The Golden Madonna (7 page)

There was a despondent droop about her shoulders too, as she slumped on the little canvas stool with her slim brown legs curled away under it. The brief cotton dress she wore exposed a great deal of golden tanned skin to the scorching sun and she began to wonder if she had been unwise to sit here so long without protection.

'So,
nina.
You not only miss my class, you also expose yourself to too much sun!'

Sally turned sharply at the sound of the familiar voice, and frowned. Miguel Cordova stood behind her, close behind her, bare-headed, his face wearing that stern, dark look that she had learned to know as a prelude to criticism. It dismayed her, too, to feel the way her pulses were racing wildly when she realised she was alone with him again. That irrepressible sense of excitement was running away with her common sense again and she fought against its influence determinedly.

'I felt like being alone,' she said, hastily on the defensive, and he gave a short laugh.

'I seem to remember that you told me that once before,
nina,'
he said.

'Well, it happens to be true,' Sally insisted, hating him'for reminding her of that time. 'I like being alone sometimes, and it's such a lovely view from up here.'

'Muy hermoso,'
he agreed quietly. 'But you are foolish to sit so long in the sun without a hat.' A hand rested lightly on the crown of her head for a moment, and she started almost nervously at the touch. 'You will become ill if you do not protect your head.'

Sally glanced up briefly but meaningly at his own black head.
'You
never do,' she told him, and he smiled.

'I am used to the sun,
mi pichon,'
he said softly. 'You must accustom yourself to it gradually. Do not sit out here again without some protection for your head.'

It was the implacable way that the order was given that annoyed Sally, and she instinctively lifted her chin in defiance of it. 'I want to get brown,' she informed him. 'That's one reason for coming to Spain, after all. To go back with a good tan.'

'But not to go down with
insolacion,
I think,' he retorted impatiently. 'You will please do as I say in future, Sarita, and not be so stubbornly foolish about wearing a hat. Also,' he added, before she could object, 'you are here to improve your talent as an artist. I can well imagine that you find the view from here more inspiring than sitting in on one of my teaching sessions, but it is surely rather pointless for your father to pay for something of which you have no intention of taking advantage.'

'He'd understand, if he was here,' Sally informed him swiftly, unable to resist the dig. 'He'd realise I had to escape occasionally.'

'Escape?' He raised a black, expressive brow at the blank canvas before her. 'Escaping seems to have been of little use to you this morning, does it?'

Sally looked at him, her blue eyes dark with anger and reproach, her fingers tightly clenched on the brush she still held in her right hand. 'I just forgot about the session this morning,' she told him, untruthfully.

'I see. But not for the first time, I think.'

Sally made no answer for a moment, but fought with the almost overwhelming variety of emotions that crowded her mind, so chaotically that she could have cried out. Why, oh, why had he had to come and find her?

'I have been here before,' she confessed at last, unwillingly, and the black eyes seemed to bore into her so that she swept down a curtain of thick lashes to hide her eyes.

'Why?'

'Oh—I don't know!' She got up from her stool, shaking her head so that the long hair fell about her face, hiding her expression. 'There just doesn't seem much point,' she went on recklessly. 'Not when I learn nothing.'

Again a brow expressed more than words, and he frowned. 'So—you feel you have nothing to learn, is that it?'

'No, of course it isn't,' Sally denied. 'It's just that —I never seem to learn very much when I
do
come.'

'And you blame me for that?'

She shook her head, seeking a way to explain, that would not be a blow to his undeniable pride. 'Oh, how do I know who's to blame?' she asked with a sigh. 'I just know that you
disc
ourage me rather than encourage me, and I haven't been able to do anything worthwhile since I came here.'

'But to learn to do something worthwhile is surely why you are here,' he suggested quietly. 'The idea is for you to learn,
muchacha,
but you do not like being taught, do you? You do not take kindly to learning, and most especially from me, I think. Is that not so?'

'No, of course it isn't,' Sally denied, glancing up at the stern, dark face, trying to make him understand. and at the same time wishing he need not stand quite so close, because she could almost feel the warmth and magnetism of him, like an irresistible force.

His black eyes were almost incredibly brilliant, and they looked down at her as if he guessed exactly the effect he had on her, and wanted to see just how far he could push her. Hastily she shifted her gaze to the far less disturbing subject of the scene below them.

'Then why do you constantly fight me?' he asked softly. 'Why will you not let me teach you,
nina,
hmm?'

Sally kept her eyes on the glittering sea and the sweeping strip of sand that dazzled like beaten gold, her heart thudding wildly in response to the persuasive softness of his voice. 'I do try to learn,' she said, her voice betrayingly unsteady. 'I
want
to learn, Don Miguel, but'

'But?' he prompted, and Sally shook her head.

'I shouldn't have come,' she told him. 'I should never have come here at all.'

He laughed shortly, and she knew that his pride was resenting her refusal to be persuaded as much as her words. 'It was what I told you when you arrived, if you remember,' he reminded her. 'And for all the good it has done for your work, you would probably have been better not to come.'

The brutal frankness of his reply made her turn swiftly and eye him with as much anger as reproach. 'Thank you,' she said bitterly. 'At last I know the truth.'

'I presumed that you wanted the truth,' he told her icily. 'It was of your own choosing,
senorita.'

'And you wouldn't hesitate to tell me, would you?' Sally asked, a catch in her voice. 'It's been very obvious from the start that you didn't like my being here.'

'That is not true,' he told her shortly, 'and you are well aware of it, Sarita!' She was too slow to realise his intention until those long gentle fingers reached out and brushed caressingly against her cheek again, making her pulses skip wildly as she hastily looked away. 'You know it is not so,
amada,'
he said softly.

Suddenly the villa seemed an incredibly long way off and she swallowed hard on the urgent desire to flee as fast as her legs would carry her. Instead she glanced up at him from under her lashes, and saw the suspicion of laughter that glistened in his eyes.

'Oh—oh, you—' Her tightly curling fingers snapped in two the slender handle of the paintbrush she held, and she felt the sharp, painful jab of the splintered wood in her flesh, drawing in a sharp breath at the shock of it.

'Sarita! You have hurt your hand!' He was suddenly and unbelievably anxious, and he pulled open her curled hand with his own strong fingers. 'Splinters can be dangerous,
amada
—let me see.'

The pieces of broken wood fell unheeded to the ground as he spread her hand in his, palm upwards, and showing the red and angry marks on her fingers. 'It's nothing,' Sally insisted hastily. 'Only a splinter, I can get it out myself.'

The minute sliver of wood prickled sharply when he ran a finger over it, and she winced involuntarily. 'Ah!' It might almost have been a sound of satisfaction as he raised her hand to his mouth and placed his lips over the spot, drawing at the fragment, while Sally fought with an ever-increasing sensation of panic.

With his head bent over her hand, he was only inches away, and she was overwhelmingly aware of the essential maleness of him. Of the warmth of his touch and the pressure of his lips on her palm, of the shadow that those almost feminine-looking lashes made on the brown face. The intimate, warm sense of touch and awareness made her head spin dizzily, and she would have reached out and touched his cheek gently with her finger tips if he had not looked up at that moment and ejected the offending splinter from his mouth before smiling at her.

'It is gone,
nina.
Is that better?'

Sally nodded, not immediately trusting herself to speak. 'Thank you,
senor,'
she said huskily, at last.

'There are no more?' He still held her hand in his, and ran gentle, exploratory fingers over the red marks, while Sally shook her head.

'No! No, thank you.' She withdrew her captive hand, and he released it reluctantly. 'I'd—I think I'd better go back to the house,' she said.

She noticed with dismay that her hands were trembling as she folded up her easel and collected her paints, and it was he who bent and picked up her stool and the abandoned canvas, tucking them both under his arm.

'You will not sit out here again,' he told her, mildly but firmly. 'Especially not during a lesson, and certainly not without a hat.'

'I'm not prepared to give you an assurance on either,' Sally replied, equally quietly. She was still shaky-voiced, but she was not prepared to allow herself to be bulldozed into meekly accepting his instructions.

'I must insist that you do,' he told her, and Sally turned her back on him, making her way up the short, steep incline to the driveway.

'And I must insist that I be allowed to do as I please,' she insisted.

'That I cannot allow.'

'Then I shall pack up and go home,' Sally declared, her adamant statement suffering some loss of force from having to be spoken over one shoulder.

'Ah!' He seemed to find some satisfaction in that, and for a moment she wondered if his behaviour until now really had been calculated to achieve just that move on her part. 'I could have guessed that you would relinquish the rest of your tuition rather than take instruction,' he told her with maddening certainty. 'You are just too stubborn to listen to anyone, are you not?'

'No, I'm
not
!' Sally denied swiftly, and half turned to glare at him over her shoulder.

The move, however, was almost her undoing, for she missed her footing on the rocky incline and would have fallen if he had not put out a hand to save her. For a moment she was pulled against him, and the faster than usual beat of his heart thudded heavily in time with her own.

He held her there, with his strong fingers gripping her upper arm tightly, looking down at her with an impatient glitter in his black eyes. 'You are wilful and stubborn,' he told her, his breath warm on her cheek when he spoke. 'More strict discipline when you were younger would have made some difference, perhaps, but like most of the women of your country you are wilful and have little notion of your proper place!'

'Proper place!' Sally wrenched at her arm, trying to free it. Most of all anxious to move away from such close contact with him, for he could undermine her strength of will with dangerous ease. She looked up at the dark arrogant features, and the black eyes looking at her down that straight, aristocratic nose. Even the way he walked—tall and confident, spoke of his pride in what he was, and his conviction that most other species were inferior.

'Si, mi poco pimienta!
' She was horribly uncertain whether it was laughter or anger in his eyes.

'Well, I thank heaven I
wasn't
brought up in a country that, lives in the Middle Ages!' she told him. 'We're not second-class citizens, no matter what the likes of you think,
senor!'

'I did not suggest that you were,' he denied quietly, 'but you are—different, you will not deny that, Sarita, surely, and that is what makes the natural rule of man as the dominant one.' An eloquent shrug conveyed his meaning more precisely, and Sally hastily turned her head away again rather than meet the challenge that glittered in those bright, dark eyes. 'It is to be expected, of course,' he went on, 'that you can wrap your father around your little finger, probably without his realising it.'

'I don't need to wrap anyone round my finger,' Sally told him. 'I'm quite capable of running my own life without having to exert pressure on anyone, even my father.'

'Just as long as you are getting your own way,' he suggested. 'That is why you are talking now of giving up your course and going home.'

'No, it isn't!'

'Because you cannot wrap me around your finger, you will go home, give up and refuse to learn anything.'

The taunt stung like a whiplash and Sally gritted her teeth as she turned round, stopping in her tracks so that he was forced to stop too, his eyes glittering a challenge at her. The sun beat down mercilessly on the back of her neck and she was breathing unevenly, partly from the exertion of the climb and partly from the tumult of emotions that threatened at any moment to burst into verbal assault.

'All right,' she said after a long moment, and drawing a deep breath before she spoke. 'I'll stay on for the whole of the three months. No matter what you do to provoke me, I'll prove you're wrong, and that I don't give up because you bully me. I'll
stay
on and prove you're not only a—a bully, but prejudiced too!'

His brief, soft laughter was a surprise, and the fingers of his free hand reached out to caress her bare arm before she could draw back. 'I thought perhaps you might,' he said softly.

Mealtimes were an opportunity for conversation, and as usual the big, cool dining-room buzzed with voices as everyone talked at once. Sally smiled across at Robert Blane, and was immediately aware that Miguel, at the head of the table, had not missed the brief exchange.

Robert's persistence amused her, and she wondered if he would ever pluck up the courage to come and sit next to her, in the chair that Michael normally occupied. Certainly their host would view the incident, should it ever occur, with less tolerance than she would herself.

After her encounter with Miguel Cordova that morning, she was feeling vaguely and rather defiantly restless. She felt more uneasy than ever in his presence, and the sensation annoyed her. It was all too obvious that his behaviour towards her was a calculated and deliberate campaign to amuse himself at her expense, and in the cruellest possible way.