Jacqueline said nothing, and he went on: “Please get rid of the idea that the money is anything to do with me—it is not my money, it never was! It was my grandmother’s money, and she left it to you. I happened to have very strong feelings for my grandmother, and I’d be deeply grateful to you if—for her sake, because I believe you did like her yourself—you would take what she left you, and let it provide the security she intended.”
Jacqueline tried to find her voice. At last she managed:
“If—if you feel so strongly about it, I—I’ll think it over. But I honestly don’t want your grandmother’s money—I don’t want anyone’s money.”
“No?” he said, and for the first time he looked at her, and then away. “You have no use for money?” a little dryly.
“I can always work.”
“In your antique shop?” A smile, curiously gentle, hovered about his mouth, and then vanished as if she had conjured it up out of her imagination as she, too, lifted her eyes to him for a moment. He gripped the verandah rail with both his fine, strong hands. “I suppose you think I know nothing at all about such a thing as work?” he asked, very unexpectedly. “No doubt you imagine that I idle all my time away here on Sansegovia? But I can assure you that is not quite the case. My family’s business interests are rather vast, and I happen to be the one whose job it is to control them. Amongst other things we are exporters, and much of the produce grown here on Sansegovia is exported by us to Britain and other countries. That’s one reason why I spend a good many months here in the year. But I spend many more months in Spain, and as a matter of fact next week I shall be leaving for the mainland and shall be away for some considerable while. And it’s because I’m leaving that I want to ask you something else!”
Jacqueline felt this time that it was impossible to ask him what it was, because her throat had gone suddenly quite dry. He was leaving Sansegovia—for some considerable while!...
In spite of the fact that two nights ago he had filled her with terror of him, she knew that she was shaken—she was much, much more than shaken!...
“I’d like you, if you could bring yourself to do so, to stay on here—at least for a time—with Tia Lola. She’s very lonely just now, missing my grandmother more and more as the days pass, and she likes you very much indeed—she would be so grateful if you would stay with her for a little while! I don’t expect you to do this for me—” digging hard at the woodwork he was gripping—“because I’ve a pretty shrewd idea what your opinion is of me! And I know I owe you an apology for the other night... ” He turned deliberately and looked at her. “I do apologize for my behavior, and for my behavior on one other occasion! ... I promise you that it shall not occur again, ever!”
For an instant—rather a long instant—they were looking directly into one another’s eyes, blue eyes and grey eyes searching, probing—but finding nothing, apparently, to justify a lightening of the darkness of two sets of faintly distended pupils.
Jacqueline’s lips parted, but she could say nothing. She moistened her lips and swallowed, and then her eyelashes fluttered down and she stared at the floor on the verandah.
“Will you accept my apologies, and will you—stay on here?”
“I—I’ll stay on for—for a time...”
“That is very generous of you.” But his voice now was formal. “You also accept my apologies?”
“I—you—you seemed to think I was guilty of some sort of deception—”
“I don’t think there’s much point in discussing that,” he replied, very quietly. “I am quite sure you would never wilfully deceive anyone, but sometimes things we say and do are liable to be misconstrued. Shall we leave it at that?”
“But, I’m quite sure I have never said anything—or done anything!—that could be misconstrued.” All at once she was concerned—she felt that there were deeps here that were beyond her, important deeps that ought to be investigated, but to which she had no clue whatsoever. And although he held the clue he was not offering it to her, either because he believed she was not sufficiently interested, or because he had some other reason for withholding it from her.
All at once her eyes actually appealed to him. “If there’s anything I—?”
“There’s nothing, little Jacqueline.” His voice was gentle, as it had often been in the past, but it was also impersonal, and still faintly distant. “Don’t worry your head about things which can’t be helped, and which don’t really concern you. Only let me leave here knowing that you and Tia Lola will be company for one another.”
“I won’t leave Tia Lola,” she promised, but she had a feeling that she was being defrauded. She had a feeling that
her whole future, which might have been lapped about with sunlight, was being cast into the shadows. She had a feeling, all at once, that she wanted to weep.
“Well, I must go. I have an appointment in the town which I must keep. But we are no longer bitter enemies?” He was smiling at her politely.
“No,” lifting rather dull eyes to him. “We are no longer bitter enemies!”
“Friends, perhaps?” he suggested, and held out his hand. She put hers into it.
“Yes, I—I hope we shall always be friends.”
“Gracias, senorita!” He gave her a brief, flashing smile this time, and released her hand after grasping it only lightly. “Friendship is an excellent thing—I am sure we shall both find it very satisfying!” But even as he left her and went out to his car she could not make up her mind whether he was mocking her just a little. Or was he—feeling slightly sick— completely in earnest?
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Nearly a week passed, and during that time Jacqueline saw little or nothing of Dominic. He was never in to lunch, he was seldom in to dinner, and on one occasion when he was in to dinner he brought Martine with him, and the family atmosphere which prevailed when there were only the three of them, Tia Lola, Jacqueline and Dominic was entirely absent from the meal.
Martine still appeared to be very well satisfied with life, and she was returning to Madrid when Dominic left in a few days time. She had been offered another film part, and she was full of her future, and all that lay ahead of her. Whether she still secretly entertained hopes of persuading Dominic to marry her, instead of Carlotta Consuella, Jacqueline wondered as she watched her occasionally sending melting looks in Dominic’s direction. But if she had given up all hopes where Dominic was concerned she had evidently made up her mind that, when a girl was as beautiful as she was, as talented, and as capable of exuding sex-appeal, there were always plenty of excellent fish swimming about in the sea, and one day, with
any luck, she would succeed in catching one possibly even more to her taste than Dominic, who in some ways was very Spanish and might expect more of a wife than she was willing to give. He might, for instance, expect her to give up her film career, and her film friends, and live a segregated kind of existence such as many Spanish women accepted as completely normal once they exchanged the status of a single woman for that of a married one.
Husband and children and family, and close family friends—that was so often the pattern of it. Martine had seen it for herself during her short sojourn in Spain. Lovely women leading cloistered lives in the very middle of the twentieth century, wearing lovely clothes and living often in beautiful homes, but with none of the freedom an American film favorite would consider necessary. Deferring to a mother-in-law, and considering nursery subjects of great importance. Almost a medieval existence, or so it had struck Martine, and she felt it would be so even with Dominic thrown in.
There was something about Dominic’s mouth and jaw, and an occasional almost austere flash from his eyes, which warned her that he could be difficult to deal with—not easy to cajole. But naturally Jacqueline knew nothing of this, and in her quiet study of Martine—reading admiration into Dominic’s eyes when they rested on the lovely red-head, and which he undoubtedly did feel because she was so lovely— she could only try and fathom the reason why th
e possessive Martine she had first met now seemed to be merely casual and friendly, apart from those occasional melting looks, and more openly inclined to discuss a future in which Dominic could easily play little part.
This was the first time Jacqueline had seen Martine since the night of the fiesta, and she was acutely embarrassed when the American girl referred in an openly amused manner to her ‘disappearance’, as she called it, with Neville Barr.
“You made it so plain that you both wanted to be alone that Dominic and I thought it best to give you a free run, didn’t we, darling?” looking with that bright flash of amusement in her eyes at Dominic. “We’re neither of us spoil-sports, I hope, and although we did call at Neville’s bungalow it was not with any genuine expectations of finding you both there. Although I understand you were there later on!” the green eyes positively glistening with amusement of a decidedly arch kind.
Jacqueline stared away from her at the flowers in the centre of the table. So Dominic had told Martine how he, Dominic, had found her with Neville!... Or had Neville himself told her? No; that was hardly likely.
But when she stole a look at Dominic’s face he, too, was staring at the silver epergne, cascading creamily pink roses, in the centre of the polished table, and from the grimness of his lips it was difficult to believe that he would pass on an item of information such as Martine had obviously obtained from somewhere, since it was no more than the truth. Dominic looked as if he would disdain any mention of either Jacqueline or Neville.
But later in the evening, when she and Martine were alone together for a few minutes in the verandah Jacqueline discovered how Martine had gained her information.
“Poor Neville!” she exclaimed, still as if the incident struck her as more amusing than otherwise. “He was positively fuming when I ran in to him yesterday morning! Apparently Dominic came over all feudal and ‘mine hostish’ on the night of the fiesta and fairly tore you away from him because the hour was late and he thought his aunt might disapprove, and Neville is simply livid! He’s thinking of throwing up his job at the clinic here and bearing you off to the mainland, so you’ll send me an invitation to the wedding, won’t you?”
Jacqueline, feeling as if she was being deliberately goaded, and feeling secretly certain that. Martine had a pretty shrewd idea of how she felt about the man who was her host, and was goading her because of it, looked at her with eyes as cool and blank as she could make them, and told her:
“There isn’t likely to be any wedding.”
“Isn’t there? Oh, what a pity!” Martine exclaimed. “I do adore weddings!” Then, looking at Jacqueline with a snake-like gleam in the green eyes: “But you’re almost bound to have a wedding on the island before long, unless it takes place in Madrid! I understand Dominic is having extensive alterations and improvements carried out on the family home near Toledo, and that’s almost certainly because he’s thinking of getting married! And he’s going straight to the
Consuellas when we fly to Madrid next week—I know that, because he told me so himself! They’re having a very big ‘do’ of some sort, and I’ve even been invited. So what do you make of that?”
Jacqueline decided there was only one thing anyone could make of it, but just then she couldn’t bear even to think about it. Before Martine left she excused herself on the grounds of a headache—not caring that Martine must have felt secretly more than satisfied—and went up to and locked herself into her room. And she wondered how she was going to keep her promise to Dominic and remain on Sansegovia.
The day before Dominic left for Madrid another of those violent storms to which the island was addicted swept over it. Jacqueline was out walking when it broke in full fury, sweeping down over all the carefree loveliness of Sansegovia and blotting it out as if at the whim of a horde of spiteful demons.
There was no reason why she should have been caught in the storm, for she had had plenty of warning before she set out that the day was not going to remain bright and fair. Even when she woke that morning it had been heavy and thundery, with a sinister hot haze over the sea which, when the lightning smote and struck, was ripped like a sheet of sullen gauze.
Tia Lola had said at lunch that she thought there was going to be a storm. Dominic was not with them, and Jacqueline hardly heeded her hostess’s observations. She had no interest in the weather, whether it remained bright or became stormy, because all she could think about was that in another twenty-four hours—or less—Dominic would have gone away from them, and would be away for weeks! The weeks could become months, and they would be scarcely endurable months—especially when all one had to do was to think of him making plans for his wedding, watching over the alterations to his house, spending weekends in Madrid with the parents of the girl he was to marry! Supremely fortunate Carlotta Consuella, who was pretty as a bird, charming and wealthy, and just the right bride for him!...
For Jacqueline knew that, however much she might delude herself by pretending that Dominic, with his inflammable Latin temperament that permitted him to make brutal love to a girl who was not only a guest in his house but had very little protection from such assaults when and if he chose to make them, was not the type of man she would wish to marry, there were moments when the memory of the kisses he had showered on her, the way he had held her, the recollection of the terms of endearment he had lavished on her—querida, chiquita—in that strange, husky, passion-choked voice of his, made her weak with longing to live such an experience all over again, even if it did terrify her at the same time.
Dominic might know little of tenderness, little of constancy—since apparently he was planning to marry another woman! —little of any of the qualities essential in a husband whom a woman could look up to and admire, and with whom she could feel absolutely safe and secure for the rest of her life; but when one fell in love with him as Jacqueline had done almost from the moment of meeting his blue eyes across the width of an emerald green lawn in the sunshine, and knew that one was never in the least likely to recover from that love, then there was only one thing one wanted of life, and that was to spend it at his side.
Under any circumstances she said to herself—not once a day, but almost every minute of every day! If she could only be near him, somehow or other, always and forever!...
And then the next second she knew that, when news of his wedding actually taking place reached her ears, she simply couldn’t endure to go on living near any of his friends, and certainly not in close daily contact with one of his closest relatives!
She would have to leave Sansegovia before very long!...
That was inevitable!...
Therefore, when the storm threatened, and Tia Lola talked of it at lunch time, Jacqueline had no interest in the topic of conversation, except to hope vaguely and rather wearily that, if the storm did break, the fierce heat abate, and the whirlwind of noise which had occurred before occurred all over again, then as the result of the temporary fear with which it would fill her she would not, for a short while at least, find it possible to think about Dominic. And therefore some sort of relief would be vouchsafed to her, because fear of the elements was not half as bad or agonizing as torturing thoughts about a man one loved.
Tia Lola said to her before she left the table:
“You won’t leave the house this afternoon, will you?”
“I don’t expect so,” Jacqueline answered. And because she was very fond of Tia Lola and wished to reassure her: “Or if I do go out I won’t go far.”
And she had no intention of going far when she set off. But it really was appallingly hot, and as she climbed the rough road which led past the villas and eventually led to the centre of the island it did seem to grow just that little bit cooler, because the air reached her from off the sea, and there was something moist and reviving about it.
A car passed her on the road, and she thought she recognized a friend of the Cortinas, who smiled at her in faint surprise as she flashed past on the downward slope. She paused once or twice to admi
re the tangle of blossom that was now making a bower of the island, and as she plucked an exquisite, waxen flower and held it between her fingers she remembered that spray of delicate creamy-pink she had plucked those many weeks earlier, when she was taking her first solitary walk on the island, and Dominic’s lean brown fingers taking it from her and inserting it into the buttonhole in his lapel.
Those many weeks earlier ...
Then she had vaguely suspected that Dominic was the possessor of a kind of deadly charm. Now she knew it only too well. And she remembered him saying that he would keep the flower and press it, saying it with a mocking glance at her which meant that he would do nothing of the kind!
A spot of rain fell on her, and then another. Already her clothes were sticking to her from heat, and if this rain continued she would be drenched through in no time at all— certainly long before she could get back home.
She looked about her as the first clap of thunder rolled and reached her ears, and the first gust of angry wind slapped at her face, and was surprised to find that she really was quite a long way from the villa, and that the country immediately surrounding her was wild and open. There were no houses near—nothing but a kind of open common, ringed by the tall umbrella pines, now already bending in the wind, and some
sturdy looking palms.
She looked up at the sky, and fear struck through her suddenly as she realized how dark it was. She must have been walking in a kind of dream, for she had hardly noticed it before; while she walked the world had turned angrily purple around her, and the lurid hue was shot through with some vivid streaks of tawny orange and flame. It was just as if the heavens were about to open above her, while out at sea there was nothing but inky darkness.
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