Beloved Tyrant Read online

  Divested of her coat, rather demure in a dove-grey dress with a tiny lace collar, Lyn gave her attention to those landscapes with their bold and active beauty.

  “Are you interested in art?” Rick spoke behind her.

  “Some of it,” she admitted. “I like those two paintings.”

  “May I ask why they appeal to you?”

  She studied them with her chestnut head tilted to one side, the tip of her forefinger resting in the dimple at the base of her chin. “The artist sees the world as God created it and not as a jumble of cubes set with bizarre eyes. Those landscapes are alive - they pulsate.”

  “Gracias, pichon! The artist,” Rick flicked his chest, where the slash-throated shirt revealed the tangle of dark hair, “is flattered by your opinion.”

  Lyn turned to him with started eyes. “You painted them, senor?”’ In her astonishment she forgot to mind that the word pigeon had a rather romantic meaning in Spanish, a language she was familiar with owing to her work as a stewardess for an international airline.

  “I paint for a living, for my sins.” His smile was sardonic, his intense blue eyes mocking the startled look in her eyes. “Did you imagine I was just a playboy - or maybe a gaucho?”

  She flushed, and then came a diversion from the direction of the hall. He had not quite closed the door of the lounge and Lyn heard an imperious young voice demanding of Pico whose suitcase he was bringing in. Pico triumphantly told her.

  “Gosh darn it, it’s her! Momma said she was coming today.” Angry young feet rang on the tiles of the hall and a moment later the door of the lounge was thrust wide open and in stormed a small girl whose dark, heavily lashed eyes took stock of Lyn from head to toe. “You’d better go back home,” she announced, “because if you stay here you’ll be sorry!”

  Rick had said that his niece would not welcome her, but Lyn herself could not suppress a quick smile as she saw her charge- to-be for the first time. The child was comically attired in a black lace evening gown, pinned at the front with the remainder dragging at her heels. A rose-trimmed picture hat was perched on her head and she carried a big patent leather handbag.

  Although Lyn was dying to laugh, Rick was without scruple and he openly did so. “Hullo, Polly Long-frock,” he said to her. “I see that you decided to leave your retreat in the monkey-tree.”

  Leoni’s dark eyebrows drew together in a scowl and she haughtily informed him that she was Tia Estella looking beautiful at a garden party. “And you’re not to tease me,” she added darkly.

  “I’m not teasing you,” he denied, looking mock-innocent.

  “Yes, you are!” The child thrust out her bottom lip. “You’ve got a laughy look on your face, and I’m going to tell Tia Estella that you’ve been teasing me again.”

  “You are turning into a real little tarradiddle,” he said. “When you grow up all the boys will avoid you, afraid you’ll go telling your precious Tia all about them.”

  Leoni gazed at him, blinking her heavy lashes disdainfully. “I don’t like boys,” she retorted. “They’re all horrid - like you!”

  Lyn frowned and glanced at Rick, who met her glance rather quizzically. “I’m neglecting the formalities,” he directed a brown hand towards his niece. “Miss Gilmour, meet Leoni Teresa Corderas, who is about as sweet and placable as a baby bear with a sore head.”

  “And you’re a big bear and I don’t like you!” Leoni flung at him.

  Lyn hastily intervened. “I’m pleased to meet you, Leoni and I hope we’re going to be friends.” She held out a hand to the child, who spitefully knocked it away.

  “You’re only a governess, and they’re all silly.” The naughty child tossed her head and dislodged her picture hat. “They’re all old maids who fall in love with Poppa because he’s handsome. You’re an old maid,” she added, with a disdainful glance at Lyn’s ringless left hand.

  “You pert little baggage!” Swiftly one of Rick’s hands swooped towards the child and he swung her, yelling, under his left arm. His right hand came down smartly on her rear end. “That’s for frightening the wits out of poor old Bianca, and this one is for being rude to a guest of your parents.” After applying a second slap he set Leoni upon her feet, and immediately she hit out at him, crying stormily:

  “She isn’t a guest and I don’t want her here! I wish she’d go away like the others and leave me alone. I don’t need her silly old lessons, and I bet she can’t ride, and that’s that!”

  Lyn bit her lip, troubled and concerned by such a display of temper in someone so young. “Leoni, can’t we be friends? It’s nice to have them, you know.”

  “I have my friends, and they aren’t people.” Leoni gave her picture hat such a tug that the rose-laden brim sagged down over her eyebrows. She stroked the frills of her dress, decided that the sagging brim added to her look of glamour, and did a couple of pirouettes with the natural grace of her Spanish blood. She then danced out of the room and across the hall, singing at the top of her voice:

  “Boys and girls, run out to play,

  Teacher’s here but not to stay!”

  Rick Corderas broke into a sardonic laugh. “Now you’ve met the little hellion,” he drawled. “Now you know why I warned you to catch the next train out of Monterey.”

  “Leoni is bad-tempered.” Lyn ruffled her chestnut hair in a troubled way. “It’s such a pity, for she’d be so pretty if she didn’t scowl in that unchildlike way.”

  “Corderas blood is strongly laced with pride, passion and temper, Miss Gilmour, so perhaps Leoni - along with other members of the family - might be excused to a certain extent.”

  Lyn met the smile of cynicism in his eyes, and then dropped her gaze to his well-defined mouth. She noticed the bold curve of his bottom lip, and the quirk it took as she regarded him. “You don’t really believe that bad manners are excusable or you wouldn’t have chastised the child,” she said. “I - I don’t know about other traits in her blood, but I’m certain she can be taught to have more respect for older people.”

  “The other companions probably thought the same and tried to tame her, but Leoni overcame their virtue with her lack of it.” Rick stretched his hard brown arms along the mantelshelf of carved stone, the personification of male physical grace and a careless disregard for anyone’s opinion of his own possible lack of virtue. “This idea of private tuition for Leoni is one I don’t happen to agree with. She should be sent to school right now. There is one at Amijo, and mixing with other kids would soon take her down a peg or two—”

  “That, Ricardo, is easier said than done!” snapped a woman’s voice.

  Lyn swung towards the door and saw a woman who could be nobody else but Dona Estella Moncada, who upon her husband’s death had returned to Monterey from Spain to run the hacienda for her nephew Julio. His wife had given birth to a stillborn son the previous year and her health had suffered, especially her nerves.

  “The child of a landowner like Julio cannot be exposed to the possible danger of a kidnapping, and you know it well, Ricardo,” his aunt added sharply. Then she came across the room, and Lyn found she was clutching her leather bag rather like a shield against those raking dark eyes.

  “You are Miss Gilmour?” Dona Estella stared at Lyn without a trace of welcome in her manner. “You seem very young - a mere girl!”

  Lyn forced a smile to her lips, though she was frankly shaken by the cold look in the woman’s eyes, whose long painted lashes threw spider-leg shadows on her high cheekbones. “I’m twenty-two, Dona Estella,” she replied.

  “This nurse, Sister Todd, she wrote and informed my nephew that you were an efficient, reliable person.” The tall, cold woman made a contemptuous gesture and her diamond rings flashed angrily. Her sloe eyes raked over Lyn’s slender figure. “You arrive here and it is obvious that you are not long out of the schoolroom yourself.”

  Indignation stung Lyn’s cheeks with colour and she told herself that never had she met such an intolerant and arrogant family. Furthermore they
could find someone else to look after that bad-tempered child, who was obviously a chip off the stone from which this haughty woman and her nephew Rick had been carved!

  “If you feel that I’m too young for the position of governess to Leoni, then I had better leave.” Lyn’s chin took an independent tilt as she faced Dona Estella. “I can catch the evening train back to San Francisco and return to the small hotel where I’ve been staying since I left the hospital.”

  Lyn turned to the man who had brought her to the hacienda. “Do you mind driving me back to the station, senor?” she asked.

  She could hardly believe her eyes when he shook his black head, nor her ears when he calmly said: “No, I won’t drive you to the station. You insisted upon coming here—”

  “I know I did, but—”

  “You refused to heed any warning I chose to give you,” his far stronger voice overpowered hers, “and now you are compelled to stay here - until the morning, anyway. You may not have noticed, but the rain is now teeming down and the mud on that ravine road will be spreading like oil.” A sardonic smile flickered on his lips as he gazed down into her large eyes that couldn’t help but express their dislike of him. “My driving unnerved you coming here - remember? I should hate to try your nerve on that road in its present state.”

  He strolled past her to the door, gave her a slight mocking bow and was gone. Lyn listened with astounded disbelief as his long strides faded away across the hall, and she hated him for his arrogance and for being so sure that she wouldn’t fit into the Corderas household.

  She appealed to his aunt, “Perhaps a manservant could run me to the station, senora?”

  Her answer was a cold smile. “Now that you are here, Miss Gilmour, you must of course stay until Julio returns from the muster of his many, many heads of cattle. He hired you, and it is for him to say whether you are suitable or not for the position of governess to his child.” Once again Lyn was looked over and dismissed. “I have my doubts, but Julio is the master here. And now I will have some refreshment brought to you. You must be feeling thirsty after your journey.”

  Lyn watched helplessly as the woman pressed a service bell. “Will you have coffee or a jicara of chocolate?” she was asked.

  “Coffee,” Lyn mumbled. She didn’t feel in the least like drinking hot chocolate; she only felt that she wanted to get away from a place which suddenly seemed alien and filled with unfriendly people. But there seemed no chance of escaping tonight, unless the rain stopped and Rick Corderas changed his mind about driving her to the station. She could hardly walk, not knowing the way, and still not a hundred per cent fit after her operation and the fearful shock of losing her beloved David.

  Her eye was caught again by those paintings on the wall, and some unhappy instinct warned her that the artist wasn’t a man who changed his mind once he had made it up.

  CHAPTER II

  A little later, having gulped hot coffee and come no nearer to liking Dona Estella Moncada, who was obviously a woman who loved power and wielded it like a whip, Lyn was informed that dinner was at eight o’clock, and she was then shown to her room by a rather severe maid in a rustling dark blue dress.

  It was a big room, lit by electricity that must have been generated on the estate, for it kept flickering, one minute bright and then dull, in the glass lamps that were suspended from a painted ceiling. Outside the rain beat down hard on the tiles of the patio, while a premature twilight had settled down over the hacienda, increasing its sense of isolation.

  “Don’t think the sunshine always shines in Monterey,” Sister Todd had warned. “When it rains it does so with a vengeance, and some mornings there are fine, ankle-deep fogs.”

  Lyn hardly knew any more what she expected of Monterey. Ease from pain, she supposed, yet right from the start there had been little zest to the adventure, for there was little of the old zest left in her. Each thing she did seemed done by remote control, as though someone pulled switches and pressed buttons to make her think, move and act. She seemed half a woman ... each thought she had, each impression and emotion was clouded over. The sun had faded for her since David’s untimely death, and now she walked in shadow like a shadow of her former self. The girl he had fallen in love with, who had enjoyed her work so much and had a ready sense of humour.

  She stood at the dressing-table and gazed at her melancholy reflection in the mirror. Well, she must make the best of things until the morning and her best plan right now was to go and have a relaxing bath.

  A long scented soak did help her to relax to a certain extent, after which she dressed, and padded about opening cupboards and discovering the small oddments which her predecessors had left behind. A half-used writing pad, the stud off the back of an earring, a handkerchief still faintly redolent of lavender water.

  Five other women had occupied this room, each one of them determined, no doubt, to have a go at taming Leoni; each one doomed to pack her suitcase and admit herself defeated. The thought was faintly distasteful ... defeat was such a spineless word.

  A dinner gong sounded downstairs and Lyn switched off her bedroom light and stepped out on to the gallery overlooking the hall, starting rather nervously at sight of an immense, rough-haired dog who was prowling about near the stairs. The shaggy head turned as she approached, then the dog slid down into a guardian attitude in front of one of the closed doors; a lion of an animal whom Lyn passed with some haste. She made her way down the stairs, gripping the balustrade of gracious wrought iron, and crossed the hall to the dining-room, which had been shown to her by the Spanish maid earlier on.

  The dining-room was large and grand, and the many branches of a crystal chandelier were abloom with light above the long table, whose rich dark surface reflected the silverware, lace mats and bowl of fragrant carnations.

  Dona Estella wore old-gold silk, and Lyn was made aware by the glance she was given that her simple dark dress was hardly in keeping with all this grandeur. Rick Corderas, over-poweringly tall and dark in evening wear, drew out a chair for her with an air of suave politeness, and she slipped into it with a murmur of chilly thanks, still feeling at odds with him over his refusal to take her away from a house in which she felt unwelcome. He seemed, she thought, to be enjoying her discomfiture. She felt his gaze as it slid from her smoothly combed hair to the unadorned lines of her dress, with a cowl neckline that revealed the paleness of her skin in contrast to his darkness.

  “Now don’t sulk,” he murmured right in her ear. “You are not quite Leoni’s age.”

  His breath against her earlobe made it tingle, and she clenched her table napkin as he strode round to the other side of the table, lithe and insufferably sure of himself as some ... some big tom-cat!

  Lyn was glad when the dining-room door opened to admit a girl in, possibly, her late twenties. She was fairly tall and clad almost as simply as Lyn, towards whom she directed a smile ... the first friendly one Lyn had received in this house.

  “My niece Rosa, Miss Gilmour,” Dona Estella said briefly.

  Rosa sat down at the table and examined her neighbour with frank interest. “So you are the new governess?” she exclaimed, shaking out her napkin and turning to accept vegetables from the tureen held by a maid at her elbow. “I thought you’d be the usual fuddy-duddy, hung from shoulder to heels in something beige and scared to say boo.” She grinned at Lyn, very tanned and with a wide humorous mouth, and with possibly a kinder heart than the one beating under her brother Rick’s speckless shirt-front.

  The Corderas family believed in good food, and even Lyn’s fickle appetite was aroused and she made a good meal. Especially did she like the dessert, a wine sauce poured over a baked apple pie with juicy berries.

  Rosa wanted to hear all about Lyn’s journey to Monterey and whether or not she liked what she had so far seen of it. She was an easy person to talk to, and she gave a nod of agreement when Lyn said that she found Monterey rugged and isolated.

  “But it’s rather nice, our touch of a lost world.” Ro
sa took a sip of her wine. “I guess it’s that certain magic that brings Rick and myself home from other cities, as if here we can recapture our old dreams and childhood memories.” Rosa smiled, but a tiny shadow had stolen into her eyes, which were a warmer blue than her brother’s. “I work for a fashion magazine in New York, and I’m running away from all the creative tumult for a while.”

  But as she spoke her fingers were tense about the stem of her wine glass, and Lyn found herself wondering if Rosa Corderas was really running away from a man.

  It was Dona Estella who snapped this thread of thought; she said rather maliciously: “Is it Henry Martell’s widow who brings you home this season, Ricardo?”

  He was peeling a nectarine, and a slightly mocking smile stabbed the edges of his mouth. “Glenda would make a fascinating subject to paint.”

  “Are you planning to use Glenda as a model, Rick?” A note of eager interest came into Rosa’s voice.

  “I’ve always been intrigued by Spanish Cove and that legend about the drowned girl who haunts it, looking for her lover. Glenda has the type of looks that would certainly lend themselves to the picturesque wildness of the cove.” Then almost deliberately, as if there might be something private about his association with the young widow, he changed the conversation. “Are you still leaving us in the morning, Miss Gilmour?” he asked.

  Before Lyn could answer him, his sister turned round in her chair and gave Lyn a disappointed look. “But you’ve only just arrived here! You must give yourself a chance to get used to us. Lyn, honey, are we that intimidating?”