Forbidden Flame. Anne Mather
Leyton? Because if you do not, you must be as stupid as you look!’ And brushing past Caroline, she ran out of the room, before either her governess or her uncle could prevent her.
‘Well—–’ Left alone once again with Luis, Caroline felt hopelessly embarrassed, as much by her own sense of inadequacy as by what the child had said. ‘What do I do now?’
Luis’s mouth compressed. ‘You are asking me?’
‘Who else?’ Caroline made an encompassing gesture around the otherwise empty room. ‘There is no one else.’ She expelled her breath unevenly. ‘Is she always like that?’
Luis shrugged, tucking his thumbs into the back of his belt. ‘You must make allowances for Emilia. She has had a rather—unusual upbringing.’
‘That I can believe!’ Caroline was vehement.
‘Do not misunderstand me, Miss Leyton. I am not saying that Emilia is without—gentleness, compassion. Only that she has never known a mother’s care.’
Caroline shook her head. ‘But your aunt—–’
‘Tia Isabel is—how shall I say it?—a little unworldly.’ He paused. ‘Miss Thackeray provided the fulcrum of Emilia’s existence. When she died …’
‘But what about her father?’ Caroline had to say it. ‘Surely he—–’ She broke off, and then said inconsequently: ‘For two brothers, you are totally different.’
‘Forgive me,’ Luis’s grey eyes narrowed, ‘but is that one of your famous English non sequiturs? I do not see what relevance it has to the purpose.’
‘It hasn’t,’ Caroline sighed forlornly, bending her head. ‘I mean, it has no relevance, of course. I just wish—–’ She broke off again. ‘Are there really vampire bats here?’
Luis’s mouth softened a little. ‘And if I say yes, will you go running back to Merida?’
He was teasing her, but she could not respond to it. ‘Perhaps, if I could,’ she answered now, and his sudden humour disappeared behind a mask of gravity.
‘I think I must be going,’ he said, moving purposefully towards the door. ‘I promised Tomas I would ride with him this morning, and it grows late.’
‘Wait—–’ Caroline went after him urgently, her green eyes wide and anxious. ‘Please, you have to tell me—what am I do do about Emilia? Where is she? When do her lessons begin? And—and are we allowed to go outside the grounds of the hacienda?’
Luis halted in the doorway and looked down at her with studied consideration. His stillness disturbed her. The penetration of those light eyes was disruptive. Her lungs began to feel constricted, and her throat felt tight, and she wondered if this was how a penitent felt in the presence of a confessor.
‘I suggest you ask my brother these things,’ he advised her at last, his voice curiously constrained. ‘He is your employer, señorita, not I. Now, if you will permit me—–’
‘You’re not—leaving!’
It seemed imperative that she should know this for a fact, and without really thinking what she was doing, she emulated Emilia’s example and gripped his sleeve. Only somehow her fingers encountered the hair-roughened skin of his forearm, and the feeling of the taut muscle beneath his skin caused an involuntary tremor of awareness to ripple over her. She looked down at her fingers, spreading them almost experimentally, then her chin jerked upward as he wrenched his arm out of her grasp.
‘I return to Mariposa in three days, señorita,’ he told her harshly, and without another word, he strode away.
Caroline turned back into the salón, aware that she was trembling. She realised she had done an unforgivable thing by making him aware of her like that, but it had happened completely without her volition. Yet perhaps it was inevitable. He was the only person she could turn to, and she dreaded the thought of his eventual departure. But somehow she had to face that reality, and live with it.
‘Señorita!’
For a moment, the whispered use of her name confused her. She had thought herself alone in the room. But now she saw that the door to an inner salón had opened, and a tiny figure, voluminous in folds of black silk, was hovering on the threshold. A headdress, of the kind Caroline had previously only seen on those ancient portraits upstairs, formed a kind of jewelled halo above the woman’s coiled hair, and her ears and the gnarled knuckles of her fingers glittered with a veritable fortune in diamonds, rubies and emeralds.
‘Doña Isabel?’ ventured Caroline nervously, at a loss to know how else to address her, and the tiny figure bobbed her head in assent. ‘How—how do you do? I’m Caroline Leyton—er—Emilia’s new governess.’
‘Governess, pah!’ Doña Isabel released her hold on the door and advanced a few paces into the room, staring at Caroline with unconcealed contempt. ‘I know who you are, señorita,’ she admonished her, in a low guttural undertone. ‘You are Esteban’s latest puta, that is who you are! Do you think you can deceive me? I have lived here too long!’
Caroline was astounded. Her knowledge of Spanish might not be comprehensive, but she knew exactly what puta meant, and its connotations were not only shocking but insulting.
‘I assure you, Doña Isabel—–’ she began, only to have the old lady interrupt her.
‘Be silent! I do not hold conversations with putas!’ she hissed arrogantly. ‘How dare you enter my sister’s sitting room? How dare you show your legs, like any common—–’
‘That will do, Tia Isabel.’ The cultivated masculine tones came as such a relief that Caroline turned to face her employer with real gratitude in her face. She was fast coming to the conclusion that no one could remain sane in this madhouse, and to see Don Esteban entering the room, apparently composed, and sober, in his elegant grey lounge suit, seemed almost a miracle.
‘Puta! Puta!’ cried Doña Isabel shrilly, her voice rising in her agitation. ‘How dare Esteban permit his women to use my sister’s—–’
‘Tia Isabel, my father is dead,’ declared Don Esteban flatly, spreading his hands apologetically in Caroline’s direction. ‘Senorita, please forgive my aunt. She is sometimes—forgetful.’
Caroline shook her head in bewilderment as the old lady frowned, and tried to absorb what her nephew was saying. ‘Esteban is dead?’ she echoed, thin brows meeting above a long aquiline nose. ‘Then—then who is this girl? What is she doing at San Luis de Merced?’
‘Miss Leyton is Emilia’s new governess,’ explained her nephew calmly. ‘You remember? I told you. She has come from England to teach Emilia geography and history, no?’
Doña Isabel viewed Caroline with suspicion. ‘But she was here, talking with Luis. I saw the way she looked at him!’
‘You are imagining things, mi tia,’ Esteban retorted, evidently losing patience. ‘Go back to your embroidery, tia, I wish to discuss business matters with Miss Leyton.’
Doña Isabel hesitated, but clearly Esteban had the upper hand, and with a gesture that was curiously pathetic she disappeared out the door through which she had entered. Her departure was a definite relief, and Caroline linked her fingers together in an effort to hide their obvious trembling, wishing she had more experience in these matters.
‘Please sit down.’ Esteban was all sympathetic affability now. ‘I do not know how I can satisfactorily atone for my aunt’s behaviour, except to beg your indulgence for her temporary lapses of memory.’ He sighed. ‘She is—was—my mother’s sister, an unmarried lady of uncertain years, and prone, I regret to say, to periods of fantasy concerning my father’s behaviour.’
Caroline, who had subsided gratefully on to a satin-striped sofa, looked up at him.