Pilgrim's Castle Page 6

  The smoke from wood fires hung on the air, and there was windmill irrigation that added to the legendary air of this island. It lay hidden from the world, and there was the ruin of an old monastery on a bluff where long ago the monks had defended the islanders with cannon when the sails of pirate ships were sighted.

  All of this had an appeal for Yvain. She had never been a city girl and she revelled in the sands as she ran along them, her hair flying out behind her, her gaze upon the castle, standing there on the cliffs like something out of a dream with its curving walls and its crowned turrets, and its sea-tower whose narrow windows gleamed golden with light.

  Don Juan was up there, the master of her castle of refuge, a subtle, dominant, aloof man who liked to give the impression that he had no sentimental feelings. Yvain wondered if he had been hurt out in Lima. The other day horses had been mentioned and he had changed the subject. He had received his injury while out riding was that the reason the stables at the castle were empty and echoing?

  Yvain arrived back at the castle that afternoon to find that in her absence the Magi had arrived with gifts and gone silently away again. Long, square and rotund boxes were piled on the end of her bed and on the chairs, and she tore off seals and wrappings in her eagerness to see their contents.

  Her hands were lost in filmy things of white and palest apple-green, exquisite lingerie in a silvery box. Her fingers stroked dresses of jersey-silk and pleated chiffon; evening gowns of lustrous velvet; beachwear, and simple day dresses in colours of sunlight and shades of green and bronze that toned with her hair. There was footwear for all occasions ... and something in a long box that she hardly dared to touch.

  With tentative fingers she stroked the honey-brown mink ... surely there was some mistake? Don Juan had not mentioned fur wraps to her, yet one had been sent, a dream-soft cape for the shoulders, with one huge mink button to fasten it and silken straps beneath the fur into which she slipped her arms.

  She had put it on as if in a dream and now she found herself in front of the mirror. She stared at her reflection. Pilgrim in a fur wrap. Pilgrim the maid clad like a princess!

  A blush ran all over her fair skin. Had she misunderstood Don Juan when he had talked of making her his ward? Manrique Cortez had said that people were talking about her. Had she, in her innocence, led the Marques to suppose that in return for the lovely clothes she would be compliant to demands other than those of guardianship?

  She tore off the wrap, threw it on the bed and went running from the room. She didn't stop running until she reached the door of his study at the top of the sea-tower. She tapped upon it before she lost her nerve. She had to tell him that the clothes were too elaborate; that she wanted only simple things. She had to make things clear to him... she was a good girl, not one to be bought with mink!

  A deep voice invited her in Spanish to enter, and she took a deep breath before turning the handle of the oval-shaped door.

  She stepped into a circular room, and for a moment she hardly recognized the lean figure who sat behind the heavily-carved desk. He wore a silk shirt open at his throat, his hair was disarranged, as if he had been running his fingers through it, and around him hung the strong haze of the dark cigarros he was fond of smoking.

  It was always disturbing to be in his presence, and upon this occasion Yvain was nervously aware of what she had come to discuss with him.

  'So at last you have found your way to my atalaya.' He got to his feet and indicated that she sit in a nearby chair upholstered in black velvet. 'It's a word meaning watch-tower, for in the old days men would have been posted up here to keep a lookout for pirate galleons. In fact, a certain scion of the Leon family was once a notorious sea-rover himself.'

  Don Juan's smile was a brief flash of white teeth. 'The history of my family has long fascinated me and I am in the process of writing it.' He gestured at the pile of manuscript on his desk, and the leather-bound diaries and notebooks that lay open around him. 'It proves an absorbing task, for the Leons have been soldiers, explorers, sea-rovers and poets.'

  Yvain gazed fascinated at his darkly handsome face; in his white silk shirt and with his hair ruffled, he was a magnetizing man. Her heart drummed ... this was a man who looked as if he might carry in his veins a dash of his pirate ancestor! Made shy by him and by the thought, she pulled her eyes away from him and looked around his study. It was quite austere except for the wall cabinets that held trophies, several rifles, the bric-a-brac of a man who had once been very active. There were Aztec masks, objects found in strange places, and a clump of silver ... probably the first piece he had ever mined.

  She glanced back at him and found him studying her through cigarro smoke and narrowed eyes. 'The clothes came... from Madrid,' she blurted.

  'I hope you found them to your liking,' he drawled.

  'Don Juan ... '

  'Yes, Yvain?'

  It was his use of her name, the velvety inflexion of his voice, the way he looked at her that made her take panic again. 'Ignazio's have sent a ... a fur wrap, senor. You didn't order one — '

  'Of course I did.' Deep in his eyes something was flickering. 'A mink shoulder-wrap suitable for a young girl ... don't you like it, senorita? Does it not become you?'

  'It's beautiful, but I can't accept it!'

  'And why not, may I ask?'

  'It's too expensive.'

  'If the wrap is becoming on you, then I shan't question the cost.'

  'I would, senor!'

  'You, senorita?' He lifted his cigarro with a deliberate movement of his hand and drew on it. Smoke drifted just as casually from his nostrils. 'Do you expect to pay for the garment as well?'

  'Fur wraps are usually paid for twice over.' Her heart was drumming madly, for though his face was so still, his eyes were quietly smouldering. She was gripping the edge of her chair, as if ready to catapult out of it to the door.

  It was then that he gave an amused chuckle. 'So, nina, you have guessed my wicked intention and won't be bought with furs and flounces, eh? Tut-tut! What a dire disappointment for the black-eyed lord of the castle? What will he do now to entice the innocent maid into his embrace - will he in next week's thrilling chapter find a way to overcome her scruples?'

  Yvain stared at him, and then he chuckled again and she blushed scarlet.

  'What absurd novels the Senora Sandell must have ordered you to read to her.' He tapped his cigarro over a bronze ashtray. 'Child, I give you the new clothes because you need them, and because a young girl should have a few pretty things. I think it has been a long time since anyone gave you presents, so you are suspicious of them. You have no need to be. A fur wrap is necessary when we go to the theatre or to dine with friends of mine. As my ward, I expect you to look presentable.'

  She swallowed the lump of mortification in her throat. 'I ... I'm sorry for being so foolish, senor.'

  'I don't blame you, child. You worked for a foolish woman who no doubt planted in your head the idea that love between adults is a commodity, something to be bought and sold. I am well aware myself that there are people who are imbued with this idea. My grandparents could never understand my father for choosing love in preference to a cold, brilliant alliance with a girl of wealth. To the day of his death they never forgave him.' Don Juan's eyes dwelt broodingly on the silver he had dug out of the wild land of his youth. 'They called me the son of a witch. They said my mother had cast a gipsy spell over their son ... they blamed her for his death. Her people were partisans, and she and my father fought in the hills of Spain with them until he was killed.'

  The dark eyes of the son of Rosalita caught and held Yvain's. They were set deep beneath the black brows, with lines etched outwards to his temples. His temples were smoky-silver, a strange contrast to the vigour of his shoulders, moulded by the silk of his shirt. And then almost with deliberation he rose to his feet and with the aid of his stick he limped to a window of his sea-tower.

  'Come and watch the sun as it drowns in the sea,' he said, and he ope
ned the window and the evening air rushed in. Yvain, shy of him because of her foolishness; shy of contact as yet with any man, leaned far forward to look at the sunset. A great flame, burning its way into the water far below, setting

  light with colour the tips of the silky waves.

  'So lovely and cruel,' she breathed.

  Her hair took flame as well, and then suddenly she felt a hand upon it. 'Would you escape, Rapunzel?' There was a note of humour in his voice, a questing look in his eyes when she turned to face him.

  'My father used to call me that,' she said. 'He used to say that one day I would - senor, your caste is very well preserved, yet it must be very old.'

  'A mere hundred years, senorita.' There was a glimmer in his eyes, as if in retrospect he found it amusing that he should be thought the seducer of a leggy adolescent. 'The old castillo was a rambling structure built all over these cliffs and somewhere we have a painting of it, but I consider the present building much more attractive and compact - don't you?'

  'I love it.' The words leapt warm from her lips. 'I never ever thought to live in a castle. It's like something out of a fable.'

  'And I am the ogre?' he quizzed her, a quirk to his left eyebrow.

  'No—'

  'Come, why should a young girl not find me rather sinister with my limp and my brooding on the past?'

  He turned from her without awaiting her reply and limped back to his desk. 'Tomorrow evening we dine at the Club Hidalgo with Senor Fonesca and his daughter. I should like you to wear one of the new dresses.'

  'Yes, senor.' She heard the note of dismissal in his voice and walked past him to the door of his tower. There she paused and glanced back at him. 'Thank you for the lovely things, Don Juan. I am grateful - really.'

  'They are necessary to your new life.' He spoke crisply and was studying a sheet of manuscript covered in longhand. 'I shall be working most of this evening, so vaya con Dios.'

  The beautiful Spanish words travelled with her to her room, where she proceeded to fill the wardrobe and the drawers with her new and exciting possessions. She studied a velvet dress with a full skirt like a bell, and then switched her attention to a chiffon dress with, hundreds of fine pleats from shoulders to hem. Never in her life before had she been faced with the problem of choosing a dress in which to dine with a man at a smart nightclub. It was like a dream, yet when she pinched herself the pain was real.

  The dresses were real ... the castle was a fact ... in the morning she would not awake to the clamour of an alarm clock, to face another day of waiting hand and foot on Ida Sandell. All of that was behind her ... all of this was part of her new life.

  After eating alone, she sat at her bedroom window and watched the stars sparkling over the sea. She breathed the scent of pennyroyal and wondered what Manrique Cortez would think of her in her finery tomorrow' evening.

  Her heart drummed softly with excitement. Manrique had thought her attractive and as she touched a wondering hand to her hair, she remembered how the young men on the ship had passed her by without a second glance. It had hurt to be a wallflower. It had made her feel so lonely and unwanted to have to watch other girls dancing in the arms of smiling young men, and sometimes she had cried in the silence of the night and longed for someone to say nice things to her.

  Manrique had come along and said them, and perhaps when they met again he might ask her to dance with him.

  The following evening she chose to wear the velvet dress. She loved the tawny gold colour of the lustrous material, and most of all the short embroidered jacket that went with the gown. She plaited her hair - washed that morning and the colour of an autumn leaf - and circled the crown of her head with the glossy rope. She then applied face powder, lipstick and a little eye-shadow, for an assortment of cosmetics had been sent with the accessories to her new clothes, and she was thrilled by how adult she looked.

  Her eyes shone now they weren't obscured by those awful spectacles, and with a happy laugh she curtsied to her reflection. She was glad she looked nice ... for Manrique ... but now she had to go downstairs and present herself to her guardian.

  Her fingers clenched nervously on her velvet embroidered bag as she made her way down to the hall. The turret stairs formed a spiral around her slim young figure and she was almost at the foot of them before she became aware of the tall dark figure framed by an archway leading out from the hall. There was a wall lamp above the archway and it cast its shaded light as if upon a statue ... he didn't move or speak until Yvain's eyes fell startled upon him.

  'Oh — ' She paused upon the stairs and caught her beaded bag to her heart. 'Good evening, senor.'

  He held out a hand to her and she went hesitantly towards him. 'You look very grown up,' he said, and for a frightening moment, as he took her hand, she thought he would raise it and kiss it. But no. He pulled her into the light and studied her face. 'You have too much paint on your lips - come!' Gripping her with one hand, and his stick with the other, he made her go with him to the sala.

  He gestured at a mirror on the wall. 'Wipe off the paint,' he ordered.

  She did as she was told, but inwardly she was trembling. Had she expected this man to admire her in the dress he had paid for? What a forlorn hope! He merely wished her to look presentable to his friends.

  'Is that better, senor?' She turned to face him, and he aroused in her all the awkwardness of youth as he looked her over. Not a flicker of a smile disturbed his countenance as he half-leaned upon his stick and studied her as if she were a painting on a wall instead of a living girl with a heart beating fast beneath the tawny velvet that picked up highlights from the lamps.

  His dark eyes dwelt on her bare young neck. 'To put jewels on the young is to gild the lily,' he said, 'but I think you might like to wear this.'

  He brought from his pocket a narrow jewel-case and handed it to her. She lifted the lid with fingers that trembled and caught her breath at the strand of twisted gold set here and there with a rose-diamond and tiny leaves of glimmering green stones. 'How unusual,' she breathed. 'Oh, I'd be frightened in case I lost it.'

  She was about to shut the case when he put out a hand and took the necklace from its satin bed. 'Come here,' he said, and she didn't dare disobey him, almost holding her breath as she felt the necklace against her skin and the brush of his fingers as he fastened the clasp. 'Turn around, Yvain.'

  She did so, and gave a sudden nervous laugh. 'If Mrs. Sandell could see me now!'

  'What do you suppose she would say?'

  'I think she would be speechless for once, senor. You see — '

  'Yes, Yvain?'

  'I never had a pretty dress before ... I always looked so awful in beige, and she made me wear spectacles.'

  'But your eyes don't look weak to me.' He quirked a black eyebrow and his lean, strong hand took her face and held it as if it were a chalice, or a flower. 'What happened to the spectacles?'

  'They were lost ... in the sea.'

  'You must let the unhappy memories be lost as well, nina. I promise you will never wear beige while you live in my castle.'

  'I'm grateful for your kindness, senor.'

  'I don't want gratitude, and I am not particularly kind.' His eyes held hers, and then he let her go. 'Come, we have a six-mile drive into Puerto de Leon and I don't wish to keep Raquel and her father waiting for us.'

  Yvain preceded him from the room, and from the castle to the limousine. The chauffeur held open the door and she slipped inside with a whisper of velvet. Don Juan followed, somewhat clumsily because of his leg, and his stick fell to the floor of the car. Yvain quickly retrieved it, and she winced as his fingers gripped hers with the stick. He thanked her in a curt voice, and his face had the immobility of a rather cruel mask as the overhead light struck across it.

  Yvain shrank away into a corner of the veloured seat as the big car swung out of the gates of the castle, a slim and bewildered young figure in her tawny velvet and borrowed jewels.

  She felt as if she would never
understand this man who seemed almost human one moment, and then so proud and unapproachable the next. He gave her a home; he fed and clothed her, but he seemed to forbid her to give him anything in return ... least of all sympathy or affection.

  She looked through her lashes at his profile and it seemed so hard and flawless that it had to belong to a man of stone.

  Yvain had not realized that the Club Hidalgo would be so grand! There were many cars parked in front, and long windows ablaze with light from crystal chandeliers. The air inside was expensively scented, and the orchestra played sophisticated music.

  The Marques de Leon and his ward were greeted with deferential bows and smiles of welcome, and people looked at them as they were led to their table, occupied already by a silver-haired man with a clipped beard, and the beautiful Raquel Fonesca.

  'Que gracia tiene.' Senor Fonesca was on his feet and Yvain met the shrewd friendliness of his eyes and was at once less nervous. He bowed over her hand as they were introduced and he seemed much nicer, Yvain thought, than his daughter, who was studying the velvet dress and the necklace with speculating eyes.

  'Juan,' she said in her warm, throaty voice, 'I would never recognize your ward after the other day. Papa, it was so amusing. This child came from the beach carrying an enormous melon and I thought she was just a school girl. Tonight you look quite nice ... it is amazing what clothes from the Gran Via can do for one.'

  She smiled charmingly at Don Juan as they settled themselves at the table and he turned to consult with the wine waiter. 'I know you are fond of champagne, Raquel, so shall we celebrate with a bottle?'

  'That would be delicious, but what are we celebrating?' Raquel's gaze flitted across the table to Yvain. 'Is it your birthday, my dear?'