“Is this house worth five thousand?” she asked soberly. The doctor glanced about him at the tapestries and portraits. “Quite that, I should say. There was one thing Don Jaime mentioned that interested me, and I don’t believe you’ve heard about it. Your aunt, it seems, wrote a letter to Senor Garcia, the lawyer, shortly before she died, enclosing another letter which was to be opened only if you or Sebastian married someone else during this year. Not an engagement, but a marriage. What would be in that letter, I wonder?”
“Oh, but don’t you see, that might alter everything!” exclaimed Linda. “She may have repented of the harsh will.”
“I don’t think so. I believe she really did want a marriage between you and Sebastian, but it does seem possible that she saw the injustice of leaving Sebastian with nothing at all. The trouble is, we shan’t know what’s in the letter unless one of you marries, so we’re no nearer.”
“We do know now that Aunt Natalie was well aware Sebastian and I might not take to each other. I wonder why Senor Garcia didn’t tell me about that letter?”
Hugh Reeves smiled. “He probably thought the first meeting between you and Sebastian would clinch the whole thing. He didn’t intend putting ideas into your head! Don Jaime, of course, has had several sessions with the lawyer. You’d think the money was fifty thousand instead of five.”
“What are we to do about Carmen?”
The doctor gave a thoughtful nod. “I never know if it’s wise to play Cupid, but the first stages can’t do any harm. Will you be seeing Sebastian today?”
“He’s supposed to be taking me to watch the fiesta.”
“Only to watch, mind!” he warned her. “Can you have Carmen here with you when he comes? Good. Tell him you’ve invited her along. And don’t look for signs between them. With you there, he’ll be entirely correct. The girl, I take it, needs no persuading of his charms.”
“Sebastian loves her,” declared Linda. “I’m sure of it.”
“If you’re right, he’ll have to betray himself, some time!” He seemed to have finished, but he didn’t get up at once. Instead he asked, “If Sebastian should admit to loving
Carmen, would you let them have the cottage rent-free for the rest of the year?”
“Good heavens, yes!” she said, delighted. “Why didn’t I think of that? The moment there’s a chink in his armor I’ll tell him.”
They parted gaily. Linda went with him to the gate and, at the last moment, promised to make up for having been wrested from the nursing home before lunch last Sunday by lunching with him next Sunday.
“I’ll come for you,” he said. “Good-bye.”
It was pleasant, Linda reflected, to find she had a genuine friend in the doctor. Merely being able to discuss her problems with him made them less of a burden, and it was possible that his talk with Don Jaime this morning would make things a little easier for Sebastian. She hoped so.
Driven by the restlessness which seldom left her these days, she wandered down the garden to the path which led away to the jasmine and the wooden gate. Anna’s cat sat purring on the top bar of the gate, and as it turned its head, in the shadows, the eyes were green and glittering. Try as she would, Linda couldn’t like green eyes.
Maxine, she supposed, was in there with Philip. If he was working she would sit very quietly in a chair; she had learned how to do that, for Philip. There was nothing Maxine would not do to get what she wanted. And since she had found out more about him, how he had led extravagantly successful mansions, in Continental castles, in Eastern palaces, there was no doubt at all about what she wanted. To share such a varied, magic and mysterious existence was the apex of her ambition.
But Philip was an unknown quantity. Certainly, nothing would be allowed to interfere with the completion of his writing and cataloguing, but he was working hard and fast; he meant to finish in record time. Even last night, when Linda had awakened towards three o’clock, a light had been shining through the trees from his workroom. She had wanted to believe that the light was a thin but precious link between them, but common sense had reiterated that it was a link about which he knew nothing at all. She had gone back to bed, unbearably unhappy.
Yet she couldn’t face leaving the cottage. She had thought about it this morning, before she got up. For a rare minute, when she had come awake, it had seemed possible to shape the world to her will; she could send Maxine away, dispose also of Sebastian and Carmen, and stay tranquilly here at the house till Philip’s work was done, and by then they would have proved in a thousand ways that each had what the other wanted. Then Anna’s movements below had wrenched her forward into the world as it was, and she had felt she could not remain in Montelisa another day. But neither could she leave.
Now, she sighed and turned back into the house. She would have to look out a frock for the fiesta and try out her flattest pair of sandals. Espadrilles wouldn’t do at all. And she must write a note for Carmen.
Early that evening Carmen Artino came hesitantly into the sitting-room of the cottage. She wore stiff black silk with a full skirt and an emerald bolero, and her mantilla was of white lace fastened with a scarlet camellia.
“You’re lovely,” said Linda involuntarily. “Not afraid, are you?”
Carmen answered gravely. “When a thing is right one should not be afraid. But please give me some needlework, so that I shall feel unembarrassed when he comes.” Unthinkingly, Linda got the petit-point from the work-box. “You’re very Spanish,” she said smiling. “When English girls wait for a swain they read a magazine.”
But Carmen’s instinct had been right, When Sebastian came in with his usual charming smile, he stopped abruptly and the smile became set. Then he looked from Linda, who was idle, to the head bent seriously over a colorful embroidery, and he spoke softly.
“I did not know that Carman came to visit the senorita. You ask her to finish the piece of tapestry upon which my aunt was working, yes?”
“She does it much better than I could,” Linda replied, not quite truthfully. “Carmen has no escort for the fiesta, so I’ve invited her to go with us.”
“But I shall be enchanted,” he said, automatically, as if Carmen were a stranger. “Shall we go soon? The streets are already strewn with roses and the procession is making ready. We are to join my family in the balcony of the town hall.’
Carmen said gently, “Perhaps it will be better if I do not come.”
“Of course you must come,” said Linda.
“But yes,” politely from Sebastian. “My mother will be charmed to meet you again.”
Well, this is a beginning, thought Linda as she was solicitously placed in the back seat of the car with Carmen beside her. Sebastian wouldn’t be able to live through a fiesta without dancing, and she couldn’t possibly dance with him.
Matchmaking, she decided as she cast a glance at the subdued radiance of Carmen, made one feel distinctly old!
CHAPTER EIGHT
LINDA was quite unprepared for the swift development of her own plan for Sebastian and Carmen. The two had danced together at the fiesta last night, but they had also danced with others. Carmen had sparkled and shown a pretty respect for the Senora de Meriaga and Don Jaime, and in a small discussion she had displayed a firmer grasp of her country’s history than either of the wives of the other two sons. Linda had seen the senora sigh and glance fleetingly at herself, and she knew the older woman was railing against the pity of Sebastian being so abominably tied. Except for her poverty Carmen was an admirable match.
Still, Don Jaime was severely one-track and Sebastian, thought Linda, was not likely to upset him in any way. But Carmen, this morning, was jubilant.
She came into the cottage like a scented breeze. “I have hardly slept,” she told Linda, “but it is wonderful. I have so much to thank you for, senorita!” this sudden triumphant vitality in another.
“Oh, yes. I am not able to tell you all—but it will come right. I know it! You are not the only one who is helping
“I’m glad to hear it. What does Sebastian think about it all?”
“He does not know,” she answered gaily. Her voice went soft and ecstatic. “But it came to me last night when we danced that one must do something quickly. You made it possible for me to go to the fiesta with him, senorita, and for that I cannot thank you enough. It was like opening the gates. I felt so powerful, and I remembered many things that might be of help to us. I am not going to continue to wait for others to work for me.” She gestured, somewhat vaguely. “There are things I can do.”
“I wish you success,” said Linda sincerely.
Evidently Carmen did not intend to stay long. She was on her way to the door when she asked, hesitantly, “May I please know something? Is it true that after a month or a little longer you will leave Spain and not come back?”
“Yes, it’s quite true.”
“Rather than live for six months of every year in this house you would give it up?”
“I’m afraid so, Carmen.”
The dark head nodded gravely from the doorway. “It is a strange decision to one like me, but I think I understand. I will come in and see you again, if I may.”
Maxine had driven into Barcelona, so Linda was alone for the rest of the morning. Inactivity made her uneasy. She put on some records, but this morning she was tone-deaf and she missed the subtleties which turn a melody into music. She picked up the petit-point embroidery, but somehow could not place one stitch upon the fabric that Carmen had unwittingly made her own. Nothing here belonged to Linda. She was an outsider, and the sooner she moved off, the better.
It was nearly one o’clock when Philip came in. Linda was lying back in her chair with her eyes closed, looking, had she known it, rather small and vulnerable as she listened to a gipsy song from the gramophone. Into her being came a spark of awareness, an unmistakable pull of attraction, and when she opened her eyes she knew who would be standing there. Even so, the sight of his head, thick dark copper hair as slick as he could make it, and the calculating grey gaze, shook her heart with a tremor of pure delight. It was only in after moments that the delight faded. Wouldn’t she ever be able to suppress the quick shock of emotion each time she saw him?
“Hangover?” he asked briefly.
“No, I’m just bored.” She sat up straight and uncrossed her ankles. “What do the English families along the coast do with their time?”
“Those who don’t write or paint learn the art of doing nothing. They’ve learned it well, most of them. If you’re so bored, why didn’t you go into Barcelona with Maxine?”
To avoid answering this, she leaned over and snapped off the gramophone. Philip sat down on a chair about a yard away and got out cigarettes. She took one and held it to his lighter.
Speculatively, he said, “You’re the queerest pair of friends I’ve ever met. Maxine tries to be amiable, but you won’t have it. If you don’t get on with her, why did you invite her here?”
Linda would have liked to give him an unequivocal reply. She felt she could have managed it tersely and forcibly. But a promise, even to Maxine, was a promise. And she couldn’t see that it would do much good to be frank with Philip. From habit, and to gain time, she raised her left foot to the stool which Anna kept meticulously near the chair. Philip bent over it.
“You’ve recovered from the braising very well,” he said. “They’re sweet little toes, Linda.”
Blood rushed through her heart but unaccountably her face whitened. His fingers on her foot were electric, and she drew it quickly away from him. He leaned back, shoved the hand which had touched her into his pocket, and regarded her with cool appraisal.
“What’s the matter with you today?” he demanded bluntly. “Couldn’t be jealousy, could, it?”
This was intolerable. Was he suggesting she was jealous of Maxine? Would he have the nerve to construe anything she might do as flattery towards himself? She was filled with a hot, corroding rage, against him, against Maxine ... against the whole of Montelisa. But the rage turned to a feeling of helplessness and hurt.
In defence of her self-respect she had to speak. “Who could I be jealous of? I haven’t been here long enough to feel that way about anyone.”
“That’s right,” he said, a sardonic twist to his mouth. “Love takes a long time; you told me that. So you’re not jealous of Carmen Artino; she can darned well have Sebastian if he wants her.”
She went suddenly flat. So that was it. He was baiting her again about Sebastian. But how was it that he knew so much about Carmen? As if she had thrown out a thought line, he said,
“I watched the fiesta for an hour last night. You didn’t look too happy among your prospective in-laws. Carmen, on the other hand, was radiant.”
“Did you speak to her?”
“Yes, and with Sebastian for a minute.”
Without looking at him she said, “They’re in love with each other.”
“Good for you,” he said, in those tones which had a steel edge to them. “Taken on the chin, like a Britisher. Do you propose to do anything about it?”
“Is that why you came here today—to ask that?”
“Partly. Let me tell you the facts, as I know them.” He tapped away ash, then looked at her, mockingly. “I had an inkling before you came to Montelisa that there was something between Carmen and Sebastian, but as I’ve told you before, Sebastian has fluttered the hearts of many senoritas, and I took Carmen no more seriously than the others. However, from one or two things he said last night I gathered that he’s really unhappy about her.”
“I’ve gathered that myself. Is that all?”
“Have patience, my sharp one, and hear me out. I came away from the fiesta at midnight and settled to some work, but when Carmen Artino came home she saw the light in my workroom and tapped on the window.”
She couldn’t help putting in tartly, “How entirely Spanish. But shouldn’t it have been the other way round?”
“Don’t be waspish. It doesn’t suit you a bit,” he said calmly. “I went out and had a word with her—many words, in fact. I won’t try to reproduce the warm, Latin flavor of them, but the outcome was that I promised to speak to you about the house—this house.”
Averting herself from him she answered, “I’ve already decided that if Sebastian wishes to marry Carmen almost at once, he can have the house for the rest of the year. After then, it won’t be mine.”
He spoke sceptically. “Are you sure you didn’t decide it just now, on the spur of the moment?”
“Quite sure,” she said vexedly. “I didn’t think of it myself. The idea was Dr. Reeves’s, and I consider it an excellent one.”
“Ah.” There was no mistaking the sarcasm in his tone. “The good Hugh Reeves. You two got together quickly, didn’t you?” A shrug. “I had a similar plan about the house. You’d already promised to rent it to me, so I thought I’d take the place for the remainder of the year and let them live in it. That way, you wouldn’t lose financially, and I’d have the doubtful pleasure of speeding young love. But I also went a step further. I promised them that when the house comes up for auction I’d lend them the money to buy it.”
She stared at him, unbelieving. “Why should you do that—for Sebastian?”
Philip paused, contemplatively. “Two or three reasons. In the first place I feel that if he finds the courage to flout his father he’ll be worth helping. Also, I’m pretty certain that Carmen is far more likely to make him happy than you would be. That’s no reflection on you, my child,” he ended reasonably. “You’re probably destined to make some other man happy.”
“Need you insert your hateful remarks!”
He took a last pull at his cigarette and then squashed it out. Hers had been left on the ashtray to smoulder into a thin grey cylinder, and while he was about it he rubbed that out, too.
“You’re obviously meant to be looked after,” he commented. “You get yourself tied up with Spaniards, run over by donkey carts, and caught up in a delicate web with a doctor w
ho’s nearly twice your age.” His expression was cynical but watchful. “I hope you do feel the doctor is too old for you?”
“I’ve never thought of him that way,” she said shortly. “I believe you deliberately set out to spoil any pleasure I might get in anyone else.”
“No, I’m a realist, that’s all.” He was silent a moment. “Are we agreed about the house?”
“Not entirely. When I leave Montelisa I’ll give Sebastian permission to live here till the house goes up for sale. There’ll be no question of paying rent, and I shan’t care what happens afterwards. I don’t even want to know.”
“Very well. Now that’s settled we’ll go outside. You look as if you could do with a good shot of sunshine.”
She didn’t want to go into the garden with him, but she didn’t want him to leave her, either; the second feeling was stronger, so she got up and walked out at his side, first of all on to the veranda, where he stood looking appreciatively over the blue and silver sea, and then down on to the grass. She was wearing black linen slacks, and he glanced down at them, humorously.
“Don’t ever go outside the gate in those, will you? In Barcelona I once saw a couple of trousered girl tourists escorted back to their hotel. They were furious, but so was the Guardia Civile. He told them very firmly that in Spain a woman prizes her mystery and femininity, but they hadn’t the foggiest of what he was saying, so I intervened. One of the girls gave me a dark look and said, ‘Just tell him nuts, that’s all.’ So I did. But she had to change into a frock.” Linda smiled a little. “It’s strange how Spanish women have let the women of other nations go ahead,” she observed. “During the day or two that I stayed in Barcelona I even saw typists going to their offices accompanied by duennas. Surely it isn’t necessary, if the girls are so strictly brought up?”
“I don’t know. They say it’s the sheltered ones that go haywire when they’re let loose.” He look her over, almost teasingly. “You’ve led a fairly sheltered existence yourself, haven’t you? What sort of man is your father?”
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