The Golden Madonna (15 page)

Her heart turned a somersault at the prospect and she hastily looked away, and across the room towards the high window that now admitted the full light of day, and gave the room a still more dazzling look. 'I—I wasn't expecting you to need me today,' she said. 'I don't know if my dress suits you.'

He looked at the short, sleeveless dress she wore with a long, slow, sweeping glance. Multi-flowered cotton in bright colours, it flattered her colouring and her excellent figure, and made her look far younger than her years, and he smiled his approval of it. 'It suits
you,'
he told her softly. 'But your clothes do not matter at this stage. Later I will ask you to borrow that
mantilla
again. The effect of black lace on your golden hair is very beautiful.'

'You—you're going to paint a Madonna wearing a mantilla?' Sally ventured, and he barely showed more than a slight drawing of his brows for her questioning his decision.

'It will not appear as a
mantilla
in this painting,
pequena,'
he told her softly.

'Oh! Oh, I see.'

He saw his mother seated comfortably in the armchair before he turned to Sally again, and he had a slightly quizzical look in his eyes when he spoke, almost as if he expected her to disagree with what he was about to say.

'For the moment,' he told her, 'I shall simply be making sketches, seeking expressions, discovering the best features, the way you hold your head, that sort of thing. I have to learn to know you much more than I do, Sarita.'

'I see.'

It had not occurred to her before just how closely she would be under the intent scrutiny of those disturbing black eyes for hours at a time, and her reaction to it was a jumble of mixed emotions. One part of her foresaw impatience on his part and resentment on hers, another wanted to "stay for as long as he wanted her to, indulging in the luxury of having his undivided attention.

'Does it matter where I sit?' she asked, and he shook his head.

'Not as long as you are where I can see you clearly,' he told her.

With a brief, enquiring glance at Dona Alicia, who smiled encouragingly at her, she went and sat near the big window at the far end of the room. She curled herself on to a low stool, with her slim legs tucked under her. Just high enough to be able to see out of the window and enjoy the wonderful view of the sea and the rocks that the house stood on, with a strip of hot, copper-coloured sand in the distance.

She rested her chin in one hand, her profile outlined against the background of endless blue sky, and tM sun hot on her skin. Her long gold-coloured hair was loose, because she had supposed he would want her to have it that way, and it caught the sun and gleamed softly.

She had been there for no more than a few minutes, however, when he called across to her. 'Sarita! It is much too hot for you to be sitting in the sun like that. Move away from the window.'

'I'm O.K.,' Sally told him. 'I'm not too hot.'

His dark face looked at her sternly over the top of the easel and he paused in his sketching for a moment. 'Do as I say,' he told her quietly.

For two pins Sally would have stood her ground, although it was already uncomfortably warm in the direct sun, but Dona Alicia was watching her a little anxiously, and she had no desire to upset her by quarrelling with her son over such a small matter. So she got up from her stool with a deep sigh of resignation, swinging back her hair, and looking at him steadily.

'Where would you
like
me to sit, Don Miguel?' she asked with pseudo-meekness, and knew
⁷
he had seen through it by the way his brows drew together.

'Over by the west window!' he said shortly.

Sally made no demur, but went and sat in the deep stone sill of the smaller west window. It was through this window that the sun had poured like molten gold on that evening she had come up here with him, and she felt something of the same warm glow she had then when she looked across at him busily sketching and frowning over what he was doing.

'Keep your head still!'

Sally started guiltily, then frowned at the imperious tone. She was very tempted to remind him that she was there for his benefit alone, but she thought better of it and turned her head back to look out of the window again. 'I'm sorry,' she said instead.

He worked in silence for some time, while Sally sat as still as she could, watching the sun gradually moving round towards the west in a sky as blue as glazed porcelain. It was quite a lazy way to spend an afternoon, and she was beginning to feel quite sleepy. Once she dared to move from a position she had held for rather too long, trying to ease a crick in her neck, and was scolded by a sharp 'tch!' from Miguel. She glared at him, then caught Dona Alicia's eye and smiled.

It was Dona Alicia who broke the silence at last, calling across to Sally. 'It is getting late, Sarita,' she told her, ignoring her son's cluck of annoyance at the interruption. 'You will wish to change for dinner, will you not?'

'Sit still!' Miguel ordered sharply when she turned to answer, and Dona Alicia shook her head at him.

'Poor Sarita is tired and hungry, Miguel,
mi hijo,'
she said. 'You must allow her to have her dinner.'

'Condenar!'
He swore softly under his breath and for a moment the black eyes met and held Sally's, her emotions responding in the inevitable way. 'Perhaps,' He suggested softly, 'you will leave us for a while on our own,
si, madre amada}'

Dona Alicia looked to Sally for guidance in her own reply, but Sally had hastily sought refuge in the view outside again. 'I was to stay with Sarita while she was up here, Miguel,' she told him quietly, uncertain just what she should do.

'But you have to attend to other things,
mi amar,'
he said, softly persuasive. 'And Sarita does not mind being here for just a few moments, do you,
nina?'

Sally looked at Dona Alicia, her eyes betraying her uncertainty, and while she hesitated Miguel frowned, disliking to be kept waiting and impatient with her reluctance. 'I—I suppose not,' she said at last.

'Madre de Dios!'
Miguel breathed piously, raising his black eyes to heaven. 'You are always telling me that you are a grown woman, and yet you behave like a frightened baby when I ask you to sit for me a moment longer without your
duena!'

Sally felt the colour flood into her face at the scorn he put into the words and she looked across at Dona Alicia with the light of battle in her blue eyes, her chin in the air. 'Don't worry about me, Dona Alicia,' she told the older woman. 'I'll stay for a little while longer, if that's what Don Miguel wants.'

'If you are sure,
nina.'
Dona Alicia looked across at her doubtfully, and Sally smiled.

'I'm quite sure, thank you.'

'Muy bien.'
Dona Alicia got to her feet and went to the door, turning in the doorway to smile at Sally. 'I will see you at dinner, Sarita. Do not let Miguel keep you from your meal.'

'I won't,' Sally promised, and caught a gleam of malice in Miguel's black eyes when he looked at her.'May we now continue?' he asked, with exaggerated politeness, and Sally tossed back her hair without answering.

It was several minutes later when she got up from the stone sill and walked across the studio. Her legs felt stiff and cramped, and no matter what he said, she simply must move. To her surprise he said nothing, but his eyes followed her as she crossed the room, and he smiled briefly when she chanced a glance at him over her shoulder.

'I'm so stiff from sitting so long,' she told him, and sounded unconsciously defiant, but he shrugged, and abandoned his sketching for the moment to speak to her.

'It is because you are not yet used to sitting still,' he told her, with, she suspected, little sympathy for her complaint. 'When you have had more practice it will come more easily to you and you will not be so—uncomfortable.'

That raised the question again in her mind of how long he would need her to sit for him, and she looked across at him questioningly. 'I was wondering about that,' she told him. 'How long are you likely to need me to sit for you, Don Miguel?'

He raised a curious brow, another question answering her. 'How does that matter?' he asked.

Sally hesitated, she had no special desire to tell him that she did not want to spend the rest of her stay being his model, but she had to know just how much of her time he was going to demand. 'It matters to me, in a way,' she said. 'I only have about seven or eight weeks of my stay left, and according to Michael it can take months to paint a work like this Madonna.'

'That is so,' he agreed quietly. He was watching her in such a way that she could feel her heart leaping in her breast like a wild thing, so that she instinctively put a hand to her throat in a vague, oddly defenceless gesture.

'Then how' she began, and he shook his head, a small wry smile just touching his straight mouth.

'You have a saying in England, I think,' he said quietly. 'We will cross that bridge when we get to it, hmm?'

'Yes, but if' She looked at him earnestly for a moment, then hastily lowered her eyes when realisation dawned. 'Oh yes, of course,' she said in a flat little voice, 'you can always use someone else for the finishing touches, once you get to a certain stage, can't you?'

The thought of someone else, possibly even Ines Valdaquez, taking her place as his model, was not to her liking at all and she had a cold little core of misery in her heart when she realised she was dispensable after a certain stage of the work.

'I could,' he agreed quietly. 'But would you have me do that, Sarita? Would you not like to see me finish the Madonna? Just for the sake of a few more weeks.'

Sally could not answer for several minutes. Every nerve in her body cried out for her to tell him that she would stay just as long as he wanted her to.
'
I
could
stay on, I suppose,' she said at last. 'If that's what you want me to do, Don Miguel.'

'Would you?' She nodded.
'Gracias, pequena,'
he said softly.

The silence in the big, bright room hung like a tangible thing between them, and Sally wondered what she could possibly do about the positive chaos of emotions he had aroused in her. There was gentleness in the black eyes as he looked across at her, but she remembered all too well just how easily passion could kindle in a moment in that volatile Latin temperament.

'Do I take it that you consider me a better model than I am a painter?' she asked, without quite realising that her smile and the look in her eyes were a challenge to him to deny it.

She saw the sudden drawing together of his brows above the glistening black eyes, and he did not smile. 'Very much better,' he agreed quietly.

Sally laughed, a husky, shaky sound that she fought to control. 'Well, at least you're honest about it,' she told him. 'But if that's so, then why do you find it necessary to snap at me so often?'

He said nothing for a moment, but looked at her with a steady gaze that almost unnerved her completely. Her heart was turning over and over, and she bit on her lip when he spoke again. 'Do I snap at you?' he asked quietly.

'Often!'

'I was not aware of it,' he said, apparently taking it all quite seriously. 'Perhaps I have been unconsciously harsh.'

'Oh no, I didn't mean it like that,' Sally exclaimed breathlessly. 'I just meant that'

'I am sorry if you find me a harsh master,' he went on in that same quiet voice. 'I shall try not to drive you too hard. I promised that.'

'But you don't!'

'My mother probably agrees with you,' he said, ignoring the denial, and Sally shook her head, drawn across the room towards him by something she could not resist.

Her eyes were half hidden by lowered lids, and their expression betrayed something of the inner conflict that set her heart thudding wildly and curled her fingers into her palms as she looked up at him.

'I really didn't mean you to apologise,' she told him softly. 'I wasn't complaining.'

He stood by the easel that now acted as a prop for the sketch pad he had been using, and she vaguely registered the rough black lines of her own head and features from various angles. There was a taut, tingling sense of tension about him, and his fingers, where he held the charcoal he had been using to sketch with, looked tight and white-boned. His grip tightened suddenly and the black stick snapped in two and fell to the floor, leaving his fingers powdery black, while Sally started, even at such a tiny sound.

'It will soon be time for dinner,' he said quietly, and in a voice that was strangely harsh for all its quietness. 'I promised that I would not keep you from your meal.'

'I have time.' She smiled, although he did not look straight at her, but at the sketches he had been doing.

'I am sorry I kept you so long,' he said. 'Now you must go, before you are too late.'

'But I' She looked at him for a moment with wide eyes, and one hand reached out, vaguely appealing, for all it did not quite touch him.

'Do as I say!' he urged, and, when she hesitated, shook his head slowly. 'Please go, Sarita!' he said harshly.

Sally looked at him for a moment, wanting to do something about the way he was dismissing her, but afraid of what it would arouse in him if she stayed and argued with him. Her own heartbeat was a wild clamour that deafened her, and she sought for words that refused to come. She lowered her eyes at last, and the movement of her head sent her long golden hair cascading forward until it half hid her face.

'Very well,' she whispered. 'I'll go.'

She made no deliberate move to touch him, although perhaps instinct brought her closer than she realised, and the act of turning away from him brought her bare arm in contact with his left hand.

The touch on her sensitive skin was like fire, and it kindled a swift, exultant joy in her that forced a cry from her lips as he swept her against him.

His mouth was hard, almost punishing, on the softness of her lips, and his hands gripped her as if he was angry with both himself and with her. Then his fingers moved up and twined themselves into her soft hair, pulling back her head, holding her firm while his mouth sought the smooth warmth of her neck, and the soft, vulnerable spot at the base of her throat.