Meeting in Madrid (13 page)

She shrank from the suggestion, knowing how wrong she could be in Don Jaime’s case. He was not the man to love lightly and perhaps not for a second time. Alex Bonnington had spoken about ‘twisting a knife in an old wound’ when she had been discussing mistakes, and he had admitted to the folly of youth and love. If he had loved in his youth it would have been deeply, she felt sure, and suddenly her heart contracted with an almost unendurable pain. ‘Don’t love him!’ reason cried deep within her, but she knew that reason had nothing to do with love. Already Don Jaime de Berceo Madroza had stretched out a
conquistador
’
s
hand and touched her susceptible heart.

A meal had been set out for them in the kitchen where it had been hastily prepared, the big yellow chick beans heaped in an earthenware bowl in the centre of the table and served with morsels of boiled beef and chicken and scraps of bacon.

‘
Cocido
!’ Teresa exclaimed, preparing to eat her fill. ‘I haven’t tasted it for ages.’

Catherine sat on the wooden bench beside her, unable to eat but grateful for the wine which Maria had produced from a large stone jug. It was rough and cool, the product of Soria’s own vines, perhaps, but certainly local.

‘Don’t drink too much of that,’ Don Jaime advised, coming to sit down beside her. ‘It’s fairly potent when it has lain for a while. How do you feel now?’ he asked.

‘Very much better, thanks to you.’

‘Well enough to return to Soria?’

Their eyes met.

‘Quite well enough.’

She could not fail to see the look of satisfaction in his eyes as he rose to his feet, thinking how right she had been about his not wanting them at Las Rosas. It had been a necessary invasion, but he would be relieved when they finally departed.

Teresa and Manuel had both disappeared immediately after they had finished their coffee, but Lucia had tethered her black horse firmly to the fence which surrounded the courtyard, determined to stay where she was until the car arrived. The atmosphere in the tiny kitchen became electric even with the homely figure of Maria hovering around as she cleared up the remnants of their meal. Don Jaime drank the remainder of his wine and went out.

‘You and Teresa have cost him half a day’s work between you,’ Lucia pointed out. ‘You do not seem to understand how busy he is at this time of year. The
hacienda
does not run itself. Miss Royce, and he can hardly be grateful to you for adding to his burdens instead of lightening them. Of course, he should have dealt firmly with the whole problem of your age at the beginning, in Madrid.’

‘Perhaps he should,’ Catherine agreed faintly, ‘but he didn’t because I may have talked him into believing in me.’

‘And the Marquesa would have helped you,’ Lucia observed, her mouth twisting in a sneer. ‘When she comes to stay here there is always trouble, and even when she is far away in Andalusia she exerts her authority where Teresa is concerned. You would not like to be a stepmother, Miss Royce, I can assure you, and I am too young for the role. Teresa has defied me ever since I married her father four years ago. She was twelve then, but amazingly precocious, even for a Spanish child. Eduardo and Jaime had spoiled her between them and Ramon was too near her own age to be anything but a daring playmate. That was the situation I had to tackle at Soria when I came here as Eduardo’s bride. Not a particularly romantic one, you will agree.’

‘I’m sure you had the—strength of purpose to handle it in your own way,’ Catherine answered. ‘The tragedy seems to be that—your husband died so soon afterwards.’

‘Less than a year afterwards.’ Lucia’s expression had not changed, even at the mention of her loss. ‘There was much to do for Soria, and Jaime and I did it together. Eduardo had allowed the estate to deteriorate at an alarming rate after his first wife absconded to South America to resume her dancing career. There was no other man, you understand; just her career.’

Stunned into silence by the unexpected revelation, Catherine stared at her incredulously.

‘You are surprised that I should tell you all this,’ Lucia suggested, ‘but it is best that you should know the truth about Soria. Eduardo destroyed it by continuing neglect while Jaime had to look on, unable to do anything much about it because there was so little money to spare. That’s where I came in,’ she added proudly. ‘I had the money they needed. I knew Eduardo was fond of me, of course, in a second-best sort of way, but it was really Soria that mattered most.’

‘It must have been—difficult for you in the beginning,’ Catherine acknowledged.

Lucia smiled.

‘Oh, don’t feel sorry for me, Miss Royce,’ she said. ‘I am—how do you say?—a realist. I do not expect too much from life or love, but what I have built up at Soria is mine. I will not allow anyone to take it from me.’

‘Surely it will all be yours when you marry Don Jaime,’ Catherine said heavily.

‘
Si,
that is so!’ Lucia was still studying her closely. ‘He does not know that I have spoken to you in this way, you understand?’

‘Certainly.’

A heavy silence descended on the kitchen as Maria went out with the scraps of left-over food for the goats.

‘What will you do when you leave Tenerife?’ Lucia asked, breaking it to put the question she had been determined to ask.

Catherine had not even thought about the future, even when Lucia had first threatened her with dismissal.

‘Go home,’ she said. ‘Back to London, Where I suppose I really belong.’

A shadow darkened the doorway, but it was Don Jaime who came in and not Maria.

‘Are you ready?’ he asked. ‘I have brought round the horses.’ He was looking directly at Lucia. ‘Shall I lead yours so that you can go back in the car?’

‘Certainly not!’ Lucia straightened the silk knot at her throat. ‘I will ride back with you, Jaime. We have much to discuss.’

The car drove into the tiny courtyard, its headlights already on. Catherine could see Ramon behind the steering-wheel with Manuel sitting beside him. Lucia flicked her riding-whip impatiently.

‘You had no need to return,’ she said as her servant came towards them. ‘Why did you disobey my instructions?’

‘I came to ride the
senorita
’s pony,
senora
,’ he explained, his dark eyes glowing with a reproachful flame. ‘You did not give me any special order when you sent me away.’

‘All right, Manuel,’ said Don Jaime. ‘You can ride back with us. No damage has been done.’

Had it not? All Catherine could see in that moment was the anguish in Manuel’s eyes as he turned abruptly away to find the pony and lead it back to Soria.

‘I’m causing you a lot of trouble,’ she apologised as Don Jaime helped her into the car. ‘You were busy on the estate.’

‘Jaime is always busy,’ Ramon assured her, leaning on the steering-wheel, ‘but he will make up for it with an early start tomorrow. The light has now gone, so there is nothing we can do in the fields.’

Lucia got into the saddle, reining in the big black horse. ‘Diablo will kill her one of these days if she isn’t careful,’ Ramon mused. ‘He’s far too powerful for her, but she prides herself on being the best horsewoman between here and Santiago del Teide. She has ridden since she was a child, but then you either are a horse-lover or you are not. We cannot all be budding champions. How are you coming on, by the way?’

‘Not very well, as you can see,’ Catherine grimaced. ‘My lack of ability was probably the cause of today’s little trouble when Teresa wished to gallop for a change.’

‘To get something out of her system, I expect.’ He put the car into second gear. ‘What was it this time?’

‘I’m not quite sure.’ Catherine was reluctant to discuss Teresa’s moods with Ramon, although he probably understood them better than anyone else. ‘We had been talking about her mother.’

‘Ah!’ said Ramon quietly. ‘That is a moot point. No one speaks about Carla nowadays.’

Did you know her?’

‘Hardly. I was in Madrid being educated most of the time, and before that I suppose I accepted her as just the most beautiful person I had ever seen.’

‘Teresa said how beautiful she was.’

‘How can she remember? She was very young when Carla died.’

They drove on in a lengthening silence, bumping over the hard dirt road in the peculiar pale grey light which was all that remained of the blazing day. The sun had gone down like an orange fire-ball, plunging behind the mountains into the sea, and the aftermath had been short and dramatic, a flare of vermilion spreading across the sky to trap the high pinnacles surrounding El Teide in brilliant flame for a moment before it faded as swiftly as it had come.

Before it was dark enough for the first stars to show through they were above the
barranco
and turning along the main road, and Catherine allowed her thoughts to stray to the two figures on horseback they had last seen riding up from Las Rosas, one as tall as the other, both straight in the saddle, riding side by side, one on a white Arab horse, the other on the big black stallion Ramon had called Diablo. They were so much a part of the strange, wild land of deep ravines and rugged mountains that it seemed almost inevitable they should marry and continue to administer Soria together.

‘You look sad all of a sudden,’ Ramon remarked. ‘Do you still feel light-headed from riding too long in the sun?’

‘That must be it.’ She gave him a quick smile. ‘It was foolish of me to go out without a hat, but it didn’t seem important at the time. I love to feel the wind in my hair.’

He took one hand from the wheel to place it over hers. ‘You are very sweet,
chiquita
,’ he said softly. ‘I hope you will stay at Soria for a long time.’

‘To amuse you, Ramon?’

‘To make my life worth living again!’

‘You’re absurd!’ She moved her hand away.

‘Why is it foolish to tell you how beautiful you are and how my heart beats twice as fast when I look at you?’

‘Because I think you’ve said that so often in the past.’

‘You are cruel,’ he declared, ‘and you do not understand me. Even when I play for you with all my heart, you laugh at me!’

‘Not at you, Ramon,
with
you! There’s a great difference.’

‘Yo
comprendo!
It is a good thing, is it not, to laugh together and be happy?’

‘Exactly!’ They had turned in at the open door in the
hacienda
wall. ‘Will you go to the
fiesta
with us? You seemed undecided.’

‘I was not sure about Orotava,’ he admitted, ‘but now I will go since Alex has asked me. A year ago we were very close friends, but it came unstuck,’ he added in the English idiom which always seemed so incongruous when he used it, with typical Spanish gusto. ‘We are no longer of one mind.’

‘Alex is a very understanding person, I should think.’

‘I agree.’ He thought for a moment. ‘But she is settled in her ways.’

‘Meaning that she doesn’t tilt at every windmill she comes across?’

He laughed spontaneously.

‘Like Don Quixote! You think that is me? You think that I go out seeking adventure for adventure’s sake?’

‘Don’t you?’

He shrugged.

‘Not always. I know what I really want to do, and when I am no longer needed at Soria I will do it.’

‘You will go to Madrid?’

‘Why not? You must see that there is nothing for me here.’

‘Even if Don Jaime still needed you?’

‘He will not need me so much when there is no debt to pay back to Lucia.’

‘You mean—when they are married?’

‘He will pay off the debt before then. He would not marry in order to cancel it, you understand?’

‘I think so.’ They had reached the house. ‘Teresa has not come home yet.’

‘She will come soon. We did not pass her on the road,’ Ramon explained, ‘because there is a shorter way through the plantations and she would take that.’

The house seemed deserted, although lights were burning in the kitchen section overlooking the stable yard. Ramon pulled the car up at the end of the terrace, waiting in silence for her to get out.

‘Cathy,’ he said, bending over the steering-wheel to look at her, ‘whatever you think of the present situation—of Lucia and Jaime—stay at Soria for Teresa’s sake—and mine.’

She stood for a moment without answering him.

‘It will not be my decision,’ she said, at last. ‘How can I stay if I’m finally asked to go?’

Before he could answer Teresa made her appearance at the far end of the
patio,
followed by Alfredo.

‘You beat me to it!’ she exclaimed. ‘So much for my shortcut.’ She tossed her rein to the waiting Alfredo as she dismounted. ‘Lucia would ride back with Jaime, of course.’

‘They left Las Rosas as we drove away,’ Ramon told her. ‘Soon they will join us.’

‘Not me,’ said Teresa. ‘I’m tired and will go to bed.’

‘Without your dinner?’

‘I ate well at Las Rosas.’

Ramon did not try to hide his amusement.

‘I can imagine!’ he said. ‘Do you wish me to convey your regrets to Lucia?’

‘If you wish, but it will be of no consequence either way.
Buenas noches,
Cathy.
Lo siento mucho
!’

‘Teresa apologises so prettily,’ said Ramon. ‘She could get away with murder if she felt like it.’

‘You’re ridiculous!’ Catherine smiled.

‘You know I speak the truth,’ Ramon protested. ‘Already you have forgiven her for causing such trouble this afternoon because she has made her pretty apologies.’ He got out of the car to stand beside her in the
patio
where the shadows were deep. ‘You would never hold a grudge, would you?’ he said, putting his arm about her. ‘You would always be generous.’

He stooped to kiss her on the cheek, but she backed away.

‘No, Ramon,’ she said. ‘Not tonight! I’m in no mood for a serenade in any key.’

He laughed softly in the darkness.

‘I will come and play for you later on,’ he promised. ‘Under your window.’

‘I’ll be sound asleep.’

‘I told you that you were cruel!’ He sighed heavily as the sound of horses’ hooves reached them from the approach to the stable yard. ‘It is Lucia, come home with Jaime.’

He did not move away as the two figures came along the terrace and Catherine felt the deep colour of embarrassment staining her cheeks as Don Jaime recognised them. Lucia, in her turn, seemed faintly amused.

‘Where is Teresa?’ she asked. ‘I must go in search of her.’ Ramon moved from Catherine’s side as his brother switched on the wall sconces to flood the hall with revealing light.

‘You must be tired,’ Jaime said to Catherine. ‘Go to bed and some food will be sent up to your room. I will speak with you in the morning.’

His voice had been cool with disapproval, although he had been solicitous for her wellbeing because she had felt so ill at Las Rosas, and to Catherine it seemed ominous that he should wish to speak with her privately in the morning. The prospect of instant dismissal was suddenly bleak.

‘If you will give me a few minutes to change,’ she offered proudly, ‘I’m quite well enough to listen to what you have to say.’

Some of the anger had gone out of his eyes, but he said almost indifferently:

‘The morning will do, Cathy. I have a buyer coming at eleven o’clock. If you can come to the study at ten I will not keep you long.’