Lise rose from the dressing-stool, and she felt the flick of his eyes over her hair, which hung loose and straight to her shoulders. She raised a hand to it, defensively. 'Good morning, senor. How the sun shines! I'm still taken by surprise at the quick warmth of the Spanish sunlight.'
`You do look a trifle — surprised,' he said, and there was a slight smile upon his lips as he turned to Rienta and told her to run along because he had one or two things to discuss with his novia. This time he spoke in Spanish, unaware as yet that Lise had recovered her shaky but workable knowledge of the language. Rienta bobbed and hurried away, and he closed the door of the bedroom so he was privately enclosed with Lise whose nerves seemed alive with tiny barbs under her fair skin.
`You slept well?' His eyes left her face and skimmed the canopied bed, and that smile at the edge of his mouth seemed to deepen, as if it amused him to think of someone as slight as herself ensconced in that great double bed.
`Amazingly well,' she said, 'considering that I had so much on my mind. I must have been tired out.'
`You must indeed, senorita.' He came further into the room, treading with that silent sort of danger over the carpet, the ebony handle of his riding-stick dark against his breeches. In daylight she saw the hint of mahogany in his skin, and the steel-smooth movement of muscle in his forearms, rippling to join those in his chest and shoulders. That hint of the graceful animal allied to the natural hauteur was more than disturbing, and Lise felt herself moving back from him, until she was brought up short against the veranda windows. Her hair blazed nimbus bright as she stood there, with wide grey eyes fixed upon his darkly handsome face.
`What is the matter?' he asked. 'Are you afraid that I expect you to react like a real novia when we are alone to-
gether?'
`I understood, senor, that Latin people display decorum in all matters relating to their — affairs. Is it quite proper for us to be alone like this?'
`In your bedroom, do you mean?' There was a gleam of diablerie in his eyes, which even in daylight were so dark as to be almost black. 'In Spain we have not yet reached that stage of permissiveness so prevalent in your own country, but we have discarded the use of the duenna to a great extent. There was a time when if I had wished to speak alone with my novia, an older woman would have been present, perhaps behind a curtain, to make sure I did not presume to take my bride's virtue before the taking of our mutual vows. Which must all seem very much like the Middle Ages to a young woman of the world who drives about a strange country all on her own.'
`Meaning that if I had had someone with me, I would not have found myself in my present predicament.'
`Is it such a predicament?' He quirked a black eyebrow, and then gestured around the room with his riding-stick. `Do you not like the Dove Suite? Do you not find it far more comfortable and attractive than a rather bare, whitewashed room at a parador? Did you not enjoy your breakfast, and having a young maid to wait on you? Come! You would hardly be human, or truthful, if you denied that you found none of these things pleasurable.'
`It's the deceit involved, senor. I'm not used to it.'
`Then let us not call it a deceit but an actuality.' He tossed his whip to the bed, pushed a hand into the hip pocket of his breeches and withdrew from it a small box. Before opening the box he glanced at the portrait of his mother, and then as if something in her eyes reproached him, he took Lise by the elbow and led her out on to the veranda of the suite, where the sun was flooding over the gracious ramparts
of the castillo and over the masses of trees and plants that from this height gave the appearance of green velvet spread over the land.
Lise slipped free of his fingers and leaned against the parapet, which had a lacing of iron sewn with rambling creamy flowers.
'Do you know what they are called?' He gestured at the flowers, and she shook her head. 'They are the Chaste Jasmine which grows in our Marcos Reyes soil with a wonderful fervour. The plants were brought with my mother from the convent at Castile, and they have bloomed here at the castle ever since. They are strangely symbolic of the sort of woman she was. She was far too lovely for her family to agree that she become a nun, but that is what she wanted. However, the alliance with my father was arranged, settled, and she was not an independent British girl, but an Iberian daughter of stern and unyielding parents. She came here as a bride to a man, but she left her true self behind in the Convent of the Blessed Heart. She is there now—'
'But you said—' Lise stared at him in astonishment mixed with a certain sense of shock. 'You told me that only the Condesa and yourself are left of the Marcos Reyes family.'
'This is true, senorita. My mother was never truly a Marcos Reyes and when I came of age, and inherited all of this, my father then being dead, my mother returned to Castile and re-entered the convent. She is happy there and is doing with her life what she always felt she was meant to do. I don't blame her for the choice she made, but it means that I can see her only now and again. It also means that the Condesa and I are rather closer than might have otherwise been the case, and she is not a gentle soul like my mother. We probably have more in common. A lot of pride, temper, and self-will, and we clash on any of the main issues of life
and at the forefront is my tendency to be cautious in the taking of a wife. I know the kind of wife I want. The Condesa thinks she knows the kind of wife I need.'
He paused and opened the small square box and he gazed intently at the contents. 'What is your own interpretation of love, senorita? I feel sure you have thought about it, even as I feel certain that you have not yet been in love with a specific man.'
`I-I haven't thought all that much about it,' she denied. 'I have been more concerned with making a career for myself - that was why I came to Spain in the first place.'
`You hoped to work in Spain?' This time she had surprised him, and as she met the deep-set, alive and searching dark eyes, she felt the delayed impact of his question about love. Heavens, here she was . . . this moment was all too real, and never in her life before had she been so sensitive to the physical attraction of a man in fact she was feeling this strongly for the very first time, and she clutched at the mundane in order to offset the unusual.
`I have to be in Madrid by next week, senor. I intend to apply for a position in the sewing room of Señora Franquista's new salon which she has opened there. I have met her and—'
`You have met Franquista Valdes?' The Conde looked astounded. 'When was this, senorita?'
`When the senora visited England and several of the fashion houses in London. I was working at Nelson King, which is one of the best couturier salons in London, and Franquista came there to see a show and to meet some of the staff. I was introduced to her because I had sewn the wedding dress which was the highlight on the show, and she said that if ever I wished to work abroad I was to get in touch with her. I thought a lot about her suggestion, and when I fully realized that I was a bit fed up with the well-established routine of my job in London, I decided to accept the
offer of a job at her fashion house in Madrid. I was combining my holiday with my decision to apply for the job; seeing something of Spain in order to be sure that I wished to work here.'
`And are you sure?' Leandro de Marcos Reyes was studying her with eyes with glittered with interest and curiosity.
`I think so. It will make a great change for me to work among new surroundings, always supposing that Franquista has not changed her mind about employing an English girl in her sewing room. She was kind enough to say that I had skill and talent.'
`Did you like her?' he next asked, and it seemed to Lise that tiny brilliant lights came alight in the depths of his dark eyes, and she wasn't sure what caused them. Whether it was amusement at her earnestness, or some sort of personal emotion. She thought of the striking, camellia-skinned face of the fashion designer, the silken precision of her coiffure, the tiny dark mole beside her mouth which emphasized the fullness of her red lips. Lise had thought her very beautiful in a world
ly, Latin way, and she had heard of the scandal attached to her name in Spain. She was one of the few Latin women who had ever been divorced, and that was because she had been married to a South American whose birthplace had actually been the Argentine, where the divorce laws were not quite so strict and where he had applied for and been granted his divorce from his Spanish wife.
Lise knew that in Spain itself the beautiful Franquista was considered a very sophisticated and worldly woman .. . and looking now into the glinting eyes of the Conde, Lise had the most astounding thought. He had spoken last night of wanting to marry a worldly woman ... was it possible that he had been thinking of Franquista Valdes, the daring
divorcee who would be totally unacceptable by the Condesa de Marcos Reyes as the wife of her grandson!
`Do you know the Señora Franquista, senor?' Lise just had to ask; she had to find out if her suspicions were justified, because in a strange way the masquerade he suggested would seem less objectionable if she actually knew the strength and sincerity of his motive. Recalling the warm and vital personality of the Spanish couturier, Lise could at once believe that this very vital man loved such a woman and would find it impossible to put in her place the young, pretty, unworldly ward of his grandmother, who had probably hoped all along to bring about such an alliance.
`Yes,' he murmured, moving in his lithe and silent way towards Lise, 'I am acquainted with Franquista Valdes. She buys from us the materials for her fabulous and highly-priced garments.' He reached Lise and took firm hold of her left hand. 'It is the accepted custom in my country for a novia to be given a betrothal bracelet of gold, and I have always held the rather cynical view that the Spanish girl likes to be given a bracelet because it has more gold in it than a ring. However, as you are English I am going to put upon your hand a ring which once belonged to my mother and which she left in my care when she returned to Castile. Her own family bad ancestors who were Castilian knights, and this ring has been handed down the years to many different brides — dios, don't jerk your hand in that way, senorita. You and I know that we play a game which will never become a true reality, but if you wear this ring, then Madrecita will be convinced that I mean business.'
Lise could not move her hand as he held it, she felt both the living steel of his touch, and the golden grip of the ring as he slipped it on to the third finger of her left hand, following the English tradition of engagement rather than that of Spain, as if in this way he did not commit his true self,
the Spaniard who when he became truly engaged to the woman he loved would follow all the Latin ways and enclose her curvaceous arm in a wide golden bracelet.
The grey eyes of Lise gazed incredulously at the ring he had placed upon her finger. The golden setting was intricate as the Spanish character, and at the heart of the ring burned a dark sapphire, so densely blue and beautiful that it seemed almost alive, sending out shafts of flamy colour as the sunlight found the gem and added its rays to the glory of the
sapphire.
No!' The word broke from Lise. 'It would be blasphemy!'
'You don't like it?' His hand gripped her shoulder and seemed to bruise her bones. 'What makes you use such a word as blasphemy?'
It's a love ring!' Lise would have wrenched it off her hand, but he quickly forestalled her by grabbing hold of her right hand. `Senor, take it off, please!'
'Don't be a little fool,' he said curtly. 'Anyone would think that it was burning you. It is just a ring, a token to convince the proud, obstinate old lady whom I love that she cannot dictate to me as she did to my father. I know what she plans to do, to 'announce to the newspapers in Madrid that I am to marry her ward. Your presence here, and the presence of that ring on your hand, will stop her from. making an announcement I should either have to repudiate, or accept, and either way would be disastrous for Ana, as we call her. A repudiation of her as my future wife would be like a public slap round the face; an acceptance of her as my wife would ensure that neither of us would ever know a real moment's happiness.'
He stared down at Lise. For a marriage to work there has to be not only simpatia, which is a subtle joy of the senses meaning rather more than happiness, which on the whole is
a somewhat childish emotion, but there has to be a driving urge to be together for always. If this is absent, then it is a waste of time for a man to marry. He might as well have his affairs and remain free to give most of his energies to his work. I asked you a short while ago if you had ever thought of what love might mean — I ask you again, senorita, and your answer may explain to you, yourself, what I am attempting to explain. I like Ana. She is a pleasing child, but when I say this does it sound as if I love her unto death?'
Lise could only shake her head. 'Surely if you explained to the Condesa—'
`Madrecita is only concerned that a grandchild be placed in her arms before she dies. Ana is young, healthy, nice-looking, and in the estimation of my grandmother, reared in the old tradition, that is sufficient for a man. If he wishes for the foolishness of romance, then he must seek it outside the home, but the home is for the founding of a family, and in her words I have virility enough to build up the Marcos Reyes clan until it is once again a sprawling, robust castle community.'
`And you don't wish for that?' Lise murmured.
`Let us say I am an emancipated Spaniard, senorita. I wish to make and have joy — I never once in my boyhood and adolescence saw a sparkle of joy in my mother's eyes. She wasn't a cold woman, or too spiritual that she couldn't have been won with real love. She was a woman who had been married to a man for the same reasons that my grandmother would have me marry Ana. Would you, Lise Harding, wish to be a wife of the body rather than the heart?'
`No—' She quickly shook her head. 'I'd hate it.'
`Which means that you have given some thought to love and what it should mean.'
`I — suppose so.' Her lashes swept down, shielding her eyes from the invasion of his gaze. 'If one can say, "your words are my food, your tears my wine," then I imagine that could be called love.'
`Hunger and a little cruelty, eh?'
`Yes — love seems to me to have an element of ruthlessness in it. I — I can't visualize it as a gentle emotion. The making of love isn't gentle, is it?'
`You have made love with a man?' There was a sudden cutting edge to his voice, and Lise gave him a quick, almost shocked look.
`Heavens, no! But I'm not an innocent who believes in fairy tales, señor. I have heard of passion, and I do know that babies aren't plucked with the strawberries.'
A smile edged his lips, and then he lifted her hand and studied the sapphire ring upon it. "Have I convinced you that you will be doing a quixotic action if you wear this for me?'
`Are you certain, señor, that I can convince your grandmother that we knew each other in England? Are you sure she will believe that I am the type to capture your interest, let alone your heart?'
At once he ceased to study the ring and to study Lise instead, as she stood there in the golden Spanish sunlight, clad in a blue cotton shirt and slim-fitting slacks, her hair like pale shining rain about the fine-boned, almost elfin features of her face.
`You make quite a contrast to the Latin girl,' he said. `Madrecita will assume that it is your difference to which I am attracted, but it is the fact of you which is important to me. When she sees you, an end will be put to her little trick to force my hand with regard to Ana, and when we part it can do no real harm if I continue the pretence a while longer in your absence.'
`When you say a while longer,' Lise looked at him rather angrily, 'do you mean you are waiting – expecting your grandmother to—'
`Dios, no!' Now it was his turn to look angry. 'With care and no violent upsets Madrecita will live another decade. No, I am thinking of what will inevitably come to pass between Ana and a certain friend of mine when Ana meets you and realizes that I have no intention of making her my wife. There will be no need for words or explanations. Latin girls are reared to the idea that they must mar
ry, and I have been for the girl the nearest male object for a long time now, ever since her parents died in a train disaster and she was brought here to be raised by my grandmother, who had been godmother to Ana's mother. You understand?'
Lise nodded, and could very well understand how an impressionable young girl would, as she grew up, develop romantic ideas about the darkly handsome Conde. Lise also believed that the girl would be far more disappointed than he casually supposed, when his mythical English fiancée came suddenly to life and was introduced to her, wearing the sapphire ring which had been his mother's.
`Did you never attach a name to your make-believe novia?' she asked dryly. 'Or a description? And why pick on England to have been the place where you supposedly fell in love?'
`To answer the last question first,' he gazed down at Lise with a sardonic expression in his eyes, `Madrecita knows too many people in Madrid and other cities of Spain for it to be sensible of me to invent a Spanish novia. She would have demanded the young woman's family name and all sorts of details which would not be within her power if I said I had met a girl in England whom I hoped to make my wife. As to a name, there is no difficulty, because I always referred to you as Bonita, which means pretty, and Spanish people are
rather fond of pet names. So, señorita, are you reassured? Are you happy to help a man out in a difficulty? There are compensations with regard to the deception, and no one will be hurt by it. Ana is a romantic girl, but she is not in love with me. Madrecita is merely concerned that I settle down to my duties – and you, Lise, will have the holiday of your life before you commence work in Madrid. The job that you so wish for can be arranged without any trouble at all – as I told you, Franquista is a friend of mine.'
Lise noticed how his voice dwelt on the name, and there seemed a sudden aloofness in him as he turned from Lise to rest his hands on the parapet of the veranda and to gaze over his castle and the gardens that rambled to the cliff-like boundary walls.
The kisses and the wine Page 4
