The Flesh and the Devil (46 page)

         
Elisabeta, seeing her puzzled look, smiled. 'I mean that
Felipe was not the same — how. could he be? But he must have told you how his
face was scarred or you would not have understood him enough to marry him, and
it is not a tale to listen to twice.'

         
Juana longed to say no, he had not told her, but her
courage failed. Instead she asked at random, 'Who is
la vtuda
 
Herreros?'

         
The elder woman's plump features mirrored a variety of
emotions. She started to speak, hesitated, and then said with immense decision,
'Oh, the most famous woman in Villenos! Quite past our accounting. They say she
could have been the King's mistress if she had chosen to try her fortune; but
then, rumour has it that all the women he has are sent to convents after, for
the good of their souls.
La viuda
 
would never turn nun. She married a man of
over sixty when she was scarce sixteen, and has had a fine time of it since he
left her a widow — she trebled the fortune he left her, they say, and by all
accounts she lives like a queen on it.'

         
Juana's attention jerked away as the far door opened again.
Tristan stood there, his red hair clinging darkly to his head, his harsh-boned
face spangled with water. He had taken off his doublet and carried it over his
shoulder, and his skin shone dully gold through his wet shirt. He met her stare
with a faintly wry look and put down the earthenware pitcher he carried.

         
'I doused myself,' he observed with a hint of ruefulness.
'I stank. I brought you some water to wash in, madam.' The gibing title made
Elisabeta smile, but Juana caught her breath; it was a mocking reminder of
their former stations, and it flicked her like the lash of a whip, From the
corner of her eye she saw Elisabeta gazing at her expectantly and realized that
she was expected to join in the game.

         
Crossing the room quickly, before she could change her
mind, she put her hands on Tristan's shoulders and stretched up to touch his
cheek with her lips. Under her palms the flesh beneath the soaking linen felt
smooth and cool, and she could feel the living pulse through his skin. Then, as
her lips brushed his cheek, he turned his head and claimed her mouth with a
quick passion that almost made her stagger.

         
His hand closed on the scruff of her neck as his head
lifted, and his eyes probed hers dispassionately. 'You grow more civil,' he
said almost inaudibly.

         
She pulled away quickly and was oddly disappointed when he
let her go without a struggle. Then she saw that Luis had followed him in and
was standing on tiptoe to see over his friend's shoulder, his face glowing with
indulgence. Juana realized that her impulsive action had corroborated Tristan's
story— that Luis and his wife now believed without question that theirs was a
marriage for love, that they had run away from nothing more deadly than her
family's censure.

         
With all her heart she wished that it were true.

         
It was night before they were left alone at last. Luis and
Elisabeta and their children had turned their backs on the noisy fiesta to bid
their guests welcome, and the evening had been full of laughter and talk and
the exchange of unimportant news. Juana had smiled until her face felt sore,
miserably selfconscious, trying to seem the loving bride for her hosts' benefit
but not daring to relax in case Tristan's watchful scrutiny detected any
alteration in her.

         
Now, facing him across the narrow slip of a bedroom where
the three Armendariz sons usually slept, she felt the illusion of warmth lent
by the night's conviviality slip from her. She shivered, crossing her arms
across her breast, and dug her fingertips into the flesh of her shoulders as
though she were trying to gouge warmth into them.

         
'You are cold?'

         
Tristan's eyes had followed her motion, and she nodded
tiredly.

         
'A little. Your friends are very kind.'

         
'They have always been so to me. You humoured them very
prettily in what they think of us,' he added deliberately, and a stab of
nervous irritation gripped her.

         
'I could say the same of you! You could have joined a
troupe of play-actors if you had not chosen a career of killing.'

         
'How do you know I did not?

         
The question might have been a light one, but the slanting
eyes were as hard as agates. Juana said with sudden intensity, 'I only realized
today how little I
do
know of you. Elisabeta assumed — she said — she
talked of things she thought I must have known, things she said you must have
told me — I could not say that I did not understand her.'

         
You could have known them for the asking— but a great lady
does not care to ask questions of servants, does she? I am only to be endured
for one piece of service — and killing, of course.' The cool voice was edged.

         
Juana said stifledly, 'She said that you were friendly with
Luis because of what your countrymen did to you. I do not even know what
country you come from.'

         
Tristan laughed shortly. 'Before God, the tight-shut minds
of the Spanish!

         
You know my real name, but you do not recognize it, nor my
native tongue when you hear it — nothing outside Spain is
ever
 
worth your countrymen's notice, is it?'

         
The tone of his voice stung her, and she retorted, 'What
could I know, penned up among my sisters in my father's house in Navarre? No
one ever came there, I saw nobody but my family and neighbours I had known all
my life —

         
friends that my father approved. The first strangers I ever
saw were merchants who had had to travel for four days from the coast to visit
my father. I talked to our friends and the peasant workers, and that was all.
You may as well censure me for not flying to Constantinople as not knowing
where you come from!'

         
He stared at her for a long moment, eyebrows lifted, a wry
curve to his scarred mouth. 'My apologies, then,' he said at last. 'I was born
in England. My parents came from the county of Devonshire.'

         
The detail meant nothing to her. 'England? You cannot be —
the English all have tails; they were cursed with them for murdering Saint —
Saint Thomas a Becket.' Her tongue stumbled over the name. 'And they are all
pagans in England, my father told me.'

         
Tristan sighed faintly. 'Sometimes I forget how very young
you are, Juana. No, Englishmen do not have tails, though it has pleased the
French to spread that story for generations. And it was because my parents were
such staunch Catholics that they first came to Europe — for greater freedom to
worship as they pleased.'

         
The green eyes glittered suddenly, almost balefully, in the
lamplight. But we are wasting time — it is not so that we can talk of the past
that Alfonso and Carlos are sleeping with their Tio Enrique. You and I have a
score to settle from last night.'

         
Juana's eyes fell from his. 'I am tired,' she said
desperately. 'Let me be tonight.'

         
His touch on the nape of her neck made her skin prickle. He
had crossed the room in one stride and stood before her, his massive shoulders
blotting out the yellow lamplight, his eyes searching her face. 'You were
kinder when we first came here.'

         
The deliberate words brought her head up half-defensively,
and the haunted, almost hunted look in her eyes made his expression harden. 'Or
can you only play the part of wife before an audience?'

         
The room felt suddenly stuffy, and Juana's head began to
spin. Then, with an indescribable sense of doing something irrevocable, she
lifted her arms to clasp his neck, drawing his head down to hers.

         
Once, lying breathless in the circle of his arms like a
spent swimmer cast up by the tide, she realized that he was leaning over her,
studying her with terrifying closeness, and she murmured a troubled query. His
mouth brushed her throat with deliberate insistence before he answered her.

         
'I was thinking —' his controlled voice had a sarcastic
edge — 'how determined your last love was to teach me my rightful place. I
wonder what he would give to be where I am now.'

         
Juana's brows drew together in pain, and she turned her
head to evade his seeking mouth. 'Little enough — he despises me now, thanks to
the lies you told him.'

         
'That would not alter him. Esteem has nothing to do with
wanting.' His hands were in her hair, compelling her to stillness. 'You can
want what you despise . . . even hate . . . can you not?'

         
'Yes —'

         
The word was jagged, a response not only to the question
but to the surging demand of his body as it tautened against hers with the same
ruthlessness that she sensed in his voice. Time and senses seemed to stop then,
as if the world had halted on its axis, and for an eternity Juana knew nothing
hut the totality of his possession. It was only gradually that her senses
returned, and she recognized her own quickened breathing and heard the dying
fall of her own voice. At once she stiffened, tense with fear.

         
'What did I say?' There was a terrified note in her voice.
'What did I
say?'

         
Tristan was lying on one elbow, watching her. She was
reminded of a drowsing lion as he lay beside her; lazy, relaxed, but ever on
his guard. He said dryly, 'Would the world come to an end if your humble
servant heard you speak your thoughts rather than what you choose I should
know?'