Meeting in Madrid (9 page)

‘Get down,’ Don Jaime ordered.

She saw how hard his mouth was.

‘I can’t!’ She was still clinging to the pony’s neck.

‘Certainly you can.’ He dismounted, but he did not try to help her. ‘You will strangle the horse if you don’t let go.’ Cautiously she regained an upright position, straightening in the saddle.

‘Now take your foot out of the stirrup and swing towards me,’ he commanded. ‘I will not let you fall.’

What a fool he must think her! Catherine bit her lip and obeyed his instructions, leaning heavily against his shoulder as she struggled to remove her foot from the second stirrup. In an instant his arms were about her, holding her securely before he finally put her on the ground.

‘What an exhibition!’ She tried to laugh. ‘I told you I wasn’t very good on a horse.’

She was trembling visibly, aware of his nearness and the contact of their two bodies as he had held her for that one brief second in time.

‘You have had a nasty shock,’ he said quite gently.

Was that all? His hands were still on her arms, his face close as he looked down at her with genuine concern in his eyes, but after a moment he put her gently away from him, steadying her on her feet, although he must have been aware that she was still trembling.

She wanted to explain how terrified she had been but couldn’t. Her heart was pounding madly, and every nerve in her body seemed to be jarred, yet in that first moment when his arms had closed about her she had felt secure.

The clamour in her heart would not die down, even now that there was no further cause for alarm. Physically she was safe enough and probably there had been no real danger. She tried to meet his eyes complacently, but her errant heartbeats seemed to fill the silence between them with overwhelming sound.

‘You must get straight back into the saddle,’ he advised in a matter-of-fact tone which steadied her a little. ‘It is the only way. If you allow yourself to be afraid now you will never ride successfully.’

She hardly heard what he said, turning her head away, still conscious of the pounding of her own heart. I can’t fall in love with him, she thought. I couldn’t complicate a situation which is already dangerous enough!

‘I’m all right now,’ she managed to say. ‘It’s like—riding a bicycle, isn’t it? One spill shouldn’t mean defeat.’

‘Let me help you,’ he said, cupping his hands to assist her into the saddle. ‘We must be thankful that nothing more serious has befallen you.’

‘Don’t blame Ramon too much,’ she begged, meeting his eyes with a quiet entreaty in her own. ‘It wasn’t really his fault.’

‘Ramon is always going off at a tangent,’ he said. ‘I dare say he has no idea what happened.’ His dark gaze swept the empty road ahead of them. ‘He will be almost home by now.’

‘I should have been more attentive,’ she blamed herself. ‘I never dreamed that Vivo would actually bolt.’

Her words dropped into a little confused silence while he looked up at her.

‘All right now?’ he asked as Teresa and Manuel appeared round a bend in the road.

‘Quite all right, thank you.’ She had cleared her voice to answer him with confidence. ‘I won’t make the same mistake again.’

‘Cathy!’ Teresa cried when they were within hailing distance, ‘Are you all in one piece?’ She looked greatly relieved when she saw Catherine still in the saddle. ‘You gave us a great fright, I must say, but now it seems that you have not taken any harm, after all.’ She began to laugh. ‘If you had seen yourself!’ she exclaimed. ‘All yellow bottom and flying hair! I thought you were going to strangle poor Vivo before you fell off!’ She looked from Catherine to her silent uncle. ‘Did you fall off?’ she enquired tentatively. ‘Or did Jaime catch you?’

‘He caught up with me,’ Catherine allowed, made suddenly uncomfortable by the speculative look in Teresa’s eyes. ‘I think I was ready to fall,’ she added lightly, ‘but he saved me the indignity.’

‘Will you ride home with us now?’ Teresa asked Don Jaime. ‘Perhaps you do not trust us to go carefully any more.’

‘I have other things to see to,’ he assured her, ‘but I will be home quite soon. You may tell Ramon that I will be waiting at San Bartolome.’

He would not return home until the last lorry with its consignment of bananas was well on its way to Santa Cruz, and no doubt Ramon would be kept working later than usual to make up for his unexplained visit to the
puerto.
The two brothers were evidently not seeing eye to eye about Soria, and possibly there was another bone of contention between them. Ramon was something of a philanderer, a charming latter-day Don Juan whose idle lovemaking would incense a man of Jaime de Berceo Madroza’s calibre and make him impatient, to say the least. What, then, must he have thought when he had come across the little tableau outside the packing-sheds? Ramon had been standing in the centre of the group holding Catherine’s stirrup while he looked up at her with frank admiration in his eyes, and Catherine knew that she had responded with a happy smile. Ramon was so easy to like, but the fact that his work had been neglected would be far more important in his brother’s eyes.

When they were almost at the high wooden door in the surrounding wall they met Ramon riding swiftly in the opposite direction.

‘I’ll be back in under an hour,’ he promised, ‘and then we will have some music. Jaime cannot possibly work in the dark!’

He flourished the mislaid bills of lading as he rode off in his efforts to make amends for his irresponsible forgetfulness.

‘Ramon will never make a farmer,’ Teresa commented as they rode in under the creeper-covered arch. ‘Jaime should let him go to Santa Cruz or Madrid.’

‘He must need him on the estate,’ Catherine found herself saying. ‘Otherwise, I think he would let him go.’

Teresa drew a deep breath which was half a sigh.

‘How little you know of Jaime,’ she said. ‘If he thinks it will be best for Soria he will keep Ramon here for ever. But perhaps if he marries Lucia. Ramon will be free to go.’

There was an abrupt movement at Catherine’s side as Manuel dismounted to lead her pony across the cobbled yard. Half hidden by the wide-brimmed hat he wore, she could not see his face from where she sat in the saddle, but something about his hunched shoulders and the way he moved suggested despair and an inner abandonment to grief.

Lucia was waiting for them on the
patio.
She had changed out of her habitual black dress into a long evening gown of some soft, clinging material, not grey, not blue, but somewhere between the two colours, which was both mysterious and attractive allied to her jet-black hair and sombre dark-lashed eyes. Once again her only jewel was the magnificent ruby which she wore close to her throat.

Manuel, who was leading the ponies, stopped in his tracks to look at her, the light of adoration burning in his eyes, though he thought that none could see.

‘What is the matter with you, Manuel?’ Lucia asked imperiously. ‘Why do you stare? Are you afraid to be reprimanded for some indiscretion or other? You are like a nervous
pe
o
n
who has not done his work properly.’

The fact that she had reduced him to the status of a field labourer sent a wild colour into her servant’s cheeks.

‘I have only done your will,
senora,
’
he said with admirable patience. ‘I can do no more.’

‘Then be off with you!’ Lucia commanded, amused by the havoc she had wrought. ‘I will ride tomorrow morning early,’ she added, ‘before the sun is strong.’

‘
Si, senora
.’

He led the ponies away across the yard and Catherine was suddenly overwhelmingly sorry for him. Poor Manuel, who dared to love the lady he served! Poor Manuel, destined to worship her for ever with no hope of love in return!

‘You look dishevelled,’ Lucia observed, glancing in her direction. ‘Have you met with an accident?’

‘Not quite. Vivo took fright and bolted, but he did not go very fast or very far,’ Catherine explained.

‘Jaime rescued her,’ Teresa interposed. ‘He was off in pursuit before Manuel or I were in the saddle. I think he imagined she might be killed.’

Lucia turned away with an angry gesture which indicated that she had no desire to hear the details of their little adventure or to learn exactly how her brother-in-law had come to the rescue.

‘In future I think you had better ride inside the walls, Miss Royce,’ she suggested coldly. ‘The valley roads are too rough for a—novice.’

‘We’d better go and change,’ Teresa decided, ‘and then we can listen to Ramon’s music. He plays quite well, as a matter of fact, and sings like an angel.’

An hour later the sound of a guitar played softly beneath her window took Catherine on to her balcony, although she did not look beyond it to discover who might be serenading her so romantically by the light of the moon. She knew that it was Ramon and she listened half impatiently until the poignant love song came to an end. It finished on a long-drawn-out note, like a sigh, and something of its intensity lingered in the still night air before Ramon broke into the lively music of a gay Catalan
sardana.
All the Spanish dances had their own individuality and charm and soon her foot was tapping out the rhythm of the tune she already knew.

‘Come down,’ Ramon called to her softly when he had ceased to play. ‘It is better if I can see you than just knowing that you are there.’

‘Don Juan in person!’ Teresa observed, coming into the bedroom behind her.

Catherine swung round, unable to control the swift rush of colour which rose to her cheeks.

‘He plays beautifully,’ she remarked lamely.

‘Too beautifully at times! Ramon could charm a heart of stone with his music, and he uses it shamelessly for his own ends. You must not take him too seriously,’ Teresa warned, ‘because Ramon is not serious all the time. Guitar music is meant for lovers,’ she added, ‘but only if they are truly in love.’

‘How worldly-wise we are tonight!’ Catherine pushed back the hair which had fallen over her eyes. ‘I like your evening skirt,’ she added. ‘Is it traditional?’

Teresa pirouetted obligingly to show off the brightly-coloured flounced skirt she wore.

‘Traditionally Andalusian,’ she agreed. ‘Gipsies wear them when they dance
flamenco
round their camp-fires, and fine ladies put them on to ride in open carriages full of flowers at
fiestas
and
ferias.
We have them here, too, you know, though not as many as in Spain.’ She skipped towards the door. ‘If you are ready we will go down and join Ramon on the
patio
.’

She never referred to Ramon as her uncle, probably because they were too near an age or because she had less respect for him than she had for Don Jaime. He was still playing his guitar when they walked across the polished floor of the hall to the long open windows leading to the
patio,
and he rose to bow mockingly as they approached.

‘At last!’ he said. ‘I have waited almost too long and nearly in despair! What shall I play for you,
se
n
oritas?
A
fandango
or a gay
sardana,
or just another love song? There are so many of them to choose from, you know.’

‘Play for me to dance,’ Teresa commanded. ‘Get me into the mood!’

Ramon hesitated.

‘Go on! I am waiting.’ She stamped an impatient foot.

Ramon drew his fingers across the strings of his guitar in a preliminary chord.

‘What will you dance?’

‘The
canto jondo
,’ she decided after a moment’s consideration.

He raised his eyebrows, but he did not hesitate, sitting down with his back against one of the pillars of the covered way to support the guitar on his knees, and soon the harshly-intense music with its sultry undertones was filling the
patio
and throbbing out into the night.

Teresa backed slowly into the hall, circling it twice with her hands low on her hips, but she did not use them for the first few moments of the dance. All the emotion of the music was reflected on her face as the rhythmic stamping of her heels and the slow movements of her fingers and wrists began, giving vivid life to her performance, and suddenly it seemed as if the quiet
hacienda
had been transformed into a gipsy encampment or some obscure
tasca
where only the pulse of a Romany heartbeat could be heard.

The music quickened as Ramon bent over his guitar and Teresa’s flying feet circled the polished floor. She was using her hands now to emphasis the swift progression of the dance, holding them high above her head and then low, bringing them slowly towards her and thrusting them away as her impatient heels took up the rhythm once more. It seemed as if she had completely forgotten time and place and even her audience in her total absorption with her art, and Catherine could only gaze at her enthralled until she realised that they were no longer alone.

Lucia was watching from the shadows with a calculating look in her eyes.

It was several minutes before Don Jaime came to stand by Catherine’s side,

‘Teresa feels that she could dance for a living,’ he observed, ‘but she must first finish her education. When she is older she will be allowed to make her choice.’

‘And by then you hope that she will have changed her mind,’ Catherine suggested. ‘But this may be something she really wants to do, and you could be standing in her way by being so—adamant.’

‘You think me lacking in understanding?’

‘In a way, yes,’ she was forced to admit. ‘I think you are judging Teresa by your own standards—a man’s standards —and they are not the same.’

‘That I do understand,’ he said. ‘Do you also think I treat my brother too harshly,
senorita
?’