The kisses and the wine

by Violet Winspear

  `Intimate?' He spoke the word so close to Lise's face that his breath was warm against her skin, imparting to the word a far more deeper meaning than she had meant to imply. `What do you mean, my innocent young inglesa? Are you suggesting that I would dishonour a woman I happen to love? Or that I would bother to marry a woman I could dishonour? You have a lot to learn about me, haven't you?'

  `A lot?' she gasped, straining away from him, and yet finding him illimitably stronger than she and able to gather

  her back to him as if she were no more than a few yards of fine silk. It was an experience she had never had before, the discovery that a determined man was so very much stronger than a woman. She wanted to struggle and claw and escape at any cost, but he controlled her as effortlessly as a doll with sawdust limbs.

  `You will only wear yourself out if you go on expending all this emotion and energy,' he drawled. 'You could at any time have blurted out to Madrecita that we were both frauds, but you let happen what did happen. You placed the ring on my finger, and you stood dumb as she gave us her blessing. If you hated it all so much, then why didn't you make your protest to her face? It would all be over now. You would be getting ready to leave the castle and—'

  `Oh, do stop it!' Lise broke in angrily. 'I could see what you can see each time you visit your grandmother. She puts on a good show of being the woman she probably was a few years ago, but we both felt the tremor to her hands, and saw the look of exhaustion under the rouge. She is still magnificent, but she is old and tired, and though I can't forgive you personally for the way you have involved me in your secret schemes, I can understand what drove you to the deception. If I had a grandmother like her, I might be tempted to do hateful things in order to spare her feelings. But it is a dangerous game! And I'm afraid of where it could lead!'

  `Along the path to the altar?' He gave his deep, mocking laugh and buried his fingers deep under her hair. 'Would you find marriage with me so very hateful, little one? Think of living in a castle, and having a husband who could satisfy your every whim. You would be a condesa yourself, and no longer a girl who sews fine materials for the figures of other women. You would wear those fine fabrics yourself and emerge quite a stunning little butterfly from your chrysalis

  of the duty bound.'

  `Stop it!' She twisted her head aside in an attempt to avoid his mocking eyes, and at once his fingers painfully gripped the nape of her neck and forced her into submission to his gaze. It travelled all over her face, taking in the young, pure line of her jaw and throat, made taut by the way he held her so that her skin showed its flawless texture. His gaze travelled to her ears, and to her eyes, both with a faun-slant to them, then drifted down again to her lips, the upper lip more finely drawn than the fuller lower lip.

  Abruptly he bent his head and with a kind of indolent carelessness he brushed her lips with his. She hadn't dreamed that he would go this far and the shock of the action mingled with the sensation of feeling his warm lips blending with hers.

  Young men had kissed her before, grabbing hold of her at staff parties and planting their ungainly kisses on her mouth ... but never had she known this type of expertise, this running of flame over the contours of her mouth ... this closeness of animal grace and dark, honeyed skin over the slope of Latin cheekbones. To try and blot out what was happening she closed her eyes, and as if he took this for a sign of surrender he placed his lips against her eyelids, and when she stirred wildly he took his lips to her left earlobe, and again those shock waves ran through her as she felt the bared edge of his teeth.

  `Don't!' She cried out the word, and this time he allowed her to tear herself out of his arms and he stood there, showing the glinting edge of his teeth in a smile of pure devilment, while above his eyes a strand of black hair daggered his brow.

  `Don't?' he mocked. b ut it is done, pequena. You have been kissed by me, and even if you scrub your lips and face with antiseptic, you can't wipe away so easily the memory

  of the hateful contact. Hateful, of course, from your angle. Rather enticing from mine.'

  'You're despicable!' she flung at him. 'You deceive your own grandmother and play about with other girls behind the back of the person you're supposed to be so in love with. I had been warned that Latin men were wolves, but I never dreamed that any one of them could be as bad as you.' She flung the hair back from her face, blending defiance with demand. want to leave, señor. You can tell the Condesa we had a sudden row and I returned your ring.' So saying she wrenched at the sapphire, but to her consternation it wouldn't move beyond her knuckle. The golden band clung, and the sapphire burned, and she fought to remove the ring as Leandro leaned against the wall of the stairs and watched her, his eyelids half-lowered so that his regard took on a certain look of menace.

  I was forgetful of how small was my mother's hand,' he

  said. I shouldn't do that if I were you, Lise. You are going to make the knuckle swell and then nothing short of a jeweller's knife will remove the ring.'

  'Soap will do it,' she rejoined. I shall go to my room and remove it there, and then if you will arrange to have my car fixed up, I shall be on my way.'

  I think not,' he said deliberately. 'You are committed to

  me for as long as I wish you to remain here, and if you jeopardise my grandmother's peace of mind and body in any way, then I promise that you will really learn what a Latin wolf can do to a small white lamb who has been foolhardy enough to stray from her shepherd. As for your car, it has been removed to a garage and I am informed by telephone that the spare part needed to put it back on the road will have to be sent from Madrid. It is an English make of car, remember, and isolated garages in the sierras do not stock many spare parts for the vehicles of foreign tourists. I do

  realize that European women consider the world their playground, and fancy it is stocked with only things and people to make life easier for them. But the truth is, senorita, this is Spain and a particularly out-of-the-way part of Iberia. And here I am in authority and I can make life pleasant or unpleasant for you, according to your choice.'

  He paused and stared at her with those menacingly narrowed eyes. 'Well, Miss Harding, what is your choice? That of my pampered novia, or that of a young woman who broke a promise? You did promise to do this thing for me, and I am holding you to that promise.'

  `You are pretty ruthless, Conde de Marcos Reyes,' she said gravely.

  `Yes, ruthless, but not exactly pretty,' he mocked. 'Now leave that ring alone—'

  `I wish you'd leave me alone,' she broke in, 'if only for a few hours. For heaven's sake allow me to adjust to this — this madhouse in the sierras.' A ragged little laugh escaped her. `My sister-in-law warned me I couldn't come alone to Spain and hope to avoid trouble. I had to give Audrey and my brother the slip in order to—' Lise bit her lip. 'For now you seem to have the upper hand, señor, and I admit that I'm half to blame for the predicament in which I find myself. If I co-operate, will you do the same?'

  `And what exactly does my co-operation entail?' he queried.

  `No more kissing,' she blurted. 'It isn't part of the bargain, least of all without an audience to impress. It isn't fair—'

  `It isn't meant to be fair,' he drawled. 'It is meant to be rather exciting You are an oddly puritanical young person, aren't you? One hears so much about the liberated English Miss, with her forthright views on life and love, but the moment she is thrown into contact with a man she develops

  all the symptoms of cold feet and palpitations. Well, for my part I am not displeased. I should not want — even deceptively —— an English fiancée who was as liberated as some of them appear to be on the beaches of Spain.'

  He took a step towards her and when she backed away, dangerously close to the stairs down which she had almost

  tripped a while ago, he quickly gripped her wrist and she

  gave a little cry at the ungentle pressure of his fingers.

  `Your neck is too pretty to be broken by a flight of stairs. Come, I will see
you to your suite, where you can take a rest from all this turmoil of the emotions.'

  His hand slid warm to her elbow, and once again Lise had to give in to his command. He seemed thoroughly gifted for getting his own way, and any show of opposition only left Lise feeling as physically and emotionally bruised as a bird which kept battering its wings against the bars of its cage.

  No kisses, she had pleaded, but he had made no promise to abide by her plea, and she just couldn't bring herself to touch on the subject again. He made her feel too humiliatingly callow . . . as if she believed that a kiss was meant to indicate affection. On his part it had meant no more than a subtle torment, an inquisitive wish to explore her lack of experience. She told herself she hated him for that . . . alone in her room she insisted to herself that he was hateful.

  She walked out to the veranda and the sun played in the heart of the sapphire as she clenched her hands over the iron-laced parapet. Had his mother's reaction been similar to hers when that other condo had placed the ring on her hand? Lise gnawed her lip and gazed at the blue blaze of the gem. If she could have wrenched off the ring she would in her temper have thrown it at Leandro's face. He had no right .. . no right at all to kiss her.

  Her heart pounded as she stood there, and again that curious weakness swept over her as she recalled the electri-

  cal contact with his lips. She didn't dare to think beyond a kiss, and she forced herself to study her surroundings, letting her gaze rise to the heights of the sierras, with their mantling of snow merging with the sky.

  Up there the crags of rock were barren of foliage, but lower down there were dense masses of silvery-green vegetation and Lise guessed that it was a plantation of olive trees ... and then as she gazed at the slopes there came to her the sound of bells pealing in a belfry, clear and strangely sweet, and carried she supposed on the wind that would always blow around those peaks, so that the olive trees dwelt under the protection of the tali eucalyptus trees.

  Suddenly a bird flew close to Lise's veranda and settled with a cooing sound on the iron parapet. It strutted there as if well aware that it had nothing to fear, and it was beautiful, a dove plumaged with turquoise-blue feathers.

  Lise now realized why this apartment had been occupied by the Conde's mother. From here could be heard the bells of possibly a mountain chapel, and doves came unafraid to the veranda. But they were free to fly if something should alarm them . . . it was Lise who was the caged dove in the castle of the hawk.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  PERHAPS it was the doves and the bells which helped to win Lise over to the undeniable attraction of El Serafin, and in the next few days the Conde did nothing too drastic to ruffle her feathers. She grew almost accustomed to having breakfast served on a sunlit patio surrounded by scented plants to the music of a graceful stone fountain fed from a spring that piped snow-water all the way down from the mountains. That combination of cool water and hot sunshine splashing through the ferny palms was entrancing.

  The patio was entered through a puerta de la luna, a moon door, and each morning Lise had a sense of stepping into a picture, with coloured tiles underfoot leading to the plaited-cane table set beneath the magenta blaze of a bougainvillea.

  And there she was served breakfast, for the most part alone, for Ana went off early to chapel, and to visit in the village, while the Conde had various tasks to attend to about the castillo. Being a very old place, carefully preserved, it had to be checked on to make sure the floors and beams were not being invaded by parasites. That the stonework was not giving away anywhere, and there was no sign of dampnesa in the cellars. It seemed that over the years Leandro had become an expert on the preservation of his inheritance, and Ana said that he was determined not to let such a fine old castle fall into ruin as so many other Spanish castles had fallen. It took a lot of money, of course, to keep it in order, and to maintain a staff at good salaries, but the family business in Madrid, with factories in other parts of Spain, was a flourishing one, and to date there seemed no reason

  why the castillo should not be preserved as the family residence. Leandro had a fine apartment in Madrid, but that was not the same as being able to come to the country to ride his horses and enjoy his olive plantation. And it would surely break the Condesa' s heart if she ever had to leave El S erafin.

  `The Condesa and the castillo mean a lot to Leandro,' Ana one day confided. 'As a boy he was aware that his parents were not happy together, and it was an open secret that the Conde his father had a mistress at Granada. She was a dancer of flamenco, and so she had gipsy blood in her veins. Leandro adored his mother, so it was not a good thing for him to learn, that when his father was absent from home he was at Granada with this other woman. He was not a man for business and in those days a general manager was in charge.' Ana had flushed slightly. 'He was the father of Chano Velarde, as it happens, and that is how it is that Chano is such a close associate of the present conde. They were always much together as boys and young men, and were only separated when Leandro went to England to complete his education. I believe the Condesa feared for him to have the flamenco contacts which his father had at the University of Granada. Later on that dancer was the cause of his father's death, for she was driving his car very fast when it crashed and they were both killed. She, they say, not outright. It was very terrible. She was found in the wreckage, still conscious then, and sightless, her lovely dark face in ruins, holding in her lap the dead body of the Conde. Madrina has always feared that the tragedy, would repeat itself, but now—'

  Ana had smiled with such trust at Lise. 'Now we are happy that he, the grandson who is her very life, has an English girl like you for his novia. Madrina's mind is set at rest, praise be.'

  Lise tried, after this conversation, not to think of the future. She set herself to enjoy each hour, each day as it came, and no day could start more colourfully than hers did at El Serafin. She had quickly established the fact that she didn't wish to have breakfast in bed, and when she discovered the little patio beyond the moon door she asked at once if it would be all right for her to have breakfast there.

  The alma de llaves, who was in charge of the household, was quite taken aback that Lise should actually ask if it was all right. 'It is for the senorita to give her orders and for us to carry them out,' was the reply. 'The señorita is to be wife of the Conde and he would be annoyed if we did not make you as happy as it is within our power to do so. The senorita will, of course, wish for an English breakfast, and Florentina will be most happy to oblige.'

  And so it was that Lise enjoyed her own pot of tea each morning, served with scrambled or boiled eggs, thick slices of mountain cured ham, crisp rolls, gorgeous thick marmalade made from local oranges, and always a different sort of fruit. Lise felt as if she were being treated like a princess, and she would have been a most unnatural girl if she had not enjoyed the spoiling. For years as a working girl she had rushed through breakfast in order to catch the bus, and then the underground train to Kensington, and it was delightful to eat perfect food in a Spanish garden, and to have the leisure to enjoy the sun and the sound of the birds.

  El Serafin was rather heavenly . . . if only she had been a guest here instead of the Conde's fake fiancée. She would have loved all this, instead of feeling in a false position all the time.

  At first she felt reluctant to explore the castle, but curiosity took her in its grip and she found herself seeking out the various rooms, the galleries and small chambers tucked

  away in odd corners. She discovered paintings and tapestries that gave her a picture of what Spanish life must have been like in days gone by. She entered a scarlet-carpeted sala and gazed in wonder at the high coffered ceiling painted in the Moorish style and hung with immense lamps of oriental design. Here there was a dark, passionate whisper of the Moorish past, with divans overlaid with rich silks, and carpets of woven silk hanging upon the smooth white walls. There were cabinets of richly carved wood in which were displayed the barbaric ornaments and daggers from
the days when this Iberian family had mingled its history with that of a hawkish Saracen.

  Lise was no longer in any doubt about the strain of ruthlessness in Leandro de Marcos Reyes. She wandered about the wonderful old sala and she came to understand why he and his father had been drawn to darkly passionate women. The old, old desires lingered in their blood and the Condesa knew of this, and she had tried to eradicate it, first with a dove-like bride from a convent, and then by her adoption of Ana, who she had hoped would please Leandro.

  Lise paused in front of a cabinet on whose velvet-lined shelves lay the jewellery which must long ago have adorned a woman of greed and beauty. The gems in the bracelets were huge and must have weighed down the arms of the wearer, and there were yard-long necklaces that must have reached to the girl's ankles, where once again she would have been chained by bands of gold ornamented with jewels. Her ankles, earlobes and breast would have sparkled and jingled as she walked. The odalisque of the oriental dream haunting, thought Lise, the imagination of the man who had asked her of all people to pose as the future provider of his earthly paradise.

  She was standing thus in the colourful sala, laughing softly and incredulously to herself, when a voice spoke at

  her elbow and she almost jumped out of her skin — lightly covered in one of the silk shifts she had made for herself out of the wonderful range of fabrics which Leandro had presented to her.

  'Buenas tardes, senorita, do I have the pleasure of speaking to the fiancée of my friend the Conde?'

  She swung round to face the speaker, and found him to be lean, dark, and extremely good-looking. The perfect Latin, with well-made features and clad in a dark suit of impeccable cut, with a tiny red flower in the lapel of his jacket. His eyes looking into hers were grave for a moment, and then he slowly smiled, and Lise liked him immediately, without a shadow of reservation. There was in his smile the kindness of a good heart, and she suspected who he was before he inclined his dark head and lightly clicked his heels.