The House of Adriano

by Nerina Hilliard

  Just what was her future going to be? She knew that her instinct about Alesandra disliking her was quite correct, and when the Spanish girl became Duarte’s wife she would most certainly make certain of getting Aileen Lawrence out of the house, whatever means she chose to achieve that end. It was unlikely that Duarte himself would interfere, since he could not intend her to be here permanently, only until Peter was thoroughly settled in. Then, of course, she would return to her old job in Australia and try to pick up the threads of her life as they had been arranged before this upheaval came to disrupt them.

  “Something worries you?” his voice broke into her thoughts and she shook her head hastily.

  “No ... no, of course not.”

  She was thankful that he did not pursue the matter, but instead half turned away from her, glancing towards the window. She was wondering whether she ought to make some excuse to leave him, since she had done what she came for, thanked him for the cabinet, and he was probably wishing her out of the way, when he turned back to her almost abruptly.

  “You have not yet seen our gypsy dancers, I believe?”

  “No,” Aileen admitted, wondering what was coming.

  “Then you will soon have a chance to do so.” There was a slight pause, during which she felt those dark eyes go over her with a completely enigmatic expression. “There is to be an engagement party shortly at the Zarpeta house. I understand that invitations are to be sent here.” Again that sharply dark glance searched her face, almost mercilessly this time. “There will be more of the same group invitations. I realise of course that my presence is something of a nuisance to you, but on those occasions I am afraid it must be tolerated, or some curiosity may be aroused.”

  Aileen was conscious of some curiosity herself. Did that mean that Duarte himself was to be her escort, or was it just some sort of family party? Probably the latter by his use of the phrase “group invitations”. That was far more logical.

  She realised suddenly that the sharp, dark glance was still on her and remembered the last part of his remark.

  “I ... I don’t...” she began haltingly, but he cut across her words almost derisively.

  “Regard my presence as a nuisance?” Those dark brows jerked up in an expression of the same derision. “You expressed yourself quite forcibly that day in Melbourne. However,” he added with a shrug, “I quite understand. We shall not dwell on the matter,” and with that he changed the subject, refusing to let her say anything - even if she had been about to refute the remark once again - talking about the engagement party to which they would receive invitations.

  Shortly afterwards she went to join Dona Teresa, who herself immediately greeted her with the same news, about the engagement party.

  “An arranged marriage,” she said with a shrug. “But that is how these matters are in Spain.”

  Yes, that was how matters were in Spain. So many different customs, and the people themselves ... so very different.

  Bart telephoned that evening. “Remember me?” he said when Vanetta had called her to the telephone.

  Aileen laughed slightly. “If I try hard I might.”

  She heard his easy chuckle. “Will the chaperones let you come out to lunch with me tomorrow?”

  “You seem to take it for granted it’s only the chaperones you have to deal with,” she retorted a little dryly.

  “Are you thinking of turning me down, then? Think of what it would do to my ego.”

  He sounded confident that he would not be turned down, though, and she laughed again.

  “I’d better not refuse, then, had I?”

  In a way, Bart was a relief. Although she was coming on quickly with her Spanish lessons it was nowhere near as easy as speaking in English. Only Dona Teresa and Duarte could speak really understandable English at Marindos - barring the tutor and Peter, of course - and when she spoke to anyone else it had to be in her halting Spanish. Also, with Bart, she did not need to consider every remark she made.

  The restaurant he took her to was apparently quite famous for its good food and, since it was the first time she had dined out in Madrid, it was interesting for more reasons than one.

  Bart watched her across the table. “I’m beginning to think the restaurant’s more interesting than I am.”

  “I’m sorry.” Aileen turned back to him, smiling. “I’m still finding everything so different from back home.”

  “Including the people.” He grinned. “Anyone made a pass at you yet? These Spaniards love fair girls.”

  “Nobody,” she said with a laugh.

  “Disappointed?”

  “I’ll survive.”

  They turned their attention to lunch then. Since she was quite unfamiliar with the menu, Bart ordered for her. Something called paella turned up first. It seemed to be a mixture of rice, yellow with saffron, containing pieces of chopped meat, herbs and tiny shellfish.

  “Like it?”

  Aileen nodded. “It’s an unusual combination.”

  “Even more unusual when the shellfish get left in their shells,” he said dryly.

  She looked surprised. “Do they?” Half automatically she began poking around in the mixture on her plate, as if searching for shells.

  He laughed. “Not in this place ... but at one restaurant up in the north of Spain when I was over here a couple of years ago, we spent the whole time diving for shells.” He grinned. “The ‘we’ was a business acquaintance, not a blonde.”

  Aileen could not help smiling. “I’m glad you explained.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea ... especially as I do have a weakness for blondes,” his glance going over the cap of platinum fair hair that clung to her finely shaped head and curled up slightly at the ends. “A lot of women must envy you that colour. It usually comes out of a bottle.”

  “Mine doesn’t,” Aileen retorted dryly.

  He grinned again. “I’m glad you explained.”

  “I wouldn’t want you to get the wrong idea,” she came back instantly, reversing the exchange of a moment ago.

  Temera was next on the menu, little veal steaks covered with batter.

  “At least it’s supposed to be veal,” Bart told her when the dish arrived, “but I can’t help thinking there’s an awful lot of it around just after a bullfight,” and he grinned so widely at that she did not know whether or not to take him seriously. Anyway, whatever it was, it was still delicious.

  After the temera - bull or veal - Bart leaned back, looking across the table at her speculatively.

  “Tell me about yourself.”

  Aileen smiled. “What do you want to know?”

  “Everything.”

  She raised her brows slightly. “That’s rather a tall order.”

  He grinned. “I’ll let you pass over the too intimate details.” His smile grew slightly crooked. “Though maybe I’d better find out if there’s any opposition back home.”

  Undecided whether to take him seriously or not, Aileen asked if all Texans were as uninhibited when it came to asking personal questions.

  He shrugged, quite unrepentant. “If you don’t ask questions, how can you get any answers?”

  Finally she admitted there was no opposition, if he insisted on putting it that way, and found herself going on to tell him something of what her life in Australia had been like. He nodded, almost approvingly it seemed, when she mentioned her old home. “So you’re a ranch girl.”

  “In my childhood days I was - and we call them stations, not ranches.”

  “Go on,” he insisted, so she went on to tell him about the more recent years, the meeting with Eric and Mandy, her work at the Southern Cross, where she had first met Duarte. For some reason, finding an odd reluctance to do so, she mentioned nothing about the “kidnapping” incident and the short, bitter fight between Duarte and herself which he had won unconditionally. It was not a reluctance to admit her defeat that kept her silent, but some odd certainty that told her Duarte would not like her discussing su
ch personal matters with Bart. Why she should give in to the feeling was something that puzzled her. Some time ago she might have discussed it quite freely, making no secret of her bitter dislike, but she found that her attitude had changed - and was still changing - more recently. She could not really be sure that she did dislike Duarte any longer. He might still have the ability to infuriate her, but the denial that she found his presence a nuisance might be true in a way.

  During the next week he telephoned her twice, and although she refused to take more time off the first time he rang, on the second occasion Dona Teresa insisted that the hours Peter spent in the schoolroom at least should be regarded by Aileen as free time. Any other times, such as in the evening, it could be arranged that Vanetta kept a watch on the boy should Aileen wish to go out. Aileen thanked her, but resolved that she would make use of Vanetta as little as she could. After all, she was here on a job, tenuous and undefined as her duties might be. She did not want it said at any future time - by Duarte? - that she had lost sight of the reason for her being at Marindos.

  The engagement party seemed to come around surprisingly quickly. Bart, she learned, was not to be there, so it would probably be an entirely Spanish atmosphere.

  She found that she was a little curious to see the newly engaged pair, wondering how they would appear, brought together in this arranged marriage. She tried to place herself in the position of the engaged girl. How did a girl feel facing the knowledge that soon the closest tie of all would bind her to a man her family had chosen and who, presumably, she did not love. How would she feel also facing the knowledge that she must give herself, without love, to that man? Surely she would detect shrinking in the eyes of the young bride-to-be? She knew she could never have been able to do such a thing herself, but it probably all depended on the outlook one had grown up with. Probably this Spanish girl regarded it as quite normal.

  On the afternoon of the party Aileen followed the usual custom of a siesta, more than ever necessary when she realised she was unlikely to be in bed before three or four o’clock in the morning. She had never thought she would be able to sleep during the day, but the heat did make one rather drowsy, and although in Sydney she had worked through temperatures almost as high, the necessity to keep going had not made it quite so noticeable.

  In the evening Vanetta laid out the dress bought specially for the occasion - a dreadful extravagance, Aileen had considered, since she had bought one new evening dress only a short time before, but as her high salary was presumably to enable her to dress well she had gone on another of those shopping expeditions - extremely pleasant expeditions, it must be admitted.

  This time the dress was of a very pale turquoise, impregnated with some kind of silver dust that was not immediately apparent, but shimmered as she moved. With it she wore a pendant necklace of her mother’s, a pear-shaped pearl on a fine gold chain. She had no fears that anyone would smile superciliously - Alesandra was the person she thought of - silently revealing that she knew it was imitation, because the pearl was real, the one thing that had been saved from the old days. Her mother had refused to part with it, because it had been her husband’s wedding present to her.

  With her silver hair brushed into a gleaming cap and the turquoise stole she had bought in Melbourne thrown around her shoulders - that piece of extravagance that misery and dislike of Duarte had led her into - even Aileen had to admit that she looked “rather nice”, but Vanetta was far more voluble in her admiration, chattering away in Spanish, so quickly that Aileen did not understand her.

  Dona Teresa smiled at her, nodding her still sleekly dark head in approval.

  “Very beautiful, my child. You look like captive sea foam.” She smiled her impish smile. “I can see that you will be much in demand tonight. Our so very dark men have an appreciation of such fairness.”

  Aileen could not help blushing a little - and she wished that Duarte had not chosen that moment to enter the room, but luckily he did not seem to have overhead Dona Teresa’s remark, although she did notice that his eyes went over her with that peculiar closed-up and enigmatic expression she had noticed once or twice before, then he was bowing to Dona Teresa with that courtly grace which was so much a part of him, raising her hand to his lips with a smiling, soft remark which Aileen did not catch, but which apparently made Dona Teresa smile in return; then she felt his eyes on her again, that smiling glance a little teasing, as if he had forgotten, or chosen to disregard for the moment, that he had accused her of finding his presence a nuisance.

  “I think you will need all that determination of yours to retain your independence, peqtiena. Tonight someone may conceive the idea that he would do well to capture this sea maid for himself.”

  So he had heard after all. She felt the quick flush rise to her face again, quite involuntarily, but managed to answer lightly. “Would he have to apply to you for permission?”

  Before Duarte could reply, Dona Teresa laughed delightedly, “Ah - and if you refused, mio sobrino, I think you would find yourself in much trouble.”

  He nodded, with a touch of that urbane charm he could assume so well. “I think that I would not dare to refuse.”

  “Wouldn’t you?” Aileen retorted. “I’m sure that you would.”

  It would not be a question of daring. He would merely take it as a natural right. Still, he could be charming as well as infuriating, so perhaps that lord of creation attitude was more bearable than it had once seemed.

  Dona Teresa’s mischievous smile crossed her face again. “You think that our men take too much on themselves?” she asked with happy tactlessness - or not so much tactlessness, Aileen was sure, but more an impish delight in clashing two such opposing outlooks. However, whatever Aileen might have replied, Duarte spoke first.

  “Perhaps that question should remain unanswered. I think that I sense the beginning of an armistice, and it would be most unwise to spoil it.”

  He smiled at her as he said that, the brilliant, disturbing smile that could make everything inside her turn right over. Careful, she told herself. Careful of what?

  Shortly afterwards they went out to the car which was to take them to the Zarpeta house. In construction it was very much like Marindos, as if it might have built at about the same period of history, when a certain architectural design was in favour. Marita Zarpeta turned out to be a lovely young girl of eighteen and her fiancé a slender young man who could not have been more than three or four years older - but what astonished Aileen was the fact that there was not the faintest sign of shrinking in the lovely dark eyes when Marita looked at Juan Desco, her fiancé. Considering that it was an arranged marriage, she seemed to be taking it not just philosophically but even willingly. Perhaps sometimes love came after all, to make things like that bearable.

  “Something puzzles you?” Duarte’s voice enquired at her side, and Aileen realised that he had come up to her unseen and unheard.

  “No ... not exactly.” She could not put in words what was in her mind, but he seemed to guess it in some way.

  “Ah ... it is the little Marita who puzzles you. You find it rather different from what you had expected ... no shrinking and no unwillingness.”

  “You mean that it wasn’t just an arranged marriage after all?”

  “No. It was arranged in the usual way.” There was just something faintly mocking in the dark eyes now.

  “And they fell in love afterwards, you mean?”

  “Perhaps - but love does not come to all, and for those nature sometimes proves a substitute.”

  “A ... substitute?”

  A moment later she realised what he had meant and could have bitten out her tongue.

  He shrugged and this time seemed to be perfectly serious as he spoke. There was not a trace of anything mocking in either his voice or his expression.

  “But of course. A man and woman who are both young and attractive should find little hardship in physical relationship. Nature has arranged it so.”

  Try as she could
Aileen could not stop the hot flush rising to her face. It was moments like these that made her realise the difference in their backgrounds, not just wealth and social position, but in actual outlook on life. It was thought nothing of to speak quite openly of physical love, without any embarrassment or the idea that it was something that should never be mentioned. It was a natural occurrence, part of life. At first glance it might contrast strangely with their strict conventions, but on the other hand perhaps it also explained them. They acknowledged the strength of human emotions and put up a barrier of convention so that those emotions were not given a chance to become too strong.

  Quite apart from the fact of whether or not their view of human emotions might be the best attitude towards it, Aileen could still not control her own embarrassment, because a conversation such as this was something that could never have occurred between, say, Paul and herself, or even Bart, who was outspoken enough in his own way.

  Just when she was hoping that she might be able to cover up what she was feeling and reply in some natural manner, Duarte became aware of her embarrassment and a faint trace of sardonic amusement returned to his expression.

  “Your pardon. It seems I shock you. I had forgotten for a moment that in other countries these matters are regarded in an entirely different light.”

  “You didn’t exactly shock me,” Aileen defended herself, rather hesitantly. “It was just that ... that it sounded so primitive somehow.”

  “Perhaps - but isn’t nature itself, and even love, something primitive?” He made a quick gesture with one of those strong, finely shaped hands. “Even love needs physical attraction to be part of it.” His seriousness disappeared and for the second time in minutes the faintly sardonic smile hovered around his well-cut lips. “Ah, but again I forget. We talk from opposite sides of the fence. You do not believe in love, and physical attraction is something that may not be mentioned. We shall then talk of something quite innocuous,” and he did just that, but Aileen hardly heard him, because she was struggling with some of the things he had said.