`But I haven't said I'll marry you,' Lise broke in, and her heart thumped at the words. 'I haven't committed myself to your proposal, and I have no intention of doing so—'
`Have you not?' Even as he spoke he dropped the end of his cheroot to the ground and took a step into the arbour, and then another, until Lise was pressing herself bodily against the bougainvillea. 'There is no need for you to take such a defensive attitude, my dear. But it is an attitude which makes me curious — I wonder what you fear the most, my kisses or my temper?'
`Don't you dare to touch me!' Her hands clenched the purple and white flowers that clustered all about her, as if she could pull them around her like a shield. But they were as fragile in her hands as she would be in his and she felt the
petals falling apart as she gripped them, and she was shocked by her own violence, her own panicky vandalism, and by the Victorian appeal which leapt to her lips. It did not surprise her to see his lips quirk in derision as he stood over her . . . Don Dark Angel . . . devil and saviour . . . for she would not be here to defy him if he hadn't pulled her out of the sea.
`Do I now have to repay you for the other day?' she demanded. 'I guessed it would come to this, as you spoke just now about making up accounts.'
`Why not?' he drawled. 'You do owe me something, and as I must find a suitable wife it seems pointless to go searching beyond this point, doesn't it?'
`There is Ana — she is a Latin girl and was prepared before I came to — to accept a proposal from you, should you make one. The Condesa loves her—'
'And so does Chano,' he broke in, and he loomed so close to Lise that she could see the saintly profile on the medal in the opening of his shirt, dark blue and silky against his brown and supple skin. She could see the crisp curl of the hairs on his chest, and breathe on him the tang of the soap with which he had scrubbed himself. Oh God, she knew he was ruthless and yet she could feel her senses being swayed by his male vigour. She knew he was the lover of another woman, yet right now he was far from that woman and too close to Lise for her heart to be in control of itself. She could feel her heart dipping, and then rising into her throat, as if she were on some emotional roller-coaster that was both thrilling and fearful.
Her pulses were in a riot, and her nerves were tingling, for she knew he meant to take hold of her and there was no way of escape, not here where the bougainvillea grew so thick and close that she was trapped in it as his hands reached for her and swung her close against his hard warmth of body
and limb, and secret heart.
`Never dare a Spaniard, he said mockingly,’for he is the
man who dares the sharp-horned bull . .. and you, pequeña, have a much softer hide, even if you have the obstinate spirit.' He bent his head and laid a warm-lipped kiss against her cheek, and then as his lips lingered there and she felt all the potent danger in his lithe body, the old panic whipped at her and made her jerk her face away from him. She knew immediately that she had done the wrong thing, for it was in his nature to enjoy conflict rather than compliance, and if she had submitted tamely to his kiss he would have released her instead of tightening his arms about her.
'Come, it's time you learned how to react to a man like a woman instead of a nervous child. Put your arms about my neck! Al momento!'
'Don't give me orders!' She threshed in his arms for escape, and her struggles only seemed to bring her closer to him; closer still to the knowledge that she didn't really wish to fight him. As all these new and unwanted emotions erupted within her, making her hate herself for wanting him, she drove that self-hate into him, like the point of a knife.
don't react like a nervous child,' she stormed. merely react like a woman who can't endure to be touched by some other woman's lover. What do you take me for! Do you think I'm so hard up that I'll take you on regardless of what I know?' As her grey eyes blazed defiance at him, and as she saw the glittering fury come alive in his eyes, the arbour in which they stood lost its romantic aura and became a cage in which a pair of felines prepared to claw and snarl. Already his fingers were bruising her when very clearly there came the sound of a stick on the flagstones beyond the arbour, and Lise saw the rapid change in Leandro's expression a moment before the figure of his grandmother appeared beyond his shoulder, pausing at the entrance to the arbour,
with Manuela in attendance.
Though Leandro could not see his grandmother, Lise knew that he had recognized the sound of her stick, which she always used when taking a short walk in the sunshine of the gardens. Even as Lise saw the Condesa, Leandro swiftly bent his head to hide the look in Lise's eyes and the next instant his lips were against hers, ordering her in a fierce whisper to put her arms about him.
She obeyed him in a blind way, and then her traitor body was yielding to the demand of his arms, to the pressure of his mouth, and through the tumult of his kiss she knew that his grandmother watched them, and it wasn't until there came the receding sound of her stick, and the murmur of her voice, that Leandro drew his mouth from Lise's forcibly kissed lips.
A violence that from the doorway of the arbor would have taken on the look of mutual passion, there in the purple shadow of the bougainvillea.
Lise's bare arms slid from his shoulders, but a moment longer his arms remained about her slim body. 'I could not allow Madrecita to see us fighting,' he said, in clipped tones. `It would have upset her and she has not the resilience of youth to bounce back from a shock. She will now assume the obvious, that we are finding it difficult to stay apart from each other. Lise, would you find it so impossible to become a Marcos Reyes? Could you not learn to tolerate my Spanish pride — and passion?'
`You — you and the Condesa between you seem to be leaving me with little choice in the matter.' Lise had never felt so unsure of herself and so shaken by another human being. If only he cared . . . if only there was more on his side than a sense of duty and honour. If only there had been love in his kiss instead of angry passion . . . anger against the circumstances that drove him to take a wife to suit his
grandmother . . . and passion aroused because he was very much a man and a long way from the embrace of that other woman.
`Both of you — you make me feel as if I owe you myself,' she went on shakily. 'If I went away now I'd feel as if I were dealing the Condesa her death blow . . . and if you had not been around the other day I'd have died. It's all so — so inexorable, as if I no longer have any say in my own future.'
`Does a future at El Serafin seem so intolerable?' He spoke with the old bite of mockery in his voice, and as he drew his hands from her waist he allowed his fingers to press, almost to caress her. She shivered and could not stop herself, and at once his hands withdrew and he must have thought that she shivered with dislike of his touch, for there was a certain savagery in the way he thrust those hands into the pocket of his trousers.
`Yes,' he said crisply, `the dilemma is now yours as well as mine. I had to kiss you to stop you from saying something to me that would have hurt and shocked Madrecita. I had to make it look as if we came here to the arbour to make love, and now she has witnessed that embrace she will naturally assume that we are in love. If she were your grandmother, old and tired and clinging to the hope of another generation of her blood and bone, could you wilfully hurt her?'
`I — I shouldn't do it wilfully,' Lise protested.
`Why do it at all?' he asked, and he was watching her with narrowed eyes, their darkness fixed upon the paleness of her face ... pale but for the hurtful bloom his lips had brought to her lips. 'There is no young man in England to whom you wish to return, otherwise you would not have come to Spain alone, searching for a job. You are free to choose.'
`But you are not — not really,' she cried out. 'You do have someone to whom you wish to return.'
`That is beside the point—'
`I think it's very much to the point.' Lise tilted her chin and drew herself up very straight. 'I don't fancy taking second place in the life of the man I marry. I happen to belie
ve in love and the sanctity of marriage, and I'm afraid it wouldn't suit me to be aware all the time of my husband's mistress in Madrid. I'd hate that, señor, as much as you would hate me if I ever sullied the Marcos Reyes name with another man.'
`I see.' For a long moment he lounged against the wall of the arbour, and everything was silent but for the buzzing of a bee somewhere in the heart of a flower. It was somehow a symbolic sound, for Lise felt as if her own heart was being plundered by the invasive love it neither sought nor welcomed. Her entire being felt at the mercy of Leandro's gaze, as if he could penetrate her body with his eyes alone and see how wildly her heart was beating.
`So, Lise, you think I would treat my wife as my father treated my mother?'
We all inherit traits from our parents, don't we?' It took nerve to meet his eyes so steadily; it took hope that her own eyes did not reveal the devastation he had wrought with her feelings. 'It might be in the Latin temperament to enjoy being martyred, but I don't fancy the procedure myself.'
`Martyred?' The word came flickering through the air like the very tip of a lash. 'Is that how you think of marriage with a Marcos Reyes?'
`Yes.' The word dropped into the silence like silk into flame; like a stone hitting glass. It had the sting of truth. `Yes, señor, I'm afraid I do.'
`Afraid?' he murmured, and he gave her the strangest smile, but behind that smile lay a glitter of fury, and Lise saw it and she wanted to be gone from this arbour and out of his reach, for she knew she had truly angered him and deep
in her heart lay the wish that it could have been crtherwise. It would have been so much easier on the nerves and the emotions to have given in to him, but she couldn't endure the knowledge that he wanted only to make use of her.
'May I go now?' she asked stiffly. promised to cut out a dress for Ana and she'll be wondering what has become of me.
'Before you go,' he gritted, 'you had better be warned that Madrecita is not yet ready for your kind of impetuous truth. We will continue as we are – do you understand me? If it isn't too much of a martyrdom.'
I don't think you'd care even if it was,' she rejoined. `I–I have no wilful wish to hurt the Condesa, but you must find some way to let me off this hook. I have my own life to live. My own way to go. I know you saved my life and I'm terribly grateful, but that doesn't mean that I have to sacrifice myself—'
'Enough!' This time the sharp lash of his tone made her flinch. 'You have really said more than enough.' And as he spoke he moved aside from the entrance and his arm swept the bougainvillea. At once a large bee flew out from the flowers, disturbed and making a loud buzzing sound. In its anger it seemed to make a beeline for the nearest object, and Lise gave a smothered cry as it struck at the Conde's face and then flew swiftly out of the arbour.
`Mierda! He flung up a hand and Lise saw with alarm that the great bee had stung Leandro close to the left eye. 'Dios, that felt like a hot needle!'
'You must have it seen to, at once!' Lise was by his side, and anxiety wiped other things from her mind for the moment. `Senor, the sting is close to your eye and a doctor should attend to it.'
'Anxious – for me?' He peered down at her in a sardonic way. 'You are right about the eye, of course, so will you be so
good as to run indoors and telephone the doctor? You will see the number there on the telephone pad, with the doctor's name — espere un memento!' As she was about to dart away. `You will ensure that Madrecita hears nothing of your call.'
`Of course, señor.' Lise ran swiftly towards the castle, and she could feel the anxiety knocking at her breast. A bee sting could be serious, and she felt certain it had touched the very corner of his eye and in a very short while the eye would be swollen and very painful.
CHAPTER EIGHT
LISE told herself that Leandro looked suitably piratic with a dark patch over his left eye, for the sting had left him looking as if he had been in a fight and he wore the patch in order to spare his, grandmother the swollen, bloodshot appearance of the eye.
On the Saturday of that week Chano was returning to Madrid, and it was at breakfast on the patio that Leandro announced his intention of driving there with Chano, in order, he added, to clear up a business matter that could no longer be left in abeyance. He would return to the castillo on Tuesday by hired car.
`Leandro, may I come as well?' Suddenly for Lise this seemed a way out of her predicament. In Madrid they could pretend to quarrel, and Leandro could return alone to inform his grandmother that the engagement was off. It all fitted so smoothly. He could tell the Condesa that she had found it imposssible to live in the country. He could ease out the hook without hurting anyone too deeply, for Lise was hopeful that once she was apart from him she would soon forget him. She could no longer remain in Spain, of course. Seeing other lean, dark Latin men would only keep reminding her of the Conde, and it would be better if she went home to England to forget.
She watched as he spread butter on a piece of toast, his gaze made even more inscrutable by reason of the dark patch. 'I don't think that it would be quite fair for both of us to leave Madrecita alone,' he said at last. 'Has not Ana told you that she is coming to Madrid to be presented to Chano's parents?'
`Yes, but I don't see what difference it makes? Manuela is here and your grandmother keeps to her apartment most of the time. Anyway, I can go in my own car now it's been repaired. You can't stop me.'
`Just listen to the girl, Chano.' The Conde drawled the words. 'Are you not glad that you are going to become engaged to a Spanish girl? At least they are a little more obedient.'
Chano gave a laugh and glanced across the table at Ana, who was demurely smiling as she ate her breakfast. But really, Leandro, I don't see why you insist that Lise remain behind while you enjoy a weekend in Madrid? I am sure the Condesa would not wish your novia to be deprived of a little pleasure.'
`You might remember, Chano, that I am going to Madrid on business.' Leandro spoke with a sudden ring of iron in his voice, and in that instant Lise felt sure that he intended to see Franquista. Her own heart hardened against him, and that traitorous softness of the past few days, stemming from her sympathy, was replaced by a flash of temper.
`I wouldn't dream of interfering with your little bit of business,' she said cuttingly. 'I'm quite sure it's of the ultimate importance to you, and I could only be in your way. I do see that, very clearly.'
`Then you agree to stay at the castillo until my return?' His right eye was boring into her, drilling her with its jetty darkness.
`I suppose so.' Lise bent her head and continued with her breakfast, and knew inevitably that she was going to have to get off the hook the painful way. Her car had been returned from the garage and was now in running order again, and much as she disliked the idea of causing distress to the Condesa, it could not be helped. She would leave a note to say that she couldn't bear the thought of living in Spain so many
miles from her brother and his family. She would drive away and not look back, and when Leandro came home on Tuesday his grandmother would have accepted the situation, and Lise would not be around to face his anger.
She peeled an orange and made herself seem wholly interested in Ana and Chano, who in the past week had come fully alive to the fact that they were in love. Chano wished to make her his wife as soon as possible, and that was why Ana was going to Madrid with him, where his mother and father lived in a villa on the outskirts of the city. They had to be informed, and their blessing received, and Lise stifled a tiny sigh of envy.
`You're an awfully lucky girl,' she told Ana, and she said it in such a heartfelt way that Chano gave her a stare of pure amazement. He had come to believe like everyone else that the Conde was going to marry her, no doubt because Manuela had hinted at passionate embraces among the bougainvillea, and Lise could have laughed or wept at the painful memory of being kissed to stifle her mouth rather than being kissed because a man desired enjoyment of her lips.
`Being an English girl, Lise is just a tiny bit cynica
l,' Leandro put in smoothly. 'The tale of Cinderella is popular in her country because of Buttons rather than the Prince. Buttons is always the hero, while the noble scion is invariably played by a young woman, so making it ultimately unbelievable that the pair ever arrive at the altar. Lise can see Ana as a bride, but she cannot imagine herself in the same role, and all because I am not Buttons. Chano, you are an awfully lucky fellow.'
They all laughed at the droll way he spoke; even Lise caught her breath on a little laughter, and then she glanced away from his face because the love inside her hurt a little too much in that moment. If she married him this would be how she felt each time he returned to Madrid. She would
know who drew him there, who held him there, until he was ready to come home once more to his Cinderella bride. It would be more endurable to be apart from him than to be the wife he didn't love.
After breakfast Ana and Chano went off to prepare for the journey, but Leandro lingered so that he might have a few private words with Lise, who knew the gist of them before he spoke.
He took her by the elbow and led her into one of the formal rooms off the hall, and he closed the door very firmly on their privacy. Lise put a hand to her throat and she looked everywhere but at the dark features that no longer smiled. The room to which he had brought her was distinctive and very Spanish, with its mosaic-tiled ceiling supported with such grace on fluted, dark marble pillars. There were high-backed chairs and cedar chests. Crimson curtains, candlesticks of gold, roses and a crucifix — an atmosphere of ritual, almost, for the roses were glowing like balls of flame in a golden chalice below the cross on the dark panelled wall. Beneath her toes was an immense vicuna rug, and above the mantelpiece was a portrait in a golden frame, of a woman with a clear olive-skinned face, huge dark, passionate eyes, and a full red, almost sulky mouth. Beside her mouth was the velvety dark mole of a truly sensuous woman, and on a chain about her neck Lise caught her breath, for the woman in the portrait was wearing the sapphire heart which Leandro had given her to wear.
The kisses and the wine Page 15
