At the Villa Massina Read online

  The lunch was ready; cold meats and salad, mounds of chopped fresh fruits in glass bowls, whipped cream, soft cheese and crisp golden rolls. The children ate without appetite, and both were glad to go down for siesta. Juliet came back to the dining-room, to find it cleared and impersonally gleaming; the old dark table and chairs, the ornate cabinet and serving table looked as if they had been polished daily for a hundred years.

  The sitting-room was equally well cared for, but gay cushions relieved the sombre armchairs and sofa, and the french door was open into the shady porch. Just inside the room, but near the door, a low table had been set with coffee for one, and the servant was hovering, to enquire whether this was what the senorita wished.

  “It’s perfect, Luisa,” Juliet told her gratefully. “If you’re used to siesta at this time, please go. I’ll dispose of the tray myself.”

  “Just to put it in the kitchen, please,” the woman said. “I will wash the things when I come to make tea.” She gave a wintry smile. “The senorita has that same English habit—the tea?”

  “I’m afraid so, but I’ll be perfectly happy to get it myself.”

  Luisa said with dignity, “Senora Colmeiro would never come to the kitchen. I will make the tea.”

  “Very well, Luisa. Thank you.”

  A brief silence. Then: “The little Rina does not look well. She is half Spanish and the English climate does not suit her. Antonio is more English.”

  “Tony’s robust.” Juliet leaned back in the low chair. “I suppose you know the children very well? They certainly know you.”

  “I have always worked at this house—first for the uncle of Don Ruy and afterwards for Don Ruy himself.” A deep lift of the shoulders. “My family have always served the Colmeiros and at the Castillo.”

  The Castillo. In spite of herself, Juliet said, “Senora de Vedro mentioned the Senor Conde. Who is he?”

  Luisa’s forehead creased into innumerable lines, her black brows became almost vertical. “But you have met him this morning; Ramiro Fernandez de Velasco y Cuevora, the Conde de Vallos. He is the most magnificent hidalgo in Spain!”

  This seemed rather excessive. Granted, the man was distinguished-looking and arrogant, every inch a nobleman; but Juliet conservatively drew the line at calling any man magnificent. So he was a count, and he owned castillos; What next?

  She would have ended the conservation there, but Luisa, who alternated between periods of utter silence and garrulousness, was on a pet subject. She folded her rough dark hands primly in front of her, but leant forward slightly, to give eager emphasis to what she was saying.

  “The Senor Conde does not come often to San Federigo, but it is said that this year he will stay several weeks. I have it from the personal maid of Dona Inez that he will certainly announce his betrothal before he leaves this time. Because Dona Inez has begged him he has come here for that purpose—to choose a wife. He has never found anyone to his taste in Cadiz.”

  “Good heavens,” said Juliet. “Do you mean he intends to marry but hasn’t found the woman yet?”

  “You do not understand; you English are very peculiar in these things. There are three eligible young women in this district, and Dona Inez will see to it that the Senor will meet them all very often.” She relaxed the grip of her hands and placed one finger along the side of her nose. “We shall then notice! There will be one whom he favors more than the others.”

  “Doesn’t he know them yet?” queried Juliet curiously.

  “But of course! He has known them for years. It is merely that now is the time he has chosen for selecting his wife. Naturally, he can marry only into a family such as his own, so there is simply the choice between these three.”

  “He’s not so young. Why hasn’t he done this before?”

  The woman lifted both hands, expressively. “There have been reasons, I suppose, but it cannot be delayed much longer. He has agreed to marry, and that is a cause for great joy in San Federigo!”

  Juliet almost gave a deep shrug herself, it was part of the rich somnolent atmosphere of this place that one accepted the customs of the people. But after Luisa had padded away in her home-made zapatillas, Juliet poured a second cup of coffee and lay back in her chair, looking out at the pinks and roses, the tall agapanthus and the distant misty blue of wistaria draping a pergola ... and she wondered.

  The Conde had at last decided to marry, because it was expected of him. As no alien or inferior blood could be permitted to mingle with that of the family of de Velasco y Cuevora, the field in which he might hunt was reduced to three, a fact which he apparently accepted with equanimity. For no man could have looked more suave and aloof, more completely master of his destiny than had the Conde de Vallos, at the quay this morning!

  Which meant that he had no objection to marrying one of the three women convention offered him. She would be his Condesa, and presumably he would make love to her in the warm Spanish fashion. Yet he would have chosen her cold-bloodedly, possibly for her beauty and tractability. How romantic. And this was passionate Spain! Juliet gave it up. She had other things to consider.

  Presently she went upstairs and began to unpack the cases which had arrived from the quay. Her own first, because the children were still sleeping. She hung away frocks and jackets, placed shoes on their rack at the base of the massive mahogany wardrobe, and set out the petit point brush set her uncle and aunt had given her last Christmas. She paused near the casement window and looked down at the garden, which was wild and fragrant, like an English cottage garden in high summer except for the orange canna lilies and the massed growth of floribunda roses. The next villa was so far away that only a glimpse of the pink tiles was visible, but to the south one could see the close zigzag of red roofs, the church steeple in the town and even a triangle of the waterfront and the sea. Actually, there was a beach much nearer, but the view was shut out by the ilexes and cedars at the back of the garden.

  Rina called, asking if she could get up, and Juliet ran into her room; a fairly bright room, this, though the bed and dressing table were definitely antiques. But there were vast built-in cupboards into which clothes and toys could be packed, and there was a book-case filled with children’s reading matter in both Spanish and English. Tony’s room was similar, even to the gaudy peasant rugs on the floor, and both children seemed already to be established.

  It was, “Luisa will get Juan to mend the scooter for me.” Or, “We’ll ask Anna-Maria to find us some strawberries in her father’s shop.” Or even, “We might ask Tia Inez if we may go on the yacht.” They had hardly spoken to a Spaniard since arriving in the country, yet both slipped in a word or two of the language without being aware of it. Perhaps unconsciously they had absorbed a little of their father’s accent; it definitely came to them as smoothly as English. Involuntarily, Juliet began to accept her surroundings as natural and comprehensible. Because nothing was strange to the children, the peculiarities became dulled for Juliet.

  They walked through the garden in the early evening, found arbours covered with jasmine and roses, and benches thick with pink blossom under the almond trees. They descended a flight of steps hacked out of the rock, and found the beach, an almost deserted stretch of golden sand where a few cockleshells were pulled up high and draped with nets. There were one or two cottages on the low headland, and they wandered up the road, past them, to look over at San Federigo nestling in its own particular bay.

  “Our beach is much better for bathing,” Tony said condescendingly, “and it doesn’t smell of sardines. I’ve been out to catch sardines.”

  “In nets?” asked Juliet, idly.

  “Yes, but they have to be special, because sardines are little. Rina didn’t come.”

  “I didn’t want to,” said Rina. “The fishes wriggle and then die.”

  “That’s exactly my reaction,” commented Juliet. “Let the men do their fishing. We’ll find other things to do.”

  “Tony was only four when he went fishing,” Rina submitted. �
�He only pretends he remembers.”

  “I do remember,” he asserted belligerently.

  “All right, you remember,” put in Juliet pacifically. “We’ve done enough for one day. Tonight you’ll have an early supper and go straight to bed. Tomorrow you must show me the town.”

  When Rina lay in bed that night she looked white but happy. Having already dealt with Tony, Juliet bent over the bed and kissed the little girl’s forehead.

  “Glad to be here, darling?”

  “So very glad. I hope Daddy will come soon, but I want you to stay, too. Goodnight, Juliet.”

  “Goodnight, honey-bunch. Sleep well.”

  Juliet came out of the room and closed the door, went quietly downstairs. Neither child had mentioned Norma till she had reminded them to do so, in their prayers. There was something wrong about that, yet perhaps it could be explained by the fact that they were used to being handled by servants, both in England and in Spain. Still, there should be no one closer to a child than its mother; what a fool Norma was, to relinquish her right to the most important place in the children’s hearts!

  By eight-thirty Juliet was again drinking coffee near the open french window. But as she relaxed she caught sight of the smart little hold-all with which Norma had presented her only an hour or so before they had parted. It held the passports and papers, Juliet’s return ticket and some Spanish money which Ruy had pressed into her hand at the last moment. There was a safe, she had been told, behind a picture in the dining-room, and it seemed that that would be the best place for valuables. So Juliet reached across to the table near the wall and transferred the square bag to her lap.

  She drew out the passports and the manilla envelope bulging with paper money, felt around the soft kid lining for anything else she might have dropped into the bag during the voyage. There was Rina’s thin blue necklace, a couple of safety-pins ... and a hard angular object which seemed somehow to have secreted itself within the pocket of the bag. She pulled the zipper, took the four-inch square package into her hands and unwrapped it from the sheet of notepaper. For quite some seconds she thought there must have been some curious error which could probably be traced to the assistant from whom Norma had purchased the bag; then she recognized her cousin’s writing on the pale blue sheet, and saw that it was a note addressed to herself.

  It said:

  Juliet, dear, I’m sorry this has to be done this way, but I was afraid you’d argue if I talked it over with you. This little package contains something which I want you to post to its owner. You will see that it is already addressed, but you will have to buy Spanish stamps, of course. I would have posted it from England, but as you know, it is difficult to send anything abroad without declaring it—in which case one has to state one’s name and address. That was my only anxiety—I had no thought of avoiding the customs duty, even though it might be fairly heavy. I daresay you will find this while you are at sea, and I want you please to post the packet, in Cadiz if possible, as soon as you arrive. If you have the bad luck to be caught with it, you must say it is something you have had a long time and that it’s of small value. Pay up without question and rewrap it for posting. You have my assurance that there is nothing in this business which could possibly injure Ruy or the children in any way. By returning a gift, I am merely closing a rather boring episode, so you must be sure to destroy this note; once the thing is posted you can forget it. I know I can depend on your discretion...

  There were words of flattery at the end which Juliet did not take in; but she reread most of the note more than once. Then she sat back, a little frightened and angry. Here was the packet with a small typed label on it. “Mr. Lyle Whitman, Los Pinos, Cortana.” Who in the world was Mr. Lyle Whitman? What had he to do with Norma? And what was she returning to him in so roundabout a manner? She had been married for nearly nine years—happily married—and yet here was unsavoury evidence of ... of what?

  Juliet slipped the small packet into her pocket and furiously tore the note into pieces. She got up determinedly and took the passports, papers and money into the diningroom. There she removed a portrait of Ruy’s heavy-faced aunt and opened the round door of the wall safe with the minute key which was in the lock. The safe was empty, and after she had slipped her own things into it, she locked it and took the key to her bedroom.

  But there, in the lamplight, she paced across to the window and back to the foot of the bed. The expensive little hold-all in fine leather, for which she had been so grateful, had not been a gift at all. It had merely been a blind, a disguise for what had lain within. Juliet recalled how Norma had handled it over openly in front of Ruy, the faintly patronizing smile with which she had received Juliet’s delighted astonishment and thanks. The rich cousin doling out largesse to someone who was being entrusted with her children! The nerve of it!

  Juliet’s normal gaiety was quite gone; she couldn’t rest. She went back to the sitting-room and found the map which she had consulted so often on the ship. She spread it and traced the coastline, found Cortana within seconds; it could be no more than ten miles along the coast in the Bahia de Manca. That was why Norma had hoped the package would be posted in Cadiz; however, she had taken the precaution of typing the address and it was very unlikely that she had enclosed anything which would reveal the identity of the sender. Juliet had only to post the thing and forget it.

  Swiftly she looked through the postage stamps which she had noticed earlier in the drawer of the carved writing-table. A peseta, she had learned, was roughly twopence, and six pesetas should easily take care of a packet weighing no more than six ounces. She pressed stamps over the sides of the parcel, dropped it back into her pocket and went through the hall into the porch. There she hesitated.

  It was no more than ten minutes’ walk to the little town and it should not be difficult to find the post office. She had to get rid of this thing at once; it was like a sudden intolerable blight on her arrival at San Federigo. She walked outside and down the path, reached the gate as a car slowed. It hadn’t been going to stop, she was sure, but the driver must have seen her. He braked, slid from the car and straightened, a tall figure in a white dinner-jacket. He came across to the gate, bowed distantly and spoke in a voice that was cool and pleasant.

  “Ah, good evening, Miss Darrell. You are happily installed, I hope?”

  Her world rocked slightly; she had enough to deal with at the moment. “Good evening, Senor Conde. Everything is splendid, thank you.”

  “You find it warm here in San Federigo?”

  “Yes, the air is soft.”

  “You are feeling a little strain, perhaps?”

  This shook Juliet; it shouldn’t be so apparent to a stranger. She took her fingers from the hard lump in her pocket and resolutely relaxed her tones. She looked up into features which were smiling with remote charm.

  “The journey was rather exacting. I was worried about Rina, but she’s settling very well. The children will really begin to enjoy themselves tomorrow.”

  “And you? What are your plans, other than for watching the children?”

  “I haven’t any, senor. I don’t need them.”

  Smoothly he asked, “You are prepared to be lonely? It is not necessary, I assure you. We shall be happy to make some fun for the young cousin of Senora Colmeiro. Both Ruy and his wife are well, I understand.”

  “Oh, yes. They told me to give their best regards to all their friends.”

  “That is kind,” he remarked, and paused. Very slightly, he leaned forward, and she saw a faint query in the dark eyes. “How old are you, Miss Darrell?”

  “Twenty-two.”

  “And you stay here, how long?”

  “Two weeks—perhaps three.”

  “So.” This might mean anything. Juliet was beginning to wonder how far his innate courtesy would carry him, when he added, “It is as well that you have the good Luisa in charge of the household. When you have inclinations which are questionable, she will advise you.”

  “Questio
nable?” Juliet echoed in some astonishment.

  His white teeth flashed in a smile. “Perhaps I do not always choose the correct word—it is some time since I last used English. Let us say that you should consult Luisa when you are in doubt. There is also, of course, my sister, who will be delighted to guide you, if necessary. Inez has a very strong sense of propriety and she is the most dutiful woman in the world. She even insists on being the ideal sister.”

  “I’ve heard about the senora,” Juliet said. “My cousin has a great deal of affection for her.”

  “I remember your cousin,” he remarked. “For an Englishwoman she is very beautiful.” Just faintly, his tone mocked. “You have the fresh prettiness of youth, so you will not object to my admiration for the beauty of my own country-women.”

  “Not at all. After all, it is one of them whom you will have to marry.”

  It must have been Juliet’s preoccupation with the square chunk in her pocket that caused the lapse, but she had no sooner spoken than she heartily wished she hadn’t. The man froze. In the darkness she could see the lift of his chin, the pull of thin nostrils, the tautening of his jaw. Without moving, he drew away and placed a steel wall between them. Yet when he answered his tones were still calm and contemplative.

  “That is very true, senorita. Before you leave us you will learn that Spanish women are not only beautiful—they also make devoted wives.” He moved slightly towards the car. “You know that I telegraphed to Senor Colmeiro of your arrival?”

  “Yes, thank you very much.”

  “Tell me,” he said, “would you call it a good marriage—this one between your cousin and a Spaniard?”

  An hour ago Juliet would have replied swiftly and sincerely. Now she spoke cautiously. “I think so, senor.”

  “But you are not quite certain?”

  “What exactly are you asking—whether I think a mixed marriage can be successful?”

  “No, you are not competent to judge that. I was merely curious, but it has no importance.” Faintly, his heels clicked as he bowed. “Please remember that I am at your service, Miss Darrell. Goodnight.”