'Did she have real hair, Senorita Birdie, like my favourite doll, Juanita?'
'Yes, and rosy cheeks and deep blue eyes shiny as enamel,' Jennifer confirmed. 'When he set her on a chair on the balcony of his house people thought they were looking at a very lovely young girl who was always fashionably dressed. Sometimes the doctor would wind her up so that she danced, but mostly he left her sitting on the balcony with a book on her lap.'
'Did no one ever try to talk to her?' Lucita gasped, her eyes wide as saucers.
'Yes, a young man who had fallen in love with the beautiful puppet, but of course he never received a reply. His sweetheart, Swanhilda, was very upset about his switch of affection and being a sensible girl she even doubted that Coppelia was real—which was just as well, seeing the young man still had her to turn to when finally the truth about the inhuman puppet girl was finally revealed.'
Lucita's face dropped, showing her obvious dissatisfaction with the end of the story. 'But why wasn't the puppet girl brought to life?' she protested. 'In my book of fairy stories the heroine is always awakened from her trance by a kiss from a fairy prince.'
'Perhaps she was an English puppet, nina,' an amused voice interrupted, 'with a sturdy heart of oak and a disposition guaranteed icy enough to discourage even the most ardent suitor.'
Jennifer did not need to look up to discover the identity of the jeering presence whose shadow had invaded their pleasant surroundings. Hiding her intense resentment behind a barrier of downcast lashes, she returned his fire with a salvo of contempt aimed directly at his insufferable pride.
'There is a well-known English saying, senor: "Listeners never hear good of themselves". Obviously, as eavesdropping appears to be a national pastime, you will not be deterred by such a warning, but for the sake of Lucita who appears to slavishly follow your example, may I pass on to you another piece of advice that I had drummed into me during my supposedly deprived childhood, namely, that whoever interrupts the conversation of others makes notorious his own lack of breeding!'
CHAPTER SEVEN
A STATE of armed neutrality had been declared between the members of the household of the Casa de Solitario. A month had passed since Birdie's arrival, a time during which some ground had been gained and some lost; tempers had been curbed and occasional pleasantries exchanged, but always in the background, insidious as the beat of muted drums, lay the threat of conflict, the danger that one unguarded word, one unconsciously-taken liberty, would bring a speedy end to the armistice.
Lucita, however, was progressing well with her lessons, so well that the Conde had become disturbed by the keenness of her dedication and sought out Birdie in order to confide his worries. She found it impossible to emulate Lucita's habit of taking an afternoon siesta, therefore she was filling in time sewing new tapes on the child's ballet shoes when the Conde appeared beside her on the terrace.
'There is no need for you to do that,' he frowned. 'I did not employ you to do the work of servants.'
'I don't mind, senor. A dancer always sews on her own tapes, she alone knows where they will feel most comfortable. Also, if she does the job herself no one but she can be blamed if the tapes should work loose during a performance.'
She schooled her fingers not to tremble when he sat down beside her, her composure strained to the limit by the close proximity of a man who for the past weeks had seemed to go out of his way to avoid her company. Of course, the task of finding a suitable wife must have been keeping him fully occupied. Each evening he was transported by boat across the bay to Mahon and back again to the villa in the early hours of the morning. Business, she assumed, kept him occupied during most of the day, and yet there had been a puzzling lack of visitors to the Casa de Solitario. By this time, she had imagined that a troupe of would-be condesas would already have been paraded for Lucita's approval, but as yet not one likely candidate had appeared on the scene. Perhaps, she had finally concluded, he had decided to be more cagey, to conduct his courtship in secrecy before presenting his novia as a fait accompli.
'I must congratulate you, senorita, on your expert handling of my precocious ward. Your assumption that she would respond well to discipline has been proved correct. The child looks happier than I have ever seen her, also her manners have improved immensely.'
The needle slipped, pricking deep into the soft flesh of her finger, yet it was her heart that reacted to the jab of his unexpected praise. 'Why ... why, thank you, senor, it is very generous of you to say so,' she mumbled, keeping her eyes averted from the lounging frame emitting a threat of piracy even though clad in a casual black shirt and well worn denims—an outfit that gave fair indication of his intention to remain at home for the rest of the day.
'However,' he hesitated, choosing his words with care, 'although your tuition has improved Lucita's deportment—I have noted that she is no longer inclined to drag her foot, as she used to—I think it would be a great mistake if she were to be buoyed with false hopes of growing up to be a ballet dancer.'
Carefully, Birdie laid her work aside. 'You do me an injustice, senor, if you imagine that I have not taken great care to ensure that Lucita is completely aware of her limitations. After all,' her eyes reflecting the soft brown look of a hurt animal reproached him, 'who should know better than I the pain of hopes destroyed, the utter aimlessness of a life deprived of the stability that comes from the knowledge that one has a useful role to play in life, that, though never indispensable, one is at least needed.'
'You miss the ballet world very much, don't you?' Keenly, he held her gaze, forcing her eyes not to waver, demanding entry into her very soul. 'Can nothing ever take its place—a husband, a home, children, perhaps?'
For a long shaken moment while his glance remained locked with hers she felt a rising tide of hope, a lifting of depression, then memories came flooding back of the bustling rabbit warren of a world that forms the backstage of a theatre— painters transcribing an artist's small design into a huge, bold backdrop; carpenters hammering in thousands of nails; frantic costume staff hard at work turning designers' sketches into garments eventually to be worn by the dancers. Then again, the sounds of a ballet about to be born, an orchestra tuning up; excited conversation humming through the theatre before lights faded, the conductor entered the orchestra pit and, seconds later, the curtain rose ...
'Birdie, tell me, would they be consolation enough?'
As if from afar she heard the Conde's voice, felt the grip of his fingers on her arm as he willed her to answer. The shock of his touch, the surprise of hearing him speak her name without the usual formal prefix caused an emotional upheaval far greater than the trauma she had experienced the night she had waited in the wings for the cue that had signalled her debut as a solo dancer. She reacted with panic to the stirring of numbed emotions, to the tingling of nerves that had lain dormant since the doctors had imparted their crippling diagnosis. She did not want to be brought back to life, to suffer more pain! All she wanted was to be allowed to continue playing the role of Coppelia, the wooden puppet who could not be hurt because she had no feelings ...
'No!' she cried out in fear of being made to come alive again. 'No, that's not what I want!'
'I'm sorry, I did not mean to cause you distress.' He loosened his grip upon her arm. 'Your seemingly calm acceptance of the bitter-sweet of life led me to hope that sufficient time had elapsed to ease a little of the regret imposed by the collapse of your career and by the absence of the most important person in your life. Obviously, I was wrong ...' He jerked to his feet and in a couple of pantherish strides reached the edge of the pool. 'I feel in need of a swim,' he decided, 'would you care to join me?'
'I can't,' she gasped, nervous of his caged-in virility, 'I don't know how.'
'You have never been taught to swim?' he swung round to question incredulously. 'I have always considered it a first priority for people who live on an island.'
'I never had time to spare for swimming lessons,' she defended uneasily, sensing that
he was angry yet at a loss to understand why.
'You have time to spare now,' he told her pointedly, 'if you change into a swimsuit we can begin to rectify the omission.'
The very idea of such shared intimacy was horrifying. 'No, thank you,' she declined swiftly, 'I don't think I want to.'
'But I want you to, senorita,' he insisted silkily. 'I refuse to leave my ward in your sole care until I can be certain that she is in no danger of being left to drown.'
He left her with no option but to obey what was tantamount to an order. Seething with resentment of his high-handed command, Birdie went to her room to search for her one and only swimsuit, a modest white creation hastily purchased upon receipt of Lady Daphne's invitation to join her cruise. Because she was nervous of deep water she had worn it only once, on the day she had escaped to the beach in an attempt to avoid the tea party aboard the yacht, but as her time had been spent dabbling in the shallows before she had scampered out of the storm, the suit had remained unmarked and looked satisfyingly pristine.
She was confused by the degree of shyness that overcame her whenever she felt the Conde's eyes upon her naked limbs. Modesty could not be tolerated on stage where dancers of both sexes were called upon to perform in costumes often explicitly revealing, yet his most cursory glance imposed upon her a paralysing embarrassment rendered all the more unbearable by the certainty that he was aware of and amused by it.
She had to force herself not to flee when she returned to the pool and caught sight of a brown forearm cleaving through the water; a spume of water raised by his kicking foot, a flash of narrow, black-clad hips and lean thigh when he reached the end of the pool and did a somersault underwater. Teeth glistened white in a smile when he caught sight of her, correctly reading apprehension in every line of her tense figure.
'Of what are you afraid, senorita?' he grinned, hauling himself out of the water. 'Here there are no sharks lurking in the depths, nor even tiddlers flirting in the shallows.'
Birdie could have replied with truth that the shark she feared most was human, a man who was a reputed master of the piropo, the flattering phrase, the flirtatious quip, which he could use with devastating effect if ever the mood should take him. Instinctively, she backed away from eyes that were suddenly alive with devilry, from lips that looked ready to tease, to wreak havoc under the pretence of murmuring encouragement.
Her worst fears were confirmed when his towering, seal-dark body drew close enough to allow him to slide a loose arm around her waist.
His touch had the effect of cold steel against her warm body. Suddenly as his fingers made contact with her skin every nerve and sinew brought to the peak of suppleness by years of dancing practice stiffened, making her retreat look clumsy, jerky as the response of a puppet to the tug of a string.
She writhed with embarrassment when he laughed aloud at her discomfiture and fought to curb the rise of colour that he had learnt to tap at will in order to judge whether her emotional state was inclined towards fair, unsettled or stormy.
'Before I can begin to teach you anything, you must learn to relax,' he reproved, thoroughly enjoying his dominance. 'As water is an element strange to humans, one must learn to adapt one's movements to its properties. With beginners, fear is the commonest cause of inability to relax, the mind reacts upon the body and increases muscular tension, breathing becomes erratic, the pulse rate responds as it would to danger or,' he glinted, 'to a state of high excitement. Take a deep steadying breath,' he commanded, nodding approval of her instinctive response. 'Now expel it slowly and at the same time allow your muscles to relax. Feel better ...?' he prompted.
'A little ...' she gulped the lie.
'Good. Now you must trust me, leave yourself entirely in my hands. I promise that you will come to no harm.'
Birdie decided that that was one instruction she would never be able to follow, yet after negotiating the steps leading down into the shallow end of the pool she followed him without fear, her hand grasping his, until the water began to submerge her. shoulders.
'Jump up and down until you become used to the feel of water on your face, keep your eyes open, and breathe out into the water while your head is submerged.'
She ran the tip of her tongue around dry lips. 'You'll stay with me?' Her anxious brown eyes begged for reassurance as she stood poised on tiptoe, her head tilted to avoid the lap of water against her chin.
His smile was so unexpectedly tender she was glad of any excuse to plunge underwater, to avoid the scrutiny of eyes so often stormy and turbulent, but now sparkling as sun on a deep blue sea without a breeze to ripple its surface, no outburst of hail to chase warmth from its depths.
The moment the water closed over her head, however, she was assailed by a different sort of panic, a purely physical fear of being out of her depth, left floundering in the clutches of a heavy alien mass that was dragging at her limbs, blocking her nostrils, squeezing every drop of breath out of her lungs. Frenziedly she jerked out of his grasp, desperate to have both hands free to fight her way back to a surface that suddenly appeared to have receded far above her head, and continued to recede farther and farther out of her reach. Just when her lungs seemed on the point of bursting she was plucked out of the depths and held with her head above water until her paroxysm of coughing and spluttering had died down. Fear of being released, of plunging once more into dangerous depths, drove her to abandon all sense of reason. Immediately the Conde's dark head appeared in focus she flung her arms around his neck and clung tight as a limpet to his rock-hard chest.
His gasp of surprise, the bracing of his muscles, ought to have served as a recall to sanity, but she felt too stripped of confidence, too shocked to think straight when she stormed at the satanic face mere inches away:
'You promised not to let go of me! I ought to have known better than to trust a cold-blooded devil who sets about choosing a wife with the same dispassionate interest he would show when shopping for a suit. Sadistic brute ...!' she spluttered, outraged, 'a girl would have to be out of her mind to marry you!'
Her aim was to exact revenge, to wipe the infuriating grin from his face, but even she was surprised at the speed with which laughter lines vanished from his face, by the instant immobility of his body, by the disappearance of forked amusement, suddenly eclipsed by a cloud of feeling that dulled his brilliant eyes to grey. The fact that she had overstepped the boundary marking the dividing line between employer and employee had barely time to register before his arms began tightening around her slim waist, gradually increasing their pressure until she was trapped in a bone-crushing embrace that shot a thrill of terror through a body fluttering pale as a butterfly pinned to a dark, unyielding frame.
Mesmerised, she stared into his eyes as his face drew nearer and nearer until their lips were almost touching. She could feel the coolness of his breath fanning her cheek, sensed his savage impulse to kiss any further insults from lips quivering slightly open as she began breathing faster and more deeply. She closed her eyes to shut out the sight of a determined mouth lowering to punish, but the crush of his kiss put an end to her darkness. Brilliant light flared, flooding every secret part of her young, immature body, delving into the depths of her soul, melting the ice around her heart, sapping every ounce of energy from limbs that felt boneless, filling her mind with the discovery of a depth of passion she was encountering for the very first time.
She had to resist a compulsion to protest when he lifted his head, his expression reflecting the reluctance of a man drawing back from mortal temptation, and managed to fight her way back to reality, to smother a longing to dwell upon an instant of shared enchantment she knew she would never be able to forget as long as she lived.
The Conde, too, seemed to be having difficulty in concentrating his mind, but after fraught seconds when they seemed to be in danger of drowning in the seduction of rose-tinted water lapping their bodies with the warmth of tepid wine; of an atmosphere hung heavy with the scent of blossoms, still and silent except
for the fluttering of dove-grey wings and the humming of bees sipping from flower to flower, he reached out a hand to administer a paternal pat upon her cheek and instructed in the gentle, affectionate tone he generally reserved for Lucita:
'Time to get dressed, nina. Your first lesson is over, you must not risk catching a chill.'
There seemed little likelihood of that when her body felt stoked with heat from an inner furnace that had been kindled into life by a kiss and was now ablaze with flames threatening to consume her entirely. But she was given no chance to argue. Bodily he lifted her out of the water and deposited her at the side of the pool while he fetched a towel. She shivered when he draped it over her head and began to rub her hair dry, a shiver of apprehension born of a suspicion that one could never be certain what the Conde would do next, that his quicksilver nature was so unpredictable he could revert from saint to sinner in seconds.
Conforming to her theory, he stopped rubbing and held the edge of the towel in a bunched fist beneath her chin, so that her troubled face appeared framed by a coif.
'Must you look like a possessed nun awaiting the expulsion of the devil?' he chided roughly, then immediately relented when he saw her flinch. 'It was never my intention to upset you, nina,' he continued more gently, 'but you do seem to possess an extraordinary ability to get under my skin. We Menorquins are a passionate race, but unfortunately the tree of passion has been known to yield both bitter and sweet fruit in the one harvest. Can you forgive me ...?'
Native pride reared when she interpreted warning in his words, an implication that the small interlude was relatively unimportant, a lapse of manners he would prefer her to forget as quickly as possible.
'Certainly,' she shrugged, managing to appear unconcerned, 'after all, a kiss can mean anything or nothing—an oath; the sealing of a promise; a confession of love, or, if the kisser should happen to be a rogue, a reminder to a girl to count her teeth. My teeth are all intact, senor.' She flashed a brilliant smile to prove what little harm had been done.
Castle in Spain Page 7
