'You don't like the fur to bristle?' Suddenly the very tip of
his forefinger was against the skin of her arm, sliding down the soft crook of her elbow . . . and sending through her the most startling sensations. 'You are a smooth little cat, amiga. I am almost temped to find out if you purr.'
Then, with a mocking quirk of his black brow, he turned away from her and went to his desk. Lise could not relax, and could feel her legs trembling as she leaned there against the wall, and watched him open a drawer of that great carved Spanish desk and take from it a small flat case ... of the sort in which jewellery was kept.
`Madrecita has already dropped the hint that I am being a little too ungenerous with the family jewels, and so a while ago I had a look in the safe to see if we had something that might tempt your saintly little soul. I am fully aware that you hate to wear the jewellery under false pretences, but it makes Madrecita happy, and if you were not such a little puritan it would make you happy, also. What is the matter? Do you feel that I am painting the artificial lily?'
`You are painting an artificial situation,' she said. 'Adding rock upon rock, so that when we finally need to escape, we'll find ourselves up to our necks.'
`You, at least, have a very pretty neck, guapa.' And so saying he came back to her, and something glittered in his fingers, so that they seemed alive with drops of blue and white fire. 'If you press any closer to that leather wall, my dear, you will leave your crucified impression. I really wonder which you hate the most, my touch, or my gifts.'
`I — I can return the gifts,' she said defiantly.
`Very true. So it is my touch which you dislike. Even soap, eh, cannot wash away a memory?' Now he was close again, and the gems sparkling in his fingers were diamonds, a necklace of them, to which was attached a heart made of a single sapphire. A dark blue sapphire, like the ring on her finger.
`Now like the family dentist I am going to say that you will hardly feel a thing,' he mocked. And locking his gaze with hers, he encircled her neck with the diamonds and fixed the clasp, and then quite deliberately he arranged the blue heart in the white hollow of her throat. 'There, child, it is all over. And not a mark on you.'
`There's no need to be so — so sarcastic,' she flared. 'I'm not a silly puritan, or some sort of saint, but I just don't like the way I've allowed myself to be entangled in your web of deceit. Decking me out in the family finery is bound to appeal to your mocking sense of humour, but I'm not amused.'
`No, my young Victorian, you would not be.' But this time when he spoke the mocking gleam was gone from his eyes and they held a brooding quality as they dwelt on her jewelled skin. 'All the same, the finery becomes you. There is fire and ice in diamonds, and in a girl not yet introduced to passion, and I have always considered that pearls are more suited to widows. That sapphire came into my family many years ago, by way of the Eastern line in our history and our veins. It is older than the ring, which was matched to it, but my mother never wore the heart It had the kind of history she could not tolerate.'
`You mean that it was probably worn by a harem girl?' Lise could feel the weight of the heart-shaped sapphire against her throat, cool and smooth, and holding Leandro's gaze to her skin. A pulse in her throat beat quickly under the gem of glowing blue, and she wanted wildly to turn away from his eyes, so dark and disturbingly shaded by his thick lashes.
`Yes,' he drawled, 'a girl in scented silks, who bathed in a lotus pool, and wore stars of jasmine in her hair. But it isn't that aspect which you dislike, is it? Your sensitivity is of a different sort. You feel that only a false gem should rep-
resent our false relationship, eh?'
`I'm afraid I do,' she admitted. 'Wearing costume jewellery wouldn't trouble me in the least—'
`Then think of it as costume jewellery.'
`You know that's impossible, senor.' She drew a sigh. `Having committed myself to your game of hearts, I have to play it your way, don't I?'
`At least with a dash of enjoyment,' he said quizzically. `When you came in this afternoon in the company of Ana and Chano, you were looking eager and happy. Does my company cast such a cloud over you?'
`A small guilty cloud,' she admitted. 'The more I get to know the Condesa, the less do I like deceiving her. In fact—'
`Yes, Lise?' His tall figure seemed to tauten and to tower over her, so that in nervous reaction her fingers gripped the blue heart on its chain of small, perfect diamonds.
`I sometimes wonder if she suspects that we are playing a game. I have seen her look at me – strangely.'
`I have noticed that look also, and that is why I wish you to wear the necklace tonight. As I said before, Lise, it becomes you, and surely you have enough vanity to be pleased that you look most fair and appealing.' Abruptly he reached for her hand and carried it to his lips, and once again that tingling shock ran all down Lise's spine as she felt his lips press warm and hard against the inside of her wrist. It seemed that no matter how she fought this man, she remained as meshed in the personality of him as a moth caught in a web. With all her instincts she had to struggle, and yet with dominant ease he seemed always to subdue her.
`And now let us go to the sala,' he said, and with an air of true possession he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm. `Everyone will be waiting for us.'
The evening meal was invariably served in a room adjoining the sala, a rather grand and solemn place in which to dine, with its long table set with heavy crystal and silver upon a cloth of wonderful Catalan lace, with the flames of candles standing still in the warm air this evening, the tawny candles grouped in the heavily sculptured candelabra that matched the rose bowls.
The food was always very Spanish, each course accompanied by a wine of the province. Lise never dared to take more than a few sips at each wine, for she had not the strong Latin head that had been trained from youth to accustom itself to the potency of these wines that were still made as in the old days, by being crushed by male dancers in great stone vats, after being collected from the vines by young girls who were still virgins. It seemed as if every potent factor of mountain life went into the wine; the sun, the wild breath of snow, the innocence and the knowledge.
The sala to which they returned at the end of the meal was a room looking on to the arcade of the courtyard where the passion vines and the bougainvillea splashed the walls and wafted their scents into the castle. These scents, mingling with the smoke of the cigars, created a dreamy atmosphere which Lise could not fight against. And this evening, to her astonished delight, gipsy dancers had been invited to come and entertain the Senor Conde and his family and guests.
The guitar music came with mysterious suddenness from where the fire-red blossoms hung the walls, and a voice began to sing to the music, and there came the click-click of castanets, like giant cicada wings, before the dancer actually appeared in the stream of light from the sala. She was tawny-skinned and supple, and she wore an ankle-length vermilion skirt in tiers of frills, with a full-sleeved blouse of
white lace. Her hair gleamed dark like her eyes and was held by a high glittering comb, with a huge camellia nestling in its waves, and at either side of her face lay the traditional lovelocks, emphasizing the high thrust of her cheekbones.
The click of her finger-castanets and her high heels were almost hypnotic, and when the singing died away she began to dance with a lonely intensity that increasingly cried out for a partner. He came suddenly, slipping from the shadows like a shadow, and sleek as a panther he circled the girl, coming closer and closer to her until at last the frills of her red dress were sweeping against the black velvet of his tightfitting pants. The pair of handsome creatures began to sway and mock each other with eyes and heels, and when he sank to one knee and showed his gleaming teeth, she whirled the frills of her scarlet dress right over his head, but when he leapt to his feet to claim her, she was out of his way again, and like two supple felines they mocked and dared each other to a fantastic array of dance steps, 'each step significant of the du
el they were playing, one of passion and desire; of temper and torment; of chase and capture.
Lise sat entranced in the corner of a divan, for never before had she seen real flamenco dancing, or heard the music of it, a pulsing, tormenting, sensuous rhythm, beating its way into her body, and revealing to her the primitive urges that lay beneath the surface of clothing and skin.
She hadn't dreamed that Spanish dancing was so evocative, so that beauty and danger blended together into a flame of feeling and fire.
When fingers touched her shoulder, Lise almost cried out. 'It is only I.' The fingers tightened. 'You jumped like a cat just then. Do you like the flamenco dancing?'
'Marvellous!' she breathed. had no idea it was so —
so—'
I am sure you didn't.' There was a deep amusement in
his voice. 'It is exciting, no?'
Unbearably exciting, she thought, and for a moment of exquisite torment she closed her eyes as those lean fingers brushed the nape of her neck and fondled the chain of diamonds. She wanted to beg him to leave her alone, to not play his game of make-believe so intimately. He knew that the Condesa had glanced their way; he meant his grandmother to suppose that the music and the dancing had aroused him to desire of his fair and innocent and altogether unlikely
novice.
It was then, while the Spanish music played and echoed so evocatively along the arcade, that Lise came to realize the state that her emotions were getting into. She felt the swift stab of that realization; that silent crying out inside her that if only this were all real and not part of an elaborate pretence.
It was the pretence which she hated, not the man who touched her to make it look as if he wanted her.
Refreshments were taken out to the flamenco troupe, and when beckoned Lise went over to sit next to the Condesa, taking with her the coffee and coñ ac which had just been served. 'Well, my child,' a ringed hand touched her cheek, `you are looking very pretty this evening, and I begin to feel convinced that you will be good for my good-looking devil of a grandson. I see he has given you the harem heart to wear, as my daughter-in-law used to call it. She was a sweet creature, but her passions were never as earthly as Latin passions usually are.'
`I understand that she is now a nun.' Lise took a long sip at her hot coffee enriched with brandy.
`Are you reminding me, child, that I speak of her as if she were no longer alive?' The Condesa gave Lise an old-fashioned look. 'I must admit that for a woman like myself a life of enclosed virtue strikes me as rather grim, but
Leandro's mother was always a creature more of the soul than the body, and for her the life is a satisfactory one. I hope, pequena, that you are far less soulful? It would not do for my Leandro to take a woman to the altar who would not be prepared to enjoy the strong kisses of a strong man. He is a true son of the sierras, with the sun and the thunder in his blood. He is a grandson I am proud of and I want very much that he should be happy. I want this as much as I want his wife to make me a fine great-grandson.'
The Condesa moved her lace fan in deliberate little movements as she studied Lise, who hardly knew how she kept from jumping to her feet and dashing away from the disturbing aspects of this conversation. The fear and the confusion was there in her eyes, and abruptly the lace fan became very still.
`I hope,' said the Condesa freezingly, 'that you are not one of these ultra-modern girls who believes in putting a career before the production of a family? I hope, in fact, that you are not afraid of having babies for Leandro? You love him, eh?'
`Yes—' The word was spoken before Lise could withdraw it, or change it, or deny her own heart that spoke for her in that moment. Yes, she loved Leandro de Marcos Reyes as if he were the man she was to marry; as if he cared in return, instead of being in love with someone else, and being in a dilemma because that love would not be acceptable to this charming and proud old lady.
`Good, my child. Excellent!' The fan began to move again, and the rings to sparkle on the hands that were hungry to hold a child of Leandro's before their grip relaxed on life itself. 'It's love between two people that makes happy children. As a boy my Leandro was not always happy. He saw the lack of love between his parents; he heard the quarrels, and later on the rumours. The time has come for that belo
hombre to be made happy.'
The Condesa turned her gaze to her grandson, who was at the other side of the sala talking to Chano and the young gipsy who had danced for them. He was taller than the other two men, his features hawk-like, and his stance, as he stood there with a glass of dark red wine in his hand, that of the man who owned all this and was aware of his authority without being too arrogant about it. Race and breeding marked him, and yet something of the Moor was there to be seen as his head was outlined against the arabesque of tiles ornamenting the arcade, the blue and silver weaving of colours, with a dash of scarlet.
Sudden emotion took hold of Lise, storming her heart and her body. She felt a devastating ardour, unwanted, unlooked for, but alive and strangely intoxicating, despite her knowledge of who it was he loved and desired.
`It pleases me that you love him,' said the Condesa, in a soft and meaningful voice. 'The other day I wondered — ah, but the elderly are always a little suspicious of the young, perhaps because as we grow older the memories of youth become suddenly sharper. In the middle years there is too much to do for a woman to have much time for remembering, but when the shadows start to grow long, then the memory becomes long again and one recalls the confusions of youth, the infatuations, and the doubts. Young women are rarely logical, for logic is a gift that comes with age. What are your doubts, pequeña? That life with a Spaniard will be a sort of tyranny?'
When Lise remained silent at the question, because it really was unanswerable, the Condesa gave a soft, slightly mocking laugh. 'He is a devil of a man, eh? But then you have certain advantages over the bolder type of woman he might well have brought here as his novia. The English girl blooms at nightfall, and the sensitive are always intensely in
tune with nature. I am quite sure that there are times when you find Leandro overwhelming and utterly foreign, with sometirnts in his mood the grumbling warmth of a thunderstorm. This is a very Latin characteristic and you must not be afraid of it, because there will be other times when he is all charm and will make sunlight in your heart. The sunlight will be worth the storm, eh?'
Oh yes, thought Lise. She had already guessed that Leandro de Marcos Reyes in love with a woman would be devastating in a number of ways, and -that a woman would put up with his thunder to have him tender afterwards and smouldering with all that protective possessiveness of the Latin male.
'You are young and love frightens you a little,' murmured the Condesa, 'but that is how it should be — for a woman. It is this element which a man finds irresistible, and I am sure Leandro has sensed in you this retreat, and I know it pleases him because he has given you the sapphire to wear instead of the pearls which his mother preferred.'
And as the gipsy guitars began to play again, and as one of the moody yet exciting songs drifted in from the arcade where the passion vines clustered so thickly that they swept the ground, the Condesa told Lise the meaning of the words: "Love is like the olive tree, a mixture of silver and shadow, with its roots deep in the past and yet bearing fruit in the present. Love is the white dove, and the red ruby, and the wild sea lashing at the rocks on the shore. Love is tall as the palm, and low as the cushion, and among its tears are heard the singing birds.'
They were rather lovely words, so picturesque as to hold echoes of the Moorish past that lingered in these remote parts of Spain. As Lise relaxed among the divan cushions and listened to the song, her eyes brimmed with delight, and of all the memories she would carry away from the castillo
she felt sure that the memory of tonight would be the most potent. The music, the dangerously soft dark eyes, the long gipsy hair held by silver combs.
It was a magical and lovely evening Its enchantment could not be spoi
led for her, not even by her knowledge that it must evolve as a memory and not as part of her future.
That night the Condesa was late going to her bedroom, and her grandson escorted her. Lise was in her own suite preparing for bed when there was a sudden tap upon her bedroom door, and thinking Ana had called for a chat, possibly about Chano, Lise pulled on her robe and went to open the door.
To her consternation Leandro stood there, and because he still wore his evening-suit he made her feel terribly undressed. She drew back at once from him, and instinctively she pulled together the gaping parts of her negligee over the chiffon of her nightdress . . . chiffon for light travel and because it folded small in a suitcase, and not because she knew that it added a sort of glamour to a girl ready for bed, her face nude of make-up and her hair unloosed about her shoulders.
`W-what do you want?' The shock of seeing him at her bedroom door made her wide grey eyes look outraged; the truth was that her thoughts had been so full of him that she felt outraged by herself, as if she had secretly hoped to see him again tonight . . . alone.
`Are you afraid that I want you?' he taunted, and with a hand negligently at rest in a pocket of his jacket he came into her room and closed the door with his other hand. Each of his movements seemed as deliberate as he could make them, yet there was a glint to his eyes that told Lise he had more purpose in coming here than to unnerve her with his presence.
He flicked his eyes over her face, and then gestured at the
velvet stool at the food of the bed. 'Please do sit down, Lise. I have something to discuss with you and it will be best if you are seated when I say what I have come to say.'
Lise now felt a new sort of alarm, and it tensed her, and made her speak with a pert defensiveness. 'I'd feel better if you sat down yourself, senor. When you stand towering over me I feel as if I'm facing the inquisitor. Please!' She gestured at one of the bedroom chairs, and was a little scared by a weakness in her legs as she sat down.
The kisses and the wine Page 12
