The House of Adriano

by Nerina Hilliard

  She remembered that Eric had more or less said the same thing, but it seemed strange to hear it coming from a man who was almost a stranger to her.

  “You’re an odd man,” she said after a moment. “Do you talk to everyone like that?”

  He grinned. “Not everyone. Maybe I’m making sure you understand what Spanish marriage is like, in case you ever get the idea of marrying one of them.”

  She shook her head instantly, yet at the same time wondered why there should be a strange pain in her heart.

  “I assure you, there’s nothing like that in my mind, Mr. Renfrew. If I ever get married, I’d like it to be a partnership.”

  “Only if - you probably will,” he retorted with another grin. “And call me Bart. We’re not these stiff-necked Spanish. I’m damned if I’m going to wait a couple of months before I decorously ask if I can call you Aileen.”

  “You’re very sure of yourself.” Her smile told him she was not annoyed. “All right, Bart.”

  “It gets results.” That grin of his was too infectious. She shook her head, laughing again.

  “I’ve heard all sorts of things about the Lone Star State. After meeting you, I’m beginning to believe them.”

  “Don’t let it frighten you.”

  “I won’t.”

  Suddenly, as if some instinct had made her glance round, she saw Duarte watching her, but it was impossible to guess anything from his expression. It remained completely enigmatic until the familiar trace of a mocking smile crossed his face.

  “Drat the man!” she muttered under her breath, but it must have been loud enough for Bart to hear.

  “Don’t go falling for one of Madrid’s most eligible bachelors,” He grinned again. “I won’t mention any names. I think you know who I mean.”

  Aileen stiffened. "Duarte, you mean?” she asked deliberately, then shrugged with a cool little laugh. “I’m hardly likely to. I don’t even like the man.”

  “Why did you accept the job, then?”

  “Because of Peter, of course.”

  The infectious grin that hardly ever seemed absent from his face came back again.

  “So the estimable Duarte knocks sparks off you, does he?” His smile died momentarily. “Don’t let him worry you. He’s just not used to your type of girl.”

  That was probably the whole reason for his almost deliberate jibing at her, Aileen told herself. He was so used to the clinging, ultra-feminine women of his own country that the sharp little digs he threw out occasionally were probably designed to find out what, in slang terms, made her tick. The very first time they had met he had called her unnatural for preferring a career to marriage. Of course that was more or less her own fault, for allowing him to believe that she had no interest in marriage, but her own fault or not, it did not give him the right to criticise. Only a little while ago he had had the audacity to suggest an experiment with moonlight and soft-scented gardens, to see if she was as emotionally invulnerable as she made out. She was quite certain what he meant by that - and equally certain that if he ever did do anything like it she would detest him even more than she did now. Anyway, she could not imagine him descending to anything like light philandering, whether in a derisive manner or not. As a man he could be quite infuriating, but he never entirely forgot that he was Duarte Adriano, Conde de Marindos, and that was the whole crux of the matter. He might take a passing interest in deriding her independence, but it would never go any further than that.

  After dinner, finished off with coffee, they went into an adjoining salon. Dona Teresa sat on an exquisite little sofa, almost like a queen holding court, and Duarte circulated among his guests, courtly and charming. The tropical dinner suit he wore suited his dark good looks to perfection and there was not a trace of the mocking amusement a certain Aileen Lawrence usually called forth in him. Probably if she had met him for the first time like this she would have come to the undivided opinion that he was completely charming.

  After a little while she found herself with the group around Dona Teresa. Alesandra and her mother, Senora Pereira, were also there, and once again she felt the lovely dark girl’s eyes on her with that subtle hint of supercilious hostility.

  “You must tell us about this Australia you come from,” Senora Pereira said, for all the world as if the country was some unknown little island, Aileen thought crossly, or some unearthly place on another world one of those space rockets everyone was shooting up might have discovered.

  Nevertheless she smiled as charmingly as she could, even though she was beginning to dislike the elder Pereira as much as her daughter.

  “You should hardly have asked an Australian to tell you about her country,” she said lightly. “I can’t help being biased. I don’t think there’s another country like it.”

  “It is a pleasant thing to like one’s country above all others,” Alesandra commented in her exquisitely toned voice. “You would not wish to live in another country permanently, then?”

  “Not unless there was a very good reason,” Aileen replied, feeling the hint of something implied in the Spanish girl’s remark. Probably dropping a hint that when she was the Condesa de Marindos she would not want any young girl around whose status in the family was rather undefined.

  “One understands that you are the aunt of the little Peter,” Senora Pereira commented, as if she had hesitated whether or not to change the name into its Spanish form.

  “Yes,” Aileen confirmed, just a little shortly. She did not mind answering questions, but there was something about this inquisition that annoyed her strangely, as if it was based on hostility and not just curiosity.

  “Then his mother was your sister?” the Senora persisted.

  “No, merely a friend. When she and her husband were killed, I adopted Peter.”

  “And when Duarte found you he had to take both and not just his nephew?” Alesandra laughed.

  The words were quite joking on the surface, but again Aileen sensed that hidden hostility, although why on earth somebody like Alesandra Pereira should feel hostility towards her after only a single meeting was beyond her. Although life was like that sometimes, she told herself. It was very easy to dislike a person on a single meeting, or just a brief encounter even, without any words being spoken. She did not like Alesandra, so perhaps her own dislike was being communicated in some manner, even though she had been just as polite and courteous, on the surface, as the other girl. Alesandra might sense it and was reciprocating the feeling in the same manner.

  “Something like that,” she said, making her reply a joke too. “Actually ... Senor Adriano...” she did not know what to call him, so played safe by remaining quite formal, “thought it would be better if somebody Peter knew and was quite used to came over here with him, so that it would not be such an upheaval as if he had been brought here on his own, knowing nobody.”

  “I think she intended to be here only for a short while,” Dona Teresa said, entering the conversation, “until Peter was well settled, but I am hopeful of persuading her to remain here permanently. I find I like her company very much,” and she turned and smiled directly at Aileen, so that the latter had to restrain an impulse to hug her.

  An elderly gentleman whose name Aileen had forgotten shook his head almost regretfully.

  “And the young man who no doubt waits for her?”

  “There is no young man,” Aileen said with a smile.

  “No young man!” He shook his head chidingly this time. “Have the men of Australia then no eyes? We see pictures of them from the Olympics ... so big and bronzed ... and yet they pass over a very pretty girl like you?”

  “I think you mistake the matter,” Duarte’s voice put in suddenly from behind her. “I am told that a career is more important than marriage. That is why none of these bronzed Australians have been allowed to place a ring on her finger.”

  “But what career is more important to a woman than marriage?” Alesandra asked with a puzzled glance, an attitude Aileen was sure was quite
assumed, not because the Spanish girl was of the opinion that any career was more important than marriage, but to give the impression that anyone who did think so was a very strange creature indeed. “This ... this career of yours...?” she said, turning to Aileen with an enquiring little glance, still smiling though.

  “I was doing secretarial work,” Aileen told her.

  “And your parents did not object?” Senora Pereira asked.

  “Why should they have done?” Aileen countered evenly. “Most girls go out to work as soon as they are old enough to. And, in any case, my parents were dead.”

  “We are behind the times,” Dona Teresa put in with a twinkle in her eyes. “In other countries they encourage their daughter to commence a career, so that if she does not wish to marry, then she need not do so.”

  “How strange,” Alesandra said in that little wondering voice, and Aileen felt she could have strangled her. “And having commenced this career, you became convinced that you would prefer it to marriage?”

  “Shall we say that I found it made me a little too independent for marriage?” Aileen answered calmly.

  Dona Teresa laughed softly, with a return of the almost impish twinkle in her eyes.

  “Perhaps independence will fly out of the window when love comes in the door,” she suggested.

  “I’ll face that when it happens - if it ever does.”

  “It will happen,” Dona Teresa said confidently. “And strangely I have the feeling that it is near.” The twinkle in her eyes became even more pronounced. “Perhaps love will come to you in Spain and we shall find you a Spanish husband.”

  “Then you will learn how sweet marriage can become,” Alesandra said with an almost dreamy smile. “Love is a woman’s whole existence and her husband and children the heart of her life. Nothing else matters. Her husband’s every wish and every word becomes her law and she desires nothing but to please him.”

  “One would think you were already married,” Duarte said almost teasingly.

  Alesandra smiled and said nothing, but her large, soft eyes darted one quick glance at him, demure and yet with a secret invitation. It was an invitation he had probably half accepted, if the rumours around Madrid were true.

  The conversation changed after that and, finding herself on the outskirts of the group, Aileen looked around the room, taking in the conventional dinner attire of the men, the exquisite dresses of the women, fairly simple, as it was only a small dinner party, but all of them giving the impression that they had never known the feeling of being short of money. Self-assured men - and Duarte the most self-assured and distinguished of them all - silken soft, luxurious women and the beautiful, exquisitely appointed room with its suggestion of restrained wealth.

  Bart caught her glance and came over to her. “How are you making out?”

  Aileen smiled and held up crossed fingers. “So far so good. I seem to have set up quite a flutter among the ladies, though. They think I prefer a career to marriage.”

  “I hope you don’t. I’ve seen enough career women in my own country.”

  Aileen smiled slightly. “And you don’t like them?”

  “No man really does at heart, I suppose.” That irrepressible grin came back. “We don’t like to think the little woman can get along without us.”

  Aileen laughed, because somehow she could not get annoyed at the way he said it, although she knew quite well that such a remark coming from Duarte would have most certainly rubbed her up the wrong way.

  “Conceited,” she said jokingly.

  “I guess we are in a way,” he said, with no sign of apology. “You don’t really mean this career racket, do you?”

  “Of course not. I’m just like any other girl. I’d like to get married and have a home of my own, but I wouldn’t marry just for those reasons. You can laugh if you like, but I’m old-fashioned enough to think there should be love as well.”

  “Good girl,” he said with quiet sincerity. “Guess I’m old-fashioned too.” There was a slight pause and he slanted a quizzical glance at her. “Then how come this idea that you’re obsessed with having a career and wouldn’t even entertain the idea of marriage?”

  Aileen laughed and told him how it had happened. “He infuriated me so much I just couldn’t help it,” she ended. “Now I’m stuck with it.”

  He laughed uproariously at that, and Aileen had the feeling that everyone suddenly turned to look at them.

  “Please, Bart...” she whispered, but could not help laughing herself, because his mirth was so infectious.

  “It seems that you find much to amuse each other,” Alesandra’s exquisitely modulated voice remarked.

  “Well, I guess we do,” Bart agreed. “We just discovered that we have something in common.”

  “Something that is always a pleasant discovery,” Duarte remarked with urbane charm. “But not always possible,” and just momentarily his glance flicked over Aileen, giving her the feeling that they had nothing at all in common and that Alesandra was the type of woman who understood him and was understood by him. Something oddly depressing threatened to settle on her at that thought, but she quickly banished it and turned to Dona Teresa with a smile as the elder woman spoke to her.

  “Is it permitted that we know what this thing in common was?”

  “Well...” She hesitated. Although she might have admitted to Dona Teresa at any other time that a career was not the sole objective she sought for her future, she could not bring herself to do so with other people there, especially Duarte himself.

  Dona Teresa’s eyes twinkled. “I will excuse you answering, my child. I understand. It was personal.”

  “Not exactly. Shall we say ... we just discovered that we’re both old-fashioned,” she temporised.

  Duarte’s black eyebrows went up. “You surprise me,” he remarked urbanely. “I thought your beliefs were ... rather modern.”

  “Only in some things, senor,” she told him evenly. “In other things they are quite old-fashioned.”

  The dark head inclined slightly, as if he acknowledged somethings, but she did not know quite what it was supposed to be, then quite suddenly he smiled. Aileen felt the breath catch in her throat and wondered at herself for it. After all, plenty of men had smiled at her before. Yet she could not help remembering that exactly the same sensation had come to her that time he had smiled at her in the car, after more or less upbraiding her for being out alone. Something began to warn her that Duarte Adriano could be dangerous even to a girl who disliked him.

  The guests had all departed and Dona Teresa had retired to her room. Aileen went to see that Peter was sleeping peacefully, then went through to her own room, but she was strangely restless and in no mood for sleep. The moonlight shining through the glass doors that led on to her balcony drew her irresistibly and she opened them and went outside, resting her hands on the wrought-iron that surrounded it. The trees and shrubs down in the patio looked ghostly in the moonlight, and almost opposite was the arched doorway that led through into extensive gardens.

  She turned from the balcony on an impulse as irresistible as the one that had originally taken her out on to it, made her way across the lounge and out into the corridor, closing the door silently behind her. There she paused. There were two ways of reaching the patio and the door that led into the garden, but the more direct route meant taking the corridor that passed Duarte’s own apartments, and she was strangely reluctant to do that. Why that should be so was a matter for conjecture. A slight sense of guilt perhaps, in case it was quite unusual to want to go out into the garden at this time of night. There was no guarantee that Duarte was even in his room, or that he would hear her if she passed his door, but she was still reluctant to take that route. If he did catch her, it would be hard to explain where she was going. She did not like to admit the truth, knowing the sort of remarks that would be forthcoming if he found out she was going to visit gardens, dreaming fairylike in the moonlight.

  In the end she took the indirect rou
te, walking silently down the softly carpeted corridor where her own rooms were situated, to another stairway, ran quickly down it into a little vestibule and opened the heavy, nail-studded door that led out into the patio. It took only a few minutes to cross the patio, through the archway and into the garden. On the other side of the archway the gardens were terraced, leading down to a lower level. It was formal and well kept, but very lovely, leading down to a little stone seat. Side paths branched off, and she took the first of them, walking between tall standard rose bushes, down to another level still, where there were borders of dahlias and geraniums and beds of campanillas and azules. A little further down still were beds of enredadera de campanillas, colourful convolvulus-like flowers that had a short time of glory, blooming for a day only and then dying ... celindas, which carried a mass of white flowers in May ... salvias and more roses. She had seen it all before by daylight, yet at night it seemed different, all the colours muted to silver in the moonlight and a fairylike, dreamy air over everything.

  The path she had been following stopped suddenly at a little stone wall that seemed to serve no other purpose than to cut off one part of the garden from the next. It certainly did not obscure anything of the other side - in particular it did not obscure the tall figure of the man who stood not ten feet away and, as he turned at that moment, she knew there would be no hope of escaping unseen, because the moonlight was outlining her own figure in the light dress she had worn for the dinner party.

  He came towards her, and only when he put out his hand to open it did she notice the low, wrought-iron gate, the same height as the wall, a few feet from her. Another path led from the gate and in a few short moments he was at her side.

  “For a moment I thought the moonlight was playing tricks with my eyes.” Undoubtedly there was something just faintly mocking in the cultured, attractive voice. “Surely, I told myself, the career-minded Senorita Aileen would not seek the gardens by moonlight.”