Castles In Spain Part 7

Holly looked at her aunt anxiously. She could guess how much disturbance her accident had caused in the household, but she did not yet know whether anyone had said anything to Helena about her part in it. It was the evening of the day following the accident and Holly still felt shaky and rather stunned.

She felt as if every bone in her body had been broken, instead of just her left leg, and she was still horribly p.r.o.ne to be tearful at the slightest cause, a state of affairs that she found very frustrating when she was so anxious to be cool and calm. She felt dismayingly close to tears now as she looked at her aunt.

'Oh, Aunt Nan, how can I stay on?' she asked in a husky and not very steady voice. 'You know how anxious I was to get away.' She looked again at her aunt's kindly, placid face and wondered if she was yet ready to accept that Helena had been responsible. 'And especially now,' she added.

Aunt Nan apparently chose, for the moment, not to be drawn, for she merely placed a gentle hand over Holly's and smiled. Her nurse's smile, Holly always, called it, and recognized its professionalism, to calm and console the patient.

'I'm afraid you haven't much choice but to stay on, dear,' her aunt told her. Tor the moment you're out of action, baby, and you just have to realize it. Anyway, you know that Jose and I don't mind how long you stay, although we'd rather it had been in happier circ.u.mstances, of course.'

'I know,' Holly said, and smiled ruefully. 'But my flight, Aunt Nan. I-'

'I cancelled it, of course, dear.'

'Oh! Oh, I see.' Somehow cancelling sounded so much more definite than postponement, and Holly pondered on how prolonged her stay was likely to be.

'I had to, naturally,' her aunt told her, and pulled a wry face, her eyes speculative as she looked at Holly. Unfortunately, dear, while I was calling the travel office about it, Marcos heard me. He's very cross to think he'd been left in the dark about your leaving, I'm afraid.'

Holly looked round-eyed, realizing how her well- laid plans had gone awry, and she could well imagine that Marcos would take his exclusion from them with bad grace. 'Oh dear!' she said. 'I'd forgotten that Marcos didn't even know about my leaving.' She looked at her aunt anxiously. 'Did he say anything?' she asked.

Aunt Nan nodded. 'Quite a bit,' she said. 'But he said most of it in rapid Spanish and under his breath, which was probably as well. However, I think he'll want to know why he wasn't told when he sees you next. You know Marcos!'

Then please don't let him see me,' Holly begged. She sighed deeply and leaned back against the supporting pillows. She looked pale and rather fragile in a white lawn nightdress that had tiny puff sleeves and a wide scoop neckline. Her eyes were dark-ringed and looked much too big for her face, giving her a soulful look. 'He was so nice yesterday when I was hurt,' she said wistfully. 'I knew it was too good to last!'

She felt a little better today than she had yesterday, but she was still in pain and dismayingly shaky, so that she was not really sorry to be confined to bed in comfortable ease in this cool airy room. Her head still ached and her broken leg throbbed dully, but here she could rest and not have to bother about anyone.

Aunt Nan sat on a chair beside her bed, and from the look on her face suddenly, Holly suspected what subject she was about to raise. 'Holly dear,' Aunt Nan said, slowly and as if she was not at all sure that she was saying the right thing, 'I know it's a difficult subject and perhaps-' A shrug resigned her to the inevitable. 'Have you thought any more, darling, about who caused your accident?'

For a moment Holly said nothing, but her fingers pleated the coverlet on the bed with deliberate care. 'I don't have to think about it, Aunt Nan,' she said quietly. 'I know who it was.'

'Oh, Holly!' It was almost an appeal to change her mind, and Holly set her soft mouth stubbornly, refusing to allow herself to be persuaded, no matter how politic it might be considered 'Please think about it, dear, for all our sakes,' her aunt urged. 'I know how you dislike Helena, and she has been dreadfully - b.i.t.c.hy to you at times, but you must be mistaken about it being her car.'

'I'm not,' Holly insisted. 'And no amount of persuasion will make me change my mind, Aunt Nan.' She remembered another prospect for a moment. 'Does Marcos know?' she asked, and Aunt Nan gave one of her expressive Latin shrugs.

'I don't know, dear,' she said. 'But he will before very long, I expect. Doctor Valdare told Jose, I know, and I think Jose is deliberating before he decides whether or not to say anything to Marcos.'

'Because he thinks I'm lying too,' Holly guessed bitterly. 'And it's certain whose side Marcos will take, if he's told!' She wished that getting annoyed did not make her headache so much worse.

'Not lying, baby,' Aunt Nan corrected her gently. 'Just making a mistake.'

'I suppose no one's said anything to Helena about it?' Holly asked.

'I don't know,' her aunt said, frowning over it. 'Probably not.'

'I see!'

Aunt Nan looked vaguely uneasy. 'I think we thought it best to let you think about it again first, darling. In case you had second thoughts.'

This time it was Holly who shrugged, a resigned and weary shrug. 'I shan't,' she said, in no mood to argue, and especially with her aunt. She guessed she had little hope of being believed, so there was really not much point. After a moment or two she smiled, only too willing to let the matter drop. A huge alabaster vase filled with roses stood on the table beside her bed and she reached out a hand to them. 'These were here when I woke this morning,' she said. 'Someone knows I like roses, thank you, Aunt Nan.'

'I can't really take th credit for them, I'm afraid,' her aunt told her quietly, and the expression in her eyes struck Holly as oddly speculative. 'Marcos got them for you first thing, and Maria brought them up.'

'Oh! Oh, I see!' Holly felt the warmth of colour in her cheeks suddenly and she hastily drew back her hand, her fingers tingling with the cool softness of the rose petals. 'That was very thoughtful of him,' she said.

'He is thoughtful, baby,' her aunt said quietly, and was silent for a moment. 'You may not believe it, Holly dear,' she told her after a moment or two, 'but Marcos is much more sensitive than I think you realize. This - this business about you insisting that it was Helena's car that hit you, could hurt him as much as anyone.'

'Oh, Aunt Nan!' Holly's cry held despair as well as protest. 'What can I do? What do you want me to say - you and Doctor Valdare - all of you?'

'Just admit that you're making a mistake, dear, that's all.'

'But I can't,' Holy insisted desperately. 'I'm prepared to let the whole matter drop. Heaven knows I don't want to - to sue anybody, or make a big issue out of it, I just want the whole matter to be dropped, but you won't let it drop! You may be satisfied if I make all the right noises, but I won't - I can't say it wasn't Helena, when I know perfectly well that it was!'

Aunt Nan sighed, patting her hand gently, professional again, humouring the patient. 'All right, darling, all right,' she said soothingly. 'Don't get upset about it. I know how convinced you are, and I promise I won't mention it again.'

'Thank you, Aunt Nan.'

Holly did the best she could to control the tears, but they rolled dismally down her cheeks and her blue eyes looked big and vulnerable as a child's. It would be so much easier for her to cope with her b.u.mps and bruises if only she did not feel as if no one in the world wanted to believe that Helena Mendez could be guilty of dangerous driving.

If her aunt was so unwilling to be convinced, it was more certain than ever that Marcos would think she was simply being spiteful towards Helena, seeking retaliation for past wrongs - and somehow that prospect was hardest of all to accept.

She had her broken leg encased in plaster and she had been told to stay in bed for at least another two or three days, but Holly saw no reason why she should not at least hobble across the room to the window, when no one was looking.

She had spent the past five days in bed, and seen no one, except for an occasional visit by her aunt, and the attentions of Maria, the little maid. But Maria spoke very little English, and she was too nervous of the housekeeper to spend too much time away from her other duties, so that she was no use as company for Holly, and the patient was beginning to get restless.

She knew, of course, that Don Jose could not visit her and she could not expect her aunt to spend too much time with her when her husband required not only her company but her professional help as well, but she was in two minds whether or not to be relieved about Marcos staying away.

Admittedly she had asked her aunt not to let him come and see her, but she had not realized just how much she would miss seeing him, or that he would be quite so willing to comply. She understood too, that it would not be considered very proper, by Spanish rules, for a man to visit a young woman in her bedroom, Aunt Nan's reaction to finding him there had expressed as much, but what really bothered Holly was whether or not Don Jose had told him about Helena.

If he had been told about Holly's accusing Helena of being responsible for her accident, it could be that his continued absence, or inquiry after her, was an expression of his anger.

She sat for a moment on the end of the big bed, looking rather forlornly at her reflection in a dressing mirror that stood against the opposite wall. It was a huge, gilt-framed antique, almost seven feet tall, and it gave a head-to-toe reflection of her.

She was the first to admit that she made an oddly lopsided picture, with her heavily plastered left leg clumsily at variance with the delicate flimsiness of a pale pink negligee and nightdress. Her dark hair was loose, the colour of polished mahogany, and tied with a pale pink ribbon that added to the rather childlike and vulnerable effect, an impression further fostered by the wistful expression in her blue eyes. The marks on her grazed cheeks and forehead, she was glad to note, were already beginning to fade.

She gave a sigh, at last, and got awkwardly to her feet, hobbling across to the window to peer out between the slats of the shutters at the arched balcony outside. She could see very little for the heavy-headed bougainvillea that twined around the pillared arches and tried to inveigle its way into the room whenever the shutters were opened, but the scent of roses and orange trees, and the musky perfume of geraniums drifted up to her from the terraces below.

Holly felt suddenly lonely and rather sad, up there in her solitary room, and after a few moments, she raised the catch and opened the shutters a little way. From her balcony it was possible to see quite a long way, down over the vine-clad hillsides to the village, and the dusty ribbon of road appearing and disappearing wherever a gap in the trees allowed.

She could see as far as the far-off hills that shimmered in a distorting heat haze under a coppery blue sky, and the irrigation channels that looked like small, well-ordered streams as they ran between the thirsty crops. It gave one a strangely elated feeling, somehow, being up so high, surrounded by the solid stone walls of the castle and able to see for miles around. No wonder the conquering Moorish Delgaros had handed on such pride and arrogance with the more solid evidence of their victories.

Nearer to her view were the gra.s.sy slopes that ran down to the paddock, sheltered behind its fringe of fig trees, and the white stable buildings where the amorous Carlos lived, those buildings too half hidden by another grove of trees. The whole scene looked hot and breathlessly still in the golden, sun-dried air.

It all looked so familiar and friendly suddenly, basking down there in the sun, and Holly realized with some surprise that she had grown quite attached to the magnificent old castle, in the weeks she had been there. She could now better understand Aunt Nan's opinion that it was a home, like any other. She had thought such a thing impossible at the time, now she felt much the same way about it as her aunt did, having grown used to its size and its ancient splendours.

She was distracted from her day-dreaming suddenly, by the appearance of someone coming up the slope from the stables, and she felt her pulses respond as they always did to the sight of Marcos's tall leanness as he strode out with that masculine grace that was so unmistakable, his black head bared to the full heat of the sun.

He saw her, Holly thought, at almost the same moment she became aware of him, and for a moment he seemed to pause in his stride, looking up at her, a pale pink shadow of a figure among the ma.s.s of flowers on the shadowed balcony. Holly hesitated to let him know that she had seen him, and before she could decide whether or not to acknowledge him, he moved on again without even raising a hand.

With her own hand half raised to him, Holly gazed at his rapidly disappearing figure in dismay. He must have seen her, she knew he had seen her, and yet he had not even waved a casual hand to acknowledge her existence. She bit hard on her lip and called herself all kinds of a fool, but there was nothing she could do about the wetness of the tears that rolled down her cheeks.

Marcos had never before so pointedly snubbed her, and it hurt far more than Holly cared to admit. What did concern her most, however, was whether it was the matter of Helena that was angering him most, or his own exclusion from her plans to leave, and at that moment she would have given anything to be able to talk to him.

She stood there for several minutes, her head resting against the cool green shutter frame, feeling even more small and miserable than before, wishing she could get away from the castle, and the general air of suspicion that she was lying, simply to be revenged on Helena Mendez.

It was most unfair that she should have to be subjected to such suspicion on top of everything else she had to suffer. Self-pity had never been an emotion she felt before, but she felt now that she was ent.i.tled to a little indulgence.

A light, but insistent, tap on her bedroom door brought her head up sharply a few minutes later, and she hastily rubbed the tears from her eyes, looking across at the empty bed guiltily. If it was Maria, as was most likely, the little maid would undoubtedly report her finding to Aunt Nan, but Holly knew she had no time to get back in before the door was opened.

She did not bother to answer the knock, but stood by the window waiting for whoever it was to come in, and looked across, wide-eyed and apprehensive, as the k.n.o.b turned. The door was flung open suddenly and with something of a flourish and for a moment Holly stared at Marcos across the room, her mouth parted in surprise, her knees suddenly feeling even weaker and likely to collapse under her at any moment.

He had been riding, and Holly always secretly thought that Marcos looked better in riding clothes than anything else. Smart fawn breeches and highly polished brown boots with spurs, something one seldom saw on an English rider, made him appear incredibly virile and masculine and her senses responded inevitably and uncontrollably to him, no matter how she tried.

Somehow he seemed taller, too, and much darker with a white shirt open at the neck and showing that strong column of neck and throat, and the first suggestion of dark hair across the deep golden chest. He must have discarded the crop he normally carried, en route, for there was no sign of it.

His black eyes regarded her for a moment, but he said nothing, then he strode across the room suddenly, a grim determined look on his face, and his mouth set sternly in a firm straight line, so that for a moment Holly wondered what he meant to do.

She was not long in doubt, however, and she gave a soft cry of surprise when he scooped her up into his arms suddenly and without warning. Her own arms went instinctively around his neck and she was suddenly held close to him, able to feel the warm strength of his body through the thinness of his shirt.

The warm, masculine scent of him went to her head like wine, a tingling blend of horses and some spicy after-shave that she remembered all too vividly from other times in his arms, and she found herself wishing that the big bedroom was endless so that he would never put her down.

He was either angry or some other emotion, deeper and more disturbing, made his arms steel-hard around her, and his mouth and chin as unyielding as rock. He set her down gently enough in her bed, however, and drew the covers up over her legs without a hint of embarra.s.sment for her lack of covering.

'If you are so anxious to leave here,' he said in a tight, clipped voice, 'you should take care that you do nothing foolish to hinder your recovery.'

Holly had never felt so small and uncertain of herself in her life before, and she looked up at that dark, implacable face through the concealment of her lashes. Her flesh still retained the warmth of his body, and she had only reluctantly slid her arms from around his neck, but she was not at all encouraged by the fierce expression on those hawklike features.

'I'm all right,' she said at last, in a small, meek voice, and he looked at her down that arrogant nose as if she was being too stupid for words.

'If Doctor Valdare considered you to be "all right",' he told her scathingly, 'you would not have been told to remain in bed.'

Holly found the argument daunting for a moment, then she put her hands together in front of her and looked down at her twined fingers. 'I got tired of staying in bed,' she told him, and glanced up hopefully for some glimpse of understanding.

There was no sign of relenting, however, only that grim, tight-lipped look that was discouraging enough to send her heart plummeting into hopelessness. It was Helena, she guessed ruefully. His father had told him about Holly's suspicions and he was treating her with the contempt he thought she deserved.

'I think it far more likely that you simply object to doing as you are told,' Marcos said, and Holly would have protested. The steady, black-eyed gaze held her silent, however, and she merely shook her head.

He neither moved nor spoke for some moments and after a while it became unbearable. He stood at the head of the bed, his face in the shadows, and the dark implacability of him unnerved her at last.

'I'm - I'm sorry I didn't - I mean I'm sorry about you not knowing I was leaving,' she said, choosing what was probably the lesser of two evils, and one black brow arched in disbelief.

'Do you expect me to believe that, when you asked that I should not be told?' he asked. 'I find that very difficult to believe, senorita!'

Holly's hands clenched hard over that unfriendly formality. 'Oh, don't start calling me senorita again!' she begged hastily. 'I've been here long enough now to know it isn't just polite, but a way of putting me firmly in my place!'

Marcos's black eyes looked down at her steadily. 'Since you seemed unwilling to allow me even the privilege of being told of your departure,' he said in the same cool voice, 'I a.s.sumed that you wished to be on formal terms. I have no wish to force my friendship upon you, senorita.'

'Oh, please don't!' Holly begged, and the tears again gathered in her eyes as she looked up at him appealingly. 'I - I don't feel well enough to quarrel with you, Marcos!'

'I am not quarrelling,' Marcos stated adamantly. 'I am merely trying to keep our - relationship,' one expressive hand gave double meaning to the word, 'on the formal footing you so obviously prefer.'

'But I don't!' Holly cried desperately, trying not to cry. 'I don't want -1 mean, I don't-' She put a hand to her aching head. 'Oh, I wish I could go! I wish I could have gone when I was supposed to, then you wouldn't even have to bother being formally polite to me!'

Holly felt tired and exhausted, her head ached abominably and she wanted to cry like a baby as she leaned back on the softness of the pillows and turned her face away from him. For a very long time he said nothing, but when he spoke again his voice had lost a lot of its cool hardness and there was a hint of that thrilling warmth in it that shivered along her spine like an icy finger.

'Are you so very anxious to leave us, Holly?' he asked, but Holly did not answer. Instead she shook her head and, after a moment, one strong brown hand slid warmly against her neck, the strong fingers cupping her jaw and turning her to face him again. One brief glance revealed a softer line to his mouth and his fingers lay against her face gently. 'Why, nina?' he asked softly.

'I - I have to go,' Holly told him, succ.u.mbing to the very emotions that had made her decision necessary. 'I - I think I've been here long enough, Marcos.'

His thumb moved back and forth caressingly, almost sensually, on her cheek, and Holly was helpless to resist the uncontrollable desire for him that even that light touch aroused in her. 'Is it Helena?' he asked softly, and Holly hastily moved out of his reach, feeling that same cold chill of reality that his mentioning Helena always produced.

But Marcos was not prepared to let her escape so easily. "Holly?' He cupped her face again in his hand and she was forced to look up, if not to meet his eyes. 'You are blaming Helena for your accident,' he said, and the inflection in his voice made it all too clear that such a thing was too ridiculous for words. 'Why, pequena?' he insisted. 'Is it that you seek revenge for the times Helena has been - unkind to you?'

'It's because it's the truth!' Holly said in a small, tight voice. 'Although it suits everyone not to believe it!'

'It does not suit everyone not to believe it,' Marcos argued quietly, still unbelievably calm when she had expected an explosion of indignant denial in defence of Helena. 'But you have to be wrong, Holly, you must see that.'

'I don't see it!' Holly declared violently. 'Why do I have to be wrong? Is it because everyone finds it unbelievable that Senorita Mendez could do such a thing and not admit to it? Or because the accusation comes from a - a n.o.body like me?'

'Now you're being silly!'

'Oh, stop talking to me as if I was a stupid child!' Holly told him shortly. Her head was aching and she wished she could decide whether she wished herself miles away from him at the moment, or even closer than that light touch on her face. She was trapped, unable to even get up and walk away from him and sooner or later, she knew, she would say something that would shatter his present calm and rekindle that stern implacable expression he had worn when he came in.

'Naturally you don't want to believe anything against Helena,' she went on bitterly. 'She's too important to you, and Doctor Valdare doesn't want to believe it because he's probably known her all her life!'

A hurt, childlike vulnerability showed in her eyes for a moment. 'I did think Aunt Nan would have believed me,' she said wistfully. 'But I suppose she's become as Spanish as the rest of you in the ten years she's spent here and she can't believe that a well-brought-up Spanish girl could do anything like running me down in her car.'

'Please don't blame Dona Ana,' Marcos told her firmly, a warning glint in his black eyes when she looked up at him. 'Perhaps your aunt has acquired some of our ways in the time she has lived here with us, but she would not judge you unfairly, and you will not speak of her so.'

Tired of being blamed, of getting the worst of every attempt to tell them the truth, Holly felt the sudden need to retaliate, and Marcos was nearest. She stuck her chin in the air and looked up at him meaningly, her soft mouth firm and angry. 'Aunt Nan certainly has acquired some Spanish customs,' she told him. 'Such as not liking to find you in my bedroom.' She challenged him deliberately with the provocative tilt of her head and the look in her eyes. 'And now you're here again,' she said. 'That's surely not the done thing for a Spanish gentleman, is it?'

'Sagrada Madre de Dios!' Marco breathed softly, and dropped down swiftly beside her on the bed. His fingers dug cruelly into the tops of her arms, his mouth, hard and bruising and completely ruthless, stifling the cry she made, while the lean hardness of his body pressed her back into the pillows.

It occurred to Holly, briefly, that she should have made some attempt to push him away, but even had she had the strength to accomplish it, she had no desire at all to do anything other than respond to the almost savage way he kissed her. His hands and arms had a bruising strength, one arm holding her so close that she could feel the erratic throb of his heartbeat against her and the other hand twined in the soft darkness of her hair, keeping her firmly where he wanted her.

'Marcos!' Her mouth, freed of that fierce a.s.sault for a moment, breathed against his ear, and her hands curved either side of his head, bowed low to press his lips against her neck and throat.

It was staggering, therefore, when only seconds later he drew back, his hands strong but oddly trembling on her bare shoulders, a dark, unfathomable look on his face and in his black eyes as he looked down at her. Slowly he got to his feet, his hands sliding down her arms, leaving her reluctantly, it seemed.

'I should not have done that,' he said, in a quiet, cool voice, while Holly fought to ease the erratic shudder of her breath as she lay back on the soft pillows trying to understand what he was saying to her. 'Dona Ana is right to frown upon my coming into your room, and I will not do so again.'

Holly shook her spinning, throbbing head slowly, looking up at him, still half dazed with the sudden change in the situation. 'Why - why did you come, Marcos?' she asked in a whisper, and he held her gaze steadily for a moment, his black eyes quite un fathomable in the cool shadiness of the room.

'Perhaps for the same reason that you looked down from your window, pequena,' he said softly. 'We both dream too much, I think.' A small, rather bitter smile touched his wide straight mouth for a second. 'You are a dream I cannot afford to have too often, nina mia. Forgive me!'

With one of those stiff, formal little bows he turned and strode across the room to the door, turning momentarily to look at her, briefly and disturbingly. 'Adios, nina mia,' he called softly, and Holly tinned away her head, her eyes already misted with the tears she knew she could no longer hold back. That 'adios' had sounded so very final.