The Dragon's Cave

by Isobel Chace

  His lips touched her face briefly and then clung to her lips. The tears welled up in her eyes and brimmed over, adding a salty flavour to the kiss. Megan gasped and struggled urgently against him, but his arms only held her the tighter until she could scarcely breathe. With a murmur of surrender, she came closer to him, aware only of the burning excitement within her. ‘Alma mia!’ he whispered.

  Megan wrenched herself away from him, smiling tremulously as she did so. ‘I think I am too young after all,’ she said. ‘I was right, you should have brought Inez with you.’

  Carlos put his hands on her shoulders and gave her a little shake. ‘Have it your way, hija—for now. You can’t play around with the fire of the dragon’s breath, though, and not expect to be changed. But I can wait. I can wait a long, long time, queridissima!’

  ‘It was the dragon’s breath, wasn’t it?’ she almost pleaded with him. ‘It—it was only flirting! I don’t think you ought to kiss me any more,’ she added quaintly. ‘I didn’t like it.’

  ‘Oh, Megan! Little liar! I have only to whisper enamorada, amanta—’

  The colour rushed into her cheeks. ‘But it doesn’t mean anything!’ she said in a suffocated whisper.

  He sighed. ‘Perhaps you are too young after all,’ he agreed stiffly. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you.’

  Megan winced just as if he had hit her. ‘Please take me home!’ she burst out.

  He put a hand under her chin, forcing her to look at him. ‘What do you want, Megan? Someone like your Tony who will never stand on his own feet as long as he lives? Even he frightened you, if you remember!’

  ‘I told you, he was angry. He wouldn’t kiss me against my will just for the fun of it!’

  ‘No?’ he asked sardonically.

  ‘No.’ She swallowed. ‘He’d ask—’

  He shrugged his shoulders, losing all patience with her. ‘If you want to be asked, my dear, you are younger than I thought! If I want your kisses, I’ll take them, with or without your consent. Between a man and a woman, any man worth his salt is the master! You’d do well to remember that!’

  ‘But it isn’t between a man and a woman!’ The tears were coming fast and furiously now. Megan sniffed desperately, but nothing seemed to make her feel any better. ‘It isn’t like that with us!’

  His expression was hard and unyielding. She peeped at him through her tears and then wished that she hadn’t. He was as hard as granite and he had only to touch her and she would be lost for ever. Silently, he handed her a handkerchief and watched her as she made a pathetic attempt to blow her nose and halt the humiliating tears that streamed down her face.

  ‘I’m sorry!’ she said.

  He smiled. ‘If you cry any harder you’ll put the dragon’s fire out once and for all!’

  Megan felt completely wretched. ‘I might have known you’d say something horrid!’

  ‘Wasn’t that the idea?’

  She sniffed. ‘What was the idea?’

  ‘To damp down the fire,’ he drawled.

  ‘Oh, I hate you!’

  ‘Wasn’t it the idea?’

  ‘No! I don’t know! No, of course it wasn’t! I never cry! Only, when I do, I can’t stop! It’s got nothing to do with you anyway!’

  She saw that he was laughing at her and she became crosser than ever, shredding his handkerchief between angry fingers. He took it from her, putting it back into his pocket.

  ‘Besides,’ Megan went on, feeling suddenly better, ‘I don’t believe in dragons.’

  Carlos grinned. ‘You can see the skin of ours, any time you want to, in the museum,’ he told her.

  ‘But not running around free!’

  ‘Didn’t you feel his breath against your cheek?’ he asked her.

  She thought of denying that she had felt anything at all. He couldn’t know how she had felt, or about the burning excitement that his touch aroused inside her!

  ‘Lots of people kiss and forget,’ she said.

  His eyes held hers for a long moment. ‘Will you forget?’

  Megan refused to answer. Then she said, ‘I don’t think talking about dragons is much excuse for—for kissing on the side!’

  His laughter was very disturbing. ‘Are you saying that you enjoyed it after all?’ he demanded.

  She held her head high, refusing to meet his dark, leaf-green eyes. ‘I don’t think it’s at all gallant of you to ask,’ she reproved him. ‘Not that I expect you to be gallant!’ she added darkly. ‘And I wish you wouldn’t look at me like that!’

  A smile played round his lips. ‘I’ll look at you in any way I like,’ he drawled.

  The sun was in their eyes as they drove back to Palma. The glaring light hit the windscreen, almost blinding them. It was particularly difficult to see the home-going carts as they drove slowly along the main road, clip-clopping their way down the middle of the road. Carlos drove in silence, concentrating all his attention on the road ahead of him. Megan tried to do the same, but her thoughts refused to follow the line she was pushing them along, coming back again and again to the moment when Carlos had kissed her.

  ‘Inez says there is a fan museum near here,’ she said aloud.

  ‘A very fine one,’ Carlos agreed. ‘Do you want to see it?’

  She shook her head. ‘I’ll come with Inez. She has a collection of them herself which she has promised to show me some time.’

  ‘Then she must certainly show you the fan museum,’ he said dryly.

  She cast a swift look beneath her eyelashes. ‘I can imagine Inez using a fan, can’t you? She has such pretty movements.’ She sighed. ‘I wouldn’t know what to do with it!’

  ‘You must get Margot to teach you!’

  ‘Does she use a fan?’ Megan couldn’t have said why she was so surprised, but she had never thought of anyone but a Spanish-born lady mastering the intricate art of opening and shutting a fan in a single satisfying, rustling movement. ‘I’ve never seen her with one.’

  ‘It’s the winter now,’ he said. ‘In the summer it’s a different story when everyone is trying to keep cool. All the young men will vie with each other to present you with a fan of your own then.’

  She refrained from pointing out that she didn’t know any young men in Majorca, let alone any who would want to give her anything.

  ‘I think I’ll ask Inez for one of hers,’ she said.

  He shrugged. ‘Just as you like.’

  Only it wasn’t as she liked! If she had what she liked, she knew exactly how it would be. Carlos himself would give her a fan, the most beautiful fan in the whole of Spain! And she would know from instinct how to use it, to flatter him with it, and flirt with him a little, and make him aware of herself as a mature, fully grown up woman who would know just as well as Inez how to please him! She gave herself a little shake, dismissing the dream. A strong dose of hard reality was what she needed, she thought, and that brought her back to Inez.

  ‘Have you kissed her often?’ she wanted to know, and was horrified to hear herself asking.

  ‘Kissed whom?’ he said. His voice was very withdrawn and she wished more than ever that she hadn’t said anything at all.

  ‘I-Inez.’

  ‘There’s only one thing that I never do,’ he began, his voice so remote that she thought she would never be warm again.

  ‘What’s that?’ she asked inevitably. The glare from the sun was hurting her eyes, but in a funny way she was glad of it.

  ‘I never kiss and tell,’ he said.

  Megan didn’t see Carlos once in the next three days. It was hard to believe that this was coincidence, seeing that they were both living under the same roof, so she could only think that he was avoiding her. She tried to persuade herself that he wasn’t angry with her and that she had behaved better when he had taken her over to the farm than she knew she had. If she had had to be so young and silly, she chided herself frequently, why had she had to bring Inez into it? That had been the one unforgivable thing! That had been why he had avoided her ever sin
ce!

  In a half-hearted sort of way, Megan had tried to find out where Tony’s band was playing, but there were no notices to be seen in Palma that mentioned his name and she was beginning to think that she had dreamed that he was in Majorca. But then, on the third day, Inez came to call.

  ‘Megan, I have had a brilliant idea!’ the Spanish girl squealed excitedly, not even pausing to sit down. ‘You know that my father is in the tourist business? I must have told you so! Well, he has a small hacienda in the country, on the way to Valldemosa, where he holds barbecues for those who wish to come. It is a very good evening, I can tell you. But, mire, there is always a dance that goes on until midnight after the people have eaten. And—’ Her voice reached a new peak of excitement—‘at the moment, we have an English group making the music!’

  Megan’s professional interest was aroused. ‘Do they have a singer?’ she enquired.

  Inez shrugged. ‘I haven’t heard them yet,’ she said. ‘That is what I was thinking about. We shall go this evening and hear them play and, if everything goes well, you can sing with them!’

  ‘Do you think so?’ Megan said doubtfully.

  ‘Why not? They are English, I am telling you, so you may already know them?’

  Megan swallowed. ‘You don’t happen to know—?’

  ‘Tony!’ Inez produced in triumph. ‘That is Antonio, no? Tony Starlight!’ She smiled suddenly, her eyes dancing with amusement. ‘My father says they are not very good, but he thinks the tourists will like them because they make a great deal of noise!’ Megan sank into the nearest chair, her knees feeling suddenly weak and unable to support her.

  ‘I should have to ask Senora Vallori,’ she began, trying to still the flustered excitement that rose within her.

  ‘I will ask her,’ Inez decided. ‘Tia Margot never refuses me anything!’ She threw Megan another, slanting smile. ‘I’ll tell her not to mention it to Carlos,’ she added. ‘He doesn’t approve of women going to a place of entertainment unescorted and if he came too, he wouldn’t allow you to sing!’

  ‘No, he wouldn’t,’ Megan agreed. The thought of his displeasure made her tremble. ‘Though he has no authority over me!’

  Inez drew in her breath sharply. ‘But you would not defy him, if he was there, would you?’ she asked in awe.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Megan admitted.

  ‘Then you have never seen him angry! I would never dare to provoke his anger, not even Tia Margot says anything to him when he is angry. My mother says that once, when Carlos was a boy, he nearly killed Tia Margot in one of his rages. My mother knew his mother and she says Tia Margot should have known better than to disparage her. My mother says that if Tia Margot had gone about it the right way, she could have twisted Carlos around her little finger, but now it is too late. He gives her everything she asks for, of course, but he has never given lovingly to anyone. Perhaps now he never will!’

  ‘When he marries—’ Megan began, but Inez stopped her with a look.

  ‘He will be kind to his wife,’ the Spanish girl opined realistically. ‘She will be a fortunate woman to be married to such a man, but Carlos will never give in to any woman. It is she who will have to give everything to him.’

  Megan frowned. It didn’t seem to her that Inez would take second place to the man she married She would want to be spoilt and petted, just as she was by her own family.

  ‘I think he’d love her very much,’ she said.

  Inez laughed and pouted. ‘No, no! Carlos will be good to her, but he will never be faithful to any one woman. He will respect her because she will bear his name and his children, but his love is in the tomb with his mother.’

  ‘Inez!’

  The Spanish girl laughed, her eyes dancing. ‘It is true! But it is not the tragedy you think it to be! Which one of us would refuse to be his wife? Verdad, I can hardly wait for him to ask me!’

  ‘I suppose you’re in love with him,’ Megan said in such flat, dreary tones that she surprised herself.

  Inez shrugged. ‘A little,’ she admitted. ‘I am very easily in love! I am both pretty and healthy, so what else should I be?’

  Megan could have told her, but she didn’t. If she was so much in love with Carlos that it hurt, even to think of him, it didn’t mean that every other girl had to feel the same way, not even the girl he was going to marry.

  Margot Vallori readily gave her permission for Megan to go to the barbecue with Inez. ‘I expect your parents will be there,’ she said to Inez, ‘and that they will look after you both.’

  ‘Yes, so you mustn’t concern yourself about us if we are late home,’ Inez told her easily. ‘That’s why we don’t want you to tell Carlos where we are. We don’t want him bringing us home before we’ve begun to enjoy ourselves!’

  ‘I don’t think Carlos would want to interfere with your pleasure, Inez,’ Margot reproved her.

  Inez made a face at her. ‘Clara que no!’ she muttered sarcastically. ‘You think not, Tia?’

  Margot said nothing more on the subject. ‘If you want to, you can take my car,’ she offered. ‘Megan can drive you home, Inez, on the way back here.’

  ‘Carlos wants to see how well I drive before I go out on my own,’ Megan reminded her.

  ‘You won’t be on your own,’ Margot retorted in a voice that brooked no defiance. ‘Inez will be with you.’

  And so, with Inez in the passenger seat beside her, Megan set out to drive the few miles along the Valldemosa road to the Novidad hacienda. Inez, she thought, looked beautiful in a scarlet chiffon dress that billowed about her when she moved. She wished that her own dress had been in the same class, but she had never been able to pay the kind of money that the Spanish girl obviously did. Her own dress was a simple white shift that reached to the floor and which had cost only a few shillings as she had made it herself. Her silver evening sandals were different, however. They had been a present from her parents and she had come to look on them as her good luck charm and had worn them on every occasion she had sung in public since she had had them.

  It took all her concentration to drive Margot’s tiny Seat through the crowded streets of Palma. The tyres vibrated against the cobbles and the gears were unfamiliar and it seemed very odd to be sitting on the left-hand side of the car. A policeman whistled at her and she realised that she had not noticed him at all, bringing her stream of traffic to a halt, and that scared her. She wished that she had waited for Carlos to take her out a few times before driving alone in this seething maelstrom of traffic.

  ‘You should have turned right there,’ Inez said suddenly.

  ‘But there was no sign to Valldemosa,’ Megan protested.

  Inez shrugged her shoulders. ‘It is quicker, that is all. The sign is on the next road. You can turn there.’

  Megan obediently did as she was told, relieved beyond measure to see the traffic thinning out and a clear road ahead of her. In another few minutes they would be out of town and she would have nothing more to worry about until the journey back.

  ‘If Carlos had come with us—’ Inez began, and stopped.

  ‘Yes?’ Megan prompted her.

  ‘I was only thinking that it will be strange not to have an escort at the dance,’ Inez went on sulkily.

  ‘What will I do while you sing?’

  Megan felt suddenly cold. ‘But surely your family will be there—won’t they?’ she ended on an uncertain note that dismayed her.

  ‘My family?’ Inez shuddered at the thought. ‘No, no, my family seldom visit the barbecue. The place is very old, you understand. Of course it has all been made quite modern inside, but when there are old walls there is always damp and cold in the winter. In the summer, sometimes we all go and enjoy ourselves, watching the horses race and the flamenco dancers, but in the winter, my family never goes in the winter.’

  ‘Then who organises the barbecue?’ Megan asked.

  ‘There is a manager,’ Inez explained indifferently. She gave a sudden jump. ‘Oh, Megan! I had forgotten all
about Senor Valdez! He’s bound to tell Papa that I was at the barbecue and what will I do then?’

  ‘Perhaps he won’t notice you,’ Megan said comfortably.

  ‘Not notice me!’ Inez was more put out than Megan had ever seen her. ‘You don’t know what you are talking about! I never would have come if I had thought of him before! Papa will be very angry with me!’

  ‘But why? It isn’t so terrible,’ Megan argued. ‘It isn’t as though you will be completely alone—’

  ‘I don’t think you would be acceptable as a chaperone,’ Inez interrupted her.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘We know too little about you. Margot has told my parents a little, you may be sure, but it—Megan, why did you have to behave so badly in England?’

  The cold feeling tightened its grip around Megan’s spine. ‘What did Margot say about me?’

  ‘Only what Carlos had told her,’ Inez answered. ‘She said that you were a singer in a very bad place, and that you only sang there because you knew the man in charge very well and had influence over him. She said that Carlos says you were too young to know what you were getting into, but that you couldn’t stay in England any longer because—well, because people were talking about you. We all know that that is why you came to Mallorca! Tia Margot is very concerned about your coming. She says that Carlos will find people talking about him too, when they find that he brought you to his home, and that he thinks his name is too honourable for anyone to think that he would stoop to anything bad, but that he doesn’t know human nature!’

  Megan’s hands shook and she grasped the wheel so tightly that her knuckles showed white in the faint moonlight. She wouldn’t have believed that Carlos would have discussed her so freely if Inez’s innocent remarks hadn’t constituted proof positive. How could he? If he disapproved of her, nobody had asked him to rescue her, or to bring her to Majorca! She could imagine him arrogantly supposing that his name would cover all her misdeeds! Only there hadn’t been any misdeeds and she was not in need of his protection! In fact, if he hadn’t gossiped about her to his stepmother, nobody in Majorca would have known anything about her!