Devil's Darling

by Violet Winspear

  ‘Please,’ she said, and realized how dry was her throat, as if she had been very close to a scorching flame and might have been far more seared than had been the case. Her lashes quivered, screening her eyes as they dwelt upon her husband. He had had every right to be furious about that letter, but now his face was quite impassive as he poured her drink and made a pisco sour for himself. That she had betrayed him he had not believed for an instant, though to frighten her a little he had pretended to play the outraged husband.

  She was caught looking at him as he brought the tall glass of sangria to her and placed it in her hand. ‘That will help steady your shaken nerves, chica,’ he drawled, taking the cane chair beside her and stretching his long legs in an attitude of relaxation.

  ‘Gracias,’ she said, taking a long sip at the cool and delectable drink. ‘But what are you going to do, señor? You can’t just ignore the letter!’

  ‘No,’ he agreed, taking a slow pull at his own drink. ‘I shall have to see the nasty-minded hombre and threaten him with jail. As it happens I know one or two things about him, and I also know the local police inspector very well. I don’t think our bandito will get very far with his accusations.’

  ‘But gossip can hurt,’ she pointed out, and she flicked a quick look over the Don’s proud dark face. ‘Some people are going to believe what he tells them, and he’s bound to if you refuse to give him money—’

  ‘He gets not a penny from me,’ the Don said curtly. ‘When you pay a blackmail threat you admit guilt, and you have assured me that you aren’t guilty of an indiscretion. I should hate to think that I had misjudged you after all, querida, and you were not so intrinsically virtuous that even a husband feels he is raping you each time he takes you in his arms. It isn’t a pretty word, is it? But to the point.’

  ‘I-I can’t help it if I—’

  ‘Mi vida, we have gone over this ground so often that turnips will soon start to grow in it. You hate me! Correct? You feel you were married against your will, and therefore I must always have you against your will. It might shake the patience of a saint, and my disposition is a trifle more satanic, eh? How is your sangria, sweet and cool?’

  ‘Just right,’ she said, and knew that he was flicking at her own disposition. ‘How was the Argentine? Did you enjoy being there?’

  ‘I did a lot of riding. Those horses trained by the gauchos are wonderful creatures, and I have purchased a mare and her foal for you. Lovely animals, who are being shipped to Mexico and should arrive in a few weeks.’ Weeks! Her heart seemed to turn over. He spoke as if no matter what the private situation was between them, it would go on, and on.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked, as if he had sensed rather than seen that turning of her heart. ‘You like to ride, and you will have the sole care of these two superb animals. Dark as silk, amiga. They will pay a compliment to your fairness - and may I say that you are looking very delectable in that Latin-style dress, with the frill framing your slim legs.’

  As his voice deepened, and his dark eyes stole from her ankles to her knees, and from her knees to her neck, Per-sepha had to fight not to jump to her feet and flee from his nearness. She had wild visions of being subjected to his ardency after ten days’ celibacy, for curiously enough she no more believed that the Don had spent any of his passion in other arms than she had found consolation in Gil Howard’s embrace. She knew with her deepest instincts that the Don still desired her in a way that sent the blood rushing through her veins, so that her heart beat wildly and a sensation almost of faintness stole over her.

  She closed her hands tightly about the sangria glass, as if only by holding on to its cool firmness could she stop herself from leaping to her feet in a panic that would result in a dizzy collapse. She felt so odd, as if seeing him again, and hearing of the blackmail attempt, had combined to make a weak fool of her, so that she wouldn’t be able to fight him with her usual show of spirit if he should sweep her into his arms and take her to that dim, cool, high-ceilinged room of his, where the air was tinged with that exotic tobacco he smoked, and where the silence was as deep as the fur that pelted his great couch ... like the couch of a barbarian.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, flicking his lighter at the cheroot he had just placed between his teeth. ‘It’s enough for now that I can look at you, so relax, chica. I am about to smoke not to act the ardent lover, and in truth your frigid dislike of me and my touch is enough to boil my blood, or to chill it, according to my mood. We re-enact the story of Lucrezia each time we meet, if only on the stairs.’

  He emitted smoke in two decisive streams from his nostrils, and let his dark head rest against the tangerine cushion of his chair. He had removed his jacket before coming to the terrace and he wore a silk, brown-striped shirt that was only a shade or two darker than his skin. He lifted his hand and pulled loose his cream tie, and Per-sepha wondered why the casual actions of other men became tinged with a sensual danger whenever the Don performed them. He had only to walk into a room and its atmosphere became charged with tension, as if some magnetic force in him made the very air alive with potency and the promise of excitement.

  It occurred to Persepha that as a boy he must have been as wild and unpredictable as any of the blooded stock running so arrogantly on the grasslands of his vast estate, sleekly muscled creatures that were cross-bred with some of the finest stock from other Latin countries. Had he been a source of anxiety to those parents about whom he never spoke? The turbulent heir to the Hacienda Ruy and its holdings, whom his mother had named after the Devil himself, seeing in the baby as he lay in her arms the dark-devil eyes looking up at her.

  Had that mother of his passed on to him her ironic sense of humour? Had she been wild and beautiful and proud to have a son who was no saint? Persepha thought it possible, for she had been in this house long enough to have learned from Carmenteira and the maids that they admired beyond anything else a man who was unafraid to be a man. It seemed bred into the bones of Latin women, the liking for domination, and the ability to forgive a man anything but his indifference. They saw in her a woman who fought against being dominated by a Spaniard, and despite his seeming indifference to those threats of scandal made in that letter from his one-time stablehand, Persepha knew that it went against the deep hard grain of him to have it even hinted that he couldn’t hold completely the reins on the spirited bride he had brought from England to share his life. His Mexican household would be even more suspicious of her ... they would say that there was no smoke without a bit of flame, and no smoke to blow in this direction if someone hadn’t fanned it.

  She sighed at the complex pattern of her life here in Mexico; all that old simplicity of days planned ahead for her by Marcus gone never to return.

  She felt out of her depth, a secure hand withdrawn and replaced by one that either bruised or caressed, but never held hers with friendship.

  The Don regarded her with lazy, all-seeing eyes; those of a master and tamer, admiring of his tigress but determined to take the edge off her claws, one way or the other; resolved to turn her bite into a kiss before he finally tired of her and turned his attentions elsewhere. He was thirty-six and had married at what Mexicans considered a mature age, but Persepha was quite certain there had been a number of women in his life, even if there had been only one perfect love. She was an interlude, exciting him by her difference to those other women, and by her indifference to him, but none of it could last if love was not its driving force. She had either to resign herself to a loveless future with this man, or she used some kind of guile to obtain those all-important documents in his desk that would ensure that she got across the Mexican border into the United States.

  Gil Howard would help her. He wasn’t a dog in the manger who ignored a bone just because he had not been allowed to get his teeth into it.

  Then she gave almost a bone-jarring start as the Don leaned forward and laid dark fingers on her wrist. ‘Your eyes are filled with conflict,’ he said, quietly. ‘Your mind is never at
rest, and your heart is never content. You treat the hacienda like a cage, and you see me always with a whip in my hand. Will you never be happy here, mi vida?’

  ‘Never,’ she rejoined, the word a reflex, as the swift withdrawal of her hand was from that touch of warm hard fingertips. ‘I’m too English to ever put down roots in your sun-hardened soil, señor. I wonder you hold on to someone whom your Mexicans regard as alien and reserved and passionless - wouldn’t you be happier with a Latin wife, who would revel in your domination and your - your—’

  ‘Can’t you bring yourself to say it?’ he taunted her. ‘It’s just a simple four-letter word.’

  ‘Lust,’ she gritted, through her very teeth, glaring into his dark mocking face and trembling slightly as his hand deliberately touched the upper part of her leg through the chiffon of her dress, stroking her as he might a little cat.

  He smiled, showing his bone-white teeth. ‘I have a surprise to show you after lunch, chica. A memento, let us say, which I brought with me from South America. I flew to Lima for a couple of days and my surprise comes from there. You may be - intrigued. Who knows, especially with a woman as unpredictable as you. So soft to touch, so hard to know.’

  His fingertips slid away from her, leaving their pressure like a brand through the thin material of her dress; more telling than any bruise, really, that caress that was a mark of his possession.

  ‘I think I should like to have lunch up here,’ he said, stubbing his cheroot. ‘Would you be so good as to do the ordering, Persepha, while I go and shower and change my clothes. I have been travelling in these and I feel the need to freshen up. Tell Orazio that I fancy steak for lunch, with perhaps musk-melon to commence with, a bottle of red Cadiz wine, and cheese - rich, ripe Spanish cheese with olives.’

  ‘Yes, master,’ she murmured, but when his eyes narrowed and his lashes made them gleam at her with mocking menace, Persepha leapt to her feet and hastened from his side, the frill of her dress flying up around her slim pale legs as she ran from him, half like a panicky adolescent, and half a woman with a turbulent knowledge of the danger and desire that could leap like a flame in that lean and supple male body, which was so swift and lethal in pursuit of its prey.

  Reaching the outer staircase that twisted down to the courtyard she felt safe enough to fling him a last word. ‘Onions with the steak, or not, señor?’

  ‘Onions,’ he said mockingly. ‘Lashings of them, for the day is long when the moon rises late.’

  Her heart tripped as she ran down the iron-grilled staircase ... the white-gold moon through those enormous windows, and dark shadow falling across her on that barbaric couch. She ran, pursued by his laughter.

  The Don came to lunch on the terrace clad in a maroon silk shirt and narrow black trousers, looking as if he had revelled in an ice-cold shower, his hair still agleam from the water.

  After seeing the chef, Persepha had changed her own dress, replacing its inviting femininity with a prim shirt and slacks with wide bottoms, sailor fashion, blue as the sky. She had combed out her hair and tied it with a shoelace, and she had cleaned all the lipstick from her mouth. She hoped she looked a passable schoolgirl, and when the Don quirked an eyebrow as he shook out his table-napkin, she felt she had succeeded.

  ‘You look very sedate all of a sudden.’ He quizzed her white shirt with its Peter Pan collar and cuffs. ‘My dear, I don’t need to be clairvoyant is order to read your transparent mind. I imagine the boyish apparel is meant to cool my husbandly ardour, but the only thing that might render that slim body of yours less enticing is a suit of Spanish armour. Have you ever seen any of the samples we have in one of the rooms in the older wing of the hacienda? Once inside a suit like that and only a mouse could penetrate to bother you.’

  ‘You’re very amusing, señor.’ She tried to look casual as she chewed a slim stick of celery. ‘I suppose you think I’d scream at a mouse?’

  ‘No, only at a husband, funnily enough.’ He shook a little sugar on his melon and started to eat with relish, and Persepha noticed throughout lunch that he had about him a buoyed-up air, as if he had something up his sleeve that was giving him a secret sort of pleasure. But he chose not to speak about it, and she supposed it had something to do with the surprise he had waiting for her after lunch.

  ‘Excellent steak,’ he said. ‘No matter how well prepared the food in any other house, there really is no place like home for what a man truly enjoys. And these onions are cooked to perfection - more wine, Persepha?’

  For some reason she thought she was going to need it and held out her wine glass to him. ‘Just a little, señor, please.’

  ‘Good wine, eh? I have a vineyard in Spain, did you know that? One day, chica, we must go and see the old country together.’

  ‘Oh, I’ve been to Spain,’ she said airily. ‘Marcus took me a couple of years ago.’

  ‘Going with your guardian and going with me are two different things,’ he drawled, watching her over the rim of his glass as he took a long sip at his wine. ‘With me you will see the real Spain, the one that lies enclosed from the casual visitor. I have some relatives scattered along the Iberian coast, and you have no idea how strangely romantic and filled with saudade are their walled courtyards.’

  ‘Saudade?’ she murmured, taking notice of his dismissal of her holiday in Spain with Marcus, which would strike him as a skimming of the surface of the Spanish way of life. ‘What exactly does that word imply? Like a number of Spanish words it seems to have layers of meaning.’

  ‘Just as we Spaniards have.’ He gave a slight shrug, as if aware that she wouldn’t care about that. ‘The word can only be translated as nostalgia, dreams, the misty recollection of a memory that seems more to be desired than what we grasp in our two hands. Reality is the hot sun; saudade is the cool light of the moon. As moonlight can deceive, so can memory, and we have to beware not to live in the past. For the Spaniard, and indeed for others, there is in saudade a sublime sort of agony and ecstasy. If it were absent, unfelt, romance would lose its edge and its fascination.’

  ‘Romance?’ she echoed, staring at him, her fork suspended with a small wedge of steak impaled. ‘I should never have thought that you believed in something so - so ephemeral and removed from the basic realities. You just don’t strike me as a romantic person.’

  ‘Which just shows, querida, that you have never really taken the trouble to know me.’

  ‘No,’ she shook her head and was about to argue fiercely with him, from her point of view, her knowledge of him, when she remembered that silver-framed photograph in his bedroom chest. Saudade, for a woman long dead. A memory of moonlight, of rose-coloured silk, and hair like the shadows of night. The words died on Persepha’s lips. He was right, of course, she didn’t really know the inner person that he was, for all he gave to her was the passion of his lean and splendid body; if he had any more heart to give, then he probably saved it for the child she might give him. She believed he would love a child with more than the satisfaction of a man of possessions who required an heir; she had seen him with the children of Juan Feliz and some of the other members of his staff, and if there was a ruthless side to him, inherited from the past, there was also the Latin affection for the very young: a protectiveness she had been aware of even in her torment at being the person closest to his body and furthest from his heart.

  ‘You were about to say?’ He quirked an eyebrow, but his eyes knew well enough the words she had bitten back. ‘That I am hard like nails and could never feel this moonlight and magic of the soul? Ah well, perhaps you are right. The soul is an elusive part of us, and when I look at you, seated there with the sun slanting on your lovely hair, it is the male side of me which reaps the real pleasure. How your lashes flutter when I speak of the way you look. After two months of marriage are you still shy of me?’

  ‘It would probably take years for me not to be,’ she rejoined. ‘You have a way of looking - a way of speaking - they’re not what I’ve been used to.’

&nbs
p; ‘I should hope not!’ He frowned slightly, though his eyes were mocking. ‘To live with an English guardian, and to live with a Spanish husband, are two entirely different things.’

  ‘Yes,’ she agreed. ‘He guarded me, but you possess me. He wandered with me in the pleasant ways of the mind, but you aren’t interested in my mind, are you, señor?’

  ‘Not to the exclusion of your delightful person, mi vida. I’d be a poor sort of man if I married such as you merely to discuss with you the excellence of good books and paintings. Was that what you hoped for? Not the natural state of wedlock, but the unnatural state of a husband locked out of your bedroom? Did you imagine when we met in England that because I was sixteen years your senior I would behave as if I were sixty years older?’

  ‘I - I didn’t even think about it.’ She lowered her gaze, for to speak of these matters always made her feel on edge - restless. ‘I was in a state of shock and you knew it, señor, and took advantage of it. I’d never have married you if I’d had time to consider your proposal - were you being completely honest when you said that Marcus approved of you as my - my husband?’

  ‘I have my vices,’ he said crisply, ‘and strangely enough, I have my virtues, and one of them is that I never tell black lies, only white ones. I saw you at Stonehill and I - desired you. I asked your guardian for your hand in marriage, and he said that he would tell you on the way home from that party of his desire that you consider my proposal. He knew that I had land and a fine home, and he knew that if he died his own land and his own house would pass into the hands of a nephew. He told me of this, and in all fairness to the memory you have of him, it was this consideration that was uppermost in his mind. That you be provided for in the sudden event of his demise. He asked me—’