Glenda laughed softly and contemplated her gold-painted toes peeping through the bars of her sandals. Lyn saw a woman to whom marriage in its truest sense had little real meaning. She wanted Rick Corderas for the most basic of reasons - he appealed to her physically. In Lyn’s estimation there had to be more to love than just wanting someone. There had to be warmth of heart as well as a desire of the senses.
“Ah, here comes Felipe.” Glenda rose to her feet as the man and the child came into the room. Leoni was munching a large rosy apple and chattering about the black foal. “He’s so pretty, Auntie Lyn!”
“Is he, darling?”
“It seems the day for pretty things,” Felipe drawled meaningly.
“Be an angel, Felipe, and drive the girls home,” said Glenda. “It’s a three-mile walk to the hacienda.”
“It will be a pleasure.” He gave Lyn a hand out of her chair, his fingers tightening on hers before releasing them.
It was indeed a rather pleasurable ride, for he drove slowly as the sun was setting and filling the landscape with beauty. Wild, picturesque land and a people to match, Lyn reflected, and as she watched the sun smouldering away in flames, she was reminded of a tongue of flame leaping from a jet engine as lightning struck and changed the course of her destiny. She gave a little shiver as shadows crept over the beauty of the day.
“Cold?” murmured Felipe.
“A little,” she said.
“And perhaps nostalgic, eh?”
“Yes.” Her smile was sad. “At the going down of the sun we remember.”
“You have a tender heart, Lyn Gilmour.”
It was true, and only she knew how closely she was guarding her heart against any more love, and the pain and loneliness that could follow if that love could not be fulfilled.
CHAPTER VI
Rick returned from Mexico looking pleased to be home. Lyn full tilt into him as she was leaving her room to go down to dinner the evening of his return. He caught at her wrist and she was obliged to walk down the stairs beside him.
“How have you been during my absence?” he wanted to know.
“Fine,” she replied. “But I can’t help admitting that I shall be glad for Mrs. Corderas when her husband returns from his business trip to New York.”
“Has Concetta given you any more scares?” A sudden note of concern edged his voice.
“She’s terribly depressed - she worries me.”
“In that case I shall insist that she comes with us to the Polo Club on Saturday. Arrangements have been made for a match and I am playing.” He stopped walking and there beneath the hall lights Lyn was subjected to his sweeping scrutiny. “I take it you want to come and cheer our team to victory?”
“Of course. I’ve never seen a polo match before.”
“Ventredieus!” He used his favourite oath. “Don’t be so British and polite! You may prefer to cheer the opposition team as I am not playing on it.”
A sudden smile broke up the gravity of Lyn’s expression. “You are a perverse man, senor, do you know it?”
“Why am I perverse?” He arched a well-defined eyebrow in sardonic enquiry.
“Because you hoped I’d be proved the little fool you thought me. You set out to make me dislike you, and now your male pride is ruffled and you can’t tolerate the thought of a woman being cool and polite towards you. You are very Iberian, to your very bones! You like women to be your adoring slaves!”
“But you are not enslaved?” A tiny mocking smile lurked in his eyes as they gazed down at her slender face framed in the chestnut hair that gleamed softly under the lights.
“Far from it,” she rejoined. “You took me for a ninny and I take you for the most arrogant man I have ever met.”
“My dear young woman, I never for a moment took you for a ninny. I merely thought that after all you had been through, it might be better for you to go home to England.”
“You thought I couldn’t cope, senor.” Lyn tilted her chin and felt a sense of satisfaction at the way she had won her battle for presence of mind, and had conquered those earlier fears she had revealed to him at their first meeting. “Your brother considers that I am handling Leoni with commendable skill.”
“You find my brother less arrogant than I?”
“Without a doubt.”
“Right now I am hungry, so we won't argue the point.” Rick’s voice was velvety with sarcasm, and he swept a brown hand towards the dining-room door. “Shall we go in before an argument robs me of your support on Saturday?”
She felt his hand cup her elbow, and heard him growl a small laugh above her head. She felt an instinctive urge to pull away from him, but she controlled it. He was so unpredictable that there was no telling what he might do, and it wasn’t until they had entered the dining-room where the other members of the family awaited them that she dared to evade him. Once seated she dared a look at him and saw a mocking dent at the edge of his mouth. With his brother absent he was the only male present, but perfectly capable of handling four women at once!
A dance to follow the polo match had been arranged for the weekend, and Rick was insistent that Concetta attend both entertainments with the rest of the family and their friends. Leoni, however, could not be left alone at the hacienda, so Lyn was free only to attend the polo match.
A thoroughly rousing one, with Rick (it would be he) slamming home the decisive goal for his team. Tea was served on the club veranda, where Cort Langdon joined the party, slapping Rick hard on the shoulder for that final goal. “If only you’d settle down in Monterey, amigo, then we’d have ourselves a crack team to beat all comers,” he enthused.
Rick thirstily gulped tea and demolished a salmon sandwich in two bites. “Not possible, my friend. I have a contract to fulfil in Mexico, and then I plan to go home to Spain.”
“We shall miss you, Rick.” Cort spoke with abrupt seriousness. “I guess when you leave, Rosa will quickly follow suit?”
Lyn saw Cort’s eyes upon Rosa, who today was wearing cool silk and a big shady hat. She looked most attractive and she used the wide brim of her hat as a shield against Cort’s gaze. “We all must work if we want to play,” she said flippantly.
Then Rick lifted a hand as he spotted the del Reys, and Lyn saw the self-possessed Glenda throw him a kiss off her flame-coloured fingertips. He lounged back in his ironwork chair and accepted a second cup of tea from his aunt, adding lemon to its darkness. “Did you enjoy the match, Concetta?” he asked. “You were always an eager supporter of the team whenever Julio played.”
“Julio has little time these days for the things he used to - love,” she replied. Her gaze was lowered and she looked madonna-like with her rich dark hair in a chignon at the nape of her creamy neck.
Rick frowned, but he chose not to follow up his sister-in-law’s remark and the talk drifted to the dance that was taking place that evening. “Are you attending the dance, Lynette?” he asked.
“No, I’m afraid not. Duty keeps me at home with Leoni.”
“What a pity,” he said, but his eyes were enigmatic.
It wasn’t until they were all strolling towards the car park that Rick chose to draw Lyn a little away from the others. “I really mean it,” he said. ‘It is a shame that you have to miss the music and the dancing tonight.”
“Oh, I don’t mind—”
“You should mind! You can’t forever shut out of your life the things it is natural for you to want.”
“What do you mean?” Lyn pushed at her chestnut hair and braved a meeting with his steely eyes. She was wearing her sleeveless corn-gold dress and beside Rick she looked and felt slender to the point of breakability. Young and uncertain of his mood. He was still wearing his breeches and ox-blood leather boots. His thin white shirt with the sports sleeves that revealed the bronzed arms fleeced with dark hair. In the throat-opening a Spanish medallion glinted against the bronzed chest. His masculinity seemed rampant ... untamed.
His mouth thinned. “I’ve known about the pil
ot you loved since the day you came to Monterey,” he said. “Unlike Julio I am not always immersed in the business columns of the daily newspapers. I read those sections devoted to human affairs, and they carried items of the crash and the fact that you were to have married Captain David Moore!”
Lyn clutched her sunglasses so hard she almost broke them. “You’ve never indicated before th-that you knew.” She managed to speak in a fairly steady voice.
He stood above her with his black brows drawn down. “I have, Lynette, in my perverse way, as you call it. But you chose to misinterpret whatever advice I’ve given. I am now going to stick out my chin still further and offer a bit more. I don’t doubt that your English pilot was a fine, brave fellow, therefore wear his memory like a jewel, but don’t let his memory obsess you. You are young. You will fall in love again, and I am sure he would want you to.”
“No—” Lyn backed away from Rick’s darkness, and she felt angry with resentment. She rejected him and all that he said to her. He had no right - she breathed quickly, taking in the scent of churned turf, the people who were bustling by, laughing, loving, living up to the hilt. She didn’t envy them. She said good luck to them, but her nerves quivered that Rick should stand there so vitally and throw his earthy common sense in her face.
“Hustle along, Rick,” his sister carolled. “It’s almost six o’clock and the dance begins at eight.”
Lyn at once broke into a run towards the car, pursued by the hard crunch of gravel beneath Rick’s riding boots.
“What were you two discussing so intently?” Rosa asked, glancing from Lyn’s tense face to Rick’s rather grim one.
“Lynette is a stranger to polo and I was explaining the game to her.” Rick spoke before Lyn could search for an answer. She wasn’t grateful to him. It was no business of his if she chose to nourish her spirit on her lost dreams.
Rick drove home at breakneck speed, and if it was his intention to rend Lyn’s nerves still further; then he succeeded with a vengeance. By the time they reached the hacienda she felt sure she hated him from his black head to his booted feet. She stared at the black peak at the nape of his neck ... the steel thrust of his muscles against the thin material of his shirt. She winced as he blared the car horn in order to overtake another vehicle. He was bruising in his arrogance. How dared he say that she should want to dance and desire around her arms other than David’s?
The car swung to a standstill and everyone sat curiously silent, and almost spent for a long moment. Rosa sat staring out of the window beside her, while Concetta plucked with restless fingers at the pearls around her neck. Daylight was dying and the life glow of the sun drained into a lavender- tinged sky. The mountain peaks were shadowed, and the hedge crickets sounded persistent in the silence.
Lyn gave a nervous start when on their way indoors Rosa hooked an arm about her waist. “I wish you were coming to the dance,” she said. “It is a darn shame that you have to stay at home with Leoni. I’ll tell you what! Lyn, you go dancing and I’ll look after—”
“No,” Lyn broke in, “It’s awfully kind of you, Rosa, but I wouldn’t dream of letting you disappoint Cort. I like him. He’s a really nice man.”
“Yes, the big lug! I could walk out on him and not care a rap if he were less of a nice guy.” Rosa drew a sigh. “Isn’t life a complicated muddle of a thing? I know that Cort would do his darnedest to make me happy, yet all I can do is vibrate with uncertainty. Lyn, are you sure you don’t want to go dancing?”
“Quite sure, Rosa.” Lyn thought of Rick, possibly asking her to dance with him, and she vibrated with the certainty that if he ever put his arms around her she would slap his dark and mocking face.
The hacienda was quiet after the family had left for the club. Lyn read a story to Leoni until she fell asleep, then she made her way down to the lounge to listen to the radio. There was a television set in a corner of the room, but Lyn wasn’t in the mood for an old romantic film from the forties. Her mood was far from romantic this evening.
She entered the lounge and switched on the light ... and found to her surprise that a leather-bound portfolio was propped against the cushions of the chair in which she always sat. She unlatched it and caught her breath, for it was crammed with the most fascinating sketches Lyn had ever seen. They were Rick’s, of course. Their glowing life was unmistakable, and she smiled a little at his complex ways. He could be so annoying at times, yet he was capable of a gesture like this one, which seemed to say: “Look at my pictures and forgive me a little for saying to you what I said.”
She curled herself down in her chair and sat absorbed in the sketches, especially those which transported her into the heart of Spain. In the sketches was revealed Rick’s almost pagan affinity with the elemental forces of life. Free, wild and passionate, so that Lyn thought of her conversation with Father Ilario. The kindly priest had told her to study Rick’s work, for it revealed the man. She wondered if Rick knew this himself, her gaze bent upon a savage, unrestrained drawing of a plateau in the wind, the strange shadows of clouds moving across it. Intolerable in its loneliness!
Lyn quickly turned the sketch over, to smile upon a cloaked singer beneath a grilled window, a guitar propped upon his knee and a rose tucked under the brim of his sombrero. The slender fingers of his hidden lady peeped through the bars of iron, curling and wistful.
Only a supreme artist could have depicted love and desire in the curling of five slim fingers, and Lyn wished she had the nerve to ask Rick if she might have the sketch ... but no, the thought of asking a favour of Rick was too much!
She closed the portfolio and firmly latched it, then she rang for a jicara of hot chocolate and carried it upstairs to her bedroom. She loved these filigreed cups in which the cinnamon chocolate was served. This one was like a creamy lotus flower uncurling its petals.
Lyn set down the cup on her bedside table and strolled to the tallboy for her nightdress. She opened the drawer in which she kept her nightwear and her lingerie ... and only just held back a frantic scream as over the diaphanous surface of a pink slip there ran a bloated black spider on eight long furry legs.
Lyn backed away, a hand muzzling her mouth, colour ebbing from her face as the spider came over the side of the lingerie drawer and sped down the side of the tallboy to the carpet. In a sudden panic Lyn ran to the veranda windows and fled out of them. She could have dealt with something smaller, but her heart quailed at the thought of tackling that monster ... planted in her tallboy ... put there with the wilful intention of giving her a scare!
The panes jarred in the french doors as she slammed them shut, locking in the monster so that he might be dealt with by one of the manservants. She ran down the verandah stairs and was making her way to the kitchen quarters when the outer door of the patio breezed open. A tall figure strode in, coming face to face with Lyn.
“Senor Corderas!” she exclaimed.
“Buena sera, Miss Gilmour!” Julio gave her a smile and a brief bow. “I hope I didn’t startle you?”
“N-no—”
“You don’t sound too sure.” He came a step closer and the lantern above one of the archways shone on her face, revealing the fright that still lingered in her eyes, making them seem larger than ever. “You have had a fright, chica!”
“It’s rather foolish of me, but—” Her voice shook a little. “I know you’ll think me absurd—”
“Come, you must tell me.” She felt his touch on her shoulders, warm and encouraging.
“There’s an enormous spider in my room a-and I haven’t the nerve to deal with it on my own. I - I was on my way to fetch someone—”
“Then it was most fortunate that you ran into me.” A sudden note of indulgence crept into his voice. “To flee from a spider is quite natural for a woman. Come, I will oust the monster for you.”
“I hate to bother you, senor, but thank you.” She walked with him across the patio to the stairway, and soon they had reached her room. She didn’t voice her suspicion that the spide
r had been planted among her clothes. The tallboy was a very solid piece of mahogany with no cracks or crannies through which the spider could have crept, nor did she ever leave open the drawer in which she kept such personal clothing. At the back of her mind she suspected Leoni, who was completely without fear of anything that ran on more than two legs. Julio would arrive at the same conclusion, and she didn’t want the child punished by him. Her acts of mischief were motivated, Lyn was sure, by a desperation to be noticed by her parents who seemed always to have other matters on their mind.
Julio regarded the tightly closed veranda doors with a smile. “I see you have barricaded your bete noire well in. It may take me a while to locate him, so in the meantime steady your nerves with a cigarette.” He proffered his gold case, and Lyn who didn’t usually smoke accepted one of his personally branded cigarettes. He held his lighter to it and she inhaled the fragrant smoke.
“Is that better?” he asked.
“Fine, thank you.”
“Good.” He swung to the glass doors, opened them and stepped quickly inside.
Her cigarette was almost down to the cork tip when quite plainly she heard Julio exclaim: “Virgen Santissima!” Then through the glass she saw him going towards the bathroom.
When Julio rejoined her on the veranda the scent of toilet soap was on his hands. “A very nasty object,” he said succinctly.
“You killed it, senor?”
“Very thoroughly, chica. At this time of the year the brutes grow large on the summer flies, but it is rather unusual for one to invade the house. The servants use a furniture polish which is obnoxious to them. That brute must have been less sensitive than his fellows. He certainly looked it.”
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