by Anne Weale
Tonight, as it had been earlier, his style of dress was casual—designer jeans and a blazer over a dark blue shirt, the button-down collar unbuttoned at the neck. From the open collar of his shirt down to his polished black loafers he could have been an Ivy League American, a member of the French gratin or of almost any élite social group the world over.
From the neck up he could only be Spanish. Those fiery black eyes, the aquiline nose and haughty cheekbones had their origins in the time when the great redwalled fortress overlooking Granada had encapsulated what had been then the world’s most advanced civilisation.
The Moors, who had built the Alhambra and the ancient part of the city where Cassia lived, had eventually been driven out. But they had bequeathed to the Spanish not only some of their knowledge of science, philosophy and art, but also their exotic dark looks.
Somewhere, far back in the lineage of the tall man now crossing the lobby in the direction of the bar, there had to be a link with the Moors who had dominated Spain for hundreds of years.
Half an hour later the Marqués and Isa emerged from the bar, and she went to the ladies’ cloakroom, crossing the lobby with an arrogant, hip-swinging walk copied from the catwalk strut of the supermodels.
It was early January, and although the day had been sunny and warm, at this time of year the nights were cold. The Marqués was carrying his girlfriend’s fur jacket for her. Cassia recognised it as wolf fur, presumably made from the pelts of animals bred in the wild. The thought of their suffering after they had been trapped would have stopped her buying and wearing such a coat, even if she could have afforded it.
But in Spain furs were much in evidence during the winter months, when parts of the country were under snow and the wind blowing over the high sierras was often bitterly cold. Guests passing through the lobby were frequently swathed in luxurious, ankle-length mink coats.
She was waiting for Isa Sanchez to re-emerge from the cloakroom when the Marqués suddenly swung round and walked towards her.
‘Still on duty, señorita? You work long hours. Do you live in the hotel?’
Surprised that he should take the trouble to speak to her, she shook her head. ‘But I don’t have far to go home, señor.‘
Switching to English, he said, ‘I think you’re British, aren’t you?’ Before she could reply, he went on, ‘It’s your beautiful skin and your eyes which give the game away. Your Spanish is very nearly perfect. You can even roll your Rs to the manner born…an astonishing accomplishment for a Brit.’ He smiled at her. ‘If you don’t mind my saying so, most of your compatriots are hopelessly bad linguists.’
‘I’m afraid so,’ she agreed, trying not to show her amazement, not only at his compliments but at his command of English. If her Spanish was nearly perfect, his English was perfect.
She had heard that in Jerez de la Frontera, the home of sherry, the children of families whose wealth derived from the wine had always had English nannies and, in times gone by, English governesses. But she couldn’t believe that a nanny could have taught him the flawless and idiomatic English he spoke now. Perhaps his amorous conquests had included an English girl.
‘How long have you lived in Spain?’ he asked.
Isa appeared at his elbow. ‘Come on, Simón…I’m hungry.’
He turned to her, holding out the jacket. As the Spanish girl put her evening bag on the counter, and turned her back in order to slip her bare arms into the satin-lined sleeves, they were both given a view of her beautiful bra-less bosom inside the low décolletage of the velvet dress. For the Marqués, being taller and closer to her, it must have been even more revealing than Cassia’s glimpse of his amiguita’s ripe golden breasts.
As Isa picked up her bag she flashed a brief glance at Cassia, in which the English girl read the arrogant condescension of a glamorous playgirl with a ten-out-of-ten escort for one of the world’s little people.
‘Let’s go!’ Smiling gaily at the Marqués, the Spanish girl flashed her teeth, snapped her fingers and did a brief, sexy shimmy. ‘I want to eat and dance.’
‘Just as long as you remember that tomorrow, at eight, no later, we leave for the ski-slopes. If you aren’t up, I’ll leave you behind.’
Although the Spaniard spoke lightly, there could be no doubting that he meant it.
‘Why must we start so early?’ Her tone was faintly petulant.
‘Because that’s why we’re here…to ski. Not for the discos.’ Turning to Cassia, he said, ‘Goodnight, señorita.‘
Watching them walk away, she was surprised that he had remembered to wrap up their conversation with a courteous goodnight.
Then she heard Isa ask, ‘What were you talking to her about?’
Whatever the Marqués replied was drowned by the conversation of a group of people descending the staircase.
Many foreigners who came to Granada were nervous of venturing into the Albaicín district unescorted. They felt safer going there with a tour group, or on a minibus excursion which would take them to selected vantage points without the risk of having their pockets picked or their bags snatched.
In fact, the modern part of Granada was no more dangerous than any big city anywhere, and the Albaicín was safe enough during the day. At night it was not advisable for lone tourists to wander there. After working late, even Cassia went home by taxi rather than on foot. As she had her main meals at the hotel, the apartment was now a place where she only slept and had breakfast.
The following morning, wrapped in a warm wool dressing-gown and wearing a pair of gaudy, plaidpatterned carpet slippers bought at the Saturday market in the Plaza Larga, she took her breakfast onto the little roof terrace from which her father John Browning had painted dozens of pictures of the Alhambra’s towers and battlements silhouetted against the snowy peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
It had to be one of the world’s most magical views, especially at sunrise and sunset, or on a hot summer night with a full moon riding the sky. Sometimes Cassia thought that she must be crazy to be planning to leave this beautiful place for the cloudy skies and long, cold winters of northern Europe.
But her father’s lease on the apartment was running out, and the owner wouldn’t renew it. Nor could she find another apartment nearby. To live amid the noise and air pollution of the modern city was not an attractive prospect. The alternative was to go to England and find out if that was where she really belonged.
After breakfast she had a quick shower. Then, wearing a Turkish bathrobe which had belonged to John Browning, she started to make up her face. It didn’t take long. Apart from using a sunblock to shield her fine, creamy skin from sun damage, and spending five minutes on her eyelids and lips, she didn’t go in for the sort of complicated maquillage she had seen on Isa Sanchez the night before. Her eyes had been works of art, and her mouth outlined, rouged and glossed to look like the petals of some rare and exquisite orchid.
‘It’s your beautiful skin and your eyes which give the game away. Your Spanish is very nearly perfect.’
The Marqués’s startling compliment echoed in Cassia’s mind as she dabbed blobs of sunblock on her forehead and cheeks. Did her skin deserve such an accolade? Being fair, it was finer in texture than the olive skins of most Spanish women, but it wouldn’t necessarily wear as well as their oilier complexions. And surely grey eyes were a common feature among all the Western nations?
She was forced to conclude that the Spanish lord’s compliments carried as little weight as the term guapa, applied to girl babies regardless of whether they really were pretty infants.
She was due on duty at eight, but arrived a quarter of an hour early. The lobby was full of people in colourful ski-suits, some with the ski-passes called taquillas clipped to their jackets or on wristbands, many with goggles round their necks and carrying heavy ski-boots. Perhaps the Marqués and Isa had already left for Pradollano, the complex serving the pistas.
Annoyed with herself, Cassia realised that the reason she was here ahead of time was that she had hoped to catc
h sight of them before they went off for the day.
She was on the telephone, taking down the name and address of someone who wanted to book a room for the following month, when she saw the Marqués coming down the staircase. He was wearing a black salopette—the close-fitting, chest-high trousers held up by shoulder straps favoured by the most active skiers. He was carrying a discreet black and grey ski-jacket, and at present the upper part of his body was clad only in a bright, coral-coloured T-shirt, with a cotton scarf of the same colour knotted round his throat. His brown arms were bare to the point where the swell of powerful muscles was visible between elbow and shoulder.
Without glancing towards the reception desk he crossed the lobby to the newspaper kiosk. Moments later Isa appeared on the staircase, stifling a yawn. She was wearing a shimmery pale yellow all-in-one ski-suit with a deeper yellow peaked cap, and yellow hoops in her ears.
The Marqués came away from the kiosk with several women’s magazines which he handed over to Isa, presumably for her to read on the drive to Pradollano. Perhaps he didn’t find her conversational abilities matched her talents in other directions.
Watching them leaving the hotel, Cassia suppressed a sigh. She had always longed to try skiing. But, even though they lived within an hour’s bus ride of the slopes, the cost of hiring the necessary equipment had been beyond their means. Besides, her father hadn’t been interested and would never have allowed her to try the sport on her own.
In the middle of the afternoon the switchboard operator rang through to Reception.
‘Cassia, the Marqués de Mondragón is on the line. He’s asking for Señor Alvarez, but I know he’s having a family party for his wife’s birthday today. I don’t want to disturb them unless it’s essential. Can I put him through to you?’
‘Of course.’ As she waited to be connected Cassia was aware of an involuntary quiver of excitement. ‘You have a problem, Excellency?’
‘Señorita Sanchez has hurt herself,’ the deep voice said in her ear. ‘Nothing serious. Another novice cannoned into her on the nursery slopes. They both fell over and got their skis in a tangle. I think it’s merely a sprain, but rather than taking her to the first-aid clinic up here I’d like the hotel doctor to look at her. Can you arrange for him to be there when we get back to the hotel in about forty-five minutes?’
‘Certainly, señor. We have an excellent doctor on call. He has a lot of experience in dealing with skiing injuries.’
‘Good.’ Instead of ringing off, he said, ‘You’re the British girl I spoke to last night. What’s your name?’
‘Cassia Browning, señor.’
‘Any relation to Robert Browning, the poet?’
‘I shouldn’t think so.’
‘But you know his work?’
‘Of course.’
‘Unusual!’ was his reply. ‘Most girls of your age have only heard of pop stars.’ And then he did ring off.
After she had alerted the hotel’s doctor Cassia returned to the novel she had been reading when the Marqués arrived the day before. But it didn’t hold her attention, which kept switching to Isa Sanchez’s accident.
Such mishaps were common on the nursery slopes, before the beginners learnt control. According to Señor Alvarez, now that skiing was the sport of the masses all ski-resorts everywhere were too crowded for comfort and safety. He always advised guests at the Castillo not to go skiing on Saturdays and Sundays, when the granadinos were out in force. A few years ago even the king, Don Juan Carlos, himself an expert skier, had been in collision with a schoolboy learner.
The week before, a Swedish guest at the hotel had chipped a bone in her shoulder, and had had to spend the rest of her holiday with her arm in a sling. It might be that Isa Sanchez had also been put out of action. If she had, Cassia wondered if the Marqués would change his plans and keep her company, or leave her behind while he went skiing on his own. If she was a beginner and he an experienced skier, they wouldn’t have seen much of each other anyway. Most of the difficult red and black pistas used by the experts were a long way from the nursery slopes. Perhaps today, being the first day, he had returned to have lunch with her.
The doctor was waiting in the lobby when the sleek car with the Madrid registration glided up to the entrance, and a porter pushed a wheelchair down the ramp provided for disabled guests. When Señorita Sanchez was wheeled into the lobby, her smeared mascara showed that she had been crying. Cassia wondered if she was in great pain, or if the Marqués had been unsympathetic, even impatient with her. He didn’t look as if he would have much time for weaker beings, especially if their shortcomings interfered with his enjoyment.
About fifteen minutes later the doctor returned to the lobby. Normally in Señor Alvarez’s absence he would have dealt with the assistant manager. But as he was away on his honeymoon the doctor spoke to Cassia.
‘The young lady has wrenched the muscles of her inner thigh. A few days’ rest is the cure. I’ll look in on her tomorrow.’
Presently Cassia wrote a brief report of the incident to give to the other receptionist, who today was replacing her at four. In spite of his family party, it was likely that during the evening the manager would ring up and expect to be informed of any untoward events. It was his obsessive attention to every aspect of the running of the Castillo that had put it ahead of its rivals.
Just before she went off duty she was summoned to the housekeeper’s room.
‘As tomorrow’s your morning off, I thought you might like these flowers to take to the cemetery,’ Señora Ortiz said kindly, indicating the florist’s basket on her desk. ‘They were only delivered the day before yesterday, but the lady they were sent to didn’t want to take them with her.’
All the flowers in the public rooms were supplied and refreshed by Granada’s best florist, but those left over from special occasions or discarded by guests were one of the housekeeper’s perks, sometimes shared with her minions.
‘That’s very kind of you, señora. They’re lovely.’
‘It gets dark early at this time of year. Why not take them home and enjoy them yourself tonight? You can take them to your father in the morning.’
The quickest way from the hotel to the Albaicín quarter was by the wooded road passing the Alhambra. Restfully shady in the heat of high summer, this afternoon the tall trees cast gloomy shadows. An elderly vagrant who frequented the area, muttering to himself, glowered at Cassia as she passed him, and she felt very conscious of the abyss separating him from the hotel guest from whom she had inherited the flowers she was carrying.
She was halfway down the hill when she heard a whistle of the kind meant to call attention. Turning, she was astonished to see the Marqués loping towards her.
‘I thought it was you by the bow in your hair,’ he said, catching up with her. ‘I’m going down to find a pharmacy. The doctor has prescribed a gel for my friend to rub on her sprained leg.’
‘We could have sent someone to fetch it for you,’ she said.
‘I needed some more air and exercise. Let me carry that for you?’ He took over the basket of flowers. ‘You said you hadn’t far to go home, but isn’t there a bus you could catch? This is a dismal walk, and I just passed a drunk who gave me a mouthful of abuse.’
‘He doesn’t swear if you say good afternoon to him. He must be very unhappy, poor old fellow.’
‘No doubt his troubles are of his own making,’ the Marqués said drily.
Coming from someone born with a silver spoon in his mouth as well as exceptionally good looks, Cassia found his reply deeply irritating.
‘Not necessarily. Life can be hard for the strong…for the weak, impossible,’ she answered. ‘You don’t know what pressures have brought that man to his present state…and you obviously don’t care either,’ she added impulsively.
Matching his stride to her shorter steps, he looked down at her, one eyebrow raised.
Suddenly switching to English, as he had the day before, he said, ‘Do you care, Miss Brow
ning?’
‘Yes, I do. I feel very sorry for people like that. It may sometimes be their own fault that they’ve hit bottom, but not always.’
‘And what, if anything, do you do about it?’
‘Not very much,’ she admitted. ‘But at least I don’t dismiss them as garbage.’
‘Is that what you think I do?’
The truthful answer was yes, but her spurt of anger had died down, and she was becoming aware that she shouldn’t have let it flare up. He was accustomed to deference. He wouldn’t like being criticised, not even by an equal, and much less by an inferior.
‘For all I know, you may be exceedingly generous to the poor and the misfits,’ she said quietly. ‘How is Miss Sanchez feeling? What bad luck for her to be hurt on her first day here.’
‘She would have done better to spend the days shopping,’ he said. ‘But she was keen to learn…or at least to have a reason to dress up in the last word in designer ski-kit. I left her in the care of an instructor and came back at lunchtime to find her a casualty. Do you ski, Miss Browning?’
‘No, I don’t.’
If her reply surprised him, in view of the nearness of the Sierra Nevada, he didn’t query the reason for it, but repeated his question of the night before. ‘How long have you lived here?’
‘In Granada—four years. In Spain—since I was fifteen.’
‘How long ago is that?’
‘I’m twenty-two. Before we came here we lived on the seaward side of the Sierra. Then my father became ill and needed complicated hospital treatment so we moved here. Unfortunately he died. I’ll be leaving Spain soon. There are many things I shall miss. Which is your favourite part of Spain?’
‘It depends on my mood. Sometimes I like Madrid. Sometimes I like Galicia…even though it rains a lot there. Even Extramadura, so arid and parched in the summer, can be beautiful in the spring. I like most parts of my country…but sometimes I want to get out of it and enjoy other places. Where are you going when you leave here?’
