'Miss Beckett is surely not so backward as to need any more teaching than the rest of them,' she stated in her harsh, precise voice. 'You are being injusto, surely, Miguel, are you not?'
'Permit me to know what I am doing,' Miguel told her firmly. 'Miss Beckett is fully aware of her own shortcomings as an artist. Are you not, Miss Beckett?'
'You've left me in no doubt of it.' Sally told him bitterly, hating the looks of sympathy that were being turned on her now. As if he thought any more of their talents, Sally thought. 'You are the acknowledged expert, Don Miguel.'
'You see?' he said to his cousin. 'Miss Beckett is perfectly agreeable.'
'It just happens that I have arranged to go out tomorrow night,' Sally ventured, remembering a rather vague arrangement with Michael to visit Cadiz on the small, rattly local bus.
But Michael too, it seemed, was bent on thwarting her, and spoke up unhesitatingly, quite willingto forgo the pleasure of her company, apparently, if it was for her own good.
'Oh, please don't mind me, darling,' he told her hastily. 'I don't mind in the least if it means you getting extra help with your painting.'
Sally's heart sank dismally when she saw her last avenue of escape blocked. 'But I don't' she began, but Miguel Cordova brushed her further efforts aside with as little concern as before.
'You see,' he told her, 'Michael is willing to give up an evening with you so that you may come to me.'
His choice of such a provocative phrase, Sally felt sure, was deliberate, although Michael seemed not to take it amiss. 'It seems I have no choice,' she said resignedly, and hastily avoided the glint of satisfaction in her tormentor's eyes. She raised an almost full glass of wine to her lips and drank the contents down in one long draught, then shivered involuntarily when a flick of panic curled icily in the pit of her stomach.
CHAPTER FIVE
ALL day long Sally had been praying for something to happen that would make Miguel Cordova change his mind, either that or that something would prevent him from keeping his private tutoring appointment with her. Any small hope she had nurtured, however, vanished when she was leaving the dining room with Michael the following evening.
Feeling a hand slide under her elbow, she turned swiftly and stopped in her tracks, her own instincts telling her who it was even before she turned. 'Oh!' Her dismay was so apparent in her expression that he smiled briefly, the black eyes gleaming with amusement.
Michael, of course, was unaware of anything but the obvious, and he smiled down at her, squeezing her hand to remind her. 'Of course, darling,' he said. 'You have some homework to do tonight, remember?'
Don Miguel's strong fingers curled over her arm and they squeezed much harder than Michael's did. 'Had, you forgotten, Miss Beckett?' he asked softly, and Sally looked up at him, shaking her head, her mouth pursed in her usual soft pout of disapproval, when something displeased her.
'I was rather hoping you had,' she told him, and he looked at her sternly down his arrogant nose, his black brows drawn into a straight line.
'I do not make arrangements and then forget them,' he informed her quietly. 'I am not very flattered that you supposed I would.'
'I didn't really,' Sally confessed. She was being very ungracious about it, she knew, but her own impulsive emotions were driving her on to try and delay, if not cancel, the moment when she would have to be alone with him again. 'It's just that—I was rather hoping you'd have second thoughts about it, Don Miguel.'
He regarded her in silence for a moment with that steady black gaze, while Michael stood looking from one to the other, probably wondering if she had taken leave of her senses. 'Of course Don Miguel hasn't had second thoughts, darling,' Michael told her. 'Have you, senor?'
Miguel Cordova smiled, one of those small, enigmatic smiles that troubled her so. 'Never,' he said firmly.
'I just thought'
'You hoped,' he interrupted softly, and the fingers on her arm tightened again until she could have cried out. 'Come, Sarita, we are wasting time.'
There was an implacable glint in the black eyes that even Michael noticed, and he laughed a little uneasily, as if he was less sure of letting her go. Darling, if you'
'I "am not accustomed to being kept waiting,' Don Miguel informed her quietly.. 'You will please come with me. Adios, Mr. Storer, we have work to do.'
'Yes. Yes, of course.' Michael's blue eyes looked at Sally uncertainly for a brief moment, then he smiled, apparently reassured. He gave her hand an encouraging squeeze and kissed her lightly beside her mouth. 'I'll see you later, amada,' he told her. 'Adios, senor!'
Sally saw him walk off to join the others in the garden, and her eyes followed him reproachfully for a moment, but she was given little time to feel sorry for herself or to blame Michael, for an insistent hand under her elbow turned her about, and guided her back across the dining-room.
'Is Mr. Storer learning to speak Spanish?' Don Miguel asked, and Sally shook her head, too concerned with her own situation to worry about Michael.
'I don't know; probably,' she said. 'He seems prone to using Spanish words lately, although he probably doesn't know what half of them mean.' She felt she owed Michael that much for deserting her.
'Have you no inclination to learn my language, Sarita?' The question was put in a soft, sensuous voice that was bound to arouse all sorts of reactions in her, and she curled her hands tightly as she shook her head.
'Not really,' she said. 'I'm not very bright at things like languages, and I haven't Michael's desire to go native.'
'I see.' He obviously had no difficulty in recog-nising pique when he heard it, for the hand under her arm shook her gently, as if in reprimand. 'Do not be angry with him for leaving you in my charge,' he told her. 'He is being very understanding, and you should appreciate that.'
'I wish I could,' Sally said, in a small voice. 'The trouble is, he doesn't understand at all.'
'You think not?'
The grip on her arm tightened again and she could imagine how tight and firm his mouth looked when he spoke again. 'And I am not at all sure that I understand your attitude, Sarita,' he said quietly.
'I'm sorry if I sound ungracious.'
'I'm glad you realise you sound ungracious,' he told her. 'At the risk of sounding conceited, most young artists would count themselves very fortunate to be offered the opportunity of being privately tutored by Miguel Cordova. You merely seem to look upon it as some kind of punishment.'
Sally looked up at him at last, but only warily from under her lashes, all too well aware that what he said was true. She was, as he had suggested, very privileged to be given special attention from him, but all the same she would much rather not have been singled out for the honour. Perhaps it was conceited of her, but after her previous experience with him she just could not believe that his suggesting the private tuition had been prompted only by a desire to improve her art.
'You're quite right about the others jumping at the opportunity,' she said, trying hard to ignore the sensation his hand on her arm aroused in her. The impression of warmth and strength and the cat-like grace of him as he walked beside her was hard to ignore. 'Most of them would be very—honoured.'
'But not you?'
She did not answer for the moment, then she shook her head slowly. 'It's not that I don't appreciate the honour,' she told him. 'I do.'
He sighed deeply over the reluctance of her admission as he opened a door she had never been through before, or even really noticed. It was tucked away in one corner of the dining-room, and led through into a narrow, coolly dim passageway, arched and silent as cloisters. The white walls were starkly bare except for a big bronze crucifix, similar to the one in the hall, and this one too had its offering of heavily scented roses that filled the narrow passageway with their perfume.
'You would run away now,' he suggested softly, looking down at her, 'if you thought you could manage to escape me. Would you not, Sarita?'
Sally did not answer, intrigued and, at the same time
, vaguely alarmed by her new surroundings. This narrow, bare corridor with its arched windows and its cool silence, and only the huge crucifix on one wall to relieve the starkness of it, reminded her uneasily of a convent or a monastery. The sensation made her feel trapped and, almost instinctively, she hung back against the guiding hand on her arm.
'Where are you taking me?' she wanted to know, and the black eyes looked down at her, as if he knew exactly what her reactions were and the thought amused him. 'To my studio,' he said, and took her to where a flight of steep, narrow stairs led upwards, taking up the full width of the passageway. 'You are surely not afraid of that, are you, nina?'
'Of going to your studio? No, of course not!'
'Then come!'
Sally wanted to resist that firm, persuasive hand that urged her on, but something deep inside her also fought for recognition. Curiosity and another emotion, even stronger that she dared not admit to, even to herself. He had a studio, on the ground floor of the house, where he sometimes took them, and she had expected it would be there that he took her now. This new and unexpected revelation troubled her.
'I—I thought your studio was on this floor,' she ventured, and he smiled briefly, following her line of thought all too easily.
'Not this one,' he told her. 'Now are you coming with me to do some work or do you intend to turn and run away like some timid schoolgirl?'
The jibe stung harshly, and Sally felt the colour in her cheeks, recognising it as a challenge too. After a moment she nodded, looking upwards at the dim outline of a doorway at the top of the stairs. 'I'm not a timid schoolgirl, Don Miguel,' she told him. 'If your studio is up there, then of course I'll come.'
'Bueno!'
He nodded his satisfaction as she moved with him to the foot of the stairs. She took the first step too hastily in her anxiety, trying to match his long stride, and missed her footing. Her fall threw her against him, and in a flash his hands caught her and held her firm, with her palms spread instinctively on his chest.
The gesture reminded her immediately that she had stood like this once before, when he had come and found her on the coast road. He had held her then, tight in his arms, with her hands spread wide over the steady beat of his heart, and she closed her eyes briefly to shut out the memory and the sudden, wild longing that his touch aroused in her again.
'Are you hurt?' His voice was so quietly matter-of- fact that Sally looked up at him for a moment, startled and confused because his reactions were less emotional than her own.
'No.' She eased herself free of the hands that still held her. 'No, I'm not hurt.'
'You are sure?' For all his coolness he seemed reluctant to release her, and she felt a steady, urgent throbbing under the hand she put to her own throat.
'I'm quite sure, Don Miguel, thank you.' It was difficult to match his coolness, but she tried, and she glanced upwards at the flight of shadowy, unlit stairs between stark white walls, her heart beating warily fast. 'Is—is it straight up these stairs to your studio?'
He nodded, putting a helping hand under her arm again. 'And take more care this time, nina.'
They mounted the narrow stairs with Sally one step ahead and, as they reached the door at the top,he tightened his hold on her arm momentarily, so that she looked up at him in the dim coolness. She thought for one moment that he was going to have second thoughts about bringing her there, and then, just as inexplicably, he shrugged and reached past her to open the door.
He pushed her through before him, with a hand in the small of her back as if he still feared she might turn and run, and Sally stood in the doorway for a moment, looking around her, not knowing quite what to expect, a strange and head-spinning sense of excitement stirring in her suddenly.
Miguel Cordova was a proud and, in some ways, a strangely reserved man, and yet he was admitting her, of all people, to his holy of holies. The studio that none of his other students had ever seen. Always sensitive to atmosphere, she felt a faint tremor through her body when she experienced a feeling of intimacy that disturbed and excited her.
Even had she not known it was his room, she felt she would have sensed it instinctively, for it was filled with his strong, dominant personality. It was here that his enormous creative talent released the deep, innermost secrets of his mind and revealed them in the beauty of his paintings, and the impression of his personality was almost tangible.
A room where he painted the things he wanted to paint, like the harsh brilliance of a picture that caught her eye, over on the far wall. Vivid and alive With all the colour, movement and barbarity of the bullfight, detailed in cruel perfection by a master of his craft. It stirred a response in her, despite her dislike of the subject.
The room itself smelled of the inevitable mixture of oil and paint and new canvas. Of the completed and part-completed pictures that stood propped against the walls, giving tantalising glimpses of form and colour. It was a big room and still retained its essentially Spanish air, like the rest of the house, except that one of the windows at the far end had been much enlarged and gave a breathtaking view of the sea and the rocks on which the house stood.
The big window, being unshaded, made the room much warmer and must, in the full light of day, have been dazzling in its brilliance. White walls reflected the light and even this late in the evening, gave the impression of being at the heart of some great light force. An oddly disturbing sensation.
An easel was set up, practically in the centre of the room and lower down, nearer the big window, was a model's dais with a chair. The silk-draped chair had a bare and sadly tatty look, somehow, without an occupant, and Sally found herself wondering who had sat in it last.
She glanced up at Miguel Cordova, and her silent question was answered by a brief nod, the persuasive hand still under her arm. 'You are very silent, nina,' he said softly after a moment, and the sound of his voice set her heart beating rapidly again as she tried to ease herself free of his hold without appearing too obvious about it.
'I'm very impressed,' she told him. 'It's—it's an unusual room, beautiful in a way, but'
'But?' he prompted gently, and Sally hesitated. To put exactly what she felt into words could equally easily amuse or anger him. It might even cause him to reveal that disturbing hint of cruelty again, so she moved away from him, shaking her head, declining to explain herself.
Her evasion was short-lived, however, for he followed close behind. 'But?' he asked again, and a long forefinger brushed lightly against her neck, as it lifted her long hair gently. 'Tell me just what impression my studio makes on you, mi pichon.'
'I—I'm not sure.' She closed her eyes briefly when a shiver slid along her spine at the touch of his hand. 'It's—disturbing. I can't explain!' she added hastily before he could laugh the idea to scorn.
'It—disturbs you?' He echoed her hesitation, but he sounded neither angry nor amused. A hand smoothed aside her long hair, and the long fingers almost reached round to her throat as they curved about her neck, the palm warm and firm at the nape of her neck. 'Why should it disturb you? Do you know?' He laughed softly. 'Or will you not tell me?'
'I don't know,' Sally admitted huskily, resisting the almost overwhelming urge to respond to that caressing hand.
'You do not know?' There was a gentle mockery in his voice and she would have answered it, but at that moment she noticed the unfinished portrait that was propped on the easel, and something familiar about it caught her eye irresistibly.
Although the painting itself was half covered with a cloth thrown over it, the uncovered part revealed enough of the subject for it to be recognisable. Dark, haughty features, one compelling dark eye, the autocratic angle of the head—they were all unmistakable. Even though only half the face was visible, Sally knew without doubt that the last occupant of that empty model's chair had been Ines Valdaquez, and she felt suddenly and quite inexplicably guilty.
It was as if the Spanish girl was there with them in the studio, her dark gaze watching them and passionately d
isapproving of Sally's near surrender to the persuasion of that sensuous hand at her throat. So well had the artist captured the character, as well as the features of the young widow, that Sally wondered if his sitter would appreciate the all too revealing truth of it. As much of the painting as she could see was brilliantly executed, but perhaps almost cruel in its depth of perception, and it disturbed her intensely.
She shook back her hair and dislodged the hand from her neck, moving away from him and nearer to the easel, standing for a moment before the painted gaze of Ines Valdaquez. Then she reached out a hand and would have drawn back the cover still further, except that a much stronger hand than her own clamped hard on her wrist and pulled her back, at the same time pulling the covering to completely conceal the painting.
'Can't I see it?' she asked, suffering the grip for the moment, without protest.
'No, you may not.' He spoke firmly, in a voice that discouraged argument. 'It is not yet finished.'
'It's very good.' she said, to let him know that she had recognised the sitter, despite his efforts.
For a moment the fingers on her wrist squeezed tight enough to make her protest, then he released her, one brow raised, the black eyes glittering down at her with covert amusement. 'I am flattered that you approve,' he told her. 'But can you comment so authoritatively with no more than a glimpse of one eye?'
Sally shrugged uneasily. Many artists preferred not to let their work be seen until it was completed, but it crossed her mind suddenly that perhaps there was some other reason behind his reluctance. Maybe she had inadvertently intruded upon something more personal than she at first realised.
It was possible that the portrait was more a labour of love than a professional commission. Perhaps he did not spend all the time working when his glamorous cousin sat for him in this warm, white room full of light. It was possible that here Ines Valdaquez was treated with less polite coolness, and in a fashion more satisfying to the passionate emotions that showed so often in her eyes. It was a possibility that Sally regarded with a sudden sense of revulsion when she recalled her own position only a moment since.
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