The Dragon's Cave

by Isobel Chace

  She made a face at him. ‘Only because you knew where I was—at school!’

  ‘I used to worry about you then because you wouldn’t do any work. I didn’t know I was in clover!’

  Megan bit her lip. ‘Have you really been worried about me?’ she asked tentatively.

  ‘Not as much as I should have been, but enough. I’ll be better pleased when you’re settled—’

  ‘Settled? I suppose you want to marry me off to someone suitable?’

  ‘Not just yet,’ her father teased her. ‘I’ll put up with worrying about you for a little longer!’

  She threw another snowball in his direction, missed him, and watched it land with a plop behind him. She gathered up some more snow, patting it firmly together, so intent on what she was doing that she failed to hear the approaching car, or the sound of the car door opening. She turned suddenly and cast the snowball where her father had been standing, but her father had gone over to the car. The snowball arched a curve into the sky and fell inexorably on the back of the Spaniard’s head.

  ‘Oh!’ Megan gasped.

  He turned and saw her, strode across the garden, stooping suddenly to scoop up some snow. His aim was better than hers, the snowball hitting her straight in the face.

  ‘Oh!’ she repeated furious.

  ‘That has given you a fine colour!’ he smiled at her.

  ‘Better than paint!’ she retorted sharply.

  His eyebrows flew upwards. ‘Did I hurt your feelings?’ he enquired.

  ‘Of course not,’ she said.

  ‘I think I did. I’m sorry.’ He studied her face thoughtfully. ‘You’re a very pretty girl.’

  ‘Thank you, kind sir!’ She reddened as he went on looking at her. ‘I—I was just going inside to change.’

  ‘Were you? Come and meet my sister first. I brought her specially down to meet you.’

  Megan would have liked to have asked him why, but something in his expression prevented her. In the full light of day, his hair looked blacker than ever and the arrogant lines of his face were etched deeper than she had thought. His eyes were not brown as she had expected, but the dark green of the leaf of the Spanish oak tree.

  ‘Senor,’ she began, and stopped.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Thank you for bringing me home last night. It was—kind of you.’

  He looked surprised. ‘I thought you resented me?’

  ‘I prefer not to be discussed behind my back,’ she said roundly, her gratitude forgotten.

  ‘I have no intention of doing so,’ he assured her. ‘That is why I have come to luncheon with your family today.’ He took her hand in his and walked with her back to the car.

  Megan had been conscious of her mud-stained jeans before, but it was nothing to how she felt when the Spaniard’s sister stepped out of the car, grimacing faintly as her pretty shoes became embedded in the snow. She was the loveliest girl Megan had ever seen. Her hair, as black as her brother’s, was worn ballerina-style, accentuating her long neck and the elegant slant of her shoulders. She was dressed in a scarlet velvet coat, edged in black, and carried a muff of snow-white fur that she hugged to her against the cold.

  ‘You are Megan?’ she asked, her English accent impeccable. ‘It is you we have come to see?’

  Megan nodded. ‘Won’t you come inside, senorita? It’s cold today, but it’s quite warm in the house.’

  The Spanish girl smiled. ‘Not senorita, please! I am Pilar Vallori. Please call me Pilar?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Megan said. ‘Vallori Llobera?’

  Pilar giggled infectiously. ‘No, that is Carlos,’ she answered. ‘His mother was a Llobera—a very grand family, I’ll have you know! Mine was a Hudson before she married.’ She ran into the house, shaking her feet like a cat as she went. ‘Vallori Hudson doesn’t sound quite the same, does it?’

  ‘You’re half English!’ Megan discovered.

  Pilar nodded happily. ‘But I am very Spanish about the English winter,’ she said. ‘How do you endure it?’

  Megan grinned. ‘Quite easily,’ she said. ‘I even like it when it looks pretty and new as it does today.’

  Pilar laughed, peeling off various layers of outer clothes as she did so.

  ‘I am so happy to be here!’ she exclaimed. ‘Carlos says you are the answer to our prayers, and now that I’ve seen you I can quite believe it!’

  ‘Me?’ Megan said in disbelief.

  ‘You’re just the person!’

  ‘For what?’ Megan asked.

  Pilar’s eyes twinkled mischievously. ‘It isn’t long since my father died,’ she said by way of explanation. ‘My mother went to pieces and is only beginning to recover now. She wants to come and live in England—’

  ‘It’s natural she should want to be with her own people,’ Megan interposed.

  ‘She hasn’t got any!’ Pilar said cheerfully. ‘Only us!’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Megan, more mystified than ever.

  ‘Anyway, Carlos says she’ll only be more miserable than ever on her own and it’s so difficult moving money about from one country to another. She might not be comfortable or able to have all she wants, or she won’t be able to find a maid, or something devastating like that, and then what would she do?’

  Megan blinked. ‘A maid?’ she repeated.

  ‘You see,’ Pilar went on sagely, ‘if she had lived all her life in England, she would be used to managing things in the English way, but she’s been living in Spain for twenty years! Papa simply doted on her, of course, and she never had to lift a finger in the house. Now, I don’t suppose she’d know how!’

  ‘Oh,’ said Megan again.

  ‘Carlos says—’ Pilar began, and stopped. ‘No, I’d better not say that. Carlos will want to tell you himself. I wasn’t sure when he first said he’d met you, but now I’ve seen you, I’m all for the idea! Mama will love it!’

  ‘Love what?’ Megan asked blankly.

  ‘Carlos will tell you!’ Pilar said mysteriously. She looked curiously about her. ‘How did you meet Carlos? He wouldn’t tell me anything about how you met! Not that he ever tells me anything anyway.’

  Megan was amused. ‘I don’t suppose he tells anyone much,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ Pilar agreed bitterly. ‘If you’re going upstairs to change, may I come with you?’

  It was Megan’s first experience of the Spanish habit of doing everything together. Pilar sat on her bed and admired her possessions as naturally as if she had known her all her life. Megan, who was used to doing things on her own, soon began to realise that Pilar, on the other hand, was hardly ever alone. If she went out, her mother or a friend accompanied her. If she visited another member of her family, someone would take her and collect her or, on the rare occasions when she used public transport, the entire family would turn out to buy her ticket and to cheer her on her way, providing chocolates and magazines and other tokens of affection, no matter how short the journey.

  ‘What are you going to wear?’ Pilar asked curiously, obviously dying to peek into Megan’s wardrobe.

  ‘I haven’t much here,’ Megan answered.

  ‘No?’ Pilar sounded surprised. ‘Then where are all your clothes?’

  ‘In London. I share a bed-sitter with another girl.’

  ‘By yourself?’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Megan.

  ‘Carlos would never allow me to live anywhere but at home,’ Pilar sighed. ‘I think you are very lucky!’

  Megan smiled. ‘I suppose so,’ she said uncertainly. ‘It’s a bit lonely sometimes. The girl-friend I share with does temporary work and she’s away almost as much as she’s there.’

  ‘But you must get lonely!’ Pilar exclaimed sympathetically. ‘Perhaps you have your family nearby?’

  Megan shook her head. ‘I have another school friend who lives a couple of streets away, but—’ She trailed off, not knowing quite how to explain about Alice and her own natural reluctance to visit her very often.

  ‘She is
affianced, I expect?’ Pilar put in.

  ‘Something like that,’ Megan agreed thankfully.

  Pilar gave her a naughty look. ‘Ah! You do not approve of her, but you like her a little. Do your parents know? Mine would blow a fuse if they knew I was going about with anyone like that!’

  Megan couldn’t help laughing. ‘I don’t know if they know or not,’ she admitted.

  ‘Life is very unfair.’ Pilar went on with feeling. ‘Carlos knows many people, women, who are not quite respectable, but he doesn’t allow me to know any at all!’

  ‘How do you know that he knows them?’ Megan asked, a little put out that Carlos should have another standard for himself than the one he applied to other people.

  ‘I know!’ Pilar replied unanswerably. ‘Women gossip—you know how it is! Wives hear things from their husbands and soon we all know! Many of my mother’s friends would like to marry their daughters to Carlos, so all his affairs are reviewed often. Mama finds it very amusing because they used to do exactly the same when Papa’s first wife died. Only then she didn’t know that he was going to marry her, you understand. She thought he would marry someone important again, like Carlos’ mother, but he fell in love with her.’

  Megan struggled into the dress of her choice, a soft woollen dress of palest apricot that looked well with her light brown hair.

  ‘I suppose Carlos will marry someone important too?’ she suggested, pulling at the waist to make it sit better.

  ‘Absolutamente si! Carlos is very proud. Mama teases him a little about it, but I think she likes it really. Carlos is the image of Papa, much more like him than any of us.’

  ‘How many brothers and sisters have you?’ Megan asked.

  ‘Besides Carlos, there is Pepe, who is in South America, and Isabel, and me. Isabel is seventeen, I am nearly nineteen, and Pepe is twenty-one.’

  Megan swallowed. ‘There must be quite a gap between him and Carlos?’ she queried. ‘He looks much older!’

  ‘Nearly thirty,’ Pilar confirmed. She gave Megan an appreciative look, admiring her typically English looks. ‘Do you always wear your hair that way? In Spain, we seldom wear it loose like that, unless we are very young. I like it. It suits you very well. But you know that! Heaps of people will have told you so!’

  ‘Hardly anyone,’ Megan said a little sadly. ‘They’ll be wondering where we are. Shall we go downstairs?’

  Pilar danced down the stairs with eager steps, almost colliding with her brother in the hall.

  ‘Carlos!’ she exclaimed, well pleased. ‘See how pretty Megan looks in this dress? Will you tell her now?’

  The Spaniard looked up the stairs towards Megan, his eyes dark and enigmatic. ‘Did you borrow the dress?’ he asked her. ‘It seems a little big for you.’

  Megan made a face. ‘I must have lost weight in the last few weeks,’ she admitted.

  He shook his head at her. ‘You are too thin,’ he told her abruptly.

  She froze, her head held high. ‘I don’t think that’s any business of yours!’

  He put up a hand and guided her down the last few stairs so that she had to give up the advantage she had had of looking down on him. Now he could look down on her.

  ‘Let’s go into the sitting room,’ he said gently.

  ‘You are going to ask her now!’ Pilar crowed happily. ‘Oh, Carlos, may I come too? I want to see her face when you tell her! It’s such a brilliant idea!’

  ‘No, you may not,’ the Spaniard said firmly. To Megan’s surprise, Pilar didn’t press the point, but went meekly away towards the kitchen where Megan could hear her mother preparing the lunch.

  ‘I don’t know why you have to be so secretive,’ Megan said crossly. ‘I think it’s rather silly, if you want to know!’

  ‘I wanted to be sure that my stepmother would like you,’ he answered callously. ‘It was hard to tell last night. She would have to approve of you first, but as Pilar likes you, she will be well disposed towards you.’

  Megan bit her lip. She longed to tell him that the approval or otherwise of his family meant nothing at all to her, but something prevented her. She wished that somehow Carlos had met her under other circumstances, circumstances that she could be proud of, instead of the shame that gripped her whenever it was mentioned, not, she thought, because it had been Tony who had kissed her, but because it had been this Spaniard, with his funny, old-fashioned ideas, who had discovered her being kissed by Tony.

  ‘Pilar says her mother wants to live in England,’ she put in hastily, hoping to turn the conversation away from herself.

  Carlos dismissed the idea with a gesture. ‘It crossed her mind, but she sees that it is impracticable,’ he said firmly. ‘How often would she see her family, with all of them living in Barcelona? She would die of loneliness! No, I have told her that she will be better off living in the family houses in Mallorca. There are enough English people there for her to feel at home,’ he added dryly, ‘and I have promised that she shall have an English companion.’

  ‘But won’t her daughters be with her?’ Megan objected.

  ‘They have to finish their education. They will stay with an aunt in Barcelona for the next year. I shall be able to keep an eye on them because I am there a good deal myself.’

  ‘But your mother—’

  ‘My stepmother is English.’ Carlos looked suddenly amused. ‘Actually she is not at all English! She depended completely on my father and now that he is gone she doesn’t know what to do with herself! She has very little of this independence that the English admire in their women.’

  Megan stole a look at him to see if he was joking, but he looked perfectly serious. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked uneasily.

  ‘I want you to go to Mallorca with my stepmother, to look after her and keep her company, until Pilar and Isabel are free to live with her. She will not be so lonely if she has someone young around the house and, for you, it will be a pleasant place in which to grow into a woman—’

  ‘I won’t do it!’

  His eyebrows rose. ‘You have not considered—’

  ‘No! You haven’t considered!’ Megan said passionately. ‘I’m a singer, not a—a maid of all work! I want to sing!’

  Carlos looked severe and his eyes were full of disapproval. ‘It is unlikely that any of the young men you meet will be any more interested in your voice than that Tony of yesterday was,’ he said dryly.

  ‘I might have known that you’d say something beastly!’ Megan stormed at him, her colour high.

  ‘It is the truth,’ he went on in the same, clipped tones. ‘This singing can have no importance in your life, Megan. In time you will marry and have children. What use will your singing in places like the Witch’s Cauldron be to you then?’

  ‘It’s important to me!’ Megan declared. ‘There are other places! They aren’t all like the Witch’s Cauldron!’

  His lips twitched. ‘With you cast as the Witch?’

  She was hurt. ‘I wasn’t!’

  ‘No, you looked very young. Too young to be trying to sing sophisticated songs to such people.’ He looked squarely into her eyes, forcing her to meet his eyes by sheer force of will. ‘Did you like to know the thoughts that were going through their heads about you?’ he demanded ruthlessly.

  Megan swallowed, unable to reply.

  ‘Well?’ he pressed her.

  ‘No,’ she admitted. ‘But why should you make a job for me? I’m nothing to you!’

  Carlos grinned. ‘I am sure Pilar has told you already that you are the answer to our united prayers,’ he said with sudden humour. ‘My stepmother is no sinecure, I can assure you of that. So you will go to Mallorca and be kind to her?’

  Megan stared at him, searching for the right words with which to refuse him in a way he couldn’t possibly misunderstand, because of course she wasn’t going to do anything of the sort!

  ‘If you want me to,’ she said.

  CHAPTER III

  Megan could have bitten out her tong
ue.

  ‘I—I mean—’

  ‘Muy bien! It is all settled, then? Naturally, I shall pay your salary in whichever currency you prefer. You may prefer half in pesetas and half in sterling? You will not need much money in Mallorca. My stepmother is still in mourning—she is old-fashioned in these ways—and does not go out a great deal.’

  ‘I see,’ said Megan.

  ‘I hope you will not find it dull. Pilar and Isabel will be there for their holidays, but otherwise there will not be a great deal for you to do.’

  Megan listened to him explaining exactly what she would be called upon to do, her mind racing as she wondered whatever could have induced her to have given way to him. She was secretly amused, too, that he should be so concerned that she might be bored. Didn’t he know, she wondered, how lonely it could be in the heart of swinging London, when you knew few people and had very little money?

  ‘We have two houses in Mallorca,’ he went on. ‘One is in Palma itself, just off the Plaza Santa Eulalia, in the Calle Morey. It is a typical Mallorcan house and my stepmother is fond of it. She and my father spent some of their honeymoon there. The other house is on the east side of the island. We grow almonds and export them and this house is in the centre of the orchards.’ His expression relaxed a little. ‘You are fortunate to be going at this time of year,’ he said gently. ‘The blossom is very fine in the early part of February.’

  ‘Is your stepmother already there?’ Megan asked him.

  ‘She goes there tomorrow,’ he answered.

  ‘How soon can you be ready to join her?’

  Megan shrugged. She thought of saying that after all, she didn’t want to go, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it.

  ‘I—I can be ready as soon as I’ve packed,’ she said instead. ‘Most of my things are in London, but I can go and get them tomorrow.’

  ‘Fine. I shall collect you on Tuesday, the day after tomorrow. There will be no difficulty in getting a seat on a plane at this time of year. I shall telephone my stepmother tonight and tell her that you are coming.’

  He stood up, offering her his hand to clinch their bargain. Reluctantly, she put her hand in his, wishing that he didn’t make her feel quite so young and foolish. To her surprise, he didn’t shake her hand as she had expected, but raised it to his lips, kissing it lightly.