A Fiery Baptism

by Lynne Graham

  ‘We’ve been apart for a long time. There’s bound to be—er—teething problems,’ Sarah said, opting for a bold retort.

  ‘This is a problem I would place my teeth in quickly.’ Dona Isabel had a nice touch with irony. ‘I suspect that Rafael is spending his nights with a bottle of tequila.’

  ‘Tequila?’ This was news to Sarah.

  ‘He should be spending them with his wife.’

  Flags of mortified colour burnished Sarah’s cheeks. This was all Rafael’s fault and so she intended to tell him. ‘You think he’s drinking?’ she just couldn’t help prompting.

  Dona Isabel dealt her a haughty look of reproach. ‘You misunderstand me. Rafael does not have intemperate habits. But…’ her lips pursed anxiously ‘…there is a wildness in him, a darkness which none of my children had. He must have taken this from his mother. What he feels, he feels too strongly. It disturbs me.’

  ‘It’s the artistic temperament,’ Sarah soothed.

  ‘I do not believe in artistic temperaments,’ Dona Isabel informed her. ‘Rafael is merely a little unconventional in his behaviour occasionally. This too he obviously takes from his mother.’

  After pressing the bell to bring the nurse at the old lady’s request, Sarah wandered aimlessly downstairs. Consuelo was clearing the coffee-cups from the sala. Rafael hadn’t even touched his, Sarah recalled with growing annoyance. Once the twins were in bed, Rafael disappeared. If they talked at all over dinner, they talked about Gilly and Ben or something strictly impersonal but not about anything that really mattered. If he came to bed at all it was in the early hours and he still rose as usual at sunrise.

  In contrast the hours of daylight had been packed with hectic family activity. Rafael had taken them all over the estate. He had also taken them to Cordoba…Granada…Seville. The twins had bounced and skipped exuberantly through the rich pageant of Andalucia’s Moorish heritage. Rafael could bring history alive in a marvellously entertaining way. Sarah had endeavoured to enter fully into the spirit of the occasion and when the children were around Rafael was full of charm and sweetness and light. Gilly and Ben would not suspect for one moment that there was anything wrong between their parents but Sarah knew it every time Rafael looked at her and didn’t quite seem to see her, every time he carefully avoided touching her.

  In turning away from him that night she had made the biggest mistake she had ever made in her life. Only now was she appreciating that before she had sunk for the space of twenty-four hours into the depths of embittered self-pity and resentment they had been growing close, closer than they had ever been before. Never mind the arguments or the hot exchanges of conflicting opinions. Weren’t those the perfect vehicle for saying all those things she had always wanted to say to him but had never had the nerve to say?

  And she understood herself, at least, better now. Holding Rafael at an emotional distance had made her feel safer but he moved too far, too fast…he crowded her, sent her imagination off on wild forays into the unknown. From where had she received the idea that he might love another woman? Since when had she become such an acute observer that she read minds? She had no facts on which to base the suspicion and the more she thought about it the more unlikely that suspicion seemed. Rafael was not of the stuff of which martyrs were made.

  Yet what had she done? She had let jealousy rise to monstrous proportions in her stupid head. By the time Rafael had slid in positive innocence into that bed, the other woman she had dreamt up had had a face and it had been the face of that woman in New York, that face that was so indelibly imprinted on her memory banks. Someone impossibly glamorous with diamonds in her ears, someone who could emerge with complete cool from a married man’s hotel room at dawn without even looking crumpled, someone who was married herself and didn’t even seem to care when a photographer caught her full face. Rafael’s sort of woman, she had often thought bitterly. Brazen, unashamed.

  Blinking rapidly, Sarah was shaken by the effect that that episode could still have on her. And it wasn’t healthy to brood and burn with pain over something that happened so long ago. They had both been very young and other couples managed to keep their marriages together despite the disloyalty of one partner, didn’t they? Rafael wasn’t like her father; he never had been. It wasn’t his fault that he couldn’t walk a hundred yards without attracting enthralled female attention. So why was she still punishing him? And she was punishing him still, she realised that now.

  ‘Can I get you something, senora?’ Consuelo gave her a concerned and questioning glance from the door of the sala.

  ‘A bottle of tequila,’ Sarah said with sudden decision.

  ‘Tequila, senora?’ Consuelo was aghast and then her homely face reddened fiercely. ‘Si, senora, en seguida.’

  Sarah smiled. ‘I’m not angry, Consuelo.’

  ‘I worry for him, senora,’ Consuelo muttered apologetically.

  Sarah collected the bottle and went back up to her room. She knew exactly what she was going to put on. The mistake. Karen had nagged her into buying it the previous summer. It had never been worn. She had only packed it out of guilt. It was a scarlet effort with shoestring straps, a low-cut, laced neckline and an above the knee narrow skirt. If it had been in Karen’s size, she would have been flattened in the stampede.

  Disconcertingly, Rafael was not slumped on the studio sofa with a glass in his hand and the air of anybody feeling anything too strongly. He was painting, and so intent was he in what he was doing that he didn’t see her hovering, suddenly feeling grossly underdressed. He had produced a series of internationally acclaimed portrayals of gypsy life and this canvas was clearly another set to join the hall of fame. A clutch of dirty, handsome children were begging with hungry but curiously hard eyes. It was not a comfortable painting. Few of his paintings were.

  ‘Hi,’ she said depositing the bottle on the window sill.

  ‘To what…’ as he took in the outfit, he faltered ‘…do I owe the honour?’

  Had she really raced out here thinking that he might be miserably drinking himself into oblivion all on his own? Had there been something highly alcoholic in her coffee after dinner? Elegantly clad in beautifully cut khaki cotton trousers and a loose-knit Armani sweater in cream, Rafael looked as extravagantly gorgeous and as alarmingly cool and detached as he had over dinner.

  The silence was beginning to stretch to an uneasy length. He was still raking questioning eyes over the scarlet dress. Her knees began to feel exposed, to say nothing of the rest of her. ‘Your grandmother’s very set on this dinner,’ she said hurriedly. ‘From what she said, I gathered that you were originally against the idea.’

  ‘For months she has been telling us that she is on her deathbed. Once I agreed with that premise and urged her not to over-exert herself, she suddenly became very keen to prove me wrong.’ He set his paintbrush down, still watching her keenly. ‘Don’t let her suspect that you could arrange the dinner without her assistance.’

  ‘I’m not stupid.’

  ‘I know you are not but she needs to feel necessary. Which of us does not?’

  Sarah took a deep breath. ‘She’s worried about you.’

  ‘Why should she? Ah!’ A faint glimmer of contempt coloured his gaze. ‘What are you trying to say, Sarah? I believe we can dispense with Abuela as a mouthpiece.’

  Unfortunately, Sarah was already primed for her next sentence and keen to get it off her chest. ‘She thinks you’re avoiding me.’

  His beautifully expressive eyes, alight with bitter amusement, were veiled by dense black lashes. ‘So, I have Abuela to thank for your unexpected visit.’

  ‘No. You don’t,’ she protested. ‘It was an impulse. Maybe boredom with my own company drove me out here in desperation.’

  An ebony brow quirked. ‘Did it?’

  Sarah was not feeling as forgiving as she had felt ten minutes earlier. Rafael was not helping her out. Olive branches were supposed to be graciously received and he was standing there emanating positive waves
of ungracious antagonism. ‘It’s a possibility, isn’t it?’ she snapped defensively.

  ‘Why did you change out of the outfit you were wearing at dinner?’

  Two could play at this game, she decided. ‘I spilt coffee on it.’

  ‘Why did you bring a bottle of tequila?’

  ‘Maybe I felt like a drink!’ Sarah was steadily becoming more and more annoyed.

  ‘Do you like tequila?’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I?’ Sarah tilted her chin challengingly. ‘Where do you keep your glasses?’

  ‘In the kitchen.’ Crossing the floor, he swiped the tequila off the sill and strode gracefully out into the hall.

  ‘Do you want it straight?’ he enquired smoothly.

  ‘Why not?’ she called on the ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ principle.

  He thrust a glass in her hand, knocked his own against it in salutation. ‘Let us drink to straight speech.’

  It struck Sarah as a very odd version of ‘cheers’ but she plastered on a smile and took a gallant gulp. ‘Not bad,’ she said chirpily. ‘Straight speech? When I first came here, I told myself it was only for the twins—’

  ‘Do I hold you prisoner? Do you see chains? Bars?’ He let fly at her without giving her the slightest warning of his intent.

  ‘You have a very nasty temper.’ Not surprisingly, Sarah had retreated several feet.

  ‘Dios, do you wonder at it?’ he grated.

  Sarah breathed in slowly and carefully. ‘You expected too much of me too soon. That’s what you always do, Rafael. When you want something, you want it yesterday. I don’t like being railroaded into major decisions. I needed time. And time is something you have never given me!’

  ‘I have left you alone, Sarah. What more do you want?’

  She bent her head. In the mood he was in, she couldn’t quite pluck up the courage to tell him that that wasn’t what she wanted at all. ‘I’ve had one shock after another since I arrived. You kept too many secrets from me and I can’t say that that makes me feel secure.’

  ‘You forget that I kept those secrets from you seven years ago. If I had not, you would have tried to change me,’ he condemned harshly. ‘In my life, I have endured too many such attempts. Did you appreciate then how much I needed to paint? Had you known of my background, would you not have tried to persuade me to heal the breach with Felipe and spend the rest of my days pushing paperwork in an office? Or would you have accepted me as I was?’

  She could not argue the points he had made. Parental approval had meant a great deal to her then. Without realising what she might be doing to Rafael, she probably would have been keen for him to mend fences with his grandfather and put on a three-piece suit and join the business world, reasoning that he could still continue to paint in his spare time if he wanted to. She sighed, too honest to deny the truth. ‘You’re right. You always have an answer, don’t you?’

  ‘If I had, we wouldn’t have broken up.’

  The dialogue was straying into dangerous waters she had not planned to touch. She was very pale. ‘We broke up,’ she said shakily, ‘because you went to bed with another woman.’

  ‘You are very sure of that,’ he breathed fiercely.

  ‘One hundred per cent sure,’ Sarah returned, her fingernails cutting painfully into the palm of her clenched hand. ‘You wanted to hurt me and you did. Let’s leave it at that.’

  ‘I have never wanted to hurt you in my life and I have never lied to you either.’

  Sarah shook her head vehemently. ‘And that’s exactly why you’ve never mentioned it, because you can’t lie about it and I don’t want any explanation. It would make me hate you,’ she confided truthfully. ‘In fact if you so much as mention that woman I’ll walk out of this room right now.’

  He was white with anger. ‘You judged me unseen, unheard!’

  ‘And you did exactly the same thing to me with a lot less justification,’ she reminded him sadly. ‘There’s no point in talking about all that now.’

  ‘At least I didn’t run away. You may not have been well but you were carrying my child. You owed me more than your parents’ lies. You wouldn’t even let me see you!’

  Abruptly, Sarah sank down on the sofa with its multicoloured pile of cushions. The taunt about running away had stung hard. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

  ‘You could have phoned me from your sickbed, sent a postcard! Anything! But you did nothing and you knew I didn’t know where you were.’

  ‘But I did expect you to make it your business to find out when I vanished off the face of the earth.’ Sarah held her head high. ‘I think it’s time that I told you the whole story. The day I found out about your affair, all hell broke loose. I didn’t handle the news the way my father hoped I would. I was hysterical and in the midst of a very unpleasant scene I fell on the stairs. I was badly bruised and I started to bleed,’ she enumerated flatly. ‘I thought I was losing the baby and that didn’t make me any calmer. The doctor sedated me. When I was told I had to have bed rest, I accepted it. I thought I would have to go into hospital but it was a private clinic. What I didn’t know was that my father had told our elderly GP that I had thrown myself down the stairs.’

  Rafael’s anger had evaporated. He was listening intently, his dark features taut and strained. ‘Why should he tell such a lie?’

  Sarah didn’t answer him. Her slender body was rigid with tension. ‘My father owned a large stake in Twelvetrees. The doctor in charge was a personal friend. I was actually in there a few days before I realised that it wasn’t just a nursing home. The lady in the room next door was as nutty as fruitcake. That’s why she was there. She was quite harmless but she was probably quite an embarrassment to her wealthy relatives. I was in there because I had supposedly attempted to kill myself and my unborn child and my poor distracted father did not know what else he could do with me.’

  ‘Infierno!’ Rafael was ashen pale, incredulous comprehension starting to glimmer in his appalled gaze. ‘But why, why should he have done this to you? It makes no sense!’

  ‘It makes perfect sense,’ Sarah contradicted. ‘It got me out of the way. He was determined to keep us apart. He actually tried to make me believe that I was sick and that he was only doing what was best for me. He wanted me to divorce you and I wouldn’t sign the papers. In the end I signed because it just didn’t matter any more.’

  Rafael closed his anguished eyes for a split second. ‘How long? For how long were you there?’

  ‘Nine weeks. I wasn’t badly treated. I don’t want you to think that. I had a beautiful room, regular meals and free therapy thrown in.’ Her voice cracked slightly. ‘For nine weeks, nothing I said was believed by the staff. They humoured me, thought I couldn’t face up to what I’d tried to do! My father wanted you out of my life and there was nothing he wouldn’t have done to win. It had become a personal vendetta between him and you. I was just the unlucky bystander who had to pick up the tab. No, forget I said that. It isn’t fair because you didn’t know,’ she completed huskily. ‘You never got my letter.’

  ‘Letter?’ Rafael queried jerkily, still visibly appalled by the realisation that he could have prevented her father from putting her into the clinic.

  ‘It was never posted. My father saw to that.’ Her tense mouth tightened.

  ‘What was in it this letter?’ he probed.

  ‘I wanted to see you…to talk.’

  Rafael stifled a curse. ‘Your father has much to answer to me for. When we are next in England, we will face your parents together.’

  Sarah shook her head uncertainly. ‘I really don’t know why I told you about all this.’

  He expelled his breath raggedly. ‘You should have told me at the beginning.’

  She produced a shadowy smile. ‘You said you would take Gilly and Ben away from me,’ she reminded him. ‘I spent nine weeks in that place. How do you think that would have looked in court?’

  Rafael flinched, a nerve tugging at the edge of his compressed mouth. ‘
You thought of that?’

  ‘I thought of nothing else,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t think I had a single night of uninterrupted sleep until I came here. It was only then that I really believed that you weren’t going to try to put me out of their lives.’

  There was a faint tremor in his hand as he lifted his glass and drained it. He was still very pale, almost drawn, his cheekbones blunt angles protruding beneath his skin. ‘Sarah, you must believe that I had no idea you had this pressure on you. I never wanted to take you to court and I never seriously considered for longer than one insane hour doing anything so cruel as to separate you from Ben and Gilly.’

  A watery smile formed on her tense mouth. ‘You didn’t give that impression.’

  ‘I was very bitter, Sarah.’ He parted eloquent hands as if he could not otherwise emphasise just how bitter he had been. ‘How can you understand what believing that you had killed our child did to me? It made me hate you. But it also made me hate myself. I felt responsible for what I believed you had done. How could I not feel responsible? For me it was like a punishment for loving you too much, for making you unhappy in spite of that love.’ His expressive mouth clenched hard. ‘I cannot bear to think of you locked in this place you describe.’

  ‘It wasn’t that bad. Monotonous, but since I had to rest anyway—’

  ‘Don’t make a joke of it. You must have been terrified! Then, you were not the woman you are now.’ He thrust brown fingers roughly through his already tousled black hair, wreaking further havoc and provoking a torturous pang of tenderness inside her. ‘You were so fragile you used to scare me but when we parted I would not let myself remember that. In my mind, I made you into a heartless bitch I could hate! I blamed you for everything.’

  ‘That’s normal,’ she said, taking another appreciative sip of her drink. ‘I like this.’

  Unexpectedly, he smiled at her, one of those gloriously spine-tinglingly sensual smiles. ‘That is not tequila that you are drinking. Tequila would put you flat on your back.’