AllFreeNovel
Share Us
He thrust long fingers through his thick black hair, his strong features hard and taut. ‘You would not understand.’
She swallowed hard. ‘I could try.’
‘But I don’t want you to try.’
It was a shock to come up against that brick wall. The door thudded softly shut on his departure and she lay down again, feeling as though he had slapped her in the face. She was shaken, badly shaken by his disbelief. Rafael had never doubted her word before. Rafael had always trusted her and until this moment she had not appreciated just how horrible it felt not to be trusted any more.
* * *
She awoke late the next morning to the blinding sunlight flooding through the windows. She had dozed on and off throughout the remainder of the night. Rafael had not returned and she had worked through the stages of annoyance and worry before succumbing to a deep sense of hurt rejection. She felt raw and bruised. Last night, for her at least, had been special, or so it had seemed until she refused to go back to sleep and did what she had never used to do with Rafael when he was in a dark mood—ask questions. Obviously there was an art to such tentative advances, an art or perhaps, she conceded painfully, an influence that she just didn’t have.
After showering and washing her hair, she pulled out a matching cerise top and skirt and wrinkled her nose at her unexciting reflection. Funny that it should take her until now to concede that Karen’s nagging had not been without cause. Her wardrobe was uninspiring. Very practical, though. Everything went with everything else, everything washed. When had she become so safe and sensible? For a couple of years in Truro she had at least experimented with different styles but after a while the fun had gone out of it and she had had other more pressing concerns. Letitia’s illness had taken priority. Her face shadowed at the memory.
Consuelo greeted her in the hall. ‘Buenas dias, senora. You would like breakfast?’
A table awaited her in a charming, sunlit inner courtyard. The air was heavy with the scent of roses and hibiscus. A maid brought her brioches and hot chocolate and a bowl of choice fruits. ‘Where are the children?’ Sarah asked.
‘Los ninos are with Don Rafael in the studio, senora.’
This I have got to see, Sarah promised herself, but she lingered over her meal, unconsciously revelling in the first peaceful and leisurely breakfast she had enjoyed in years. Stealing a last succulent grape, she was rising from her chair when Consuelo walked out on to the patio.
‘Dona Isabel asks that you visit her, senora.’ The housekeeper had the uneasy look of someone delivering a royal command. ‘In the afternoon, she must rest. You will come now, por favor?’
‘Of course.’ Sarah hid her dismay behind a strained smile. ‘I hope that—er—Dona Isabel is feeling better today?’
‘She is still weak,’ Consuelo responded with warmth. ‘But this morning, when the little ones come to see her, she is much brighter than she has been.’
So Gilly and Ben had already met their great-grandmother. Between them Rafael and his staff were making her feel pretty superfluous as a mother. The next item on his agenda would probably be a nanny, she thought tautly. Her close ties with the children would be undermined even more. Was she being unfair to Rafael? Did he regard her presence in this house as permanent? Dully recalling his chilling withdrawal the night before, she decided that she was wise to feel insecure.
Consuelo led her up a rear stone stair and into another wing. It was distinctly different from what she had so far seen of the rest of the house. They passed through a door and the wide, airy spaces and soaring ceilings were left behind in favour of long dark-panelled corridors with uneven floors and walls hung with family portraits which she would have liked to examine. Unfortunately the housekeeper’s steps were brisk. Dona Isabel, she deduced, did not like to be kept waiting.
Consuelo rapped lightly on a low-lintelled door. It was opened by a woman in a crisp white nursing tunic and Sarah was ushered in.
‘You may go, Alice.’ A tart voice emanated from the utilitarian hospital bed so at variance with the elegantly furnished room. ‘If I require your services, I’ll ring for you.’
The nurse withdrew with pronounced reluctance.
‘Come over here where I can see you properly,’ Sarah was urged. ‘You’re standing in the sunlight.’
‘You speak very good English.’ Sarah spoke the thought out loud without realising it, staring helplessly at the gaunt old lady raking her up and down with faded but sharp blue eyes.
‘My father was a diplomat in London for many years,’ Dona Isabel informed her. ‘Please sit down. People who stand over me make me dizzy.’
Sarah took the chair by the bed and withstood an unapologetically thorough appraisal.
‘Rafael is no woman’s fool.’ There was reluctant approval in his grandmother’s critical gaze. ‘You look like a lady.’
Involuntarily Sarah smiled. ‘Appearances can be deceptive.’
‘At my age, I’m not easily deceived,’ Dona Isabel responded drily. ‘I would like to ask why you parted from my grandson but you are together again with the children. That is all that should concern me.’ She paused. ‘No doubt you are curious to know why this should concern me. Rafael cannot have failed to have told you how this family treated him.’
Sarah met the challenging stare levelly. ‘He hasn’t.’
The old lady rested back against the banked-up pillows. The frail hand that gripped the raised bed-rail was the only sign of her tension. ‘I must try to explain our behaviour.’
‘That isn’t necessary,’ Sarah said uncomfortably.
‘I disagree. I lie here remembering what I did and what I didn’t do. My conscience—it troubles me even now,’ she admitted grudgingly. ‘Once we were a happy, united family. Felipe and I had three sons. One was a blessing, one was a curse and one a nonentity. Que? You speak?’
Sarah moved her head in urgent negative, having stifled a gasp over the blunt maternal dismissal of Ramon. As the sole surviving son, he was no more popular with his parent for lack of competition.
‘Antonio was the eldest and we adored him. Toni was like the sunshine…everyone loved him.’ Although her attention remained fixed on Sarah, there was a faraway look in the old lady’s lined features. ‘Toni was irreplaceable…’
As the silence lengthened, Sarah moistened her dry lips. ‘And Rafael’s father?’
‘Marcos.’ The sunken eyes shut for an instant as if to ward off images that brought pain. ‘He was always in trouble even as a child. He was very jealous of Toni. He cost us a fortune when we were not so privileged as we are now. Felipe could not control him. Yet he had charm, tremendous charm when he wanted to use it. He seduced the girl whom Toni loved. He didn’t want her. He did it to hurt Toni,’ she shared harshly. ‘Marcos liked to break things. Look at Lucia now, bitter, so bitter and unpleasant…poor Lucia. She was passionately in love with Marcos. I still pity her.’
‘Lucia?’ Sarah prompted, certain she had lost the thread. ‘Ramon’s wife?’
> ‘Before she married Ramon, she was betrothed to Marcos. He jilted her a week before the wedding,’ she shared heavily. ‘His behaviour could not be forgiven. Felipe told him to leave and from that day he refused to support him. Two years later, we were informed of his death. He died in sordid circumstances. He had become a dealer in drugs.’
‘I’m sorry.’ But as Sarah spoke she swiftly met her error in the old lady’s daunting stare of aloof enquiry.
‘He married the gypsy when he was dying of his injuries in hospital. She was many months pregnant. He married her out of malice.’
‘Malice?’ Sarah queried.
‘Without our knowledge, Toni had had some contact with Marcos. Marcos knew that Toni had leukaemia; he knew that Toni’s chances of survival were small and that his child, be it boy or girl, would come before Ramon to take all that should have been Toni’s had he lived.’ The thin voice was jagged, ravaged by the strain of relating tragedy with proud detachment. ‘Toni had a long period of remission. We learnt to hope but it was not to be. He died the same year that Rafael came to us. Perhaps we would have reacted differently had we discovered his existence sooner. But we did not. We knew nothing of the marriage. Rafael was delivered to us like a parcel. He had Marcos’s eyes and they accused us. Felipe could not bear to look at him.’
‘So you handed him over to Ramon and Lucia.’ Sarah felt sick, too sick to hide how she felt. She saw it all now. Lucia, cruelly jilted and humiliated by Rafael’s father, Ramon suddenly deprived of his status as next in line by a child nephew.
‘Ramon agreed. Someone had to take charge of him,’ Dona Isabel said defensively but she could not meet Sarah’s pained scrutiny. Her thin fingers tightened convulsively on the bed-rail. ‘I was still grieving for Toni. Rafael made me feel guilty. It was easier to turn my back and pretend he didn’t exist. Felipe…he was so certain that he could not be Marcos’s child…and yet I knew…I knew,’ she muttered in a distressed undertone.
Sarah’s mouth tightened and she drew in a slow, deep breath.
