The Man From Madrid

by Anne Weale

  ‘If I’m not living up to your expectations, I’m sure you will let me know.’

  ‘You can rely on that,’ he agreed, giving her a stern look while inwardly feeling a strong urge to reach for her hand and kiss it.

  She was looking very businesslike in black trousers with a black and white check jacket over a high-necked black silk sweater. But the boardroom-style clothes couldn’t disguise her essential femininity.

  He had noticed in the car that she wasn’t wearing the pervasive type of scent that the women in his family and many of the smartest women in Madrid favoured. But he knew, from the times he had kissed her, that her skin had a natural scent he found far more arousing than anything out of a bottle, however expensive.

  It was not going to be easy keeping his word that, as long as she was his employee, he wouldn’t make any further advances. But one of his few virtues was that he always kept his promises. Which meant that their personal relationship had now reached an impasse that only she could break. He wondered if she could bring herself to do it…if indeed she wanted to do it.

  The only certainty was that he wanted her more than he had ever wanted anyone…more than he had ever expected to want and need a woman in his life. But that was something she was never going to find out unless she had the courage to put the past behind her and, this time, take the initiative herself.

  Would she? Wouldn’t she? There was no way of telling.

  Meanwhile he would at least have the pleasure of looking at her and introducing her to life in Madrid.

  Wondering what Nicolás was thinking as he stared out of the window beside their table, its double-glazing muffling the sound of vehicles speeding along the west-bound side of the autopista, Cally sensed that he wasn’t best pleased by her revelation that she still had an iron in the fire in England.

  ‘I remember at the Drydens’ dinner party you said something about the Internet being the world’s best hope for understanding and tolerance, but not if politicians had their way with it. Have you considered writing a book about that?’ she asked.

  ‘An excellent book has already been written by a professor at Stanford University. I’ll lend it to you,’ said Nicolás, surprising her with a smile instead of the severe expression that had compressed his mouth a few moments earlier.

  ‘Actually now I come to think of it, the book you’ve given me to read could do with a glossary,’ she said. ‘For instance, the author keeps referring to fibre optics without explaining the term. Perhaps I should know what they are, but I’m afraid I don’t.’

  At that Nicolás gave her an even warmer smile and proceeded to explain fibre optics with a lucidity that made her feel he could have been an excellent professor himself, except that all his female students would have fallen in love with him and had difficulty keeping their minds on the subject of his lectures.

  Cally’s first weeks in Madrid were her happiest time since the early days at Edmund & Burke.

  Its location high up among Spain’s central sierras, at more than two thousand feet above sea level, meant that it was much colder than Valdecarrasca at about four hundred feet above the sea.

  But she didn’t miss the milder airs of the valley. She was both too busy and too interested in her new environment to give much thought to the weather, and anyway she would willingly have worked in Antarctica to be in occasional contact with Nicolás.

  She did not see a lot of him. About once a week he stopped by her desk to ask how things were going and if she had any problems. When she said she hadn’t, he chatted for a few moments and then went on his way.

  Inevitably, like all bosses, he was discussed by his staff, but they all seemed solidly supportive with none of the grumbles she had often heard about her London friends’ CEOs.

  She had been in Madrid for a month when two surprising things happened. First she received a large envelope forwarded by the Society of Young Publishers. It contained a letter, signed ‘H P Johnson (Miss)’, from someone who had read River of Life, Death and Love and wondered if she would be interested in publishing the writer’s travels during the twenty-five years since her retirement as the head of an independent school.

  Cally who had read and rejected, as kindly as possible, a great many very dull memoirs by elderly people with time on their hands, felt her heart sinking. Then she read the first chapter Miss Johnson had enclosed. From the opening paragraph it was a delight, written in simple but vivid language and imbued with a delightful sense of humour. If the rest of the book lived up to this sample, it couldn’t fail to sell.

  The second surprise was a call from Leonora Dryden.

  ‘Your mother gave me your telephone number. How are you liking Madrid?’ she asked.

  ‘I’m loving it,’ said Cally. ‘I have a tiny apartment right in the centre—it belongs to Nicolás’s company and I pay a peppercorn rent—and I’m making friends and having a fabulous time.’

  ‘I was hoping to hear that you and Nicolás might be coming back to Valdecarrasca before long. It’s time I gave another party and if you two were present it would have extra pizzazz. I remember how stunning you looked at the last one.’

  ‘I’ll ask Nicolás next time I see him, but he hasn’t said anything to suggest that a trip to the village might be in the offing,’ said Cally.

  ‘Have you met any of his family?’ Leonora asked.

  ‘No, but I wouldn’t expect to. I’m part of his working life, not his private life, and all my new colleagues are being very friendly and hospitable. He knows I’m not lonely or at a loose end. Quite the opposite,’ Cally assured her.

  There was a pause before Leonora said, ‘Have you been told about his mother?’

  ‘Told what?’ asked Cally, puzzled.

  ‘His mother is a Grandee of Spain…la Duquesa de Baltasar. She lives in one of Madrid’s most beautiful private palaces.’

  ‘You’re joking!’ Cally said faintly. This was an even worse shock than when Luis had told her Nicolás was a billionaire.

  ‘I assure you it’s true…and his friend Simón Mondragón is another Grandee, a Marqués. I looked them both up in the Almanach de Gotha which lists all European nobility.’

  Soon after bringing her to Madrid, Nicolás had mentioned that Cassia Mondragón had gone to stay with her mother-in-law in the country until her baby was born. Since then Cally had been too busy to give any thought to the Mondragóns.

  Having no idea what a blow she had dealt, Leonora chatted for a few more minutes before saying goodbye.

  It was several days—days of secret despair now that she had lost the last glimmer of hope that there was any future in loving him—before Cally saw Nicolás again.

  After some conversation about the work she was doing, he astonished her by saying, ‘Do you remember telling me about a Spanish autobiography, a bestseller here, which you couldn’t convince Edmund & Burke’s marketing people would be equally successful in translation? Would you like to meet the author?

  ‘Very much…but you didn’t say you knew him?’

  ‘I don’t, but my mother does. She’s having a velada tonight. I asked her if we could come. I’ll pick you up at eight-thirty.’

  He walked off with his usual brisk stride, leaving her wondering what, in her limited wardrobe, would be the most suitable thing to wear for a duchess’s soirée.

  Then, suddenly, he turned back. ‘Do you have that outfit you wore at the Drydens’ house with you?’

  Cally nodded.

  ‘Wear that, will you?’ said Nicolás. ‘I liked it.’

  Damn you, she thought, as he walked away for the second time. Why do you raise my hopes by being nice to me when you know, and I know, there isn’t any future for us?

  Not at all sure that his mother would approve of her outfit, Cally was ready to take the ascensor to ground level when, a minute before eight-thirty, her doorbell rang.

  She knew that Nicolás rarely used his car in the city centre and wasn’t surprised to find he had come for her in a taxi.


  Sitting beside him in the back of it, she said, ‘Don’t you think you should have warned me your mother is a duchess? I had no idea until Mrs Dryden mentioned it during a telephone conversation the other night.’

  ‘People of Leonora’s generation tend to attach more importance to titles than I do,’ he said. ‘A rank inherited from someone who, centuries ago, won it by fighting—which is how most Spanish titles were achieved—is a meaningless distinction today unless it’s allied to successes in other fields like those of the man you want to meet.’

  ‘You must have a title too. Do you never use it?’

  ‘From choice, no. Occasionally, if I have to go to a very formal function, I can’t avoid it. But I duck out of those if I can. I’m only going to this velada because I felt you would enjoy meeting someone you admire.’

  Don’t do this to me, Nicolás, she thought, her heart wrung by his thoughtfulness. Aloud, she said, ‘That’s very kind of you. By the way, Mrs Dryden asked me if either or both of us were likely to be going to Valdecarrasca any time soon. I said I didn’t think so. She’s giving a party and would like to have you on her guest list.’

  ‘I’m not planning to spend any time at La Higuera in the foreseeable future,’ he said. ‘If you want to go home for a long weekend you have only to say so, you know. At Llorca Enterprises, we’re all grown-up, responsible people who will work flat out when it’s necessary, but also take some time off when we feel the need for a break.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Cally. ‘I’m enjoying Madrid too much to want to leave it even briefly.’

  The taxi turned through an archway into the forecourt of a palatial building with an imposing entrance. A flight of shallow steps led up to massive doors at least twice Nicolás’s height.

  He gave some money to the driver and thanked him before springing out and coming round the back of the vehicle to help Cally alight. Although she was apprehensive about being presented to his mother, as they mounted the steps she was more conscious of the touch of his fingers on her elbow.

  Two hours later, she found herself having a relaxed supper in a nearby restaurant with Nicolás and two of his friends who had not been at the velada but whom he had arranged to meet afterwards.

  A married couple, both doctors, they were very different from the people she had met at the drinks party, none of whom, apart from the author of the memoir, she had warmed to.

  Indeed, having met la duquesa, she was forced to conclude that Nicolás must take after his father who, she gathered, was no longer the duchess’s husband. Not that his mother had been anything but charming to her, but it had been the artificial charm of an actress or a professional celebrity rather than a genuine warmth. Cally had been left with the feeling that the owner of the Palacio de Baltasar was, in a different way, as dissatisfied with her life as her own mother.

  Knowing how difficult it had been for her, growing up with parents who did not meet each other’s needs, she began to wonder if Nicolás, too, had felt alienated and that what appeared to outsiders to be privileged circumstances had, from an emotional perspective, been seriously lacking in the loving support that children and adolescents needed.

  By Madrid standards, it was still early when he dropped her off at her apartment.

  When she thanked him for the evening, his tone as he said, ‘My pleasure,’ was oddly formal.

  The last time they had said goodnight, in Valdecarrasca in December, he had kissed her. Probably he had forgotten that evening. Even if he had not, clearly he was never going to kiss her again.

  Walking back to his own apartment, Nicolás marvelled at his self-control. The temptation to kiss Cally goodnight had been almost irresistible, but somehow he had managed to resist it.

  He wondered what she had made of the party at the palacio and of his mother who, according to gossip, had recently embarked on yet another of her ill-advised romances, this time with a man the same age as her elder son.

  He was crossing the Plaza Santa Ana when his mobile rang. ‘Nico, who was that English girl you brought to the party?’ The voice was his mother’s cigarette-husky drawl.

  ‘She’s an English editor I have working for me, Mama.’

  ‘Really? I had no idea editors had so much style. One thinks of them as being serious-minded and dowdy. Are you having an affair with her?’

  ‘No, Mama. It’s a purely working relationship.’ Pure being the operative word, he thought sardonically. ‘Cally doesn’t go in for casual affairs. Her looks are misleading. She’s very serious-minded.’

  ‘I’m sure you could change her mind if you tried,’ said the duquesa.

  ‘I like her mind the way it is.’

  ‘If you aren’t careful you will end up like your father…the dullest man I have ever been married to…though we had a lot of fun in the early days,’ the duquesa conceded. ‘Sometimes I wonder if I made a mistake in divorcing him.’

  With typical casualness, she rang off without saying goodnight, leaving Nicolás to wonder if his strategy where Cally was concerned was not going to bring about the outcome he wanted.

  As the days lengthened and Madrid lived up to its reputation for enjoying more hours of sunshine per year than any other European capital, Cally worked twelve-hour days converting technical jargon into clear Spanish and English, and writing detailed reports on the typescripts sent to her by Robert Quarles.

  In late February she flew to London for a few days, and in March she spent a long weekend in Valdecarrasca, getting there by train and bus. Nicolás had mentioned that the restoration of La Soledad was going ahead more slowly than he had hoped, but the delay did not seem to concern him. Why he had bothered to lease La Higuera when he spent no time there was a puzzle. But presumably when one had an income of the order that his was said to be, wasting some of it was not the worry it would be for ordinary people.

  By the middle of the month people were discussing their plans for Semana Santa—the Easter holiday.

  One night Cally was the last to leave the office. Thinking herself alone in the building and hearing footsteps, she assumed it was the security guard who stayed on duty all night and sometimes stopped by to practise his English with her.

  But it was Nicolás whom she had thought was still on a trip to the US.

  ‘Who are you working for tonight…Quarles or Llorca Enterprises?’ he asked, pulling the chair from the neighbouring desk close to the end of her desk and sitting down.

  ‘For Llorca Enterprises. You look rather bushed.’ She had never seen him look even mildly fatigued before and presumed it was due to jet-lag.

  ‘It’s been a hard month,’ he said, ‘but I’m taking some time off soon. I’m going to the Ariège…the area I told you about, on the other side of the Pyrenees. A week or ten days up there will defrag me.’

  Cally watched him rake his fingers through his thick black hair in a gesture of uncharacteristic weariness. She felt something come over her: a powerful upsurge of care and concern for him.

  She found herself saying, ‘Would you like me to come with you?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  THERE was a prolonged pause during which she found it hard to hold his gaze without averting her own from his searching scrutiny.

  ‘With what object, Cally?’ he asked.

  ‘With the object of our mutual enjoyment of a holiday like the one you suggested before and I turned down.’

  ‘Why have you changed your mind?’

  ‘Because I know you better now…because, as some poet said, I want to live before I die…because I think it would be fun.’

  There was another disconcerting pause before he asked, ‘What about Mr Right? Where does he figure in this sudden change of attitude?’

  ‘I’ve decided one can’t live one’s life waiting for something that may never happen. The way things are is more important than future events that may not materialise.’

  ‘I see,’ said Nicolás. ‘Well, I’m afraid it’s too late, Cally. I’ve had a change of mind too, or rather a c
hange of heart. I’m not in the market for light-hearted no-strings holiday romances any more. Perhaps I should be flattered that you’ve decided you’re ready to have a carefree fling with me, but those days are over. You see I’ve fallen in love…seriously in love, with someone I want to have a permanent place in my life.’

  Cally felt the bottom drop out of her world. His announcement that he had fallen in love was far more painful and shocking than anything she had felt during the period when her job with Edmund & Burke was on the line. It hurt too much for her to disguise her reaction. She stared at him horror-struck, all her pain and despair in her eyes.

  He was lost to her…for ever out of reach…his heart given to someone else…someone far more suitable than she could ever be.

  In a moment of excruciating insight she realised that all this time she had been deluding herself that, despite all the obstacles between them, it was still possible that one day he would come to love her.

  To have that hope snatched away was the worst moment of her life.

  ‘That’s wonderful,’ she said hollowly. ‘I hope you’ll be very happy. I—I’m sorry I’ve made a fool of myself.’

  ‘On the contrary, it may be I who’ve made a fool of myself.’

  She had no idea what he was talking about. Her brain wasn’t functioning properly. It was an automatic reflex to say, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I don’t think she knows how I feel about her.’

  ‘Well then, tell her. What’s stopping you?’ she said crossly. Surely he wasn’t going to add to the torture by confiding all his feelings about someone else to her.

  ‘What if she doesn’t feel the same way?’ said Nicolás.

  ‘She will feel the same…I’m sure she will.’

  She marvelled at her own self-control. How could she be discussing this like a relationship counsellor when she wanted to run away and hide in some dark private corner where no one would witness the depths of her wretchedness?

  ‘I think we have our wires crossed, Cally. It’s you I’m talking about. You’ve offered to go to the mountains with me, but how do you feel about marrying me?’