The kisses and the wine

by Violet Winspear

  Instinctively Lise withdrew her left hand to her lap, dominated as it was by that sapphire which meant exactly nothing in terms of love and desire, and was being used by Leandro to convince his grandmother of a lie.

  `Tomorrow I am coming with you to the hospital, Ana.' Lise spoke gaily, but anyone who knew her well would have noticed that her grey eyes were cloudy. 'I want to meet the children and be of some help myself.'

  `Ah,' Chano held up his hand, 'but I am going to insist that Ana takes a holiday from the hospital while I am here at El Serafin. It will not be all business for me, and I shall need

  to be entertained. Well, Ana? What do you say? Are you going to turn me down?'

  Ana looked at him in sorhe confusion, then she appealed to Lise with a swift glance. Be a devil for once,' Lise laughed. 'All duty and no play makes a girl feel — uninteresting, as if she is taken for granted, like a piece of useful furniture which is there when needed, but unnoticed for a good deal of the time. Do you see?'

  'Yes, I think I do see.' Ana ceased to tidy her hair with her hand and she stared at Chano Velarde as if suddenly aware that he was more than a charming business associate of the Conde's; he was a good-looking bachelor who was actually inviting her to use her charms on him, and she caught her breath at the thrill of the realization. `Chano!' she gasped.

  'Yes, that is my name,' he chuckled. `Ah, and here comes our cool drinks and our crisp churros.'

  A carefree hour followed, and when at last they made for the car, the sky was beginning to turn pink and purple above the peaks of the sierras. There were goats in the fields as they drove home to the castle, nibbling at the stalks of lavender and thyme. It was a magical and lovely scene, that would melt into the strange, almost melancholy beauty of the mountain night. Noche triste, and smoke rising from the logs that were lit in the great fireplace of the hall, the clumps of burning genista and twigs of rosemary giving out a scent that mingled with that of coffee and cognac. The tall figure of the Conde was reflected in the gold-rimmed mirrors, and the Condesa ate delicious convent-made sweets that were wrapped in silver paper. And then when the little silver clock chimed, Leandro would assist Madrecita from her velvet chair, and Lise would kiss her cheek, and the Condesa would go to her room, leaving in the air, with the scented smoke, those lovely Spanish words:

  `With God, until tomorrow.'

  The wind blew Lise's hair from her brow, for she held her straw hat on her lap, and she felt terribly glad that for the next few evenings Chano would be at the castillo to help relieve the tension of that after-dinner hour, when Lise was never certain what kind of question the Condesa would spring at her. And Lise was constantly aware of Leandro's own tension; his tiger-like readiness to intercept those sudden and unsettling questions, pouncing smoothly between the asking and the answering.

  `You must decide on a date for the marriage,' the Condesa had said last night, 'I insist on that, Leandro. You must remember, mio, that I could go to my bed tonight and not awake tomorrow. I am an old woman and all my desires are gone — except the one, that I live to see you married in the cathedral at Jaen, where I was married to your grandfather. Is it so much to ask, that you name a day for wedding bells, before they toll the mourning bells?'

  `You are eternally young,' he had retorted, 'but I promise you that soon I shall discuss the matter with the one I want for my wife.'

  And last night he had lifted his madrecita into his arms and he had carried her off to her bed. And as the mountain winds blew against Lise's face, she recalled vividly the look there had been on his face, so that each feature had seemed sculptured in dark, rather tortured bronze. His eyes had swept Lise's face in passing, and their darkness had been impenetrable . . . like a night without hope of stars.

  The car of Chano Velarde reached the carved iron gates of the castle, not yet closed for the night, and as they sped along the tree-lined drive, Ana laughed softly at something Chano said to her, and a sudden bleak sense of loneliness swept over Lise. She, who was supposed to be the novia of Leandro de Marcos Reyes, was really the outsider . . . the

  stranger burdened with a secret that was weighing on her heart as the great blue sapphire weighed on her hand.

  The car came to a halt in the forecourt, below the ornamented stone corbels supporting the circular balconies of the twin towers. They stood below the steps leading to the boldly sculptured entrance; above which were carved some more of those seductive Spanish words, striking at the heart, and yet leaving the stranger to wonder if they were really meant to be taken seriously:

  Mi casa es to casa. My house is yours!

  The lights were ablaze in the hall as they entered the castle. On a side table stood a cigar-box of embossed leather, and Chano paused to help himself to one of the thin, dark, strongly aromatic cigars. He crackled it in his fingers, then stabbed the end with the tiny silver instrument provided for this purpose, and applied the lighter-flame until the smoke streamed from his nostrils, and Lise had that choking, panicky sensation she had had last night . . . that feeling that she had to get away, if only to her room.

  `I must dash and change for dinner.' She tried to control her voice, but it shook, strangely. 'Many thanks for a really enjoyable afternoon, senor. The village of El Serafin is an enchanting place, and I agree that it must never be spoiled.'

  `It never will be while I am master here.' The words rang out crisply, and Lise had whirled about before she could stop herself. Leandro had just emerged from his leather-lined office, and his black hair was rumpled above his brow, as if while he did his accounts his hand had strayed in thought and reckoning through the thick, close waves. He wore a striped silk shirt open at the throat and dark corded trousers, held snug around his middle by a thin leather belt. There was a certain informality about his appearance that

  struck Lise as alarmingly attractive.

  `I take it, Chano, that you have been showing Lise the pueblo? La mar de gracias, eh? And certainly not on the agenda for change.' The bite to his words made Lise look at his lips, and she saw their inflexibility, and their touch of arrogance, she knew that once he had set his mind on something, there would be no way to change his purpose . . . short of killing him. As informally charming as he looked at the moment, she glimpsed the steel in him, and felt a cold shiver run all down her spine.

  `It's a wonderful place, Leandro.' She spoke his name for the first time without hesitancy, despite that chilling little feeling that he could be savage if opposed over an issue which he took to heart. 'I have never in my life seen anything so — so perfect. I do agree that it must not be spoiled by tourist trespass.'

  `No,' he agreed, and his eyes looked directly into hers, as if reminding her that when they had met she had been on her way there as a tourist. 'In a way we remain rather feudal at El Serafin. Those we do let in sometimes become so captivated that they want never to leave. There is a sense of duende, a mysterious charm that holds the heart a prisoner. Here we do not feel what is prevalent elsewhere, the longing for what is lost. Anoranza. Muy interesante, no?'

  `Wonderfully interesting,' she agreed, and could feel her heart beating strangely fast as she turned with a gay smile at Ana. 'Shall we leave the men to smoke those fearfully strong cigars while we go and change for dinner?'

  `We will see you both later,' smiled Chano, and with Latin courtesy he escorted them to the stairs, while Leandro lounged against the side table, lighting a cigar so the tiny flame leapt and reflected devilishly in his eyes. Lise could feel his eyes upon her as she started up the stairs, and she had the sure feeling that when he had talked about

  Serafin holding the heart a prisoner he had been referring to her heart.

  When she parted from Ana and reached the seclusion of her own rooms that feeling felt intensified when she glanced around her bedroom and saw the circular shape of the walls.

  She mustn't let her imagination play tricks with her . . . but all at once she felt as if she were a captive in a Spanish tower.

  CHAPTER SIX
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br />   IN the quiet hour, before it was necessary to go downstairs, Lise finished sewing the hem of the dress she had made from a length of the deliciously soft rose-red silk which had come from the looms of the family factories. She studied each detail of the simple yet effective design, and then covered the small electric sewing-machine which Manuela had been kind enough to lend her.

  ' The Condesa's companion had been curious, of course, as to why Lise should need to make frocks when everyone thought that she had come on an arranged visit to the castle. Lise had then found it necessary to resort to the excuse which Leandro had suggested; that her luggage had somehow got delayed in its arrival from Madrid.

  `Why did you not bring it with you in the senor's car?' Manuela had asked.

  Lise had been absolutely lost for an answer until she remembered the golfing gear which had been stowed in the back of the Conde's car and the crate of champagne which had been unloaded from the boot in anticipation of the party in honour of his grandmother's birthday.

  `You know what men are,' she had smiled, partly from the relief of having a good excuse to offer. 'They like to pretend that they can carry all they need in their pockets, but the truth of the matter was that Leandro was so loaded down with his own belongings that there just wasn't room for mine, except for a small case.'

  Manuela had accepted this explanation, and had probably carried it to the Condesa. Anyway, nothing more had been remarked on the matter and the loan of the sewing-machine

  Its

  had been quickly forthcoming.

  The rose-coloured dress was designed so that it left Lise's throat and arms bare, and was classically draped to her ankles, where the folds of the soft material tightened. Evening shoes would have proved a problem had it not occurred to Lise to cover a pair of canvas casuals with gold velvet. The result was highly attractive, and she discovered that walking in such shoes while wearing a long, close-fitting skirt gave her a lithe, catlike tread.

  She had reached the foot of the stairs and was about to cross to the door of the sala, where they gathered for aperitifs before going into dinner, when she noticed that the door of the splendidly neglected castle ballroom was ajar, and in. her present rather feline mood the enticement was too much for her and she had sped in the direction of the ballroom almost before she could stop herself and had slipped inside with the silence of a young cat. Beyond the uncurtained windows the moon was shining and the tide of its reflection was caught and held on the surfaces of the long mirrors lining the walls. The effect was one of dark silver and velvet, and feeling as buoyant and unknown as a shadow herself Lise sped to the centre of the vast room that was never used these days for the parties the Condesa would have loved when she was in the heyday of her beauty.

  As if hearing the inviting music again, as if feeling the arms of an invisible partner, Lise danced the length of the ballroom, the silk of her dress whispering as she moved, the pale gleam of her hair caught and held by the gleam of the moon and the mirrors.

  When the chandeliers sprang their shock of dazzling light, Lise was caught and held in her dancing attitude like a moth whirling into a flame.

  `Muy guapa,' drawled a deep voice, and when Lise heard that voice she stood there burning, and wondered at her own

  idiocy in dancing by herself in the dark. Her mood that had been so strangely exalted was now at the mercy of Leandro's mockery, and she felt furious with him for coming upon her, and flicking on those great clusters of lights, and seeing her like a child caught play-acting.

  She had felt so divinely young and free, whirling and twirling on this vast floor of polished tiles.

  `It must be a certain whisper of the Moorish past that makes a girl so British a dancer for a long-dead lord of the harem.' Leandro came to the centre of the room, and Lise tensed as his foptfalls rang on the glowing tiles. She could sense every muscle and bone of him, smoothly encased in his black tuxedo and trousers like a sword in its sheath. She could feel his dark eyes upon her body, sheathed in the rose-silk that had been his casual gift of the other day.

  ' "Through what wild centuries roves back the rose." ' As he spoke the words he reached the place where she stood, and the second stunning shock was the feel of his hands upon her waist, settling there, and then tightening, and twisting her to face him as effortlessly as if she had been made of petals and scent. 'I am thankful, guapa, that you have no actual thorns budding from this slender stem of yours. But the invisible thorns are bristling, are they not?'

  She looked up at his face and saw the caressive cruelty of his mouth . . . lips that demanded submission to strong kisses ... lips that could say words that stabbed and stroked.

  `I — I know you think me an idiot,' she said stiffly, 'but these large rooms go a little to my head. They are so grand, and so lonely, somehow, as if begging someone to make a movement or a sound in them. I imagined there were grand parties when the Condesa was a younger woman. A woman as lovely and lively as she must have been would have enjoyed company.'

  `She still enjoys company, but too much of it is not good for her these days.' He gazed down intently at Lise, and then he shifted his grip to her hands and holding them he drew away from her and studied her under the chandeliers. 'That is one of the dresses you have made and sewn yourself? You really are a clever child, and it seems a pity—'

  `A pity, sew?' She could feel his fingers pressing against the fine bones of her wrists, holding her lightly but so surely, while his eyes travelled over. Under the fine silk she could feel how fast her heart was beating, and how strangely weak her legs felt when his gaze rested on the pale hollow of her throat.

  `That such talent should be put to the service of another person,' he said. 'I must think about setting you up in a dress shop of your own — when the time comes. You would like that, Lise?'

  `It would be too much to ask—'

  `Nonsense.' He smiled, and this time without the slightest shading of mockery around his lips. 'I said at the start that you must have what is closest to your heart, did I not? Anyway, the time has not yet come for a discussion on that subject, and I have the feeling that Madrecita would expect me to add a little adornment to that white neck of yours. Come with me!'

  `No!' Protest was so strong in Lise in that moment that she had to cry out against these attempts of his to smooth over the false situation by offering gifts. 'I won't!'

  But I can make you, my dear.' In an instant the mockery was back, twisting the edge of his mouth and glittering in his eyes. 'I can pick you up as if you were a cat and carry you there, or I can drag you to my study and if we are seen you will look most undignified. Take your choice, mia amigo. Do you come willingly, or do I use force? Ay Dios mio! One would think that I had the bedroom in mind. Santina

  amada, all I am proposing is that you come and be given a trinket. In fact, I have exactly in mind what will suit you! Come!'

  Mutiny, and that strange feeling that she had water in the bones of her legs, made her drag behind him, and when his grip tightened on her wrist to the edge of pain, she gave a choked gasp. 'You're brutal!' she flung at him.

  `Don't exaggerate,' he rejoined. 'That is the problem with very young women, they have this exasperating tendency to be melodramatic. With you I have not the slightest need to use brute force. You are so slight that Florentina has already suggested to me that you need fattening up. The good woman fears that I shall not have enough woman in my arms on my wedding night.'

  `But we -know differently, don't we?' Lise flung these words almost in his face as he very firmly pulled her into his study; the room which always seemed a little inquisitorial with its Cordoban leather walls and its massive desk and tall, hard-backed chairs.

  `Yes.' He snapped the word at her, showing his teeth in a white biting way. His eyes raked her, and temper ran like a snarl between them. With his free hand he slammed the study door, and because the interior of the door was also lined with leather, Lise was suddenly framed against the dark red, a slim, pale-skinned figure in rose silk
that was softly shaped to her slenderness. Her hair against the red leather took on a sudden startling fairness, and her grey eyes seemed darkened by the dark face looking down into them.

  `You could go too far with me,' he said, and the words ran across her skin like a whiplash. 'Then you would know at last what it is like to be alone — entirely alone with a man. Be careful, angel hair, if you don't want defiance and threat to make a reality of my words.'

  'I — I'd yell the place down,' she gasped, and she was almost unaware that she had drawn back close to the leather wall until she felt its cool touch against her bare arms. She shivered 'at the touch, and saw the lids narrow across Leandro's eyes.

  'These walls are soundproof,' he drawled. 'That is the idea, that a man can work in peace, and also reprimand his staff without being overheard. Such walls would also make it possible for a man to do whatever he pleased with a woman, for her cries would not be heard. I could beat you, or make love to you, and our only witness would be that bronze figure on my desk.'

  Lise stared at him, and so dark and menacing was his face in that moment that she knew with her every nerve that he was utterly capable of carrying out his threat. It wasn't only the castle that held echoes of the Moorish past; the old desires and inclinations still ran in the blood of this direct descendant of that long-dead lord of El Serafin; here in the courts and gardens lingered the tinkle of slave bracelets: there in Leandro's eyes smouldered the passion and the daring that would never die while he lived, and in his turn passed on the flame to his son.

  The moment held such danger for Lise that she felt petrified. The slightest movement might trap her in his arms, for she knew instinctively that his cruelty was not of the kind that raised its hand against a woman. He had other ways . . . ways far more subtle . . . of inducing a woman to give in to him.

  Lise dragged free of the magnetic glitter of his eyes, and she forced a shaky laugh to her lips. 'We're quarrelling like a couple of cats of different breeds,' she said. `For no real reason, except that I seem to ruffle your fur, and you seem to ruffle mine. Let's stop it, please.'