Another thing she couldn't help noticing was how
very gentle Severo was with the elderly lady. `Abuela,' his voice soft and caring, let me introduce your future granddaughter.'
There was little time then for her to mentally object to being introduced this way—it sounded more final than if he had said 'Let me introduce you to my fiancée' for even as he was following up with, 'Reggie, querida—my grandmother,' the little old lady, against her murmur of protest, was rising from her chair.
It was instinctive then, as two thin arms came out towards her, for Reggie to go forward. Instinctive too, since the old lady did look as frail as Severo had said, for her to hold her as Doña Eva embraced her, her once smooth cheek, now aged, pressed up against her own.
`You've chosen well, Severo.' Doña Eva at length pulled back, the tears Reggie witnessed in her eyes bringing a choking sensation to her throat as the faultless English accent met her ears. `Abuelo would have been so proud of your choice,' she sighed. Emotion was thick in the air while Reggie sought for something to say. And then Doña Eva had recalled, 'But you did meet Severo's grandfather, did you not, Regina?'
Remembering Bella had gone to see the old man in hospital, Reggie could have wished Severo would step in and help her out, because she was finding it totally impossible to lie to the old lady.
`I was so sorry when Severo told me your husband had died,' she said gently, and found her hands warmly squeezed.
Severo saw his grandmother back into her chair, suggesting, with a loving look at his fiancée that she knew meant nothing, 'Perhaps you would like to sit here by Abuela.'
Doing her best to emulate his loving look as she took the chair next to Doña Eva, Reggie saw he looked
slightly surprised to find she was entering into the spirit of the pretence, and her eyes quickly found something to admire in the cream-coloured carpet. Well, what did he expect, for goodness' sake, she mused crossly, that she should further upset his grandmother by telling him to go to hell? Already she was hating this deception, yet with Doña Eva looking so fragile, her loss so new, she wouldn't have dreamt of adding to her distress.
Doña Eva's maid Ana came quietly into the room, and talk while the maid served them with coffee was of Reggie's flight, Doña Eva saying that though she loved London and had visited the capital many times over the years, a London fog was something she tried to avoid.
As silently as she had entered the room, Ana withdrew, and a few minutes were passed in quiet conversation, none of them shying from mentioning Doña Eva's husband since she appeared to have a need to feel he was still with them, still a part of them.
As she had found everything going smoother than she had dared to hope, Reggie's nerves and apprehensions faded as conversation became easier. Then suddenly Doña Eva visibly brightened.
`And now,' she said,, her smiling glance taking in Reggie and Severo both seated near, 'we have to look forward to happier times.'
Not knowing what was coming, Reggie tried to keep her face composed, a be-ready-for-anything instruction being sent up to her brain. But her brain just wasn't ready to receive what followed, and all her nerves and apprehensions jangled together in one agitated mass, when she said:
'Roberto and I- had many years together, many years in which to store up such happy memories. Now it's the turn of you and Severo to begin to make your memories.' Her glance stayed on Reggie, her eyes tender. 'I was
more delighted than I can say when Severo told me earlier this morning that last night you arranged your wedding date for the twenty-fourth of this month.'
`Twenty fourth!'
Severo' was in there before she could tell his grandmother what a lying hound he was. Last night he had been with the Gomez woman. He was out of his chair, an arm coming around her shoulders in a hard warning grip that hurt.
`Still exhausted from your flight, querida?' he teased, only his flint-hard eyes showing the insincerity of his teasing. 'You were awake enough last night when you told me the next three weeks can't go fast enough for you.'
`I..... er' Reggie floundered, knowing she would
have to pull herself together.
She glanced at Doña Eva, saw her pale face, a fresh wrinkle on her brow as though they were confusing her, and felt so dreadfully sorry for her. Her husband hadn't been dead a week yet. She just had to go along with it, even if it did mean lying her head off. Anything to get the old lady smiling again and looking less as though she might suffer a heart attack at the smallest shock. I—er—didn't know you were going to tell your grandmother so soon, darling,' she murmured. 'I'm sorry —er ' she hesitated, not quite sure what to call the old lady and settled for, 'Doña Eva. Of course, as Severo says, I—' and in up to her neck, 'I'm looking forward to my —our wedding day. It's just that I thought you might be offended as it's so near to .
By this time Doña Eva was smiling again in full sympathy with her future granddaughter-in-law's sensitivities. `Oh, my dear,' she said gently, 'I'm not at all offended that you and Severo want to be married so soon after Roberto's death. And it would please me if you would call me Abuela as Severo does.' She sent Severo a loving
look that was full of pride for the tall good-looking man she had helped to rear, then went on, 'Severo made his grandfather the happiest of men when he told him he was to marry an English girl. Because of Severo's news Roberto was able to die knowing his last wish was to come true. Believe me, he would applaud Severo's decision to waste no time in making you his wife.'
Feeling trapped, all Reggie could do was to smile and hope her smile wasn't as sickly as she felt. Then the man who for his own reasons was threatening to make her his bride before the next three weeks were out, if she didn't do something about it, rose to his feet.
`I think you have had enough excitement for one morning, Abuela,' he said gently, going over to kiss the old lady's wrinkled cheek. 'Reggie and I will come and see you again—for the moment we will leave you.'
She was left alone with Doña Eva while Severo went in search of Ana. But she had no need to search for anything to say, spontaneity having left her a few minutes ago, for Doña Eva was saying:
`I usually rest in the afternoon for an hour or so, but if you are free around four perhaps you would join me for tea?'
Smiling, Reggie accepted the invitation, powerless to do anything else and realising it was natural for her to want them to know each other better.
`I'll look forward to it,' she said, wishing the circumstances were different and that she had no need to feel anxious about the four o'clock meeting.
`May I call you Reggie too?' Doña Eva was asking.
`I'd like that,' Reggie was replying—her first honest answer in a long while, she was thinking. Then Severo was back, his arm once more around her shoulders.
`Ready, querida?'
Knowing the urge to knock that smile off his face
would have to wait, she picked up her bag and made her farewells to Doña Eva.
But once out in the hall and away from where they could be overheard, she angrily shrugged out of the arm which had remained about her shoulders.
`Don't touch me!' she snapped, dynamite in her anger needing only the merest spark to have it exploding. `Don't you ever, ever touch me again!'
`That might prove a little difficult,' came the laconic answer, which did nothing to lengthen the fuse on her fury that he could sound so complacent when she was ready to give forth with an eruption that would put Vesuvius to shame.
The explosion nearly happened out there in the hall, for after walking to where the hall angled, though stomping would have been a more apt description of the way Reggie set her feet, seeing she could find her own way to her room, as cool as you like to her mind, Severo said:
`If you'll excuse me, I have work that calls for my attention in my study.'
And while she stood rooted, dumbfounded that he thought he could just announce their wedding date and that was all there was to it, he gave a slight bow in her directi
on and strode away.
`Just one minute!' Her voice, that she had never known possessed such a roar, bellowed after him.
He halted, turned, and if just one single solitary smile had cracked his face, then Reggie knew at that moment that regardless of the consequenses, she would have flown at him, for she was sure there was a look of devilment in his eyes.
`I have one or two things I should like to say to you,' she told him, her voice only marginally quieter.
For a second or two he surveyed her mutinous face, her eyes flashing fire. 'Might I suggest,' he said eventually,
`that if you intend to scream like a .. .' he paused to get the correct English expression, 'fishwife, then perhaps you should join me in the privacy of my study.'
That he should take it she would follow him as he casually turned back to the way he had been going and walk on to open his study door and go through had her anger boiling over. She was in that same room, hardly aware she had charged after him, not bothering to close the door after her.
Unperturbed, Severo went unhurriedly to shut it, but even while he was closing it, she was laying into him.
`What do you mean by telling your grandmother I'd agreed to marry you?' she stormed. 'You know damn well I never so much as clapped eyes on you last night!' Her cheeks were hot with her fury, she didn't like it one bit that he just propped himself up on his desk, folded his arms in front of him, and made no attempt to defend himself. He seemed set if anything to lean there until she had burnt herself out. 'What the hell do you mean by it?' she demanded to know. 'You're as aware as I am that you couldn't wait to pack me off to my room so you could continue your—your liaison with that Gomez woman!'
`Liaison? Gomez woman?' Severo echoed, his eyes suddenly alert before, infuriatingly, a smile did cross his face as he accused, 'Reggie, you're jealous!' His smile became a laugh as his head tipped back and a deep-throated shout of laughter left him. 'Without ever having seen—the Gomez woman, you are jealous of her.'
`I am not jealous!' she raged, only just this side of aiming a kick at his shin to see how funny he thought that was. 'Don't be ridiculous,' she snapped. 'I just—just happen to think it very bad form to dump me in your home as though I'm some unwanted p-parcel, that's all.'
Severo sobered at being accused of being ill-mannered, his pride evident as his arms unfolded and he stood away
from his desk. 'I apologise,' he said stiffly. 'If you have been made to feel like a—parcel—that was not my intention at all. My visit to the Gomez home was necessary, otherwise I certainly should not have left you. Though in all fairness I think you will agree you were near to the point of exhaustion and, I think, feeling you had had sufficient of my company for one day.'
He was turning the tables on her and she didn't like it. `Well,' she said, lamely realising some of her heat had left but determined not to be on the defensive, 'that doesn't alter the fact that you've added to the lies you've told your grandmother. I have no intention of marrying you and you know it.'
Levelly he looked at her. Then instead of telling her why he had told his grandmother this latest lie, he further shattered her by denying it was a lie at all.
`I may have stretched the truth here and there,' he told her coolly, 'all in the attempt to give her a little peace of mind in this very difficult period of her mourning. But I certainly wasn't lying when I told her that I would be marrying Regina Barrington on the twenty-fourth of this month.'
Shaken rigid, for there was a conviction about him that said he meant every word, Reggie opened her mouth, found her throat had dried up, and her eyes wide with incredulity, she tried again.
`But—but I never said I'd marry you!' she denied.
Severo flattened her composure before it could get a firm hold. 'A girl calling herself Regina Barrington did.' - 'You mean Bella agreed to marry you?' she gasped, her disbelief evident.
`It would appear your sister misled you in more than one detail. She told you she had advised me that you were coming in her place, when she had not,' he reminded her.
Feeling winded, Reggie could only look at him, wide-eyed, struck dumb as the truth of what he was saying hit her. Then remembering the love Bella had for James, she didn't know what to believe. Surely loving James as she did Bella wouldn't agree to marry another man? Yes, but, prompted a small voice, there was a vast difference between agreeing to marry someone and actually going through with it. Bella hadn't hesitated to break her contract to be Severo's fiancee when her love for James had got on top of her. All the same, her lovely sister wouldn't ...
`Bella wouldn't ...' she began to defend, only to have her words chopped in mid-air as though he was tired of the whole argument.
`There's the telephone,' he said, pointing to the instrument. 'Put through a call and ask her.'
Her hand went to the phone before she realised the futility of trying to get through. `Bella's on her honeymoon,' she said, and, her intelligence at work, 'as you well know. You know too that even if I could contact her I wouldn't, because you still hold that ace, don't you?'
He didn't deign to answer. 'I paid ten thousand pounds for a bride,' he said instead. 'I have every intention of having a bride, Regina Barrington.'
`I'm not going to marry you.' Her temper was coming again, helping her out of the feeling she was fighting a losing battle. 'So don't you think for a moment that I am!'
His face hardened, but not so much, she thought, because it wasn't every day or any day he got turned down. She soon found out the cause for the hard look he was giving her.
`What are you after?' he asked unpleasantly. 'More money?'
`More money?'
`Trying to up the price. Perhaps you too are after ten thousand to put into your bank account.'
Vesuvius erupted. Her stinging hand, the cruel grip of his hands on her arms as he shook her, told her she had hit him and that he was furious about it.
`No, I'm not!' she was shouting, terrified by the demoniacal look on his face that soon she would have a similar red mark to match the one he had showing on her cheek. Her good sense left her then in her fear of him, and she was babbling more than she would have let anyone know other than Bella. 'I'm not interested in your money. I c-can't marry you, Severo—how can I? I'm in love with another man!'
The grip on her arms threatened to crush her bones as her confession rang through the air. He was livid, she could see that, but she knew it wasn't because she had confessed her love for another man, but because he had decided he would marry her and was furious at her repeated refusal. Fear beset her again as his eyes burned into her, his mouth taking a cruel line, his eyes harder than she had ever seen them, like chips of flaming granite.
It was only as a cry of pain came from her that he seemed to realise how violently he was treating her. His hands dropped to his sides, but his face was still hostile.
`We will discuss this matter again,' he told her shortly. 'Deny our forthcoming wedding to my grandmother when you see her this afternoon and both you and your precious sister will live to regret it.'
It barely registered that his grandmother must have told him she was inviting her to take tea with her that afternoon, because he hadn't been there when the invitation had been issued, for she was too busy trying to keep herself from wilting. Wanting badly to answer back, she found any words she had were stuck fast in her throat.
He obviously wasn't expecting her to say anything, taking her silence for acquiescence anyway. And what he had to do in his study could not have been as important as it had once seemed, for without saying another word he strode to the door as if he didn't trust himself, his anger, with her in the same room, and left her alone with her own mixed-up thoughts.
Damn him, damn him! Damn him to hell, Reggie fumed, her fury returning when it didn't look as though he was coming back to set about her. It was some minutes before she too left the study—minutes which had been filled completely with railing against him.
If anything, prior to knowing Severo Cardenosa,
she would have said her nature was on the placid side. But since knowing him it was fast being brought home that the fire he had said she possessed was a fact. Oh, not the sexual fire she was sure was behind his remark, but fire of such flaming anger she had for the first time in her life physically set about someone.
Not that he hadn't had it coming. No man had so moved her to such fury before. If she had had time to think before she had acted, she would have hit him harder. It was all his fault, unquestionably all his fault, she fumed, her feet of their own volition taking her out on to the verandah.
And it was on the verandah that fair play prodded for a hearing, the thought that Bella wasn't coming out of this smelling exactly of violets disquieting her. Bella had lied once before. She had believed her when she said Severo had agreed to her coming in her stead, when he had known nothing about it. Just as she had believed her when she had said all she had to do was pretend to be his fiancee for a few months. Had Bella lied again?
Remembering that her sister had looked desperate enough to do anything, Reggie felt the need to clear her
muddled head, to be away from the house. Collecting her sunglasses from her room, she returned to the verandah, wondering which way to go.
The Estancia de Cardenosa stood on top of a hill, and glancing about she saw some outbuildings some way away from the house. That way was out. She had a feeling Severo Cardenosa might be over by those buildings, and she had no wish to see him again until it could possibly be avoided.
She took the opposite direction, passing a swimming pool, ignoring its cooling-looking waters in the noonday heat, passing lawns and flower beds. The worry of her present predicament had not let up, but as her feet took her through a field of lush grasses, some of the heat of her anger against her temporary fiance, soon to be her husband—over her dead body!—had cooled.
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