Doctor at Villa Ronda (13 page)

“Adrienne?” she whispered.

He shook his head and yawned.

“I’ll have some coffee brought to you.” She went out towards the kitchen, met Rosana, the housekeeper, and asked for coffee to be sent to the doctor’s study.

“
Si, senorita
.”

When she returned to the study, Sebastian had already opened the shutters and daylight revealed the greyness of his face. It was unnecessary to ask him if he had heard
any
thing
new. Her glance, as she looked away, fell on a f
r
amed photograph on his desk. She realised that it had been close to his hand when she first entered the room, and he did not adorn his desk with personal photographs. He moved towards the desk, picked up the silver-framed photograph and replaced it in a drawer, but not before Nicola had seen that it was a portrait of a young and beautiful woman. Elena? Nicola thought not.

A maid brought in the coffee tray and Sebastian poured cups for Nicola and himself.

“Thank you, Nicola.” He spoke at last after the long silence. “It is good to have someone who does not ask stupid questions.”

“I know that if there is anything to tell me, you will do so,” she answered quietly.

“Let’s take our coffee outside. I can’t bear any more of this room now. Our house is old and the rooms have heard many bad announcements as well as good news, they have seen quarrels and gaiety.”

Nicola nodded. She was overwhelmingly grateful that he allowed her to be with him at this agonising time. She was about to pour more coffee when she heard steps coming along the patio. She jumped to her feet.

“A
drienne!” she cried out, and ran towards the girl approaching, accompanied by Barto.

N
icola flung her arms around Adrienne’s neck but the girl gently disengaged herself and her face became composed and unsmiling. Nicola stood aside, aware that Sebastian was facing his niece and her companion.

“
Buenos dias, Tio
Sebastian,” Adrienne greeted her uncle calmly.

The boy Barto bowed to Sebastian.
“
Senor
.”

“
Well, Adrienne? Where have you been?”

N
icola was puzzled by Adrienne’s black dress. Why had she changed into this, leaving her
sardana
outfit in the beach chalet—unless the reason was to cause as much anxiety as possible?

“
In the church. All night,” returned Adrienne.

“
With Barto?” asked Sebastian.

N
icola walked a few steps away. She did not want to hear Sebastian forcing an explanation from Adrienne.

“
Don’t go, Nicola,” Sebastian ordered.
“You must hear Adrienne’s explanation from herself and not secondhand. But we will go indoors to hear the story.” In the study he turned towards his niece. “I asked whether you were with Barto.”

“
No,
senor
,”
the boy answered quickly.

“
Adrienne? I asked
you
.”

“
I was alone. I met Barto this morning by the harbour.”

“I want the truth,” pursued Sebastian. “Not a parcel of lies.”

“
I am not lying,” Adrienne answered coolly. “Nor is Barto. It’s his unhappy misfortune that he insisted on accompanying me here so early in the morning.”

S
ebastian shook his head. “Leave Barto out of this. I will deal with him later.” After a pause, he asked, “Why did you go to church? And when?”

“
I warned you last night,
Tio
Sebastian, that I would not put up with Dona Elena residing in this house. It is enough that I have to suffer her visits.”

“
So you chose this childish way of making us all anxious about your safety.” Sebastian’s lip curled in derision. “If you want to be treated as a woman, you must learn to behave like one, not a spoilt baby.”

N
icola reddened with shame that the doctor should so humiliate Adrienne in front of herself and the boy Barto.

“We sent men down to search the sea for you, Ignacio scoured the town looking for you, Ramon was worried and Nicola has had no sleep.”

A
drienne smiled. “And you, Sebastian? Were you anxious, or did you sleep soundly and not bother?”

“You haven’t told me why you went to the church.” He ignored her jibe.

“I wanted to hurt you,” Adrienne said vehemently. “To run away and make you sorry. If I had wanted, I could have gone to Barto’s house, but that would have dragged him into the affair, so I went to the church.”

“After midnight? It’s always locked before then. How did you get there? Did you walk along the road and through the streets?”

“No. Some of the guests gave me a lift in their car down to the village.”

“Without recognising their hostess?” Sebastian’s tone was incredulous.

“I wore a black dress and veiled my face.” Dramatically, Adrienne withdrew from the pocket of the dress the black lace mantilla that most Spanish women wore in church.

“And how did you get in the church? Or does your imagination fail?”

“
The door was not locked, and I pushed it open and went inside.” Adrienne was defiant.

“So you stayed there until a short while ago? Then you decided to return here and on the way you happily met Barto?”

“He had been out with the fishing boats and had just landed, so he escorted me here.”

Sebastian remained silent for a moment. Then his face became darker than ever with anger. “Adrienne Montal,
you are not fit to be the daughter of my brother and your mother. How dare you stand there and tell me this fairy tale of nonsense!”

Barto, who did not understand the rapid English of Sebastian and Adrienne, looked from one face to the other and shifted on his feet restlessly, but he understood the doctor’s angry tone. Nicola wanted to cry out that surely Sebastian could see Adrienne was telling the truth, whatever her mixed motives might have been for such alarming behaviour.

“If you do not choose to believe the truth,” Adrienne began, “then I really will disappear. Perhaps I shall go to South America and look for my father. To be lost in the jungle would be better than staying under this roof.”

Sebastian closed his eyes for a moment as though in pain at the reminder of his brother’s unknown fate.

“Barto.” He spoke quietly to the boy, then continued in what Nicola thought to be Catalan. The boy, his large eyes unwavering in their honesty, answered with polite dignity. There was nothing cringing nor servile about him, and Nicola reflected the truth of the saying that all Spaniards consider themselves the equal of kings.

There was a long pause, and then one of the manservants knocked and
ann
ounced that Fr. Anselmo had called and would like to see Don Sebastian.

Adrienne smiled triumphantly. “Of course he must come in.”

The priest hurried into the room. “Your pardon, Don Sebastian,” he began in Spanish, “but these young people arrived here too quickly for my old legs. Senorita Adrienne has told you?”

“Sit down and let me hear your story,” commanded Sebastian.

Nicola could scarcely follow the priest’s rapid Spanish or Sebastian’s questions, but she gathered that his account corroborated Adrienne’s own story, and he had come up to the Villa for that express purpose.

S
ebastian sank heavily into the chair at his desk. In
reply to Barto’s questioning glance, he nodded and indicated that the boy could leave. Then he stood up.

“Adrienne, please offer Fr. Anselmo coffee and any breakfast he wishes to have. I am going out.”

He went through the windows on to the patio and disappeared into the sunlit garden.

Nicola was uncertain whether to go or stay, but finally she said, “I’ll be in my room, Adrienne. Perhaps later we can talk.”

She wanted to rush after Sebastian, to comfort him in his defeat, to reassure him that in future she would stay close to Adrienne, act as her shadow and see that she did not upset the entire household by her wild-cat exploits. Instead, she went to her own room as she had promised and waited for Adrienne to come. The girl was not long in arriving. She had taken off her sober black dress and now wore a padded terylene housecoat embroidered with pink and white flowers.

“Why did you do this mad thing?” was Nicola’s first question.

Adrienne sat on the dressing stool and peered at her face in the mirror. “I was very angry with the way Sebastian had allowed Elena to come here and practically act as
la madre
in our house. She must wait to do that when she marries Sebastian—if that should ever take place—and perhaps by that time she will be a very old woman!”

“But even allowing for your anger, why leave the Villa and not come home?”

Adrienne swung round on the stool. “Perhaps it was a devil that entered me. I wanted to do something most desperate, to throw myself into the sea and swim far out so that I would be lost and not able to return. Then I wanted to throw Elena into the sea so that she would never come back and distress us. All this time the party was so gay, and underneath it all I was seething like a boiling pot.”

“
But the black dress?” queried Nicola. “Did you take it
down to the shore with you so that you could conveniently leave your other clothes behind?”

Adrienne smiled. “No. It was when I was changing into my swimsuit that I saw the black dress hanging on a peg in the beach house. There are always spare dresses down there. Sometimes they are mine, sometimes they belong to Inez or one of the other maids. So I had the idea that after my swim I would leave my
sardana
costume and slip away somewhere in the black dress. It did happen to be mine.”

“But surely that was wrong of you! You were hostess at the party.”

Adrienne shrugged. “In the house one could not leave the guests like that, but down on the shore it is different. Who will care whether the hostess is there or not? Everyone is enjoying themselves and in the darkness one cannot see where everyone is. I did not even meet your Patrick.”

“Never mind about Patrick now. Go on. Tell me why you stayed so long in the church, and how was it that you weren’t recognised in the car that took you there?”

“I spoke in Catalan, which, truth to tell, I don’t speak very well, but in my black dress, the friends mistook me for one of the extra helpers we had engaged from the village, so it was natural they should give me a lift home and so I was deposited almost outside the church. Now I felt guilty and thought I should enter the church to ask forgiveness for all my black thoughts.”

“It was not locked?”

“No. Fr. Anselmo does not have it locked usually. Only the big door is closed. The small side one is nearly always open. It was so peaceful there, the candles burning, very quiet, and I felt all my anger melt away.”

“
Then why didn’t you come back to the Villa then?” demanded Nicola. “Didn’t you realise how anxious everyone would be, wondering what had happened to you?”

“I think I fell asleep,” said Adrienne simply. “I heard the main door open and then Fr. Anselmo was talking to me. So I told him all that I had done. He was concerned that I had been out a whole night—or what was left of it
after the party—and he promised to come and tell Sebastian the truth. As I passed the harbour Barto was just coming ashore and he offered to walk up with me.”

“Poor Barto! You didn’t think that he might have to take most of the blame for your escapade?”

“Why should he? Fr. Anselmo knew that he was speaking the truth. Only Sebastian disbelieved.”

“It was a selfish prank, Adrienne,” said Nicola gently, aware that she must not sound censorious.

“It has served its purpose, though.” Adrienne’s face was flushed with triumph. “Dona Elena will not, I think, take up her residence here.”

“How can you be sure of that?” asked Nicola. “Both she and your uncle may feel that her supervision is all the more necessary. She has the power that I can’t have obviously.”

“She will not have power over me,” returned Adrienne firmly.

After a pause Nicola said, “Will you tell me your plans for today? Then I can arrange the hours when I will do the doctor’s typing work.”

Adrienne impulsively sprang from the stool and kissed Nicola’s cheek. “You are sweet and charming, Nicola. What you really mean is that I am not to go off on wild madcap trips while you are glued to your typewriter and cannot watch me.” She laughed happily. “This I will freely promise. Today I shall busy myself in my studio and work on my pictures and you will have not the slightest cause for complaint.”

“Thank you for that assurance. Perhaps you should also reassure your uncle. He spent a very unhappy and anxious night over your disappearance.”

Adrienne nodded, “Yes, I will apologise to him. It is odd that when you scold me for my wrongdoing, I accept it, but Sebastian—oh, he must always play the heavy uncle and then I feel rebellious.”

“Have you thought that it might be that he loves you very much? You’re very dear to him.”