Spanish Serenade

by Jennifer Blake

  The carriage horses reared and whinnied, jerking the carriage back and forth. Don Esteban screamed out an order to his guards, who had fallen back beside the stranded vehicle, and they moved to the heads of the carriage horses to calm them. Pilar's stepfather then plowed through the sheep toward the old man. For a moment Pilar thought he meant to ride the shepherd down, but instead he lifted the short whip of braided leather he always carried and slashed it across the bent shoulders. The old man cringed, ducking his head as he turned. Don Esteban raised the whip again.

  The braided leather came whistling down once more, but it never struck. The shepherd straightened, catching the slashing thong and whirling it around his wrist. He gave a hard jerk, and Pilar's stepfather was dragged half out of the saddle. At the same time the old shepherd's hood fell back, revealing a harshly handsome face set in lines of aversion, and dark, windblown hair.

  “Carranza!” Don Esteban cried. He cast the whip from him, staring wild-eyed down at the shepherd. Abruptly, he called back over his shoulder. “Kill the girl! Kill her, I say! At once!”

  “El Leon! El Leon!”

  The cry came from Don Esteban's guards, but it was picked up by men in the hillsides above the carriage. Pilar heard the full-throated shouts that seemed to ring from the skies themselves, saw the men of Refugio de Carranza's band appear as from nowhere, calling their leader's name. Her heart leaped with sickening force inside her. Her hand trembled as she clutched the curtain. It was here, the time of her abduction. It had come. It was now.

  There was one of her stepfather's guards moving toward the carriage door. He was drawing his sword, though he was hampered by the frightened sheep eddying back and forth under his horse's feet. It was the lackey Carlos, Pilar saw, the man who had invaded her bedchamber on Don Esteban's order. As she stared at him, the words Don Esteban had called out took on meaning. Her stepfather had ordered her death. He meant to see her killed rather than allowing her to fall into the hands of his enemy.

  She looked around her in frantic haste, searching for something, anything, to use to defend herself. There was nothing. Across from her, on the other seat, her duenna was gabbling her prayers, her eyes wide in a face gone colorless.

  Her stepfather cried out again in strident outrage, a cry that was suddenly broken off. There was no time to look. The lackey Carlos was surging through the sheep, leaping his horse over a large rain. He reached out with his sword, thrusting through the window. Pilar flung herself backward as the blade slashed through the leather curtain. She snatched up a fat carriage cushion, and as the sword came slicing inside again, deflected the sharp blade with the thick, soft weight. Down feathers erupted into the air, swirling, drifting in a white cloud.

  The sword did not penetrate the carriage again. Outside, there came the clang and scrape of steel on steel. A man with a hooded cloak hanging down his back blocked the view with his broad shoulders. In an instant there was a gasping grunt, then the body of the lackey Carlos tumbled from his horse as El Leon whirled away.

  There were shouts and yells from every quarter now, followed by the sound of hoofbeats as a number of the lackeys in escort raced away in retreat. The carriage rocked as a man clambered up its side. At the same time there came the sound of a heavy weight falling on the roof, as if one of Refugio's band had leaped from the rocks above. Blows thudded from the direction of the coachman's box. Sheep bleated and the dog barked. Men cursed. Shots rang out. The duenna screeched and clutched her rosary as the carriage jerked back and forth with the plunging of the team. As Pilar reached for the carriage door, the duenna snatched at her arm.

  “Where are you going?” she cried, clutching Pilar's wrist. “Come back. You'll be killed, or worse!”

  Pilar shook off the woman's hold. She pushed the door panel open and eased outside, using the iron step as a viewing platform as she clung tightly to the swinging door.

  The noise had begun to quiet. The coachman was being held at pistol point. Four of the eight guards were being trussed up, seated with their backs together. Carlos lay still and unmoving with a splotch of blood darkening his ripped coat, while the other three had apparently taken to their heels and were nowhere to be seen. Don Esteban was face down in the road in front of the carriage, with the sheep dog sniffing with wrinkled nose at his beard.

  There was no time to see more. There came the thud of hoofs behind her. As she turned her head, a man mounted on horseback swept down on her. El Leon caught her waist in a hard grip and heaved her from her perch. Surprise drove a cry from her as she was lifted across the horse's neck and settled in front of her captor.

  “This wasn't necessary!” she gasped. “I would have joined you.”

  “It must appear an abduction indeed, for your sake. Your duenna will be your witness.”

  The words were hard-edged with irony. She turned her head to look up into the face of El Leon. Its strong planes were set and stern, giving nothing away. His eyes, she saw, were a bright-faceted gray and burned with clear intelligence and fierce, exacting determination. A wave of doubt moved over her, one swiftly followed by dismay. To hide the last, she quickly turned her head.

  Before her on the ground was the sprawled form of Don Esteban. She moistened her lips before asking, “Is he . . . dead?”

  “No, thanks to Satan's own luck,” Refugio answered. “He's unconscious, since he fell on his head when I pulled him from the saddle.”

  “You hate him so much, but failed to kill him because he wasn't conscious?”

  “I prefer him to know who strikes the blow.”

  The horse under them was restive, sidling, tossing its head. Refugio de Carranza controlled it with iron muscles that she could feel in his thighs under her and in the hard arms clasped around her. Her voice was tight as she said, “It's a courtesy that could mean your death.”

  “Shall I let you down to finish him?”

  “I have no weapon.”

  “I'll lend you my sword.”

  The temptation was great, but she knew the deed was beyond her. “Thank you, but no.”

  “Courtesy or fault, you share it, then,” he pointed out.

  “Yes.”

  “Shall we go?”

  The question was grave, without haste, as if they would linger as long as it was her wish, as if he was giving her the chance to draw back, to return to the carriage if she so desired.

  She did not dare put the matter to the test. Quite suddenly she could not bear to tarry an instant longer.

  “Yes,” she said with a breathless feeling in her chest, “let us go.”

  He wheeled the horse with a shouted order to his men. There were only three of them, though before she would have sworn there was a dozen. They leaped to their leader's bidding, one tying down the last strap on the pack saddle of a mule loaded with Pilar's trunk and the money chest, another gathering the reins of the extra horses, while the last jerked the final knot tight on the rope holding the captured guards. In an instant the three had mounted and they were all thundering away from the stranded carriage. The duenna, putting her head out the window, screamed invective mixed with shrill, despairing pleas after them. They did not look back.

  They rode in grim silence for mile upon mile, threading intricate, branching paths through the hills and avoiding all habitation. At first Pilar expected them to regain the main road to Cordoba, the fastest way to reach her aunt. She soon realized that the caution of their passage forbade it. She began, instead, to make calculations of distance and time in her head, wondering how late in the night it would be before she was with her aunt. She knew that it was a two-day journey from Seville to Cordoba by carriage under the best of conditions. Horseback would be considerably faster, but she had no real idea how much the winding hill roads would add to the journey. She finally came to the conclusion that it would be dawn at best before she reached her destination.

  The track they were on seemed to be getting rougher and steeper, as if they were heading into the mountains instead of making their
way back toward the valley of the Guadalquivir River and the Cordoba road which followed it. Moreover, with the overcast sky and lateness of the evening, she could not tell whether they were even traveling in the right direction. The doubt and dismay she had felt earlier returned to plague her. What had she done? The refrain beat in her mind with the rhythm of the horse's hoofs. What had she done?

  The arms of the man who held her were warm, but their enclosing strength felt like a hold that might well be unbreakable. She was aware of warring instincts inside her; one bid her to fight free, while the other urged her to accept his protection. She could not understand her own ambivalence. What was El Leon doing, except what she had asked? There was nothing wrong in that. In addition, he had slain the man who was trying to kill her, and for this she must be grateful. If it seemed in retrospect that he had agreed too readily to what she proposed, there was the chest of gold bouncing along on the mule with them for an explanation. She was safe; how could it be otherwise? What possible reason would he have for betraying her trust?

  There could be no reason, and yet she could not relax. To permit herself to accept his support, to lean against his body, was far too intimate a gesture. She did not know him, nor he her. He seemed too hard and uncompromising, too formidable a man, for such a thing to even be possible. The miles passed and her muscles burned and ached with the effort of remaining erect within his grasp, yet she still refused to yield.

  To distract herself she turned her attention to the men who rode with them. The communication between them had been brief, the caustic comments of men who knew each other and their duties too well to need long speeches. There had been enough banter, however, to give Pilar some idea of their names. The one on her left had been called Enrique, she thought. He appeared in his early thirties and his hair was light brown and wildly curling. His eyes were the brown that was near black, the chocolate eyes of Andalusia, like her own. He had no great height, being hardly more than two inches taller than she was herself, and his form was slight. His mouth was outlined by a thin mustache that he touched often, almost like a talisman, and as he caught her glance he gave her a smile that was drolly cheerful. Of them all, he seemed most approachable.

  On the right was an older man addressed as Baltasar, who was bearlike in size and gruff in manner. His face was craggy, with a deep line between his brows and a series of pitted scars in his face, perhaps from smallpox. His eyes had the weary, faded look of a man who had seen much, experienced much, and most of it out in the weather. The gaze he turned on her as she rode with Refugio was shrewd yet troubled.

  Following in the rear, leading the extra mounts, was a tall and lanky young man in his twenties who rode with his hat bouncing on his back, held by a thong around his neck, so that his dark hair flopped onto his forehead. His saddle was odd, with a high pommel and decorations of silver medallions in a style Pilar had never seen before; still, he sat upon his horse as if he had been born at a gallop. Of an age with Refugio, just over thirty, his light blue eyes were clear and watchful, though he carried with him an air of recklessness that verged on bravado. He was called Charro, if she had caught the word correctly, one signifying some kind of horseman, apparently not his real name.

  Refugio had not troubled to introduce Pilar to these men. She doubted it was an oversight, since she was beginning to know something of him. It was more likely that he thought the less she knew, the less she could tell. She tried to convince herself that it didn't matter, that she would never see any of them again after today. Regardless, she found the precaution annoying.

  It was a relief when Refugio called a halt. It appeared, from the way the men instantly began to transfer the saddles from the spent horses to the fresh mounts, one of them her stepfather's white Arabian, that the respite would not be long. Pilar had done more than appraise El Leon's followers: she was ready with a suggestion for her own satisfaction.

  As Refugio lowered her to the ground and swung down to stand beside her, she gestured toward one of the extra mounts. “I can ride now, and relieve you and your horse of my weight.”

  “You're far from heavy. Besides, there's no ladies' saddle, and these brutes are likely to shy at flapping skirts.”

  “I'm sure I can manage,” she insisted.

  “How could I face your aunt if you were thrown? No, I can't allow it; I have my reputation to consider.”

  She glanced at him from under her lashes, wondering at the undercurrents she sensed in his answer. There was stringency in it, and also deft reassurance for her that could only be deliberate. Added to those things was an alertness, as if he stood ready to deal with any resistance she might raise.

  “Really, I'll be quite safe,” she said.

  He was quiet a moment before he smiled. “Have you been so uncomfortable?”

  “Not at all, but surely you were?”

  “How can you think it? Maidens who fail to kick and scream don't come my way every day.”

  There was that flick of irony again. He had felt her apprehension. He was a man of acute perceptions; she must remember that. Being perceptive did not, of course, make him trustworthy. This she would also remember.

  “You would not—” she began, then stopped.

  Refugio, studying the pure lines of Don Esteban's stepdaughter's features and the grave look in her large, lash-fringed dark eyes, watching the wind tease at a strand of her hair the color of old gold coins, felt an unaccustomed qualm. It had been years since he had traded banter with a woman, or at least a woman such as Pilar Sandoval y Serna. She was beautiful and intriguingly willful and had more than her share of courage. There had been a time when he might have approached her with gallantry and wit, serenades and a touch of reverence. Perhaps she would have responded with smiles. But that was long ago, and he had no time for regrets.

  “I would not what?” he said abruptly. “Betray you? I could make you a pretty speech full of solemn oaths and protests of honor, but why should you believe it? Brigands have been known to lie. Besides, you are right to be on your guard. We are not headed toward Cordoba.”

  “What?” Her eyes widened as shock rippled along her nerves. “But my aunt will expect to see me by late this evening, or at least by an hour or two past midnight. I—I would not like to disappoint her, since she went to great effort to send word of my welcome when Father Domingo contacted her on my behalf.”

  “I believe Don Esteban knows that you once intended to seek refuge with your aunt?” At her nod, Refugio went on. “He will also know and fear the influence such a respected lady may bring to bear to have an inquiry made into the circumstances of your mother's death and your own disinheritance. There's little that he won't do to prevent you from persuading your aunt to that course. Assuming he regains his senses as expected, he will no doubt ride at once to Cordoba to intercept you. It will be best if you tarry along the way long enough for him to think you may have found other sanctuary.”

  “You mean, I should stay with you? Overnight?”

  “Or longer. Don't tell me you are concerned for your good name? I thought you abandoned that in Seville.”

  “I did not leave behind my common sense!”

  “Your common sense tells you that I mean you harm?”

  There was a sting in the softness of his tone, one that sounded a warning in Pilar's mind. At the same time, she sensed the close attention Refugio's men were paying to the confrontation. The three maintained attitudes of indifference as, their tasks completed, they lounged against a tree or leaned with a shoulder propped on a horse's flank. Yet they made no unnecessary sound to draw attention to themselves, had nothing to say to each other.

  Pilar met Refugio's gaze, her own unwavering though her heartbeat inside her chest was uneven. “The fact is,” she said, “it was you yourself who mentioned the possibility.”

  He lifted a brow, his features relaxing a fraction. “So I did. I didn't think it made an impression.”

  “You thought wrong.”

  “My mistake. I believe
I also explained why I refrained. My mood is the same as in Don Esteban's garden, which is to say, disinclined. I'll tell you if it changes.”

  His gaze swung to his men, hardening as he saw their suspended interest. “What?” he said, his voice like a soft lash. “Are you so bored you're reduced to eavesdropping? I have a remedy. Mount up!”

  The others groaned and muttered as they obeyed, but there was none who was slow in moving. Pilar stood still. She had not agreed to go with El Leon, and was incensed that her consent was taken for granted. But what else could she do? To wander these hills alone, without means of protection or transportation, would be more dangerous than the alternative. Besides, her predicament was something she had brought on her own head.

  Refugio de Carranza swung into the saddle of the white Arabian, then walked it to where Pilar stood. He leaned down to offer her his hand. She gazed up at him for long seconds with mutinous eyes, then she put out her hand and lifted her foot to place it on his boot. He clasped her wrist and drew her up before him in one smooth, effortless motion. His arms closed around her once more. As she settled into place they moved off down the track with the others following behind them.

  Dark came, closing around them as if they had ridden into a dense black fog. There was neither a moon nor starshine to guide them, due to the overcast heavens. A fitful wind arose, whipping into their faces. After a short while it began to rain. It was hardly more than a mist, but it was steady and had a windblown chill. The droplets swept into their eyes and dripped from their chins. Pilar huddled into her cape, holding it at the neck with her arms inside to keep the wet from seeping to her skin. It made it difficult to balance, and now and then she was jostled back against Refugio. However, she always struggled bolt upright again.

  Finally he breathed a soft imprecation and caught her waist, dragging her under his heavy cloak and against his chest. As she stiffened and tried to pull away, he spoke with impatience in her ear. “Be still, before we both get soaked.”