Dearest Demon

by Violet Winspear

  'It was selfish.' Destine couldn't hold back the words. 'Real people don't run out on their obligations, señora. They face up to them, not being saintly but being true to them­selves and to the person who has been hurt through no fault of her own.'

  'You speak like a romantic' Cosima looked cynical. 'I thought English people were realists—their newspapers and magazines are always boasting that this is so.'

  'Newspapers and magazines, señora, are in the hands of editors who are probably afraid to admit that romance is not quite as dead as the dodo. They would like to kill it, for it's easier to write about sordid things.'

  'Yet you, as a nurse, must have seen many shocking things.' Cosima gave Destine a curious glance. 'You don't look the typical nurse of my experience, and that has not been inconsiderable in the last three years. Do you really think you are going to find me endurable, and Xanas, which is so deep in the south that you will still hear Moorish music, and the tinkle of tiny bells on the ankle chain of Zahra, the slave girl who haunts our fountain court. We are a strange family, Nurse. We live much in the past, and you are from London, which is one of the most cosmopolitan capitals of the world. I predict that you will run away from us in a matter of days.'

  Destine didn't argue with Cosima. This was Manolito's family and she still wasn't certain why she had decided to stay. She only knew that she felt challenged by the Don, and by this Spanish girl who had once been vivacious and active, and who now only wished to find a dreamless oblivion.

  'I'm not afraid of the country, and I'm intrigued by your ghost,' she said. And then she tensed as Cosima suddenly switched her glance to beyond Destine's shoulder; she felt compelled to glance in that direction, and there by a palm tree whose base was swathed in bougainvillaea was no ghost but the very vital figure of Don Cicatrice. The smoke of a cheroot drifted about his dark features, and his eyes seemed to be mocking her.

  'So our nurse is unafraid of ghosts,' he drawled. 'Perhaps it's down-to-earth people who make her tremble, eh?'

  'Am I supposed to be a trembling leaf in your presence, señor?' she asked, while fury swept through her as she looked at him and knew that he was sharing the memory of their last encounter. They both knew that she had felt weak with fear of him, and she longed once more to strike that derisive smile from his lips. She felt that he would do everything to make her stay here an impossible one, and a blue flame lit her eyes… a fighting flame that made his eyes go narrow, so that the black lashes met and made him sinister.

  'We'll see,' he said, 'just how much you can stand of us.'

  'Artez, for heaven's sake don't lose us another nurse,' the Marquesa exclaimed. 'I really begin to think that you have some ingrained prejudice against nurses—perhaps it goes back to your boyhood. As I explained to Destine, you were very much hurt at that time and—'

  'Destine?' he broke in, and his gaze arrogantly mocked her. 'So that is your name? I wondered what the D stood for. D is such a significant letter, is it not? Standing for dearest and darling; devil and death.'

  'Artez, go about your business,' his aunt said sharply. 'You will drive Destine away before she has had a chance to get to know us. We really aren't as bad as he would paint us, child. He is just the typical Spaniard who believes that a family should try and heal its own and not call upon strangers.'

  'How fearfully insular and old-fashioned of him,' Destine said tartly. 'It's the Moorish influence, I suppose? The high walls and the maze of courts that confuse the stranger who dares to trespass. Perhaps the señor is afraid that I shall be more successful than he has been at encouraging Señora Arandas to look forward to the future?'

  'Is that your speciality, Nurse?' he drawled, and he looked directly into her eyes, reminding her with that look that she had claimed to care only about the past; that her love lay locked in its embrace, and made of her a woman who could never forgive and forget.

  'I am a nurse.' She flung up her chin as she looked at him. 'I never forget that my first duty is my patient's welfare. If you're afraid that I shall harm the señora in any way, then you needn't be.'

  'Of course not, Artez.' The Marquesa went to him and took his arm. 'Destine comes to us with the best of qualifica­tions, so we may safely leave Cosima in her hands.'

  'Let us hope so,' he said, walking with his aunt from the patio.

  Destine watched him go with an acute sense of relief. No one in her life before had ever made her feel that her mind could be looked into, and her heart laid open for hard fingers to probe.

  'You don't like him, do you?' Cosima gave her weary laugh. 'Is it his face that makes you look as if you had just encountered Satan himself?'

  'I'm not that foolish.' Destine gave a faint shiver. 'Your cousin doesn't like me, señora.'

  'Does that scratch your vanity, Nurse?'

  'I'm not vain, I hope.'

  'How unusual in a girl with such shining hair and a skin so touchable. Most men must find you very appealing, with such hair and that slender figure. Has it come as a shock that Don Cicatrice is the exception?'

  'It doesn't surprise me in the least that he dislikes me. The antipathy is mutual, as it sometimes is for no accountable reason. I don't think your cousin is much in sympathy with the human race.'

  'A cynic, eh?'

  'Very much so.' Destine watched as a white kitten with a black tail leapt on to Cosima's lap and began to purr as it snuggled into her thin arms. 'That's a very pretty cat, señora.'

  'My cousin gave him to me, for company when he is not about. I call him Domino, and it will be part of your duty to see that those girls from the kitchen don't forget his saucer of milk and his sliced kidneys. These girls think only about—ah, but I am just being envious of their youth and their ability to laugh and dance at the feria. Life is strange, is it not, Destine?'

  'Very strange, señora, in some ways.'

  'Would it strike you as strange that Don Cicatrice loves me?'

  'No.' Destine shook her head. 'We all need to love some­one.'

  'Yet you say that love is over for you; done with.'

  'It is,' said Destine. 'My husband was a good man.'

  'So you like only good men?' Cosima smiled, almost to herself. 'You make me feel so much older than you, and yet we are of an age. Dear Nurse, you have yet to learn that until a woman has loved a devil she hasn't really lived.'

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Somehow a week had passed, and for most of that time Destine had been with her patient, who had developed a cold and therefore needed the extra attention essential for some­one who couldn't take physical exercise, one of the best ways of preventing a cold from going to the chest.

  Because of feeling so run down Cosima was peevish and inclined to pick little quarrels with everyone, her nurse in particular. But Destine was too accustomed to the moods of sick people to take very much notice, and in the end Cosima sulkily smiled at her and told her she was of the stuff that martyrs were made.

  'I thought you would find this house like a prison and wouldn't stay here,' she said, dabbing at her nose with a lace-edged handkerchief. 'I wonder what changed your mind? It couldn't be that you found my cousin handsome unless you are the type that likes a manly form and isn't concerned with charming good looks.'

  'As I have told you before, señora, I am not concerned with men at all.' Destine tidied a mound of magazines and replaced the lid on a box of fondants. 'Would I have come all this way to work if I couldn't live without male com­pany?'

  Cosima shrugged her shoulders, clad in a robe of chiffon silk edged at the full sleeves with soft beige fur. 'Were I in your shoes and able to walk, I would walk out of here and go where the life and the gaiety are. It's hell on earth to be tied to an invalid chair, only half a woman instead of a whole one. Who could desire me? When I look at you, Destine, I am filled with envy, and I wonder why you endure someone like me when you are free to do as you wish. Were you so in love with your husband that you have no desire for love any more? What an unnatural state of mind and body when you are
really a most attractive person—why, you are like a nun who has taken the vow of chastity, and you must intrigue Don Cicatrice for all that he looks at you with eyes of irony.'

  'I'm quite sure his feelings are centred on you, señora' More than once had Cosima probed in this way, as if jealous of her cousin's love for her even if she didn't return it. She had to be sure that he wasn't interested in anyone else, and Destine was only too ready to reassure her that nothing but a mutual antipathy existed between herself and the tall, scarred Spaniard.

  'Your cousin doesn't strike me as a Don Juan,' she said, pausing at the dressing-table to admire the toiletries of white jade and amethyst-blue. 'I should think that once he has set his heart on a woman he would want her and no one else.'

  'I wonder why you are so sure,' Cosima drawled. 'Does he confide in you?'

  'Heavens, no!' Destine swung round from the dressing-table and her eyes were brilliantly startled. 'We hardly meet, let alone speak. He disapproves of me, and equates me with the sun-loungers of the Costa Brava.'

  'Even though you have spent a week in my sickroom?' Cosima gave a laugh that broke off into a sigh. 'It is said that women are the mystery of life, but let me tell you, Destine, that here in Spain it is the men. In this particular region they are half Arab and the strange ways of the desert haunt their blood. I warn you that Don Cicatrice is not like the young doctors of your English hospitals, and even though I have known him all my life, I don't profess to know him. Some­times he—he actually frightens me—'

  'You?' Destine exclaimed. 'But he cares for you, señora.'

  'I don't mean that he would harm me—no, that is too ridiculous a thought. But he is so deep, and that is why I have always been a little afraid of him. He would, I think, break a woman's neck if she took his love and then played with it. The love that he feels for me is not of that sort, it is more of an affection, a compassion—ah yes, Destine, he can be compassionate, for he's a Spaniard. The veins of cruelty and compassion run side by side in the men of my country, whom you probably equate with the matador. Is this not so? For me this cousin of mine typifies mal angel, and I am thankful that he gives me the sweet side of his heart rather than the reverse. I could never be woman enough to pacify all that is in the heart of Don Cicatrice. I could never be angel and devil in one body, and that is what he needs.'

  Destine didn't argue with Cosima, for there was too much truth in what she said. He was the kind of man who might be gentle with a woman hurt, or a child crying, but when it came to passion he would be the absolute master of the woman in his arms and he would bring out the devil in her.

  Destine had decided from the start that he was a man to be avoided, but once Cosima was over her cold and feeling quite well again, she no longer wished to dine alone with her nurse and Destine had to brace herself for more social con­tact with the man.

  The family dined at eight-thirty in the evening and she was ordered to join them.

  Anaya, the maid who had been with Cosima since she was a girl, was in charge of her mistress's toilette, so Destine was able to get ready for dinner without rushing under the shower and into a dress.

  Her trunk had arrived from Madrid a few days ago, so she was able to select a dress from the half dozen formals she had brought with her. Her choice was a long-sleeved lace blouse which she had purchased in Madrid, where the lace was handmade, and she matched it to a long velvet skirt in aubergine.

  After she had clipped her hair into a calot and lightly coloured her lips, she was pleased to see that she could hold her own with the Obregons. She looked quite chic, in fact, and her hair had a glistening quality. It still rankled that the Don had taken her for a bottle blonde… what a fearful cynic he was, and such people were so armoured that it was almost impossible to scratch them in return.

  A glance at her wristwatch showed her that it was almost eight o'clock, when the family assembled in the salita off the dining-room for their aperitif. Though this was a family that lived in the heart of the south, its habits were civilized, even though Destine had reason to know that under the skin they weren't quite so suave and had a streak of ruthlessness in them.

  Holding her long skirt above her ankles, Destine made her way down the long curve of the staircase, with a balustrade or iron wrought into arabesqued patterns. The Moorish lamps were alight along the vista of archways, and as she paused on the stairs and gazed downwards it was as if she had left the modern world and wandered into another era.

  She saw a strange beauty in the coloured lamps, in the spiky flames of the flowers growing in great pots against the white walls, in the lovely tiles framed in lacy ironwork. She feasted her eyes on the interlacing arches, their columns fluted and inset with Moorish script… it did seem feasible that a slave girl might wander these halls, the tiny bells making a soft seductive music on her ankles… and at that moment, sending a shiver all the way through her body, a shadow shifted out from an archway into a pool of golden light and Destine saw a white-clad arm lifted lazily to carry a thin cigar to lips set in a dark, masculine face.

  He didn't say a word, he just stood there and looked at her, his eyes as inscrutable as the shadows which had con­cealed him from her. He wore a crisp white dinner-jacket over narrow black trousers, and he wore them with super­lative ease. There was a gleam of bloodstone at his cuffs, and yet again Destine had an impression of sophistication that could be as easily slipped off as the tailored jacket that he wore.

  'Good evening, señor.' Destine collected her composure like a cloak around her and descended the last few stairs with an assumption of ease. She would never get used to his almost sinister distinction, and his way of coming and going as silently as a jungle jaguar tracking its prey.

  'You look startled,' he said. 'Did you expect to see the ghost of the casa?' I thought you said you were unafraid of them?'

  'You seem to think, señor, that everything I say should be queried and questioned by you. Are there inquisitors in your ancestry as well as Moors who kept slave girls?'

  His white teeth clenched the cigar, and smoke writhed and curled over his lean features as he allowed a silence to hold the two of them in a kind of suspense. The scent of tropical foliage drifted in from the gardens and mingled with the rich smoke, and Destine felt again that stirring of fear and fascination. He knew of her tragic involvement with Manolito and that made a secret Between them, and secrets were intimate things.

  'I am the last man in Spain to deny that our history has been a cruel one,' he said. 'But it amuses me that your own people should consider themselves angels just because of a fair skin and hair. Standing there you look divinely good and graceful, but we both know, don't we, that you know how to hate and you hate me and see in me all the sins of Manolito.'

  'That I feel antipathetic—that we both feel it, for each other, should set your mind at rest, señor. In such circum­stances I shan't be tempted to run after you for your pro­tection and riches.'

  He quirked a brow into even more of a devilish arc, and smoke curled from the lips that smiled briefly and cynically. 'I have never felt less protective towards any woman, señora, and not merely because you hate me. The hatred of a woman is a gnat bite, as we say in Spain. Hating and loving are too closely related for anyone to really know the difference.'

  'What nonsense!' Destine spoke sharply. 'I could never mistake one for the other—I felt hatred stab sheer through me when your cousin stepped alive out of his car while my husband lay there, mangled, blind with blood, dead! I could have killed him myself! I—I wished him dead!'

  'And it came to pass.' The words came with a sinister soft­ness from the lips of Don Cicatrice, drifting through space with the smoke from his cigarro.

  'It was on the cards for someone who lived as he did.' Destine flung back her head and the golden lamplight shimmered on her hair and cast gold shadows over her white skin. Her eyes had the density of midnight in that moment, and there was a sudden ripping sound as her fingers tore in two the lace handkerchief that she was hold
ing. 'He gambled with lives and he paid the price. He was bad and he killed someone good and kind—someone capable of saving lives. Matthew was a surgeon, did you know that? Your cousin was a Latin playboy—oh, to hell with him! I hope he's in purgatory!'

  'My dear young woman, hell and heaven are here on earth.'

  Destine stared at Don Cicatrice, the torn handkerchief gripped in her fingers. 'You're a Spaniard, so how can you believe that?' she said.

  'I'm a cynic' He shrugged his shoulders. 'And I had an English mother.'

  'But the Marquesa told me that she and your mother were sisters.'

  'Stepsisters,' he corrected. 'Their father was twice married, and his English daughter was my mother. An excellent match was arranged for her, but she found that she loved neither my father nor me, and not long after I was born she left both of us. I came into the care of the Marquesa because my father was always a busy man. He was an administrator of public works, who died in the Civil war.'

  A silence prevailed, and then the Don moved fully into the lamplight and his scar stood out in jagged detail against his swarthy skin. 'Yes, señora, Spain is a land of saints and sinners, and it is known to have a most curious effect upon foreign women who come here. You had best beware, had you not?'

  'Yes,' she said, in a voice not fully aware of what he im­plied, for she was still held by the personal things he had just told her. 'What became of your mother, señor? Do you ever see her?'

  'She married an Englishman and lives in a place called the Chiltern Hills, and now I never see her.'

  'Why—?' Destine broke off her question, for one look at his adamant' face was enough to tell her that he had too much pride to seek recognition or love of a woman who had abandoned him all those years ago. She understood, and yet it seemed so sad, somehow, to allow old hurts to go on giving pain.

  Then Destine caught her breath, for she was like him in that respect—she couldn't forgive, or forget. Hating what had hurt you could somehow be a shield against further pain, and she dropped her glance from his face and walked with him in the direction of the salita.