For a moment Helena's dark eyes regarded her suspiciously. 'You do not mean to go to the policial she asked, and Holly shook her head.
'No,' she said. 'It would hurt too many other people if I pursued it to the bitter end.' She looked at Helena steadily. 'Not that I wouldn't like to,' she added.
'Without proof? You would not dare to!' Helena declared confidently, and Holly faced the fact ruefully.
But it was not the fact that she had no proof that made her think as she did, and she wanted Helena to know it. 'Possibly not,' she said. 'But I really wouldn't like innocent parties to suffer just so that I could have my revenge on you, Senorita Mendez.'
'No?' She was obviously not believed.
'No,' Holly insisted. 'For myself I'd make you pay for the - the barbaric way you ran me down, but anything I did to you would hurt Aunt Nan and Don Jose, and I wouldn't want that to happen.' She looked up through the thickness of her lashes, watching for the reaction she felt was bound to come. 'And most of all I'd hate to hurt Marcos,' she added quietly.
She drew a sharp breath suddenly when she caught sight of the look in Helena's eyes, for it was something of a shock to realize for the first time in her life that someone actually hated her; hated her with an intensity that made her shiver.
She stared up at Helena and a small, cold flutter of panic clutched at her stomach when she remembered how helpless she was. Helena Mendez was tall, and probably a powerful, woman. If she was capable of handling those temperamental Arab horses of Marcos's, she would be more than capable of dealing with Holly, in her present position.
Helena said nothing for a moment, but her eyes glittered like jet in the olive smoothness of her face. Then she reached out suddenly and took a handful of Holly's dark hair, doing nothing more at first than twine it round her long fingers. Then the grip tightened suddenly and without warning and she twisted hard.
'Usted se ha equivocado, rustica,' she said softly, between tightly clenched teeth 'Lo siento!'
Holly bit her lip hard, not to cry out, but she instinctively put up her own hands to try and loosen that merciless grip in her hair. The bump on the back of her head made her scalp still tender enough to hurt with a sickening pain when it was subjected to such treatment, and she could feel the tears already running from her eyes and down her cheeks as she struggled to free herself.
'Let go!' she whispered huskily, clawing at the cruel fingers still gripping her hair. 'Please let go!'
'Rustica perra!' Helena twisted again, and Holly let out a cry, fighting to free herself.
'Let me go!' she begged, unable to do anything against the superior strength of the other girl, and Helena laughed shortly.
'I will let you go!' she said harshly, and gave another sharp tug before she released her. 'But be warned, perra,' she added. 'Do not dare to look at Marcos again. Comprende?'
Holly said nothing. Her voice was choked with the tears of anger and frustration as well as pain, that poured down her cheeks unchecked. She held her throbbing head in both hands, covering her eyes and leaning back against the pillows. But her hands were pulled roughly away from her eyes after only a moment, and through the haze of tears she saw Helena bending over her, those glittering black eyes hovering like a threat above her. An enveloping wave of some heavy, exotic perfume made Holly feel suddenly nauseated, both by the perfume and the woman who wore it.
'Did you hear me, perra?' Helena demanded, and Holly nodded, although she immediately regretted the movement and clutched her aching head again. 'Then you will go!' Helena told her in a cold harsh voice. 'As soon as you are well enough to travel, you will leave here and never come back again!'
For a moment Holly merely looked at her, swallowing hard on the humiliation of being so helpless, of being so angry and yet unable to do anything about it. 'I want to go,' she insisted, her voice husky and unsteady. 'I would have gone a week ago, if you hadn't done this to me! It's your fault I'm still here!'
'Si, that was a mistake I made.' Helena stood upright beside the bed again. Her tall, shapely figure and arrogant bearing, the ruthlessness of her anger, gave her a kind of savage grandeur, and even Holly, for all her own misery, was forced to recognize that such a woman would make a fitting mate for Marcos's hawklike pride, unbearable as the idea was.
She would give him tall, dark Spanish sons to carry on the Delgaro name into yet another century, and they would, in their turn, marry women like Helena Mendez because it was what they were meant to do. And if they too made occasional and casual love to some visiting English girl - well, it was a well established precedent, and why shouldn't they?
Holly shook her head, bringing herself out of a reverie that did nothing to ease her own misery, and almost overlooking the fact that Helena had finally admitted to being responsible for her accident.
'You - you've admitted it!' she said, watching Helena with half closed eyes, almost too tired to care. 'You admitted that you knocked me down and - and just drove off!'
Helena shrugged her elegant shoulders, evidently considering herself safe enough in admitting it, while there was no one but Holly to hear her. 'Why should I not admit I knocked you down?' she asked. 'As you have discovered, no one will believe it but you. I only regret that I did not know you were leaving so soon.'
Holly stared at her, still not quite able to grasp the fact that someone could actually hate her enough to do anything as deliberately callous. 'You - you really meant to hurt me?' she said, and Helena shrugged again.
'I meant for you to be - how is it? - scared. Scared enough to leave here.'
It was ironic really, Holly thought, and almost smiled. 'But it misfired,' she said. 'I'm still here.' She leaned back wearily against the softness of the pillows and closed her eyes, wishing with all her heart that Helena would go and leave her in peace.
'You are still here, but you are up here where no one sees you,' Helena said, and her ignorance of Marcos's visits gave Holly a certain grim satisfaction. 'Up here,' Helena went on, 'you cannot force your infantil co- queteria upon Marcos.' Her voice became soft and menacing again, and the smile that showed her excellent teeth owed nothing at all to good humour. 'And should you try to do so again when you are recovered,' she said, 'then I shall show you, sucia, just how much I can hurt you! Comprende?'
Holly said nothing, there was nothing she could say in the face of such unrelenting malice, and she turned her head hopefully in the direction of the door, when it opened, closing her eyes in a brief prayer of relief when she saw her aunt standing there.
Aunt Nan looked almost as if she could guess something of what had taken place during her absence, and she frowned at the glisten of tears in Holly's eyes and the pale, drawn look of her face. Then she came across to the bed and looked at Helena steadily, her small, plump figure drawn up to its full height and her blue eyes shining with determination.
'I think it's time you left, Helena,' she told her. 'Holly's obviously not at all well, and I don't think your being here is doing anything at all to help. Please leave now. You'll find Marcos downstairs.'
If Helena's dismissal of her had been summary, Aunt Nan's banishment of Helena was even more crushing, and it looked for a moment as if Helena would object to it, but then she gave a last malicious look at Holly and stalked haughtily out of the room, banging the door firmly behind her. For a moment after she had gone Aunt Nan stood looking at the closed door, then she turned slowly and looked down at Holly.
Her blue eyes were gentle and curious, but speculative too, as she put a soothing hand on Holly's brow. 'What happened, darling?' she asked quietly, and Holly felt on the verge of tears again when she thought of all that had taken place, and how unlikely it was that her aunt would believe half of what she told her.
'She admitted it,' she said huskily. 'She admitted to running me down in her car, Aunt Nan, because she said she knew no one would believe it.'
Her aunt sat down on the edge of the bed, and for a moment or two she studied Holly's drawn face with anxious and uncer
tain eyes, then she reached out and covered her hands gently. 'Did you accuse her, Holly?' she asked.
'She raised the subject herself, Aunt Nan,' Holly said. 'I didn't. She raised several matters, in fact, including the reason she did it.'
'Did she, darling?' The gentle hands encouraged her, but there was still a look of doubt in her aunt's kind, friendly face, and Holly shook her head, although it cost her dear to do so.
'It doesn't matter,' she said in a soft, resigned voice. She leaned her head back on the pillows and closed her eyes against the tears that were already starting again. 'You wouldn't believe that, either.'
It was another two days before Doctor Valdare considered Holly fit enough to get up and two more before he allowed her downstairs. Anxious as she was to be on her feet again, she viewed the prospect of facing them all again with some trepidation.
It seemed to Holly that nearly two weeks was rather a long time to have been kept in bed for only a minor concussion. The broken leg would have healed as well if she simply rested it, and it occurred to her that perhaps Aunt Nan had thought it best if she spent as much of her recovery time as possible away from contact with Helena, and had persuaded the doctor to see it too.
Holly had to admit that she looked forward to seeing Marcos again, but the prospect of Helena gave her much less pleasure. It was with mixed feelings, therefore, that she prepared for her first day downstairs.
She had dressed herself slowly, realizing for the first time how much twelve days in bed had weakened her.
She still looked rather pale, but it was a creamy paleness that flattered rather than detracted from her looks, and her eyes looked deep blue and huge between their fringe of dark lashes. A brief dress of rose pink with a demure little girl collar gave her a fragile and feminine look and she smiled as she took a last look at herself in the long mirror. Only the heavy plaster cast on her left leg struck a jarring note, and she frowned at it in dislike.
There was a soft tap on her bedroom door and she turned to smile a welcome at her aunt. But it wasn't Aunt Nan who opened the door and stood smiling at her, it was Marcos, and she felt the sudden wild leap her heart gave at the sight of him. It seemed so much longer than six days since she had seen him and she was almost surprised to see him unchanged.
He wore slim-fitting dark blue trousers and a cream silk shirt, and instinctively her eyes sought that glimpse of deep golden chest and the first shadowy darkness of black hair where the shirt fastened. She shook her head slowly when he came across the room to her, remembering his parting words to her - that she was a dream he could not afford to have too often.
'You - you shouldn't be here,' she told him, her voice sounding dismayingly unsteady.
Marcos smiled, that rare and devastating smile, and his black eyes held hers steadily as he looked down at her. 'I came to fetch you, nina,' he said softly.
'Oh!' She sat with her hands held tightly together on her lap, trying to control the impulse to lift up her arms to him, accept any excuse to have him hold her close to him. 'Do - do they know you're here?' she asked, and Marcos cocked a questioning brow at her, surveying her curiously, his hands on his hips.
'If by they, you refer to my father and Dona Ana,' he said softly, 'yes, nina, they know I am here.'
'Oh, I see!' Apparently in this instance his coming to her room was not taken amiss, although she could not imagine that Aunt Nan had thought it a good idea.
'I persuaded them,' he told her, with a smile, as if he guessed what she was thinking. 'You have that clumsy cast on your leg and you could not be expected to walk down so many stairs when you have not walked at all for so long.' His eyes glittered a challenge at her, daring her to refuse to let him carry her, and she hastily lowered her gaze again.
'As it happens I can walk quite well,' she told him. 'I was practising all day yesterday and the day before. I'll make it all right'
Marcos said nothing for a second, then he reached out his hands and put them on her shoulders, standing close enough to play havoc with her senses as he worked that special kind of magnetism he always did on her. His palms were warm through the thin cotton dress and his fingers moved caressingly, kneading gently at her shoulders, his thumbs smoothing softly against her neck.
'You have spent almost two weeks in bed, mi pichon,' he said quietly, his voice, as well as those hypnotic fingers, seeking to persuade her. "You must be as weak as a baby, and yet you would rather struggle with that clumsy plaster cast than let me carry you Why, mi tonta nina?'
Holly was shaking her head, partly to rid herself of the wild impulses that were making her head spin, and making it hard to resist laying her face against those caressing hands. 'Is - is Helena down there?' she asked huskily, and felt the fingers tighten on her shoulders suddenly until they dug into her.
'Helena is not here,' he said quietly, after several moments. 'And I cannot think why it should matter to you if she was.'
Holly looked up at him reproachfully. He must surely see how wrong that was, unless he refused to see things in any other way but the one that suited him. 'Marcos, you know it would matter,' she told him, and he shrugged.
'You are my cousin, and I cannot see why anyone would object if I carry you downstairs when you cannot walk. You are making mountains, Holly.'
'Out of molehills,' Holly supplied automatically, and raised her eyes to look at him. 'And I'm not your cousin at all, Marcos, not really. You know perfectly well I'm not, you just say that to - to—'
'Si?3 Marcos prompted softly, and dug his fingers into her shoulders hard enough to make her shrug them in protest. 'What are you accusing me of now?'
'I didn't say I was accusing you of anything!' Holly protested.
His nearness, the warm vibrancy of him, filled her with a desperate hunger for him, and those hard unyielding hands on her shoulders had a strength that was irresistible, only the thumbs moving slowly, almost sensually against her neck.
'Then why do you refuse my help?' he asked.
'Because - because I'm capable of helping myself,' Holly declared, trying to shrug off his hands and to stand up at the same time.
He exerted enough pressure to keep her seated on the end of the bed, and she soon gave up the struggle. 'So,' he said, 'you are not my cousin and you do not need my help, and—' He shrugged his broad shoulders resignedly. 'It matters if Helena is here or not. Forgive me for listing your objections, pequena, but I am trying to follow your reasoning.'
'It's not difficult,' Holly told him, feeling now that she had been unreasonable, perhaps a little over-sensitive, but not prepared to simply give way. 'I'm not your cousin, Marcos, that's just a - a sop to your conscience, and—'
'My conscience?' He regarded her for a moment, his brows drawn. 'Why do you think I should have a conscience about you? Madre de Dips!' he breathed softly, but you must always try and make me feel guilty about Helena, must you not?'
'You may not feel guilty about her!' Holly cried, 'but I do! And I'm the one who has to take the blame, get knocked down by a car, have my hair tugged and twisted until I could scream with the pain in my head, just because you don't think of the effect you can have, of the impression you give! Well, you may not care, but I-'
'Parada!' Holly stopped there, her eyes wide, stunned by the black glittering anger that looked down at her. She had been too impulsive, saying so much to Marcos, but it was too late to retract now. His hands pulled her to her feet so that she found herself even closer to him, and felt the anger and tension that emanated from him like a physical force.
'You accused Helena of running you down in her car,' he said, in that cool, hard voice she hated so much. 'Are you now saying that she - assaulted you as well?'
'She came to see me while I was in bed,' Holly said, in a small reluctant voice. He looked so disbelieving that she immediately flew to her own defence. 'Ask Aunt Nan,' she told him. 'She brought Helena up to see me.'
The black eyes regarded her steadily. 'And Dona Ana was present when - it happened?'
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'Oh no, of course not!' Holly's laugh had a short, hollow sound, for she recognized all too clearly that she was not going to be believed. 'No one was there when Helena admitted to running me down, either,' she said. 'I'm afraid she's much too clever for me!'
For a moment he said nothing, and Holly had a faint hope that he might perhaps be prepared to believe her, at least in part, but then he shook his head slowly and the hands on her shoulders squeezed gently, as if to convey some message of understanding. 'Holly, I know you do not like Helena, and perhaps she has—'
'She hates me!' Holly cried desperately, and flung away from him. She could no longer bear to have any physical contact with him, not knowing how he felt, how he was ready to defend Helena because he could do nothing else when she meant so much to him.
He was ready to go to any lengths to persuade Holly to let him carry her downstairs in his arms, perhaps even kiss her again in that savage, passionate way that deprived her of all sense, but he was still not prepared to hear a word of complaint against Helena. He still refused to believe that it was Holly who bore the brant of Helena's spite.
'Perhaps it doesn't matter to you!' she said shakily, her hands smoothing down her dress in a quick nervous gesture. 'But I've had enough, Marcos. I'm leaving just as soon as Doctor Valdare says I can travel, and in the meantime I'd rather you didn't try to - help me! I'll walk downstairs! I don't need you!'
For a moment she had the wild idea that he would strike her, but then he turned suddenly and swiftly and strode out of the room, leaving the door open behind him, and the muffled sound of his footsteps as he went towards the stairs.
It was much more difficult walking than Holly had anticipated, and she felt emotionally spent after her argument with Marcos. A few feet back and forth across the bedroom was not like taking the long length of the carpeted passageway to the stairs, and she was feeling breathless and horribly weak-kneed before she was half-way there.
She rested for a while, sitting on one of the ornate gilt chairs beneath one of Marcos's black-browed ancestors, and she was nearly in tears at the frustration of being so weak. It took several moments before she felt even a little better, but if she did not appear downstairs soon, Aunt Nan would begin to wonder what had happened to her.
Rebecca Stratton - Castles in Spain Page 12
