Pilgrim's Castle Read online

  Even as she turned to look at Don Juan, her eye was caught by a portrait and by a pair of shell-shaped castanets that hung on silk by the picture, which glowed against the panelling. Yvain took in the raven hair, the ruby-red dress, creamy-skinned face and flashing dark eyes. The girl portrayed stood in an attitude, her slender left arm thrown backwards, castanets on the fingers, the flowers in her hair as vivid as her eyes.

  'That was La Rosalita.' Don Juan came and stood just behind Yvain, tall above her head, despite the fact that he leaned slightly on his stick. 'She was the gipsy dancer whom my father married.'

  Yvain turned in surprise to look at him, and the breath caught in her throat as she met the full impact of his dark eyes, brilliant beneath his heavy lids.

  'Yes, senorita, my mother was a gipsy girl, and my father's family never forgave him for marrying her. He brought her here to live, and made for her this golden room to which she escaped, during the time she was having her baby, to play on the piano the flamenco music she loved. She was all gaiety, all music, elemental as a flower that slowly withered in the atmosphere of frost which my father's people created for her.'

  Don Juan's eyes dwelt with a faraway expression on the portrait of his gipsy mother. 'I can recall,' he murmured, 'how she would warm her finger-castanets in her masses of dark hair. Hair like midnight.'

  He reached forward and took them from the hook on which they hung. He eased his fingers through the silk bands and their hollow click was like the echo of a broken cry. Then he replaced them and said they would take their coffee and cognac in here. He reached to the braided bell-pull, and Yvain studied him through her lashes and thought he had his mother's dark eyes and the kind of bone structure that denoted a fierce, hidden streak ... a flame beneath the frost.

  'Do you play?' He gestured at the piano.

  'The duties of a maid-companion don't include such refinements, senor.' She spoke and looked demure as she sat in a silk-upholstered chair, her hands clasped in her lap. She wanted to hear more about his mother. Dared she ask? She thought not as he leaned on his stick in front of her and no doubt compared her in his mind to the golden girls of his own land.

  'For how many years did you work for this woman?' he asked.

  'Since I was fifteen, senor, when my father was killed by the kick of a horse.'

  At once those black eyes upon her seemed to hold a flame. 'So! Was he out riding?'

  'There was a hunting party at Sandell Hall and he was helping out in the stables.' Her hands clenched together with remembered pain. 'He was adjusting a stirrup when ... when it happened. He loved animals, and yet that was how he died.'

  'Your mother?'

  'I don't remember her, senor. I had only my father, and then afterwards I worked at the Hall.'

  'Secretly rebellious?' There was a tinge of sardonic humour in the question, and it seemed to Yvain that the beautiful, chiselled mouth was gentle for a fleeting moment.

  'There were times when I thought of running away,' she admitted.

  'Ah, then why did you stay?'

  'Because cities are so noisy and when I could get away from the Hall for an hour I had the woods and wilds of Somerset to explore. I was close to the places my father always loved. There were the birds, and the Romany people camped on the heath.'

  'You liked these Romany people?'

  'They were colourful, but my father had been a gamekeeper at the Hall, and so .'

  Don Juan broke in with a laugh. It was the first time she had heard him laugh and her eyes reflected her amazement. 'Yes,' he said, 'there is an untamable streak in gipsies and they enjoy pheasant as well as the rich man.' Luis entered with a coffee tray and was told to put it down on the table beside Yvain's chair. She felt the discreet flick of the manservant's eyes and she knew instantly what he was thinking. It was out of keeping for a little servant girl to be here in the golden room, the coffee set beside her so that she might pour for the Marquis.

  Having been a servant she knew how they gossiped in the kitchen. It made her feel embarrassed that they might misconstrue Don Juan's attentions.

  The door closed behind Luis. 'Please pour.' Don Juan took a chair and stretched forth his handicapped leg. He was intensely dark against the gold and crimson silk of the chair, and Yvain strove not to spill the coffee as she poured it from the silver pot, and she couldn't help but recall the number of times Ida Sandell had performed such a service for a male visitor to the Hall. Her hand shook slightly as she handed Don Juan his cup of coffee, in which at his request there was neither cream nor sugar. 'Are you nervous of me?' he asked.

  'Can you wonder, senor?' She concentrated on sweetening her own coffee. 'I'm not used to ... to all this.'

  'I daresay practice will make perfect.'

  She glanced up then as if a wire had jerked her to attention.

  He quirked a black eyebrow as he drank his coffee.

  'There will be other times, Senorita Pilgrim, when we shall be alone like this, and I hope that in time you will not look at me as if at the ogre of the castle.'

  'I don't!'

  'Ah, but you do.' His smile was mockery incarnate. 'You have a wide pair of eyes, senorita, and the eyes can be looked into as one looks in through the windows of a house that is otherwise locked up. It is an intrusion from the outside; a stolen glimpse into the soul of another person.'

  Their glances interlocked and she felt indeed as if she surrendered to him a part of her secret self. Bruno maga, she thought. Dark sorcerer.

  'Drink your coffee before it grows cold.' He rose with the help of his ebony stick and went across to crystal decanters on a tray with little silver lion's feet. 'This is an old bonded brandy,' he said as he poured. 'We will drink to your survival, and to your arrival on the Isla del Leon.'

  His lean fingers held the goblets by their stems, and as she took one of them she felt its lightness. It was like an iridescent bubble with liquid gold inside.

  'The world is small.' In his beautiful lean hand his goblet was like a chalice he held during some pagan rite. Un panuelo, no more than a pocket handkerchief in the hand of chance. To chance, Senorita Pilgrim, the master of us all.'

  A few moments after drinking the cognac, Yvain felt its soothing influence on her nerves. The room took on a glow, a warmth, and she could picture La Rosalita at the piano, a scarlet rose in her raven hair.

  She saw that Don Juan was looking at the portrait, lost in his thoughts so that she was free to study his profile; the power and passion blended in the features, as silver blended with the darkness of his hair. Pain had left lines beside his lips and silvered his hair, and she knew with her instincts rather than her eyes that he was a younger man than he appeared to be.

  'Have you ever seen the flamenco dance?'

  'No, senor. I have heard that it's very exciting.'

  'The flamenco dance is a duel between a man and a woman.' The down swing of his glance caught her eyes upon him. 'I must arrange for you to see it. Spanish parents regard it as a form of education for their daughters, and I think there is much for you to learn.'

  'I'm nineteen, senor!'

  'The age of discovery. A step away from the teens to the twenties, when one is emotional without being in full command of the emotions,' His eyes were magnetic, holding her captive as he carried his dark cigarro to his lips. The black pearl studs in his shirtfront seemed to gleam like his eyes. 'You think me arrogante, eh? The know-it-all?'

  'I think you regard people as chess pieces to be manipulated,' she rejoined, made daring by the cognac.

  'And what chess piece are you, senorita?'

  'I think ... the king's pawn,' she murmured.

  'And what move do I intend to make with regard to you?'

  'I can't imagine.'

  'But I should have thought you had a lot of imagination.' His gaze dwelt on her hair, with its auburn shading to the brown-gold of her eyes. He appraised her in the dress that neither fitted nor flattered. He would smile, she thought, but he remained aloof, concealed behi
nd a mask of suave, satanic beauty.

  The word shook her as it came into her mind. One didn't apply it to a man, yet it had been applied ... to Dante ... to Byron ... to the martyred Sebastian. He was akin to them, this dark and dangerous lord of an island. This tall and limping Lucifer!

  'Your imagination is at work right now.' He read her eyes and veiled his own behind the smoke of his cigarro. 'Our level of response to life is either deep or shallow, and our consequent torments arise from that level. I don't think you are shallow, Senorita Pilgrim, otherwise I should have asked Emerito to take you to the mainland.'

  'I... I may have preferred to go to the mainland.' She felt a disturbing clamour of her heartbeats. 'I can't stay here indefinitely. I must find work ... I have no money.'

  'I have sufficient,' he drawled. 'I noticed at the dining table that you eat like a bird, and I daresay life has conditioned you to accept less than you secretly desire. What is your secret wish, senorita? I may be in a position to grant it.'

  'I need a job,' she said nervously.

  At once he smiled, an enigmatic twist of the lips. 'What an undemanding little creature you are! What sort of a job? Again as maid-of-all-work to a woman of no heart?'

  'It's all I'm trained for, senor. Do you know someone .?'

  'Ah yes, several ladies of leisure who would be delighted to have you for a runabout.'

  'Then . . . ? '

  'I shall not recommend you to one of them.'

  'Oh...!'

  Don't burst into tears!'

  'I ... I never cry,' she said with dignity, 'in front of others.'

  'An admirable trait.'

  'It would be to someone like you.'

  'Like me?' There was a diabolical tilt to his left eyebrow.

  'A Spanish aristocrat who has no need to depend on others for a livelihood.'

  'In one way or another, senorita, we are all dependent on someone.' He traced with the ferrule of his stick the pattern on the silk rug at his feet. 'You must have the ambition to be something more than a maid-companion. Tell me, what would you like to do with your life?'

  The fact that he showed interest, that he was prepared to be attentive, had the reverse effect of making her dumb with shyness. In any case she had never thought seriously about a career. One needed an education for that sort of thing and she had been taken out of school and set to work at the Hall when she was just fifteen. Of course, like every other girl, she had thought it would be fun to be an air stewardess, one who was whipped off to colourful lands in a streamlined jet aeroplane. And deep in her heart she had sometimes dreamed of being a smart assistant to someone brilliant in the world of art and antiques.

  Yvain loved old and lovely things, and her response to this place was due to the wonders it held.

  'Is your ambition so impossible that you dare not mention it?' There was a dry note in Don Juan's voice.

  You would only smile,' she said, at a loss to meet his quizzing eyes. Her gaze was upon the floor and it came as a shock when he leaned forward on his stick, took her chin in his hand and made her look at him. At his touch she gave a shiver she could not control. At that shiver a look of irony came into his eyes.

  'I am one of those who will not be denied his way,' he said a trifle mockingly. 'Come, tell me your wish and we will see if I can make it come true.'

  'You can't — '

  'At least let me hear what it is I cannot do.' He held her face tilted up to him so that she was at the mercy of his scrutiny. She couldn't escape him as he studied her country-girl skin, the slant of her cheekbones, her mouth that was wide but sensitive, her eyes that were a marigold colour. Hers was a face that wasn't at all pretty in the conventional sense ... but given the right sort of clothes and gaiety to light her features and she had the makings of an unusual attractiveness.

  Yvain was quite unaware of this. She thought herself as plain as Ida Sandell had made her look.

  'Tell me.' His eyes were magnetic, drawing forth the truth against her will.

  'It would have been interesting ... to be assistant to a brilliant art dealer.' She gave a nervous laugh. 'But what could be more impossible a wish for me when all I know is how to fetch and carry and walk Madam's pet dogs?'

  'You surprise me.' The pressure of his ring was against her skin. 'Young girls usually have a longing to be something glamorous, such as a model.'

  'A model?' Her eyes were honeyed with laughter, and his eyes narrowed speculatively. 'Senor, I am hardly the type for that sort of career.'

  'You have unusual bone structure.' He turned her face from left to right, as if studying an objet d'art. 'So you would like to handle rare and priceless objects, eh? First you would have to know what makes them rare.'

  'That is the drawback.' Her eyes took on a look of gravity. 'I have had no real teaching. I left school when I was fifteen.'

  'Young lady,' his eyes were amused in a sardonic way, 'I was riding the plains of South America when I was a boy. I was a gaucho, as they call the cattle herders there.'

  'But you are the Marques de Leon!' she gasped.

  'I was but a gaucho when I was fifteen.' His fingers slipped from her face, leaving a warmth she was very conscious of. His gaze turned from her to that of his portrayed mother. 'My father died fighting in the Civil War, and my mother ran away from his family, taking me with her on a boat with other refugees bound for Argentina. There she worked as a flamenca dancer, and there I grew up to become a vaquero, until driven by ambition I set off to mine for silver in the hinterland. I had luck, I found a silver mine, and I bought a house for my mother in Lima and there she lived, without any more need to dance for the toughs that frequented the cafes.

  'She died of sadness of the heart, senorita, and in the course of time my grandfather also died and I returned to the Isla del Leon. I have never forgiven the slight to my mother. My father's family wanted me but not Rosalita, and I chose to stay with her and to find my own education. Events conspired to bring me back to the island, but I left behind me an affection for Lima, with its savage history and its strange beauty.'

  His eyes flashed to meet Yvain's. 'Yes, the vaquero lives in the saddle,' he said crisply. 'I was not always as you see me now.'

  'You . had an accident, senor?'

  'Yes, an accident.' He seemed not to want to discuss that aspect of his life in Lima, and for a moment his features were drawn with a harsh memory. 'So you wish to work among old and lovely things, eh?'

  'It's nice to dream,' she said with half a smile.

  'It need not remain a dream. You are not a shallow young person. I can see for myself that you have an appreciation of this room with its antiques from Lima and its carved furniture. Of course you need to learn a lot of things, and a couple of foreign languages are necessary. There resides on the island a friend of mine who knows a great deal about the lives of great painters and sculptors, and who in his younger days was a teacher of languages. A Senor Fonesca - ah, do you know of him?'

  'Yes, senor.' She thought of the housekeeper's words, that Senor Fonesca had a daughter of great beauty whom Don Juan would probably make his wife.

  'Good. I will take you soon to meet him and we will discuss the possibility of your becoming his pupil for a few hours each day — you widen the eyes in amazement. Is this not what you

  would like, to receive education from a man of learning?'

  'I ... I'm thinking of the cost, senor.'

  'Then stop thinking of it, instantly.' His dark eyes held hers, brilliant and yet inscrutable. 'The day may come when you can repay me. In the meantime it will amuse me to be the guardian of an English girl.'

  'Guardian?' she faltered.

  'Did we not agree that I would be responsible for you while you reside on the Isla del Leon? If Senor Fonesca agrees to accept you as a pupil, then it will be some time before you are ready to leave the island for the world of art and antiques. You need a home, so you will stay here. I have a relation on the mainland, a Dona Augusta, who can come and be your duenna. Ther
e,' his smile was mocking, 'will that satisfy your sense of propriety?'

  She flushed and found it disconcerting the way he could read her mind. 'I ... don't know how to thank you, Don Juan.'

  'I shall be quite rewarded if one day I walk into an art gallery and find Yvain Pilgrim in charge.'

  Even as he spoke he looked her over. 'Tomorrow you will request of the housekeeper that she takes your measurements. They will be sent to the fashion house of Ignazio in Madrid, along with details of your colouring, and half a dozen pairs of everything will be ordered, including day and evening dresses suitable for the life you will now lead as my ward. And,' he held up a hand as if to restrain the words on her lips, 'you will not mention another word about being grateful. I do this for my own sake. The red flowers on that dress do not accord with the colour of your hair, senorita.'

  She might in that moment have warmed to him, for she was deeply grateful for the chance he was giving her, but he limped past her to the door and opened it. 'You will now go to bed,' he said.

  She slipped past him into the hall. 'Goodnight, senor.'

  'Buenos noches, Senorita Pilgrim.' He gave her a bow that was dismissive, and feeling chilled again she hastened away and heard the door of the golden room close behind him.

  Forever, and forever life had changed for her. Her devil guardian had granted her wish and she was going to train for a career.

  There was no one about in the hall and she did a jig and curtsied to her reflection in a wall mirror. 'You are going to learn how to be a lady, Miss Pilgrim.' She smiled at the country burr in her voice. 'There now, you never thought that would happen, did you?'

  On her way up the turret stairs she thought of Ida Sandell, who hadn't cared enough to inquire if she had been picked up by a boat and brought to safety. Just as well Ida hadn't asked; she would probably have demanded the return of her maid-of-all-work, and Don Juan would not have said that from now on she would be his ward.