Pilgrim's Castle Page 5

  CHAPTER THREE

  IT was impossible to sleep late at the castle, for the sun was an early invader, filling her turret room with warmth and light. She would quickly wash and dress and make her way down to the beach, postponing breakfast in order to avoid being alone with Don Juan. After his coffee and fruit he went to his sea-tower to work, or he ordered the car to be brought round to take him to a business meeting in town.

  He was very much involved in all that concerned the island, and was a director on the board of several companies that maintained work, education and the health of the people. But Yvain had no idea what occupied him in the sea-tower, a place that fascinated her, but one she had not yet dared to explore, though he had given her permission to use the library there.

  She could have asked the housekeeper, but since the morning Alma had taken her measurements and they had been sent to the famous fashion house in Madrid, there had been a tightlipped, frozen air about the woman, as if she thought Don Juan's prodigy a little gold-digger.

  Yvain plucked a wild oleander as she made her way down

  the path to the shore. She would have been happy to make do with the simple clothes she had, but Don Juan was a fastidious man, and having decided to look upon her as his ward, he didn't wish his critical eye to be offended by a badly dressed girl.

  She tucked the flower in her braid and stood looking at the sea that creamed to meet the gold of the sands. How incredible that all this blue and sparkling water had seemed one dark night as if it would drag her down and choke her. Even yet the fear lingered and though she played about on the beach, collecting shells and enjoying a game of ducks and drakes with pieces of driftwood, she did not venture into the water for more than a paddle. She had no desire to learn how to swim since the night of the shipwreck.

  There was a bark and Carlos the wolfhound came dashing along the beach to join her in a game. She threw smooth pieces of driftwood for him to chase after, and Soon they had drawn near to the path that led to Emerito's cottage in the woods. She decided to visit Mari Luz and the baby, and was only too willing to stay to breakfast and later to mind the nino while Mari Luz went off on the donkey to do some shopping at the little fishing village a mile or so further along the shore.

  Having worked for a year in the nursery at Sandell Hall, Yvain was adept at amusing small children. Everything was sunshine until the nino picked up a shiny pebble in his chubby fist and thrust it into his mouth. Yvain lost no time removing it, and this set him off howling. He howled so lustily that Carlos joined in, and Yvain was pacing the sands, trying to pacify the little eater of stones, when someone appeared On the beach and stood taking in the scene with amused dark, eyes.

  Suddenly there drifted to Yvain's ears the music of a guitar and she glanced round to see a young man strolling towards her. As she drew nearer he began to sing a Spanish song in a voice that was as velvety as his eyes. He wore matador trousers and a thin silk shirt and a red scarf fluttered at his throat. He was young and black-haired, and as he serenaded the girl and baby he leaned against a tree, and as if by magic the baby stopped crying and lay sucking his thumb with contentment.

  The young man sang and played until the nino slept, and then with a soft litheness he came forward and took a look at the beatific infant in Yvain's arms.

  'Mil gracias, senor,' she said shyly.

  He replied in Spanish, but she didn't understand a word he said. 'I'm sorry,' she looked up at him and was very aware of his Latin good looks, 'I'm afraid I don't speak Spanish.'

  'Ah!' A gleam came into his eyes. 'Your baby has a lusty pair of lungs, senora. He will be a singer like me, eh?' She smiled at his

  very natural mistake. 'The baby isn't mine, senor. I'm minding him while his mother goes shopping.'

  'I see.' That gleam in his eyes became a sparkle. 'When I see you just now, I think to myself, Rique, again it is your misfortune to arrive too late! Such hair, like that of the Madonna. And like the Madonna a mother. But no! After all it was a glad mistake . you are not, senorita, the possession of some other man?'

  'No, I'm not,' she said breathlessly, and she just had to escape for a moment from his exciting eyes. She laid the nino on his striped blanket, and when she again looked at the young guitarist he gave her a Latin bow and introduced himself as Manrique Cortez y Esteban, a resident on the island for the six weeks he was engaged to appear as singer at the Club Hidalgo in Puerto de Leon.

  'You permit me to sit beside you?' He gestured at the sand and the next moment he sprawled there at his ease and looked at her with a waiting smile. At last he said amusedly: 'Will the senorita not tell me her name? We might speak for an hour and then part, but if I know your name I shall be able to find you again.'

  'Would you want to?' She had never flirted with a man in her life before and was amazed at how easy he made it.

  'With some an hour is enough in which to learn everything, with others it might take a lifetime.' His eyes dwelt on her hair

  in a soft rope down over her slim shoulder. 'You should have a name that is not modern, for there is something unusual about you. You are different from the gay young holidaymakers I have met and spoken with in Spain.'

  'You speak excellent English, senor.'

  'You are English, senorita?'

  'Of course.'

  'There is something about your voice that is different - to tell the truth.' His teeth flashed in a smile. 'I am very intrigued by you.'

  It was a flattering statement and Yvain, with amusement, couldn't help wondering what this young Lothario would have made of her in one of her shapeless beige dresses with her hair in a bun and a pair of plain-rimmed spectacles perched on her nose.

  He leaned slightly forward to study the smile on her lips, but she felt no fear, none of the wild urge to retreat, as she did with Don Juan.

  'Even your smile is mysterious,' he murmured. 'Have you come from some place of enchantment in those pine-woods?'

  'Perhaps a castle,' she teased. 'With my hound to guard me.'

  Yes.' He eyed Carlos, whose large, fur-ruffed head was close to Yvain's shoulder. 'What a creature to fall out with. Are you not afraid of him?'

  'Not in the least.' She gave Carlos a fond caress. 'He's really a lamb.'

  'He looks like a wolf.'

  'Supposing I said the same about you, senor?'

  'Touche!' He laughed, with enough appreciation of the quip to give away the fact that he was fond of a flirtation. 'The Spanish are a warm-blooded race of people, senorita, with a taste for intrigue and romance. No Spaniard is cold, you know. The good Dios gave him eyes, feelings, a strong pair of arms, and whether a Latin man is young or old he uses them.'

  'Isn't that a little difficult, with an iron grille between a Spanish couple?' Her smile was deceptively demure.

  'There is no such barrier between us,' he said wickedly.

  'There is Carlos, and the fact that I hardly know you, Senor Cortez.'

  'That is a promising remark, Senorita Mystery. Dare I hope that you are going to allow us to become — friends?'

  'It's always nice to have friends.'

  'A girl so attractive must have several.'

  'On the contrary,' her fingers were lost in the dog's ruff, 'there is only Emerito and his wife. I . . . I can't be certain about the Marques de Leon.'

  The young guitarist raised his eyebrows. 'You know the Marques?'

  'Who can be said to know him?' Her eyes brooded on the blue sea that surrounded the Island of the Lion. 'I live with him ... oh dear, that sounds very scandalous! I am his ward, senor.'

  'His ward? You mean — you are the girl who was picked up from that holiday ship? Why, everyone in Puerto de Leon is talking about you. They are all very curious, but the Marques is a man whom no one dares to question. So he calls you his ward.'

  'Yes!' She jumped to her feet, startling the dog and bringing a whimper from the baby of Mari Luz. 'What is everyone saying, Senor Cortez, that I am a gold-digger?'

  'You?' He rose with lithe g
race to his feet and stood head and-shoulders above her, the silk of his shirt flattening against his hard young body as a breeze blew in from the sea. 'How could anyone look at you and think such a thing? Besides, the Marques de Leon is no one's fool. He has a reputation for generosity, but no woman - so it is said - has ever turned his heart.'

  'He's a Spaniard to his bones,' she rejoined. 'Are not Latin men warm-blooded, whether young or mature?'

  'I was talking about ordinary men.' 'Yes, I suppose you were.' Their eyes met and held in the sunlight. 'Emerito, who works for him, found me in the sea and brought me to the island. The Marques said I was to stay at the castle until we heard whether my employer was safe. She was, but she left me stranded ... I have no one but Don Juan. He's kind to me in his own way.'

  'Have you never thought that he has a significant name, senorita?’

  'You said that no woman. . . .'

  'The other Don- Juan broke hearts though his own remained intact.'

  'You think my heart is in danger?'

  'The Marques is a distinguished man.'

  'And I was a maid until two weeks ago, Senor Cortez.'

  'Will you not be kind and call me Rique?'

  'You still wish to be friends with me, senor?'

  'More than ever.' He smiled in his beguiling way. 'If you won't tell me your name, then I shall call you La Soledad.'

  'What a sad name!'

  'It means girl of loneliness, a condition I mean to change.'

  'You are very sure of yourself!'

  'Don't you wish to be pried out of your shell?'

  'It sounds a painful process — '

  'I promise you it won't be painful at all.' His hand moved as if he would fondle her braid, but he only took the flower that clung to her autumn-leaf hair. 'Life is like the oleander, a mixture of sweet and bitter. We will meet again, La Soledad. Hasta la vista.'

  He went as he had come, silently among the trees, but a few moments later Yvain heard the motor of a fast car and she imagined it ripping away in the wind, the red scarf at the young man's throat a thread of colour until he was quite out of sight.

  She picked up the baby and the blanket and made her way to the cottage. Mari Luz had returned and brought with her some enormous golden melons. The two girls had coffee together and when Yvain said that it was time for her to go, Mari Luz insisted upon giving her a melon. It was so plump and such a lovely colour that Yvain couldn't resist the present, and so it was that she arrived back at the castle with the melon in her arm and a smile on her lips.

  She entered through the wrought-iron cancela of a patio, and was immediately startled to find Don Juan in occupation ... and in the company of a startling beauty in a cloudy lavender chiffon dress and a shady hat that yet revealed the creamy face and large dark eyes beneath the transparent brim.

  Yvain stood by the cancela, holding the melon and wildly wishful that it was large enough to conceal her tousled, sandy-legged, sun-hot figure from the elegant couple who sat in conversation beneath a Paradise-tree whose blossom was the same colour as the girl's dress.

  Don Juan slowly glanced up and for an endless moment his dark eyes seemed to capture Yvain in all her youthful inelegance. He wore an immaculate white suit, and his thick hair had the gleam of a raven-wing.

  With that polished politeness of his, and the merest flick of amusement in his eyes, he rose to his feet with the aid of his ebony stick and greeted Yvain. 'Please come and meet Dona Raquel Fonesca, he said. 'I have been telling her about my plan to have you become a student of her father's.'

  Yvain - still clutching the melon - came forward obediently and felt her person and her cotton dress sized up by a pair of alluring eyes.

  'How nice, Miss Pilgrim, to have the delight of meeting you.' Dona Raquel had the warm voice of coquetry, and her accent was charming. Her laughter held a breathless note as she turned to look at the Marques.

  'Juan, you did not tell me that your ward was such a child of nature! How touching - with the melon and all. Now I understand why you wished to take her under your providential wing.'

  He inclined his head as if in agreement with every word that came from those silky red lips ... words that jarred on Yvain, with their undercurrent of mockery. Melon and all! She wanted to toss it behind the bushes, but when she remembered Mari Luz and her pleasure in giving the fruit, she felt ashamed of herself for caring what this self-assured rich girl thought of her and her melon.

  'I'm looking forward to meeting Senor Fonesca,' she said, a tilt to her chin. I understand from the Senor Marques that your father is a man of learning and culture.'

  It was a deliberate attempt at a come-back, and Yvain felt beside her the stiffening of Don Juan's immaculate figure. 'Dona Raquel is staying to lunch at the castle,' he said frigidly. 'You have half an hour, Yvain, in which to make yourself presentable.'

  'You wish me to join you?' Yvain had harboured the hope that she would be spared the ordeal of sitting at table with the Latin girl, whose dress was lovely, whose make-up was perfect, whose hair was not bloomed by the salty air of the beach.

  'That is my wish,' he rejoined, and Yvain caught the smile that curved on the lips of Dona Raquel.

  'Your wish is your ward's command, eh, Juan?' And she pronounced his name with perfection - caressing it almost.

  'I'll go and get ready. Please excuse me.' Yvain almost ran from her guardian and his guest, her fingernails stabbing the melon which she threw on to the bed when she reached her room. She stared at herself in the mirror of the wardrobe - she looked a gamine, a grubby little ward of charity. Was it any wonder that Raquel Fonesca should think her an amusing target for a few sly digs?

  She opened the wardrobe and took out the leaf-green skirt and blouse with the frilly sleeves, and as she washed and dressed she wondered when her new clothes would arrive from Madrid. At first she had felt reluctant about accepting them, but now she was glad they had been ordered for her. As the ward of Don Juan she would have to meet his friends, and he didn't wish to be embarrassed by her, nor did she wish to be hurt by girls who had never known what it was like to be an orphan, and then a maid who was on her feet from daybreak to bedtime.

  It was a very gay luncheon on the part of Dona Raquel, who was well versed in all the tricks of charming a Spaniard. She was coquettish and demure by turns, and it seemed to Yvain that her aloof guardian was enchanted by her. He listened to her with a smile on his lips, and even laughed when she described the party she had attended on board the yacht of a celebrated matador.

  'He wore diamond cuff-links, Juan, and said that next time I visited Seville I was to see him fight in the bull-ring and he would present the ear to me.'

  'How horrible!' The words escaped from Yvain before she could stop them. 'I mean - about the bull, not the cuff-links!'

  Dona Raquel gave her a cool look, her fork poised above the rich sweet on her plate. 'It is ironical that, the British should think us cruel because of the bullfight. Is it not a fact that your countrymen go hunting in red coats? I believe their quarry is the fox or the stag?'

  'I hate hunting as well.' Yvain's face had gone white, for inevitably she was reminded of the sound of horns on a misty morning, and of her father's death in the stables at Sandell Hall. 'People who think it sport to bait. Others never feel anything but the thrill of being cruel, and I wish my country would outlaw hunting.'

  'The bullfight is a contemptible spectacle.' Don Juan spoke quietly but with an edge to his voice. 'I have always hated the masking of the picadors' horses.'

  'You say that, Juan, when it was a horse —'

  'We will not discuss it, Raquel.' He smiled, Yvain noticed, but his eyes were as still and dark as pools whose depths could be hiding many mysteries. 'There is to be a concert at the Club Hidalgo. I should think my ward would enjoy it, eh?'

  Dona Raquel gazed across the table at Yvain in her peasant-type dress, with her hair in a braid and her slim young neck bare of adornment. The Spanish girl fingered her own glowing pearls and sa
id demurely, 'Are you sure Miss Pilgrim will like our music, Juan? It is rather different from the guitar strumming of the pop groups in her own country.'

  He looked at Yvain, and his lean fingers played with the stem of his wine glass. 'Are you a fan of pop music?' he asked her.

  'I never really had the time to find out, senor,'' she replied. 'Now and again there were dances at the Hall and an orchestra was hired for the occasion, but my employer's friends were not exactly the jet set.'

  He smiled, and for a bewildering moment it was as if she entered his dark, dark eyes and found there a promise of sympathy, even of humour.

  'I think we can rest assured, Raquel,' he said, 'that my ward has not yet lost her innocent values. The guitar playing of Manrique Cortez will not be lost upon her.' Yvain's heart seemed to miss a beat. So - in the company of Don Juan — she was to see again the young man who had called her La Soledad, the girl of loneliness. The prospect was exciting!

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The flower-house was like a grotto of shade and scent, with tiny stabs of golden sunlight revealing a scarlet zinnia, a palmetto, or a little lantern fruit on a lotus-tree. It was Yvain's hideaway, where she read a book or just enjoyed being lazy. In her heart she waited impatiently for the moment when the Marques would take her to meet Senor Fonesca. She looked forward to becoming a student, and longed to learn about art and literature and all the things that would enable her to start a career.

  If romance ever invaded her thoughts, it took a nebulous shape. It would be nice, she thought, to be loved and protected with passion, but the man who was to do this was only a dreamlike figure. He might never emerge as a reality, or as

  someone who could love her in return, but a career meant bread and butter, an interest in life, and being someone in her own right.

  'I'm like Galatea,' she would sometimes reflect. 'Or Eliza Dolittle.'

  The latter thought made her smile, for Don Juan was no crusty professor. He was a Spanish grandee who had made her his ward because it amused him.

  She took walks along the cliffs above the little fishing harbour, and found starfish and medusa on the beach when the tide was out. Crabs scuttled beneath borrowed shells, and seaweed cast wet, soft traps about her bare feet. The little village was called San Caliz, and she would watch the fishermen hauling in their nets, and wander along cobbled streets roofed with arcades and out again into the dazzling sunlight.