The black invader (8 page)

'I know, but I won't take very long. I'll be back here by nine, Don Miguel, don't worry.'

'It isn't my concern if you're late, it's my uncle's,' he told her. 'I just wondered if you'd realised what the time was, that's all.' They approached the arched gateway into the patio and he moved closer to allow for them to go through together. 'You think I was too hard on Luis?' he asked, and Kirstie jerked her head round quickly and looked up at him. 'I shouldn't have lost my temper with him, eh?'

Kirstie hesitated, unable to resist saying what she thought, but not quite sure how he was going to react. 'I don't think you should have lost your temper with him while I was there to hear it,' she said in a huskily small voice, and to her surprise she realised he was nodding his head.

'It's true. I don't usually let my temper get the better of me, and I can't think why I did on this occasion.'

It was such an uncharacteristic admission coming from him, that she wasn't sure what to say for a moment. 'I suppose you had a right to be angry when you found both horses gone,' she allowed warily, but again he seemed to accept her opinion and was nodding his head gravely.

'Luis has a lot to learn, but we have high hopes of him,' he observed as they walked through the patio gardens. 'The only problem is having him in such close proximity to you while he's learning the business. He has a penchant for pretty girls, and unfortunately he's all too easily distracted.'

'Then I shall do my best not to distract him!'

Heavy-lidded eyes looked down at her, faintly quizzical. 'Is that possible?' he asked, and Kirstie looked up at him, anxious suddenly and prepared to offer assur-

ance that she wasn't very sure she could keep if she had judged Luis Montanes correctly.

'I take my job seriously, Don Miguel, and I shan't distract Don Luis during working hours, you have my word.'

*And out of working hours?' Miguel asked softly.

She met his eyes with her chin angled in a way there was no mistaking. 'Out of working hours what I do is my own affair, Don Miguel!'

'Ah!'

'You don't like me being frank!' she accused swiftly, but it seemed she was mistaken, for he showed no sign of resentment, even though his eyes gleamed darkly.

'As you say, Sefiorita Rodriguez,' he said in a voice so soft it slid like a velvet finger along her spine, 'what you do in your own time is your own affair. My brother is very good-looking, and you make a handsome pair; your grandfather would be delighted, I'm sure.'

Kirstie had forgotten all about that preposterous idea of her grandfather's until Miguel reminded her, and her colour was high as she stared at him reproachfully. 'I'm talking about normal friendly relationships,' she insisted. 'Whatever you and my grandfather think, Don Miguel, I've no intention of marrying anyone for years yet, and I wish you wouldn't concern yourself with things that are none of your business!'

'But you like Luis?'

'Of course I like him! He's pleasant and—and good-looking and just as gallant as you said he was, but I don't fall in love as easily as that! We met just a few minutes ago!'

'But long enough, it seems, for Luis to be smitten,' he observed dryly, and before she could object further his fingertips touched her arm and they came to a halt where the path split two ways. 'You haven't very much time,' he said, consulting his watch. 'I'll explain to my uncle that you've been delayed.'

'There's no need!' Kirstie didn't understand why it

disturbed her so much that he seemed to share her grandfather's readiness to see her married to Luis, but it did. 'And please—don't say anything about that ridiculous idea of Abuelo's of wanting to see me mai'ried—not to Luis.'

The time was ticking by, but somehow for the moment it didn't seem nearly so important as it had, and she caught her breath when a finger Hfted her hair from her neck and let it fall slowly back again, as if its silky softness fascinated him. 'So Don Jose does hope to see you marry my brother?' he mused, and Kirstie gave a swift upward glance.

'But didn't he tell you?' He was shaking his head slowly, and there was a glitter in the dark depth of his eyes. 'Then how '

'I suggested you should be married, that was all,' Miguel told her quietly. 'It was only when you let slip that Don Jose was of the same mind that it occurred to me Luis would seem an ideal choice to him.'

'Oh!' Her thoughts were running wild, trying to guess who Miguel's own candidate could have been. Not himself, she couldn't believe that, but who? She was still trying to come up with an answer when she heard him give a faint sigh as his hand was withdrawn and he looked at his watch.

'I'd better make your excuses to my uncle after all,' he said, but Kirstie shook her head insistently.

'No, please don't, there's no'need, I can be back here by nine.'

'And you'll do anything rather than be under even the slightest obligation to me,' he observed quietly. 'Very well, Senorita Rodriguez— adiosV

Always a man of swift movement, he had turned and was striding across the patio towards the rear door of the house before Kirstie could draw breath, and she watched him go with an undeniable sense of regret. Not only had he been so sure she was refusing his help because she did not want to be obligated to him, but he had taken it so much to heart that he had

reverted to the formality of a title instead of calling her Kirstie. And she wondered if he realised that by making such a point of a future affair with his brother, he had done a great deal to make her wary of the very idea.

Don Jose wasn't accustomed to spending most of the day alone, but he accepted the necessity of it as he accepted all the other changes in his life, and made up to some degree for his solitariness by listening to Kirstie's account of the happenings at Casa de Rodriguez when she came home.

She had been working for Enrique for two weeks and she now had a routine pretty well established, both at home and in the office. Preparing and cooking meals fitted in quite well with working hours, although she had much less free time than she once had. Her grandfather neither offered nor was expected to make any contribution to the running of the house, but on the whole things worked out very well.

\yhile she dished out cod steaks in tomato sauce, Kirstie passed on the latest piece of gossip from Casa de Rodriguez, and Don Jose showed his usual interest. 'Did you know that Seiior Montaiies has his daughter-in-law and his granddaughter coming this evening?' she asked, and her grandfather shook his head, obviously interested. 'They're coming for a month, apparently.'

'I've often wondered if he had a family apart from his nephews,' he observed. 'A daughter-in-law, you say?'

Kirstie nodded. 'His only son was killed three years ago in the same crash that killed Luis's parents and crippled Seiior Montafies himself, and apparently he was his only child. He has the daughter-in-law to stay with him because he likes to see his granddaughter, but I gather from Luis that the daughter-in-law isn't very popular and she won't let the girl come alone.'

'The fact that the mother comes too suggests that she's a dutiful daughter-in-law,' Don Jose suggested, but Kirstie smiled as she handed him his plate.

'According to Luis the attraction is Miguel,' she told him, and noticed the way her grandfather frowned over her flippancy. 'Apparently Rosa Montanes has always— liked Miguel, and since her husband was killed she's made quite a play for him.'

'It seems to me,' Don Jose remarked disapprovingly, 'that Don Luis is being very indiscreet about his family's affairs. Even if it is true that Seiiora Montanes wants to marry again, and would prefer it to be Don Miguel, he shouldn't talk about it to a stranger. I'm quite sure Seiior Montanes wouldn't like it if he knew.'

'Probably he wouldn't.' For a moment Kirstie's eyes gleamed with malicious mischief as she looked across at him. 'I should think Don Miguel would like it even less!'

'Kirstie!'

For once she ignored the rebuke, caught up in the prospect of Seiior Montanes' unpopular daughter-in-law pursuing Miguel with marriage in mind. Not for a moment did she consider that he might be a willing victim, it simply seemed to her a kind of poetic justice after some of the remarks he had made recently about her own marriage plans.

'Unless of course she's tall and thirtyish and sophisticated,' she went on. 'According to Luis that's the type Miguel prefers.' He had also told Luis that she herself was lovely—enchanting was his description, according to his brother, but she kept that strictly to herself. A curiously satisfying secret that she wished Luis did not share.

'That young man gossips too much,' Don Jose insisted, 'and you shouldn't encourage him, my child, it's very wrong.'

'I can't stop him talking,' she objected. 'And incidentally, he's warned me to expect fireworks while she's here; something to do with me being Senor Montanes' secretary, he says, although I can't imagine why it should bother her who her father-in-law's secretary is.'

.Her grandfather was slightly more speculative than

critical, she realised when she looked across at him, and she frowned at him curiously. 'Could it be because there could be a certain amount of—jealousy?' he suggested. *You are, after all, frequently in contact with Don Miguel, my child.'

Despite her efforts, Kirstie knew she coloured furiously. That's most unlikely,' she insisted. 'Firstly because if I'm—friendly with anyone it's Luis, not Miguel, and I don't see Miguel nearly often enough to give even the most jealous lover grounds for suspicion!'

Her grandfather said nothing, but his expression was thoughtful, and she thanked heaven that he knew nothing about those occasions, few as they had been, when there would have been grounds enough for a jealous lover to object. The uneasy thought still lodged in her mind the following morning as she cleared away the breakfast things, although she did her best to dismiss it. Suggestions like that were so much more disconcerting when they involved Miguel rather than Luis.

It was while she washed up their breakfast things that Don Jose reminded her he had an appointment in town. It was a rare enough event for him to go anywhere at all these days, and to Kirstie it was sad that a man who had once led a busy social life to have dropped almost completely out of sight because his pride would not allow him to accept sympathy from his former friends.

'I'm seeing the oculist this morning,' he reminded her, 'but I'll be back in plenty of time for lunch. My appointment is for nine-thirty, and then I have a little personal shopping to do—I shall be back here by one, well before you come in for lunch, my dear.'

'And you'll drive carefully?' Kirstie warned.

'Of course, child! I'm still a competent driver even though I'm nearing my seventy-first birthday.'

A car of some kind had been considered essential even in their present circumstances, but the one they now owned was such a small, ramshackle old thing that Kirstie feared for its survival every time it was on the road; which admittedly was very rarely. Yet somehow.

despite its contrast to the elegant limousine they had once owned, her grandfather still managed to endow it with a certain air of luxury.

He drove with his head held high as if oblivious of the vehicle's shortcomings. Neatly dressed and well-groomed, Don Jose proclaimed his breeding to the world, and endowed the decrepit old car with something of his own elegance. When Kirstie looked at him her eyes were suspiciously hazy for, poor or not, however proud and arrogant the Montaiies might be, Don Jose Rodriguez could match them any day, and she was proud of him.

Kirstie had tried not to let herself become agitated, but the longer it was the more worried she became. They always had lunch about two o'clock and her grandfather had been so sure he would be back well before that; it was now after three and he still hadn't arrived. Don Jose was a man who seldom deviated from his set course, and it was that which troubled Kirstie most, for he was now two hours beyond the time he had set himself.

She had made herself sit down at the table and eat, but she had eaten very little in fact, and at a time when she should have been back in the office she had still not left the house. It was silly to fret so much, yet she couldn't help it, and when she heard the tread of booted feet her head came up swiftly and she went hurrying across the patio to the gate. Her grandfather wore shoes, not boots, but she recognised the new arrival easily enough; if Miguel Montaiies was there then perhaps there was a message, the little barraca had no telephone.

She met him in the gateway and the first thing she noticed about him was the absence of any sign of concern. Whatever her opinion of him, she couldn't believe that had there been a message from the hospital or the police concerning her grandfather, he would be so completely unmoved and just for a moment she felt a sense of relief.

'I saw you through the gateway,' he said. 'Have you

given up working, or have you decided to give yourself the afternoon off? It's gone three o'clock.'

It occurred to her then that he was making for the house, not coming away from it, and if there was any message for her, he probably wouldn't know about it. In the meantime he obviously expected some kind of explanation for her being so late going back to the office, and Kirstie hastily gathered her wits about her.

'Yes, I know,' she said. 'I'm just coming.'

It was just possible that her grandfather had met someone he knew and was having lunch with him, she supposed, although she thought it unlikely and she toyed with the idea of confiding her fears to Miguel. She might have done too if he hadn't looked at her so impatiently, as if her lingering there still annoyed him^ When she got back to the office she'd tell Senor Montaiies and see what he had to suggest.

'I'll just get my handbag and lock up,' she said, making a determined effort to pull herself together, and Miguel looked vaguely surprised.

'Isn't Don Jose home?'

Again she was tempted to confide in him, but instead she merely shook her head as she turned back into the cottage. 'He went to the oculist,' was all she said.