by Lynne Graham
Her companion cleared her throat brusquely. ‘When we understood what had been happening here,’ she continued evasively, ‘we sent him to boarding school. No, we did not redeem ourselves even then. But he was brilliant at school. In every field, he excelled. He could have done anything, become anyone he wanted to be, and little by little we began to take notice of him.’
‘What happened?’ Sarah encouraged.
‘When he was a child he drew on walls when Lucia wouldn’t give him paper. There was never a time when Rafael did not paint,’ she confided grimly. ‘I believe it was a form of escape for him. We gave him no love and no place in the family and we attempted too late to make him one of us. We failed. We could give him nothing that he wanted but his freedom and that he took for himself. He refused to enter the business world. He defied all of us. I learnt…’ the old lady’s voice was dragging with exhaustion now ‘…that it is only with love that Rafael can be held or contained. That is the only tie he will acknowledge and we had not created that tie.’
That assessment had an intimate personal reality for Sarah and it hit her hard. After a long pause, she whispered tightly, ‘You understand him,’ but Rafael’s grandmother did not hear her. Dona Isabel had drifted off to sleep.
The British nurse was waiting outside. Sarah apologised for over-tiring her patient. ‘Dona Isabel dictates the length of her own visiting hours,’ Alice said wryly. ‘I wouldn’t dare to interfere without good reason.’
Sarah asked where the studio was and discovered that it was in the grounds. The sprinklers on the velvet-smooth lawns were at rest in the heat of midday. Sarah had a ten-minute walk up a gradually steepening slope of terraces before she reached the encircling belt of acacia trees that bounded the formal gardens. She sheltered briefly within their dappled shadows. From there she could see the stone-built studio with its red-tiled roof. The path that ran to the open door was a mere track through long grass and wild flowers. As she approached she could hear the twins chattering.
Several doors opened off the cool, tiled hall. The studio lay to the left, a spacious extension of the original room with floor to ceiling glass at one end. The facing wall was hung with numerous paintings. The twins were down on their knees fingerpainting on a giant sheet of paper. Rafael was suggesting colours with all the enthusiasm of someone privileged to be sharing in the creation of a major work of art. One of his gifts, she recognised, was an entirely unstudied genius for handling children…and one particularly stupid woman, who loved him. Last night, Rafael had made surrender torturingly and unforgivably sweet. With time and the kind of encouragement she was giving him, how much more damage might he do?
But watching those three dark heads meeting in such unity, she finally understood that Rafael would not be deliberately guilty of anything which might hurt the twins. The children would come first. He had said that from the start. He had also mentioned the sacrifices they would both have to make. And she was one of those sacrifices, wasn’t she?
She was an unavoidably necessary component of Rafael’s determination to give his children the secure and uneventful childhood that he himself had been denied. And making love to her, she appreciated on a wave of anguished hurt, was just one more practical part of that ambition. Rafael was a very highly sexed male. And he had made a very moral decision. Either he satisfied his needs within marriage or he indulged in a series of affairs. Sneaking around was most definitely not Rafael, nor would such behaviour add to a happy home environment for his children.
She was looking at a reformed rake, handcuffed by conscience to the marital bed. And all that storm and passion expended on her imaginary trail of lovers meant not a thing. It certainly didn’t mean that he was jealous or that he was reacting with resentment against the events that had separated them, thereby enabling her to indulge in what he clearly envisaged as a voracious appetite for other men. When you didn’t really want someone, you became hyper-critical and dwelt on their flaws. Rafael had seized on her supposed scarlet past with a purpose—it gave him a vent for his frustration. He was feeling trapped and like a wild animal he clawed when you put him in a cage.
Ben saw her first. ‘Mummy!’ he scrambled up, waving rainbow-coloured hands. ‘We had breakfast with Daddy and he’s teaching us to swim.’
‘We saw fish in a river,’ Gilly put in.
‘We climbed a tree and a wall…a great big wall,’ Ben boasted.
Gilly pirouetted. ‘Daddy says I’ll be even more pretty tomorrow if I stop telling people how pretty I am.’ Clearly she hadn’t quite grasped the message yet.
‘Go and wash your hands now.’ Rafael sprang gracefully upright, the worn soft fabric of his jeans flexing indecently taut over his lean, hard flanks.
‘You’ve had a very busy morning,’ Sarah remarked.
‘They wanted to awaken you. It was by my instruction that you were left in peace.’ He was maddeningly attuned to her most petty inner resentments.
‘I met your grandmother this morning,’ she said hurriedly.
Rafael wiped long fingers clean on a rag. ‘What did you think of her?’
‘How serious is her illness?’
‘She had a stroke after Felipe’s death but with therapy and determination she would be able to use a wheelchair,’ he explained. ‘However, she has lost her interest in life and the longer she lies in that bed the less chance there is that she will ever leave it again.’
‘She seems to be fond of you,’ she commented.
‘Do you think so? I would say she respects me.’ His wide, passionate mouth had a wry curve. ‘She lives too much in the past now. Fallen idols and grief have become her sustenance. What did you talk about? Let me guess—Toni? I have often regretted not meeting my late uncle. So much perfection in one human being is rare.’
‘You’re not very sympathetic, are you?’
He laughed uproariously. ‘Abuela would choke on sympathy!’ With amusement dying out of his eyes, he looked incredibly attractive. ‘Toni was an obsession with her. She had no time for her other children. She takes precious little interest in the surviving four.’
‘Four?’ Sarah questioned.
‘She neglected to mention my trio of aunts?’ He smiled. ‘Females stand pretty low on Abuela’s scale of importance.’
‘Ramon doesn’t do much better.’
‘She despises weakness.’
‘Strong people tend to,’ Sarah said less evenly. ‘You have no time for him either.’
‘He is a fool.’ Rafael was carelessly indifferent. ‘Lucia is not even faithful to him.’
‘At least he’s loyal.’
‘So is a dog. Lucia has no need of a pet. To love without return is a form of degradation,’ he breathed contemptuously. ‘And in the name of that love Ramon has done much to be ashamed of.’
She could feel the colour draining sharply from her cheeks.
His dark eyes were intent upon her. ‘About last night—’
‘Oh, let’s not have a post-mortem,’ she interrupted.
‘I stayed here,’ he continued in defiance of her dismissal. ‘I shouldn’t have lost my temper. If I upset you, I’m sorry.’
He didn’t look sorry, she thought unhappily. He looked more like someone trying to look sorry. It was called papering over the cracks. That was what he was doing. In the future there would be many similar episodes if she stayed. Compromise. Give and take. Charades and civil dishonesty were part and parcel of that. Rafael was not the most likely choice for a diplomatic career but possibly time and practice would improve him.
‘Forget it,’ she said flatly.
‘It won’t happen again,’ he assured her impressively.
‘Of course it will,’ she contradicted helplessly.
‘Why do you have to make this so difficult?’
‘Because you’re talking nonsense,’ she muttered. ‘You’re no good at pretending!’
Unmistakable bitterness hardened his bone-structure. ‘As to that, you may one day be surprised.’
‘I want us to be a family,’ he emphasised harshly. ‘It is very important that you should be happy here at Alcazar.’
With every word he confirmed her suspicions about his own feelings. In no way was she wanted for herself. Without the children, she had no value whatsoever. ‘I’ll do my best to sparkle,’ she said sarcastically.
His mouth compressed. ‘Sometimes, I could slap you!’
‘That would be most conducive to my happiness.’
‘You know what I meant! It was a saying, not a threat. Are you afraid that you will lose contact with your parents? All right. If you want to bring them over here on a visit, you can!’ It was clear from his expression that he considered that a magnificently unselfish offer. ‘It is a very big house and I would probably see them only at dinner. What do you think?’ he prompted impatiently.
‘I don’t really think you want to hear my answer.’
A smouldering dissatisfaction was awkening in his tawny gaze. ‘I am not very good with people I don’t like.’
‘I did notice that over dinner last night,’ she said woodenly.
‘But for your sake I would make an effort. Who knows? Time may have changed your parents,’ he breathed with a brooding lack of conviction.
Dear heaven, this was sacrifice. This for Rafael was the equivalent of lying undefended on a cold stone slab with a gleaming knife-point hovering over his heart. He was ready to make the ultimate sacrifice for his children’s benefit, most probably on the mistaken assumption that the twins were very attached to their maternal grandparents. ‘I shouldn’t worry, if I were you. I imagine it will take my father quite a while to come to terms with your connections with Santo Amalgamated Industries!’
‘Cristo, Sarah!’ Abruptly, he lost patience. ‘You are being deliberately obstructive. I have apologised for last night. But you are behaving like a sulky little girl!’
‘Perhaps I’m less idealistic about the future than you are and I should know what I’m talking about—I have lived with you before!’
‘Let me spell my intentions out, then,’ he grated. ‘Whatever you want, you can have. Whatever you want, I will try to give you. What more can I offer you?’
She couldn’t tell him. Her self-respect might be badly dented but it was still in existence. She wanted his love, his trust, his understanding. Only none of those things was on offer. He had loved her when he was twenty-four but that was a long, long time ago and a century in terms of maturity. In those days, compromise would have been a very dirty word in his vocabulary. Then, it had been all or nothing for Rafael.
That day he had called her from New York and issued his forty-eight-hour ultimatum, he had gambled their entire relationship on the single turn of a card. And a day past the deadline and her failure to put in an appearance, he had picked up that exotic brunette at the gallery and taken her back to his hotel room. Until now she had rigorously avoided seeing that connection. It was perfectly possible that in the heat of anger and wounded pride Rafael had believed that their marriage was over, that she had made her final choice and that that final choice did not include him.
‘What happens if you fall in love with someone else?’ she asked drily. ‘What happens then?’
A spasm of pain flashed through his eyes, pain mingled with some other fierce and dark emotion. Regret? Bitterness? It was there so briefly that she might almost have thought her imagination was playing tricks on her had not a lingering tautness to his facial muscles confirmed the impression that she had hit a nerve.
‘That is a very unlikely event.’
Sarah felt numb. Quite accidentally she had jerked a tripwire. She had thrown the question off the top of her head, intending only to disconcert him. He had tripped but she was the one who, to borrow Gordon’s terminology, had ridden herself into one back-breaking fall. Rafael was in love with someone else. Someone else, someone else…the echo rose to deafening proportions in her head.
Perspiration dampened her upper lip and she turned, pretending an interest in the canvases on the wall when in actuality she couldn’t see them. A vast and horrible emptiness was yawning inside her, making her wretchedly aware that in spite of everything that she had been busy telling herself she had been cherishing the hope that sooner or later, he might…he might what? Love you again? You weren’t even his type the first time around!
Her unseeing gaze focused involuntarily on one of the paintings and without conscious volition she moved closer. Recognition shocked her briefly out of her stupor. A girl in a prim white sundress was sitting on the deep sill of a low window, hands folded, feet neatly placed together. All the cluttered paraphernalia of an artist’s studio surrounded her. You could taste her tension and isolation. Her shoulders had a defeated droop; her whole posture radiated misery.
‘I did it from sketches,’ Rafael murmured softly.
‘I look like a dying swan.’
‘I think you look lost and unhappy. It is not very good.’ His intonation had roughened. ‘Next time I paint you there will be no comparison.’
She tensed. ‘There won’t be a next time.’
‘But who thought there would be a next time for us?’ he countered mockingly. ‘And in Andalucia we say, “Life is much shorter than death.” You should think about that.’
CHAPTER NINE
‘ARE you awake, gatita?’
The inhabitants of a cemetery would have been enlivened by the racket Rafael had made coming to bed. Sarah lay very still, play-acting sleep in the darkness.
‘You should be. I made enough noise.’ He laughed softly. ‘Why are you lying over there? I forgot the time. You should have phoned the studio. Lo siento mucho,’ he breathed huskily as he drew her inexorably into the strong circle of his arms. ‘But better late than not at all, es verdad?’
‘I’m tired,’ she muttered curtly.
‘Dios, Sarah, the bed is here at any hour. I am not,’ he teased.
‘You conceited jerk!’
‘Is this some game that I am to play? Heads, you want me? Tails, you don’t?’
Silently, Sarah slid out of his embrace and rolled over to a cool, uninviting stretch of the bed. She had no sense of satisfaction. The unpleasant thoughts that had been her constant companions throughout the afternoon and evening refused to be shaken off. If he loved someone else, why had he made no attempt to speed up the divorce? Or had he only met her recently? Why had he made love to her that day in London? Was it possible that this other woman was already married and out of reach? Was it possible that she didn’t feel the same way? For hours, she had tortured herself with every feasible possibility in search of answers that she didn’t really want to find. For hours, she had been waiting for him to put in an appearance.
And then what did he do? He strolled in as if he hadn’t a care in the world and reached for her as if she was his by some holy, unwritten law. Well, she needed to be more than a warm, willing body in his bed, a physical release for his sexual desires…a tolerable and practical substitute for some other woman he couldn’t have. Every ounce of pride she possessed revolted against that latter prospect. The knowledge was too fresh, too like a drop of acid burning into her flesh for cooler reasoning to play any part in her response. She had to mean more to him. A loveless, careless joining of bodies in the dark was not enough for her.
‘I too have my pride,’ Rafael asserted, his intonation tellingly abrasive. ‘I want nothing from you that you do not give freely. When the pious high of self-denial loses its attractions, you can make the running—’
‘Never!’ She practically spat the word at him, she was so outraged.
‘But you will have no other choice. It will become rather cold and lonely on that side of the bed.’
There was something alarmingly threatening about that blithe promise. It set her teeth on edge. A little while later, she listened to the deep, even sound of his breathing. He had fallen asleep. How could he do that when she was tossing and turning in turmoil? Tears inc
hed a stinging path of betrayal from beneath her lashes. Rafael had offered neither reassurance nor persuasion. If anything, he had sounded bored. He couldn’t really have wanted her that much to begin with, and it was not that she wanted him to want her when she most definitely didn’t want him, but…? At that point she withdrew from her hopelessly entangled thoughts, experienced a surge of totally illogical fury over his ability to simply drop off to sleep and curled up in a tight ball at the furthest edge of the bed.
* * *
‘You must be formally introduced to the family,’ Dona Isabel repeated immovably.
‘But while you’re unwell…’ Sarah murmured worriedly but her arguments were steadily losing force. It was very obvious that they were unwelcome.
‘I have already listened to Rafael on this topic. I am feeling stronger,’ Dona Isabel asserted firmly. ‘We will hold a dinner party. I have already begun drawing up the guest list. I shall make use of Rafael’s secretary, Senora Morales. It will be excellent experience for you as well, Sarah, to see how such things are correctly organised.’
Sarah bent her head, hiding a smile at the thought of the amount of training she had received from her mother. Setting up a dinner party would not have provided her with any problems whatsoever. ‘Yes,’ she agreed.
‘The invitations will go out tomorrow.’ Her keen old eyes rested on Sarah. ‘You should be with Rafael in the evenings, not sitting here with me.’
Sarah tautened, taken by surprise. ‘He’s probably in the studio.’
‘Consuelo informs me that many nights he sleeps there.’
‘He’s painting,’ Sarah said tightly.
‘He is restless, discontented. These are not good signs. Rafael? He needs careful handling. A clever woman would not let him know that he is being handled,’ Dona Isabel continued meaningfully.
In the mood Rafael was in at the moment a clever woman would need a shotgun to get that close to him. A bubble of hysterical laughter was trapped in her throat. She had been ill prepared for his grandmother’s candour although goodness knew why. Over the past two weeks she had become pretty well acquainted with Dona Isabel. Rafael’s grandmother had spent a lifetime dominating her family. While she did not make the mistake of trying to dominate Rafael, she was not above speaking her mind to Sarah in no uncertain terms.
