. You can take yourself about the island and see the sights.’
Megan’s eyes widened in protest. ‘But I ought to be doing things for you—’
‘So you shall, dear. Only I am not exactly in my dotage and so I don’t need anyone to wait on me all the time.’
‘In fact,’ said Megan, ‘you don’t know what to do with a companion now you have one!’
Senora Vallori looked mildly embarrassed. ‘You’re very welcome! You must know that! I expect I shall find lots of things for you to do in a little while, my dear, but as we already have two maids and a gardener-cum-chauffeur, there doesn’t seem to be a great deal for you to do at the moment.’
‘I can’t think why Carlos suggested my coming,’ Megan said abruptly.
‘Nor can I, dear, but I expect he had his reasons. And you are going to do up the small sitting-room, aren’t you? Why don’t you get on with that?’
Megan stood up. ‘It’s a little difficult to shop as I don’t speak any Spanish yet. May I go and look round the shops? Perhaps I’ll get some ideas that way.’
‘Do,’ the Senora invited her. ‘By the time you get back Carlos may be in and you’ll be able to talk to him.’
Megan gave her a startled glance. ‘I don’t think—’ she began.
Senora Vallori’s eyes hardened. ‘Don’t you?’ She looked away again, the smile on her face never altering. ‘Don’t be late for dinner, dear, will you? We have guests coming.’
‘No, I won’t be late.’ Megan gathered up her handbag in a sudden rush and hurried out of the room. She would go out, she decided. She would take her first look at Palma and try and feel a little less unwanted. It was so peculiar that Carlos should have brought her here if his stepmother didn’t want or need an English companion. As for the Senora, she couldn’t make up her mind about her. It was too early to know if she liked her. Most of what she had heard about her she didn’t like at all. Megan repressed a faint shiver as she thought about her. All she really had against the Senora was that she wasn’t a particularly kind person. She wasn’t even thoughtlessly kind in the way that Megan’s own mother was kind. She was charming and very sure of her own attractions, but she wasn’t kind!
Megan passed down the magnificent steps into the patio, pausing for a moment to look at the potted flowers and some ornamental carvings that she hadn’t noticed previously. A car zoomed past the entrance, taking up the whole of the narrow street, warning her to be cautious as she stepped outside and made her way towards the cathedral and the sea.
At the bottom of the street she wondered whether to turn left or right. Both looked equally unlikely. The streets were very old, narrow and shuttered, with the occasional line of washing hanging out of one of the secretive windows. Some women stood gossiping in the doorway of one of the houses, flattening themselves against the yellow ochre walls whenever a car crept along beside them. She turned left because a lorry was making a delivery in the street on the right. An old woman, dressed totally in black, eyed her curiously, turning right round in her carpet slippers to get a closer look, her toothless mouth hanging open in her astonishment.