The Golden Madonna (6 page)

'Then why are you here?'

She felt like telling him that it was absolutely no concern of his, but instead she answered him, sounding almost childishly defiant. 'Because I felt like being on my own.'

His shrug of contempt brushed again on her arm, and she could easily imagine the way his lip was curling. 'You have quarrelled, I suppose,' he guessed. 'I expected something of the sort would happen when I saw you go off with Robert Blane last night. You did it deliberately, of course.'

It was not a question, it was not even an accusation, just a statement of fact as far as he was concerned, obviously, and Sally turned swiftly to deny it. 'I did no such thing!' she said indignantly. 'How dare you say that?'

'Because it is true,' he insisted smoothly. 'You must have known that Michael Storer would resent you going off with another man, but it did not stop you from going. You are a
coqueta,
I think, Miss Beckett.'

I don't know what that means, but I can guess it's not very complimentary, and I deny it,' Sally declared, and blinked hastily when a glint of white in the brown face revealed a smile.

'Oh, but you are,' he insisted softly. 'A—a'

'Coqueta,'
he obliged, and smiled again. 'You would call it—a flirt, I think.' - 'I'm not!' Sally denied. 'And anyway, it's nothing to do with you, what I am!'

'It is if you disrupt my classes with your games,' he said quietly. 'And whether you have quarrelled with your Michael or not, you were extremely foolish to have come so far on your own at night.'

'I haven't come so very far,' Sally said, and looked at him through her long lashes as she added, 'I
had
thought of going down into the village.'

She had been right to guess what sort of a reaction that would have, but she was not prepared for the strength of the fingers that gripped her upper arm so tightly that she cried out in protest. 'You do not mean that,' he said quietly, and she turned, originally to glare defiance, but the expression in the black eyes stunned her for a moment.

They blazed at her like coals in the bright yellow moonlight so that she stared at him with wide eyes and her lips parted in surprise. 'I—I do mean it,' she managed at last, almost choking on the words because the blood was pounding so heavily in her head that she had difficulty in thinking straight. 'I saw no reason why I shouldn't go down there,' she added.

'If you ever do such a thing, if you even
think
of going down there alone at night, I will lock you in your room until your father comes to fetch you home,' he told her, and the gripping fingers shook her hard. 'Do you understand me, Sarita?'

'You have no' Sally began, but he shook her again, and his black eyes seemed to scorch her as they raked over her from top to toe.

'Do you wish to discover how warm-blooded Spanish men are?' he asked harshly. 'Is that why you were going down there to the village? Is it, Sarita?'

Sally stared at him, shaking her head, her hands and legs trembling as she saw from the look in his eyes what he meant to do. 'No,' she whispered. 'No, it wasn't that at all.'

'I think you are lying.'

Sally tried to look away, but those gleaming black eyes seemed to have hypnotised her and she could only stand there shaking her head slowly back and forth, like someone in a trance. 'No, I'm not lying, I'm not!'He ignored her denial, and reached out with his other hand to take her right arm, pulling her, un» resisting from her perch on the boulder. For a moment he looked down at her in silence, while Sally fought with such a tangle of emotions that she was unsure how she wanted to react. 'If you are so curious,
mi pichon,'
he said softly, 'it is better I am your teacher, much better.'

She could not have evaded him, even had she tried, but somehow this seemed to be the moment she had been waiting for all evening. The culmination of that inexplicable sense of exhilaration she had felt ever since she ran away from Michael, and came out here to sit above the moonlit sea—waiting.

She was trembling like a leaf as he drew her closer, her shoeless height bringing her only as high as the vee of his jacket. His tall figure blocked the moonlight and she instinctively put both her hands to his chest, her open palms feeling the warmth of him through the softness of the frilled dress shirt he wore, spreading her fingers over the strong, steady beat of his heart.

'Your first lesson,
mi
Sarita,' he said softly, and bent his dark head to brush her throat with his lips.

Sally's heart was beating so fast and so furiously that she had not even breath enough to resist, while some secret part of her admitted to not wanting to resist. It seemed so right, somehow, what she had been waiting for and she closed her eyes as, with a slow deliberation that was in itself exciting, his mouth moved from her throat to a spot below her left ear, then to her neck where the coil of soft fair hair lay. Strong, gentle fingers brushed it aside, caressing her neck as they did so.

The soft and pretty pink dress slid down her arm, moved by persuasive fingers, and he kissed the smooth skin it had hidden, his mouth warm and sensuous, and evoking such emotions in her as she had never dreamed of with Michael.

Almost on the point of responding more actively, Sally's senses flicked in panic suddenly, and she made a small, soft sound of protest, putting her hands flat against his chest. But the exulting sense of excitement that coursed through her like fire would not so easily be stilled, and she yielded again as his mouth came down over hers and stifled the whisper of sound she made.

Ironically it was the fierceness of his kiss, the hard demanding pressure of his mouth on hers that reminded her sharply of his reason for playing this incredible scene. He had spoken of himself as her teacher, with the intention of showing her what she might expect if she was ever foolish enough to stray down into the village alone at night. Teaching her a lesson about Spanish men, and betraying that innate streak of cruelty again.

'No!' She managed to free her mouth at last, and brush a hand fiercely across her lips as she looked up at him. her eyes bright and curiously luminous in the moonlight. 'No! Please let me go!' Her hands beat at his chest fiercely, and she squirmed in the grip that still held her tightly.

He eased his hold on her a little, but did not let her go completely, and the black eyes glowed like, live coals as he looked down at her. 'Ah!' he said softly. 'I think you find your lesson a little too much for you,
mi pichon.
Am I right?'

'Oh, you despicable—unscrupulous'

'No!' A hard note crept into the quiet voice, and the fingers holding her arms increased their grip. 'You sit by the roadside in the moonlight,
senorita,
waiting for someone to come along, or deciding whether you should go down into the village and see for yourself what my countrymen are like when they see a beautiful woman. You cannot claim to be
I'innocente,
after such an obvious expedition!'

'I claim nothing!' Sally cried desperately, shaking her head and very close to tears. She felt weak and trembly and suddenly chill, as if that warm, exciting feeling had gone, and left her drained of emotion. 'I just walked down the road a little way and sat here, looking at the sea. I—I wasn't waiting for anyone.'

The way her voice shook dismayed her, and also she sounded so much as if she was apologising, when she had really no cause to. For a moment he said nothing, but stood and looked down at her steadily, the tightness about his mouth gradually easing.

'But someone came, nevertheless,' he said quietly. 'And it is fortunate that it was me, Sarita.'

'Fortunate!' Sally stared at him, the words choking in her throat, then hastily lowered her eyes rather than see the arrogant, calculating look on his face. 'Please let me go,' she begged huskily. 'I'll walk back to the house.' She sounded suddenly weary and she felt sure she would cry before long if he did not go away and leave her.

'You will come back with me in the car,' he told her, a hand on her arm again making sure she did not escape. 'Have you not yet learnt your lesson,
muchacha?'

'No!'

'Please do not argue with me!' The grip on her arm tightened, and she cried out in protest as he drew her across the road to where he had left the Mercedes. 'Come!' He opened the door and almost pushed her into the car, and Sally slumped miserably into the seat.

The moon still shone as big and brilliantly as before. over the glistening ocean, and the stars still promised a thousand romantic dreams, but Sally, keeping as far away from her captor as she could, wished she had stayed and shared the evening with Michael. At least she knew what Michael was all about, and she knew just what her own feelings for him were too. With Miguel Cordova she was painfully uncertain on both counts.

T
HE
narrow strip of golden sand looked bright and almost copper-coloured in the hot sun, seemingly endless as it swept off into a hazy infinity, with the soaring skyline of rocks behind it. The craggy, impressive rock face that was dotted here and there with clusters of green, where white villas perched like birds among the lushness of their own gardens. Palms and orange trees, and the kind of massed geraniums and roses that surrounded the Casa de Principes.

It was all so lovely, though perhaps slightly unreal, and it should have proved a source of inspiration to any artist, Sally thought, but she had sat here now for over an hour, and the canvas in front of her was still maddeningly and dismayingly blank.

She chewed on the end of her brush, her mouth, slightly pouting, betraying her dislike of the situation. She felt she should have been able to paint as she had never done before, in such surroundings, but far from that being so, she found herself devoid of any kind of inspiration at all.

In the two weeks since she came to San Gregorio she had done nothing worth mentioning at all. Not that she had ever considered herself any more than a passably good amateur, but at least at home she had been able to produce something that she was not ashamed to show her friends. Two weeks under Miguel Cordova's expert tuition and she had nothing at all to show for it. She had no hesitation, either, of placing the blame for her failure firmly at the feet of her tutor.

She avoided Miguel Cordova as often as she could, although she was forced to bear his harsh and unrelenting criticism during teaching sessions. It was ridiculous to feel as sensitive as she did, but since that episode when he had found her alone by the roadside and played such havoc with her emotions, she felt unable to face him without wanting to run away and hide.

He had made it plain enough to her that he considered it no more than a lesson to teach her never to go wandering out alone at night. Nevertheless, she was aware that she had responded to him, if only for a few minutes, with far more lack of inhibition than she should have done.

As for helping her to improve her painting, from his manner he seemed far more intent on discouraging her, until she had reached the point, only a couple of days ago, when she had been ready to pack up and go home. Only Michael's persuasion had changed her mind, and she thanked heaven that he could not possibly have known what other, more disturbing, factors lay behind her wanting to leave.

She was sure that Dona Alicia would have regretted her early departure, for the older woman had shown, quite unmistakably, that she liked her, but she would probably have seen the reason for it far more easily than Michael would. Dona Alicia, Sally thought, would know exactly what sort of an effect her son would have on other women.

No one saw anything of Ines Valdaquez, except at mealtimes, and Sally thanked heaven for it, but she was also feminine enough to speculate on what the Spanish girl's reaction would have been to that incident on the coast road. Ines Valdaquez showed quite plainly, in her manner towards him, that she looked upon Miguel Cordova as something more than just her late husband's cousin; even if she did receive little in the way of encouragement—in public at least.

It was annoying, Sally thought, how often she found herself thinking about Miguel Cordova, and she frowned now to find herself so preoccupied yet again. No one could deny that he was a brilliant artist, of course, but his manner towards her fellow students and herself was one of such arrogant impatience and barely concealed contempt that she found it very hard to understand why they did not object, as she did herself. Their acceptance of it all only added to Sally's sense of injustice.

Michael had surprised her by proving quite amazingly knowledgeable about their host, although Sally had hesitated to enquire too closely into the source of his information. He had informed her, only yesterday, that Don Miguel had, during the past few years, numbered several famous beauties among his conquests. Of course Michael had hastened to add, as if it made everything all right, he was always very discreet, and never so obvious as to create a scandal.

The latter had made Sally smile wryly to herself when she heard it. Perhaps some of those famous beauties too were merely being taught a lesson on the danger of tempting the Spanish male. It was iTi- evitable, of course, that his dark, almost stern, looks would prove irresistible to a good many women. Even his arrogance would probably be in his favour with some.

His reputation too would be an added attraction and he had been commissioned to paint any number of wealthy and beautiful wives and daughters. His work hung in some of the most luxurious homes in the world, and perhaps it was not surprising that he looked upon the rest of the world with arrogance and the conviction of his own importance.

She sighed again, resignedly, and looked at the blank canvas in front of her. This was not the first time she had managed to slip off alone to sit on the rocks above the sea, and she expected her tutor's wrath to descend on her any day now. She had managed to give Michael the slip several times lately, and come out here instead of joining the rest of the class.

Instead of lifting her spirits, however, her truancy had merely added to her low feeling, and she sighed deeply as she stared at the copper-coloured sand and the incredible blue glitter of the sea below her. Her head was bare and the sun was much too hot for even her thick, corn-coloured hair to be any sort of protection, and she knew she was squinting her eyes against it.