by Susan Barrie
‘Ah, the bridal trousseau!’ She glanced alertly at Angela. ‘How exciting!’ she drawled. ‘How madly exciting! I can recollect what fun I had collecting masses and masses of things I actually never wore when my own turn arrived, and I married Martin. Only he and I were so madly in love that I don’t think we thought of anything else apart from each other. The orgy of buying and the preparations were just an extra delight thrown in.’
And now you are a widow,’ Angela reminded her, understanding perfectly that she was not expected to insist that she was madly in love with Don Felipe. Perhaps it was so obvious that she wasn’t in love, she thought afterwards.
Mrs. Ruddock nodded.
‘But it was marvellous while it lasted,’ she declared briefly. Then she looked across at Don Felipe and smiled brilliantly. ‘Your fiancee is very pretty,’ she told him, ‘but I was astonished to hear that she has an English name— and, as a matter of fact, she looks very English. I had imagined, if you ever did marry, it would be a Spanish woman.’
For the first time he looked and sounded a little withdrawn.
‘Angela is half Spanish,’ he replied, ‘and the half that is Spanish is an excellent half. On the English side I have no faults to find, either,’ with a contemplative look directed at Angela.
‘Oh, but, my dear, I never meant that you could possibly have cause to find fault with what is obviously an excellent arrangement,’ the widow purred, with sudden dulcet softness. Then she smiled for the first time very sweetly at Angela. ‘You must invite me to your wedding, child. If I am not in Spain I will fly over for the great event.’ Once more she glanced at Felipe. ‘I wouldn’t miss it for the world!’
‘Of course, if you would like to receive an invitation, madame, I will see to it that you are sent one....” Angela began diffidently, but the other interrupted her.
‘For goodness’ sake, my dear, don’t be so formal,’ she protested. ‘The name is Willow, and you must call me that. Carmelita is Felipe’s pet name for me, but I’ll confess I’ve never thought of myself as a Carmelita. I’m much too fair and English, like yourself.... And I’m truly astonished that you’ve got any Spanish blood in your veins! Your children will be an exciting mixture. I wonder what they’ll be like?’
Felipe once more bent towards her, and the very way in which he did so was the next best thing to an actual caress.
‘Tell me, Carmelita,’ he enquired of her softly, ‘where are you staying? And for how long do you propose to honour Granada? We can’t have you running home too soon—’
‘Not home, Felipe, but on to the next port of call.’ Her exciting mouth curved upwards, enticingly, at the corners. ‘You forget that I am my own mistress, and nowadays I have few ties. I ran in to these good friends’—she waved a hand to indicate them—‘in Seville, and we decided to have fun together. But now I am likely to be at a loose end again, for they are returning home in about another couple of days—all except Jose and Pedro here, of course,’ smiling at the two Spaniards who had attached themselves to her retinue. ‘You forget that we English are hampered by a travel allowance, and it is most inconvenient at times,’ and the lovely mouth set more petulantly.
But Don Felipe seemed to be inspired by a sudden notion.
‘Then we must do all that we can to overcome this difficulty for you,’ he said, with an eagerness that Angela for one had never associated with him. ‘We must relieve you of the necessity of settling hotel bills! I cannot have you disappearing out of my life again so soon after you have consented to reappear in it, and perhaps your friends’—obviously, however, not including the two Spaniards, whom by his look he quite plainly regarded as not up to his own social level—‘would accept my hospitality, too? I was thinking of reopening one of my houses here in the south before I enter into the commitments of matrimony, and also to enable Angela to see for herself what is in store for her. So what do you say to becoming my guests? For as long as I can persuade you to stay!’
‘Not overlooking the fact that you are committed to marry Miss Grevil within the next five or six weeks,’ Willow Ruddock reminded him.
‘Of course!’ For one fleeting second he looked as if his integrity had been called into question, and the slightly disdainful expression overspread his features once more ... but only for a very fleeting moment. ‘I am not likely to forget such an obligation as that. My marriage is of supreme importance, but all the arrangements have already been concluded in connection with it. I am free to offer you such hospitality as will enable you to enjoy a more protracted holiday in Spain.’
‘I must say I think that’s terribly kind of you, senor,'’ the other woman member of the party leaned forward eagerly to assure him. She was thinking with relief that this would reduce her own and her husband’s expenditure considerably. ‘But I’m afraid we could only stay for a few days. We have to be back in London before the end of the month.’
‘But I’m an entirely free agent,’ Willow assured him, fluttering her remarkable eyelashes at him. ‘And I adore
Spain, as you know—’
‘I do know.’ He looked down at her with that soft light in his eyes Angela had never seen in them before. ‘How about Mr. Hainsforth?’ he enquired rather more coolly, indicating the only other male member of her entourage, apart from the Spaniards, who had not so far been consulted. ‘Has he also to return to London before the end of the month, or is he a free agent as well?’
‘Oh, Johnny’s as free as I am, and he’d love to accept your invitation, wouldn’t you, Johnny?’ appealing to him by turning and touching his arm very lightly.
The Don’s lips tightened.
‘That is extremely gratifying, then,’ he assured them both a trifle stiltedly. ‘I shall look forward to the pleasure of your company at the Casa Martinez. This is an excellent arrangement we have arrived at, and all that remains is for me to assure myself that all is in readiness to receive you. Please supply me with the name of your hotel and I will have you collected from it at a day and time to be arranged.’ Mrs. Ruddock professed herself as delighted by the arrangement, her two married friends plainly regretted their inability to stay longer than a few days at the Casa, and Johnny Hainsforth looked neither pleased nor displeased. He was, in fact, an inoffensive-looking young man whom Angela strongly suspected was the type to be held in thrall by a sophisticated woman like Willow Ruddock, and he in his turn was the kind of willing admirer whom she probably liked to have in tow.
As for Angela, it was not until the others had departed that her fiance remembered to enquire whether or not she thought it was a good thing to become a member of his house-party. He also informed her that he would, of course, consult her grandmother before taking it for granted that she would be permitted to join them, and while she was at the Casa Martinez she could inspect the present furnishings and equipment of the house and decide whether or not she would like extensive alterations made.
‘I think your grandmother will approve of that,’ he said, as if that was the only really important aspect of Angela’s joining them.
Angela wished, for the first time in her life, that she had a very large circle of friends with one of whom she could stay—with her grandmother’s blessing, of course— while Don Felipe was entertaining his friends.
As for the condition and contents of the Villa Martinez, she had no interest in them whatsoever, and was certainly not prepared to put him to the necessity of having the place refurnished for her. As far as she was concerned it was all part of a future that was entirely without any sort of appeal for her, and in fact she was beginning actively to resent the very thought of it.
To her own dismay she realised that she was in secret rebellion against it.
CHAPTER V
Don Felipe returned her to her grandmother’s house at a respectable hour, and they didn’t even wait to see the fireworks that were the one thing she might have enjoyed watching had she been asked. But following upon the somewhat abrupt departure of Mrs. Ruddock and her friends, who had r
emembered that they had other friends to meet with whom they were to watch the fireworks, Felipe seemed to lose interest in the evening altogether, and without even pretending that he wasn’t bored by her unadulterated company suggested that she was probably feeling tired and would like to be taken home without delay.
Angela realised with a sense of curious shock that to her this was rather like the final straw. She had been forced to endure the society of his friends—one of whom was a woman who seemed to know him very well indeed, and whom he obviously and very openly admired—and the complete break-up of her evening, and he never even apologised for intruding his friends upon her, or affecting the quality of the evening.
And she strongly suspected from his decidedly marked silence on the drive home—quite a different kind of silence from the one that had engulfed him on the way to the hotel—that he was concentrating all his thoughts on Mrs. Ruddock, and probably making plans for her entertainment at the Casa.
She was even inclined to wonder whether her grandmother would approve the invitations he had issued that evening.
In the entrance to her grandmother’s house he said his good-night. Absent-mindedly, almost, he bent his head over her hand and kissed it lightly, after expressing the formal hope that she would sleep well; and it was only when she practically snatched her hand away from him that he looked at her rather more attentively.
The mellow light from an antique lantern shone down upon her, and in her white dress she herself looked curiously pale and mutinous. Without looking at him she thanked him punctiliously.
‘It was very kind of you to devote so much of your time to me this evening, senor. I have had a most diverting evening!’
She was about to dash away from him and into the house, where a light had been left burning dimly for her in the hall, but he declined to let go of her fingers and caught her back.
‘Are you, perhaps, trying to convey to me that you have not enjoyed your evening?’ he enquired in surprise.
She looked up at him in the diffused rays of the lantern, and her blue eyes sparkled coldly, like stars on a frosty night.
‘What do you think, senor?’ she returned bleakly. ‘From my point of view, apart from the actual dinner with which you regaled me, was there very much that I could honestly claim to have enjoyed?’
He looked almost completely taken aback.
‘But—but I thought—’
‘You thought, senor? How often do you think seriously in connection with me? That I am a kind of willing tool, a useful appendage to have about the house now that you have made the decision to take me into your household? For treats I am to have ice-cream, and in front of your friends I can be referred to obliquely, as if I was not actually present, but never drawn into the conversation. I may give my assent, or dissent—if I dare to do sol But apart from that I must not have ideas, because even as Dona Angela Martinez my lot in life is to be severely circumscribed. Do you think, senor, that Mrs. Ruddock would ever be willing to fill such a role in your life?’
There was a moment of absolute silence between them, and then he threw back his head and laughed, and there was no doubt about it, he was honestly and intriguingly amused.
‘Upon my word, little one, you can be a spitfire when you choose, can’t you?’ he said. He released her fingers, and his hand shifted to her chin, and he lifted it and looked down from his superior height with quite a noticeable degree of interest into her stormy eyes. ‘You have a temper, which indicates that your Spanish blood has not been entirely swamped by your English blood, and apparently you have notions about yourself which were no doubt given strength at that Swiss school of yours. I must try and remember that you are not just as you appear on the surface.’
She wrenched away her chin, and her little teeth snapped together ... providing him with the impression that she might actually have bitten him had she found the courage.
‘It has nothing to do with my school, senor,'’ she told him, in a muffled voice. ‘I hope I have my father’s family’s pride!’
‘Oho!’ he exclaimed softly, as if still more amused. ‘So it is your father’s family who are responsible for this rebellion, is it? And what of your mother’s family—Dona Miranda’s family? Do they not also fill you with a sense of pride?’
‘Of course, but it isn’t the same....’
‘You mean you want to be thought of as English?’
‘If you like, yes! ’
He regarded her almost quizzically, and trying to avoid the dark depths of his eyes she felt suddenly absurdly selfconscious, as if she had committed an actual breech of good behaviour and was regretting it already.
‘And the English are not at all submissive, is that it? ’
‘I—I don’t know much about the reactions of English women.... ’
‘But you are one! You like to think of yourself as one!
‘I see no reason why I shouldn’t, if it doesn’t offend my grandmother.... ’
‘Ah! You do do as your grandmother wishes you to do, don’t you?’
He released her chin and fingered his own, smoothing the uncompromising jut of it with very thoughtful and shapely dark brown fingers.
‘You were rebellious this afternoon, weren’t you?’ he said, remembering her hostility after the fitting of her wedding gown. ‘So your attitude has nothing to do with Mrs. Ruddock, and that sudden eruption of her and her friends into the quiet of our little dinner together?’
Of course not! ’ But she persisted in avoiding his eyes. ‘However, since you mention her I might as well tell you, Don Felipe, that I do not think it would be a good thing if I added to the numbers of the house-party you are planning. For one thing, it is so close to our marriage that I have much to preoccupy me, and for another—’
‘Yes?’ he said, in that same soft tone that was almost silken in its softness, which vaguely irritated her because she more than suspected he was using it to mask his irritation with her, and his secret annoyance because she should all at once become so awkward to handle.
‘I think it would be a mistake. We are not of the same world.’
‘You mean she is not of your grandmother’s world?’
‘I don’t know.... No; no, it’s not that! It’s nothing at all to do with that! ’ She turned even more noticeably away from him, drooping her head a little, so that it looked rather like a bright flower wilting on a stem. ‘But I don’t think my grandmother would entirely approve.’
‘Aha! You suspect some sort of a liaison between myself and Mrs. Ruddock? We have not always been such innocent friends, you would say...?’
She flung round swiftly to confront him, and for the second time that evening her innocuous English eyes
flashed indignant Spanish sparks.
‘You call her Carmelita!’ she accused. ‘She is not in the least like a Carmelita, and yet you call her by an absurd Spanish name! ... And it is very obvious, from the way in which you and she regard one another, and the delighted way in which you greeted one another, that your relationship has not always been very— very—’
‘Distant?’ he suggested, as if he wished to be helpful. ‘Yes, distant!’ Challengingly she met his eyes, and at the same time he could detect the fact that her slim breasts were heaving under the thin silk of her dress, and the muscles of her slender throat were quivering with a kind of righteous indignation. ‘It is true she is a widow, and that you knew her husband, but one would never suspect that the real attachment was between you and the husband and not you and the wife after they had seen you together to-night!’
‘Indeed,’ he said, as if she had provided him with room for thought, ‘that is most interesting.’
‘And I’m sure my grandmother would have the same kind of feeling about Mrs. Ruddock that I—I have.’
‘More than interesting,’ he commented, as he plucked a sprig of jasmine from the wall and played with it between his fingers.
‘Well? ’ she demanded, as if she meant to insist that he saw her point of vi
ew, but was by no means convinced he was treating the matter at all seriously. ‘You do perfectly understand, senor, why I—’
‘Why, no,’ he admitted, smiling at her almost lazily and permitting her the gleam of his excellent white teeth in the glow of the overhead lantern, ‘I cannot say that I “perfectly” understand.... But I do understand that you are lodging a protest. However, I can assure you that Dona Miranda will be most unlikely to raise any objections after I have had a talk with her tomorrow on the subject of your joining me and my friends at the Casa Martinez as soon as all the arrangements have been completed. She may not feel like chaperoning you herself, but there will be someone there to chaperone you ... ignoring the fact that there will be other guests in the house. And of course it is important that you should be allowed to suggest your own improvements to the house. We shall quite possibly spend our honeymoon there, or at any rate a few weeks of it.’
‘I have no improvements to suggest, senor,'’ she told him coldly.
‘Dear me!’ And his dark eyebrows quirked upwards. ‘You do seem to have taken a dislike to the house in advance. Some people might consider that boded ill for the honeymoon I have just mentioned. However, you have not yet seen the Casa Martinez, or indeed any of my other houses, so perhaps you will be in for a pleasant surprise, and the honeymoon will be a success after all.’
‘Good-night, senor,'’ she said, and turned away. ‘Good-night, little one—Though I do wish you would make it Felipe. Our married life is going to be very unusual if you insist on this formality. Altogether, I begin to suspect that, whatever happens, it will be unusual.’
She did not see the way in which he smiled as she moved determinedly away from him this time, and she was annoyed that he thought it necessary to open the outer door for her and make a careful inspection of the hall beyond it before permitting her to cross it on her way to the stairs.
‘I shall see you tomorrow, Angela,’ he said, as she stood waiting to put up the bolts for the night. ‘I shall make it my business to see you after I have talked with your grandmother, and I feel certain I shall be able to reassure you about the complete wisdom of your becoming one of my guests at the Villa Martinez. And the next time I take you out I will try and remember that your tastes are a little more sophisticated than I had imagined them to be, and we will cut out the ice-cream and substitute something more heady for your entertainment. Although I do not recollect that you even sipped the champagne that was provided for you this evening.’