Devil's Darling

by Violet Winspear

  But here in the restaurant there was nowhere to go, unless she rushed pell-mell among the crowded tables and made a spectacle of herself. She tossed her hair and glared back at her husband.

  ‘If you wanted a cowed object for a wife, then you came to the wrong shop when you chose me, señor. I’m a person in my own right - not just a breeding macine!’

  It was out... spoken... the blade had been twisting in her ever since that encounter with Carmenteira in his bedroom that morning. God, she was but twenty, and life had ended if all she had to live for was to produce the son and heir of a man who felt no real love for her.

  ‘This conversation has gone far enough.’ The Don’s face was dark and thunderous as he beckoned the waiter and settled the bill. He left a generous tip, and then taking Persepha’s elbow in a painful grip he led her from the cafe, out into the brilliant sunlight where the sea and the sands made a dazzling image. Persepha saw it all as through a blur, and when she blinked she was surprised to feel the cool moistness of tears on her eyelids.

  She walked silently with him to the car, for she thought they were going back to the hacienda. Instead he reached inside for the swimsuits and the towel, and for the high-crowned straw hat which had so amused him earlier on. ‘It will be hot on the beach,’ he said.

  ‘Do you still want to go?’ She spoke diffidently. ‘It doesn’t matter to me if we go - home.’

  ‘Don’t be a child, and take this absurd thing. Por deus, if you think I’m going to be deprived of a dip in the ocean because we’ve crossed foils and drawn a little blood, then you can think again. Sit in the car if you don’t wish to join me on the beach. Suit yourself!’ He began to stride away from her in the direction of the rough stone steps that led down from the plage to the sands. Persepha stared after him, and then her nostrils quivered as a gush of aromatic sea air blew into her face. Oh, to hell with it! She’d swim and swim until she felt so beaten that she was numbed to the reality of things. To hell with him, with his high and mighty swagger and his black head held like a conquering hero!

  When Persepha reached the sands she found that the Don had hired one of the beach huts that stood in a colourful line along the dried white tideline, where the water didn’t reach when it came in. She hung about kicking at the sand until he emerged from the hut in his bath-ing-trunks, a strip of black against his lean hips, baring his torso to the strong neck, his legs long, strong and hard as he strode past her to the sea, where it creamed in and whispered seductively. He went right in to his waist and then struck out, his arms glimmering like wet copper.

  The whisper of the water was too much for Persepha and she made a dash for the hut and was soon out of her clothes and stepping into her swimsuit. She pulled the dark-flame material up over her slim contours and her white skin, and taking her hair in her fist she tied it with a piece of string which she found in her bag. She ran on bare feet through the warm velvety prickle of the sand and gasped with sheer pleasure, grasping at an illusion of girlhood again as she plunged into the buoyant water and felt it like a vibrant caress against her limbs, and then her body, until she was striking out with both arms.

  There was a voluptuous pleasure in being in the sea again; she had always liked to swim since being introduced to the joy of it at an early age by Marcus. She let the sea soothe away her cares, and those bruises of emotion that didn’t fade so quickly as those inflicted by a cruel hand. She closed her mind to everything but the enjoyment of the moment, and didn’t look around to see the dark head of her husband bobbing on the blue water. She wanted to pretend that she was entirely alone; her own person and not one who was subject to the orders and the demands of a man who aroused in her such antagonism and wilful temper. Marcus wouldn’t know her for the pliant, humorous, obedient girl whom he had reared in his bachelor establishment. She would have become a stranger to him with her wild eyes, her flashes of fury, her bursts of hatred. She believed he would have been shocked, for he could not have visualized that she would see in Don Diablo not a rich protector but a ruthless predator, driven by dark currents in his blood.

  She was swimming easily, and loving the water that was neither tepid nor too cool. She turned on her back and did the back-arm crawl, slitting her eyes against the burning blue of the sky above her. Everything was so peaceful that she could almost believe that the Don had gone under and drowned ... suddenly she felt curious and looked around her, but there was no sign of him. No dark head could be seen against the blue swell of the water, and a most curious spasm seemed to grip her deep in her stomach.

  Had her prayer to the pagan gods been answered? Had he sunk silently and forever out of her life ... and then she gasped and cried out as a swift lean shape swam up out of the very depths, or so it seemed, and grabbed hold of her with a strong, wet, golden arm.

  ‘We have the sea to ourselves,’ he chuckled. ‘Every other lazy soul is taking siesta ... you swim well, chica. You don’t flounder about, or fear to get your hair wet. If only you had this same kind of fearless enjoyment in my arms, eh?’

  She looked into his wet face creased by his amusement in having startled her, and she wriggled in his grip like a slim red eel. He had come at her like a shark and her nerves were still in a tumult... ‘I thought you had drowned,’ she said. ‘Wishful thinking!’

  ‘What sinful thoughts for a wife to be having,’ he mocked. ‘My dear, you don’t get rid of me as easily as that; with my Indian blood I not only swim like a fish but I’m tough as whipcord.’

  ‘Don’t you mean a shark?’ she asked sweetly. ‘Silent, swift and lethal as that brute of the ocean.’

  ‘Did you think that was what had hold of you? Further out they hang about the reefs where they fish, but they rarely come into the bay itself, for it’s deep and clean, with no refuse in it. That was a local law which I helped to impose, that this bay and its beach were to be kept in immaculate order for the benefit of those who wished to swim in some kind of comfort. Some years ago we had a bad outbreak of the polio disease in this area, caused by the murky condition of the bay water, but now they are clean and safe, and beautifully buoyant, eh?’

  She had to agree with him, and in a way she was unsurprised that he had been influential in making the bay such a beauty spot, to which the inhabitants of this town could come in their leisure time to swim in safety and to enjoy a beach unpolluted by human refuse.

  ‘It was good of you,’ she said, ‘to put yourself out for other people. Polio is a very awful disease—’

  ‘Yes.’ He spoke shortly, and then gestured at the beach that lay a shimmering strand of white-gold about half a mile from where they were, she in the half-circle of his arm. ‘Would it be an awful blow to your male ego if I actually got the better of you?’ she asked.

  ‘Who knows?’ he said. ‘Shall we put it to the test?’

  He released her and at once she struck out for the beach and swam as she had never swum before, putting her entire effort into the attempt to beat him. If only she could! If only by some miracle she could prove that she wasn’t a creature so much weaker than he, whom he could reduce to a helpless heap of womanhood, biting her lips to stop herself from pleading with him, but unable to keep the imploration out of her eyes.

  When she flung a glance to the side of her, there he was swimming without effort, with strong easy movements of his coppery arms. She saw the glimmer of his white teeth and knew that the devil was just pacing her and that if he so wished he could have outdistanced her at any time he pleased.

  In a sudden fury, she kicked water in his face, and as suddenly went under the water in her temper, gasping, choking, and near enough drowning until strong arms caught her and swam the remaining yards to the beach with her, where she was lugged to the dry sand like so much flotsam and dumped there.

  A stream of Spanish followed this inelegant action, such fluent invective that Persepha could only guess at its meaning. She choked and coughed and grimaced at the grains of sand all over her wet legs and arms.

  ‘Little
fool,’ he concluded in English. ‘One day you will go a little too far with your childish and foolish actions. Why don’t you grow up?’

  That he was absolutely in the right to be angry with her was added fuel to Persepha’s mortification. ‘You’re the supreme adult, aren’t you, señor? You’ve never done anything foolish - or so you think. The biggest fool-thing you ever did was to make me marry you ... make me come to a country I hardly know ... make me give in to you because I just haven’t the strength to fight you. I can only hate your arrogance—’

  ‘That theme is becoming a bore,’ he snapped, standing above her like dark justice personified, the water streaming from his body and failing on to Persepha, his bare feet deep planted in the sand. ‘You say the word hate so often, mia, that it’s beginning to lose its sting.’

  ‘So it did have a sting?’ she butted in, pushing at her bedraggled hair from which the string had come loose, so that it made an untidy swallowtail down her back. The flame material of her swimsuit clung to her body and she wanted unbearably to get out of it and to rub off all this gritty sand with the towel which had been left in the beach hut.

  ‘I have never,’ he said slowly, ‘ever permitted from anyone an iota of the insolence that I have taken from you, and the time is rapidly coming to strip you of some of that temper—’

  ‘By breaking my spirit with your whip?’ she cut in. ‘As if I’m some kind of wild mare that you bought who needs chastising?’

  ‘I don’t need to use a whip on you, querida.’ And suddenly as his voice dropped, he followed suit and was kneeling over her recumbent figure and raking the wet black hair out of his eyes. He had acted so quickly, with such a supple, animal discipline, that Persepha was made captive in the arc of his strong legs before she could roll out of his way.

  ‘Don’t!’ she gasped.

  ‘Don’t?’ he mocked. ‘Who is going to stop me? Everyone else is at siesta and you and I have an empty beachv entirely to ourselves. You can scream, struggle, bite and claw, and bring about your own exhausted defeat more quickly than I can. Come, my dear, let’s have our usual wrestling bout before the main tournament—’

  ‘Oh, go to hell,’ she said helplessly, and for once she lay supine as he leaned closer to her, until his skin was searing hers with its hard warmth, and she closed her eyes and clenched her teeth as she felt his lips drifting across her throat.

  ‘Ugh, sand grains!’ he muttered, and the next instant he had leapt upright and was pulling her with him. His eyes were narrowed and flickering as he gave her a slap across the rump and told her to go and rub down and make herself more presentable. ‘Though I will say,’ he held her a moment, those devil-eyes playing over her, ‘that there is almost nothing more delightful than the disorder of a woman, when she isn’t prickly with sand and temper. Run along, little sand-cat, before I change my mind and decide to brave the grit as well as the claws.’

  ‘Sybarite!’ she flung at him, only after he had let go her arm and she was able to flee quickly away to the beach hut, her backside in the flimsy material of her swimsuit still stinging from his slap.

  Once inside the hut she quickly slid the latch into place, and only then did she feel it was comparatively safe to strip off and rub down with the big towel.

  A swim with Marcus had been followed by a blissful laze on the sands, body and nerves in a state of relaxation ... but right now she was as strung up as a cat, jumping at the slightest sound, and relieved when she had zipped her dress and straightened it on her hips.

  Dam that man ... he was so deliberately provoking that he made her behave like an ass. Why couldn’t she keep her vow to be cool and dignified, instead of flying off the handle and giving him the satisfaction of getting the better of her in one of those undignified tussles.

  She combed her hair until it was free of sand and looped the damp, shining tail around itself at the nape of her neck. She then felt a little more composed when she stepped out of the beach hut, and with her nose in the air she walked past the Don who was lounging against a palm tree, his bathing-trunks a bar of black against his sun-gold skin, a single glance at him enough to recall the feel of that skin against hers, so close that not even the sunlight could slip between them. Clad like that he had an untamed look about him, a flagrant masculinity that made her turn her eyes away from him.

  ‘It’s all yours,’ she said. ‘Shall I go and wait at the car?’

  She knew, as he guessed, that she was apprehensive of being reached for again and brought close and helpless to that hard, tigerish body of his.

  ‘No, stay here,’ he said. ‘I shan’t be more than a few minutes.’

  He vanished into the hut, but he didn’t latch it as she had, and she stood there watching the long shining scrolls of water being rolled inevitably towards the beach by the turning tide. She glanced at the sky and saw that a golden glow was creeping into the blue and she realized that the day was starting to die a little.

  And then her pulses gave a little bound as she saw the figure of a man making his way from where the plage steps led down to the sands. He was swinging a towel and a swimsuit in his hand, and as the sun touched his hair and made it gleam, that pulse start of Persepha’s told her the identity of the strolling figure.

  ‘No!’ she wanted to cry out. ‘Don’t come to me don’t speak... don’t recognize me!’

  But of course he did. ‘Señora! This is great!’ The twang of his American voice rang out in the stillness, which a moment ago had been broken only by the sound of the sea as it washed forward, and then away again.

  Ignore him she couldn’t, and despite the closeness of the beach hut, and the quick ears of the Don, she had to respond to Gil Howard ... brazen it out,

  ‘Hullo, Mr. Howard. Are you going in for a swim before the tide comes all the way in?’

  ‘Sure. This is my favourite time of the day, with honest graft behind me and the pleasures of the evening ahead of me.’ He loped across the remaining yards of sand that separated them and when he drew close he looked down at her with that flash of quick admiration in his grey eyes. ‘I can see that you’ve been in the sea. You look like Undine right now, all sea-washed and sort of ethereal.’ ‘Please,’ she lowered her voice, her imploring eyes directing his attention to the beach hut where the Don was dressing. ‘Don’t say things like that — my husband wouldn’t understand—’

  ‘Oh, I get it!’ Gil Howard gave her a knowing wink. ‘So you’ve been swimming with the Spanish spouse. Say, poor kid, you’re all tense and would like me to make myself scarce! Is he that kind of a husband, then? Has a rule about his esposa keeping strictly out of contact with other men, keeping to him alone and abiding by all his commands? Say, that must be hell for you!’

  ‘It will be hell for you if you don’t go,’ she rejoined, and despite her edginess, and her wish that Gil Howard would depart before the Don saw him, she had to return that quizzical smile which he was slanting down at her.

  ‘Your wish is my command, fair lady. Any hope on earth that we might meet again - alone?’

  ‘None,’ she said quietly. ‘Please go before he sees you!’

  But she spoke too late, for in that instant the door of the beach hut swept open and there was the tall figure of her husband, looking overpoweringly tall on the steps of the hut, grey-clad, his brows in a black bar above his penetrating eyes. Then he came down the steps and even the informality of the towel and the trunks in his hand couldn’t detract from his look of the forbidding Latin husband to whom his wife was forbidden to all other men ... even in friendly conversation.

  Gil Howard gave him a single comprehending look, then he strolled casually on, to all appearances a passerby who had paused to chat up the English girl who stood presumably alone on the beach. Persepha breathed a little sigh of relief. She hadn’t wanted to introduce the two men ... she realized, with a quick beat of her heart, that she wanted Gil Howard to be her secret. Someone she knew and could, perhaps, trust to help her when the time came.

  ‘W
as that hombre annoying you?’ The Don frowned down at her.

  ‘Not really,’ she said, forcing a smile to her lips. ‘You know what young men are. He was just being friendly—’

  ‘You mean he was trying to pick you up?’ The Don’s lips were so thin they seemed to give a cutting edge to his words. ‘Why didn’t you call out for me - or did you enjoy the encounter? I notice he wasn’t a young Mexican.’

  ‘No, he might have been English or American — anyway, señor, let’s forget him. He hasn’t damaged my reputation as your wife - there wasn’t time for that.’

  ‘Be careful, Persepha.’ Hard fingers closed over her shoulder, letting her feel their pressure against her fine bones. ‘I would never tolerate any kind of behaviour from you that was some form of retaliation against me. I’d never want you to sink to the level of using another man to get even with me - I’d sooner you used a knife.’

  ‘Mi esposo, don’t tempt me.’ She looked away from him, unable to endure any longer the hard glitter of his eyes. She gazed instead at the fading gold of late afternoon, the deepening shadows on the gilded scroll of the sea on the turn, to whose rustling had been added the crying of seabirds. Some long fishing boats were gliding in, manned by barefoot boys, painted prayers on the prows as they reached for the sands. The sea wind combed tendrils of hair from her brow, and her eyes reflected a great stream of sunset fire across the westering sky.

  By her side the Don suddenly quoted some lines in Spanish, and because he spoke them slowly she made them out.

  ‘When the fire goes out, the ashes retain the heat.

  When the love flies away, the heart retains the pain.’

  As the sunset burned and there came the brilliant afterglow, Persepha thought again of that photograph in the Don’s room at the hacienda ... was that the love he was thinking of ... was there still pain in the memory of it, which the dying beauty of the sun recalled for him?